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-   -   AGS vs SLUDGE (https://adventuregamers.com/archive/forums/ag-underground-freeware-adventures/7411-ags-vs-sludge.html)

Erwin_Br 04-02-2005 03:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trumgottist
I'd like to see more general discussion move off engine forums to the general sites.

Yes, indeed! I don't have the time to browse and read all those forums! Which is a shame, because every now and then I find out I've missed very interesting discussions that were going on.

Oh well, back to the topic at hand...

--Erwin

Wormsie 04-02-2005 04:13 AM

People have tried comparing engines, unsuccesfully.

Golan 04-02-2005 09:45 AM

EDIT: (found it on my own) http://trumgottist.com/crowsnest/games.php

I'm not sure if it was this web site in the past (adventure gamers) or another but I remember being able to get a list of a lot of underground/amature games and see what engine they used. It looked just like the one here except it you could sort by engine type, alphabetically, or if it was released or not... and if so what date. I know this site has the engine information for each game but it's not visible from the listings. Anyway, I'd like the link if anyone knows what I'm talking about.

thanks

nihil 04-02-2005 09:56 AM

You find that at www.adventuredevelopers.com under "Games".

Trumgottist 04-02-2005 10:22 AM

(edit: nevermind)

nihil 04-02-2005 10:47 AM

Oh, I found the wrong one :-)

But to come back to topic:

I think that a real comparison of all the major engines out there is nearly impossible, because the tester would need deep knowledge of all of them, take into account that the different engines are targeting different user groups and so on. Plus, nearly all of them are under constant developement, so either he would have to update his tests constantly or the results become outdated soon.

So my advice to any starting developer is to download all the engines that may suit his needs and then play around a bit to see which he likes most ... and then bomb the developer with tons of extra wishes :-)

Uhfgood 04-05-2005 04:24 PM

Hello, my name is Keith, and I go on the boards and on irc as Uhfgood -- Someone pointed me to this thread, as he had read a message I posted on the 2dnow forums a long time ago...

I figure you guys would be interested in reading it -
http://www.zenzer.net/2dnow/viewtopi...321&highlight=

Please keep in mind that this is old, and i've since learned SLUDGE carries a proper license for it's sound libraries... Other than that the message is still somewhat relavent. The only thing to add is Visionaire didn't have any english documentation at the time I wrote this, and I couldn't properly evaluate it.

So please don't lambaste me about SLUDGE and sound... otherwise you can disagree, argue, agree, praise me about anything in that post.

Also if you do wish to reply to the post, please do so in here, as this post on 2dnow is quite dated...

Larrin 04-05-2005 07:06 PM

It seems all you focused on was whether or not you could sell the game commercially, most people doing their own adventure games could care less, but it can be a worry for some. As you said, you don't have to worry about the sound with SLUDGE anymore.

As for my own thoughts on the engines: from what I've read in this thread, it appears that hardly anybody likes AGAST, and most seem to think the other engines are better (someone correct me if I'm wrong), and it doesn't appear to be any better than SLUDGE, but SLUDGE now has free selling of commercial games. Wintermute looks like a very good engine, which I hadn't looked in to much before. It seems to have a good combination of menus and scripting, while also having many built-in features, and stable, fast, and being constantly updated, with a good forum community, the only one I know of now supporting actual 3D characters (at least among the major adventure engines), though it doesn't have free commercial selling of games. Next is SLUDGE, no menus, requires a lot of learning by yourself (I found the tutorial included to be very un-descriptive), but the engine is much faster than AGS (good for high-res), it doesn't have 24-bit or 32-bit color (I don't really care about having that many colors), and doesn't have anti-aliasing (important for me), some people might like the simple look to it, and doesn't have a bunch of menus to get lost in trying to find the one thing you want, I think it fits my personality fairly well. My main gripe with AGS is how slow it is, but it is easy to use and has a large community, many good features, and supports high-color and high-res (800x600 is fine for me, a good balance of quality and files-size), and antialiasing, among other things.

I don't know why I wrote all this, it's probably just writing down my own thoughts rather than trying to sway others to different engines or to share my opinion.

