PICEDIT 1.3 Milestone 6 released

[lance.ewing]

Today I have built and released the sixth milestone of PICEDIT 1.3.

http://picedit.googlecode.com/files/picedit-1.3M6.jar

This release includes a couple of big features that took a considerable amount of time, but I think the effort was well worth it.

The new features include:

• * Multi picture support. You can now open and edit multiple pictures at the same time. Each picture keeps track of its own zoom factor, background image, bands on, ego tester, dual mode, picture position, etc.

• * Ego Test mode. This is a feature that allows pictures to be tested by walking King Graham around the room to see how the priority bands and control lines behave. This isn't just your standard priority band tester. It includes actual cell cycling, direction changing and obstacle blocking. It feels like the real thing. And the really cool thing about this feature is that you can slide the picture position around, toggle between visual and priority screens, draw away to your hearts content and the Ego Tester is still happily working away. You can control ego with the arrows keys while you're drawing an obstacle in front of him only seconds before he hits in to it.

• * Picture code list. On the left hand side of the window there is now a list of the picture codes for the currently selected picture. It interacts with the picture in both directions, i.e. it shows the current position within the picture and allows the position to be changed by clicking on the relevant picture code. In a future milestone this list will support a lot of editing features, which I'll be the first to admit have been somewhat lacking from PICEDIT.

Let me know what you all think. I am very keen to hear your feedback and suggestions.

[Raziel]

That sounds all great...kudos to your work.

I hope there will soon be some devs working on AGI games

[lance.ewing]

Yes, hopefully a new batch of modern tools can rekindle the interest in AGI that there was about 10 years ago. I'm guessing that a lot of those people (those of us that grew up with AGI games) are more busy these days with work and family. At some point I'll stop working on this tool and actually use it to write an AGI game. I didn't get very far with my Ruby Cast game, and I'd like to revisit a Mission