Uhfgood 04-05-2005 08:40 PM

As far as AGAST goes, it seemed fast and had a number of things like alpha-blending and such IIRC, however their scripting system seemed pretty complex to me at the time, and although SLUDGE is also a script driven system SLUDGE seemed a bit easier to use.

Plus the author of AGAST seemed to think it was the best thing since sliced bread...

As far as AGS the big beef I had with that mostly is that it was slow, like I said in that old post, on a pII 400mhz computer at 320x200x256 the games seemed a bit sluggish almost hard to play. But at that time it was highly unoptimized. I'd definately go for lower res or lower colors if the engine is fast. If you want people playing it you don't want something that's way slow. Especially since adventure games are still (since they were no longer commercially viable) a niche market (slowly coming back, but still in it's early stages)...

Wormsie 04-06-2005 05:36 AM

Regarding your comment about MOD music support in the link you provided Uhfgood... MOD is not a pure-sound -like format. MOD contains samples and pattern data, and thus a mod reader would have to be a bit more difficult to program. MOD is also a dead format. (Yes, you can link to as many tracker sites as you want, but it's still dead.) And you can record it to other formats, too.

AGA 04-06-2005 06:36 AM

AGS supports MOD, as well as OGG, MP3, MIDI, WAV, XM, IT and S3M, some of which I have no idea what they are.

[yeah yeah, deadworm, I'm bigging up AGS again without mentioning other engines :shifty:]

Wormsie 04-06-2005 07:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AGA
[yeah yeah, deadworm, I'm bigging up AGS again without mentioning other engines :shifty:]

*gasps* Heathen!

Likewise:

WME supports OGG (mp3-like, but without licencing issues) and WAV.

Erwin_Br 04-06-2005 08:50 AM

So does SLUDGE. :D

--Erwin

Trumgottist 04-06-2005 11:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wormsie
MOD music support... MOD is not a pure-sound -like format. MOD contains samples and pattern data, and thus a mod reader would have to be a bit more difficult to program.

I don't know if this was directed at me, but I'm guessing it was, since I brought up MO3 and I don't recall anyone talking about MOD-formats before. MO3 is a slightly more modern variation on the theme of MOD-formats, in that it supports high-quality OGG-compressed samples. I like this beacuse I can get a lot smaller files than if I were to store the same music as OGG. Since my game will be available for free download, that saving in filesize is a big plus. The end result would have been an around 20-30 MBs larger download if I'd used OGG music, and it still can be made to sound decent.

Quote:

MOD is also a dead format. (Yes, you can link to as many tracker sites as you want, but it's still dead.)
It doesn't matter if the format is dead, since the only one that has to bother with it is me. The game player will never know the difference. (Yes, working with a tracker is clunky. Being a classically trained musician that have some experience with good music software, I absolutely agree there, but I think it's worth it anyway. At least for me.)

Quote:

And you can record it to other formats, too.
Yes, but its main advantage to me is the size. If I were to have OGG-music, I wouldn't create it with a tracker.

Trumgottist 04-06-2005 11:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AGA
AGS supports MOD, as well as OGG, MP3, MIDI, WAV, XM, IT and S3M, some of which I have no idea what they are.

I suppose those unknown ones are the three last? XM, IT and S3M are also MOD-formats, with only small differences. The original MOD-format only supports four channels and 8-bit samples, which is why the other formats were invented. MO3 I mentioned earlier is actually any of these four formats, but with compressed samples.

Wormsie 04-06-2005 11:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trumgottist
I don't know if this was directed at me, but I'm guessing it was, since I brought up MO3 and I don't recall anyone talking about MOD-formats before.

Nope, it wasn't directed at you. One person talked about MOD in a link he provided. An article or a forum post or something.

Wormsie 04-06-2005 11:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trumgottist
I suppose those unknown ones are the three last? XM, IT and S3M are also MOD-formats, with only small differences. The original MOD-format only supports four channels and 8-bit samples, which is why the other formats were invented. MO3 I mentioned earlier is actually any of these four formats, but with compressed samples.

Furthermore, XM is the format of Fast Tracker, IT is for Impulse Tracker and S3M for Scream Tracker. (As far as I remember.)

james_isaac 04-06-2005 11:57 AM

I use and prefer SLUDGE. Even though the community is smaller, it's the one I got to know first, and in my opinion it is the most powerful.


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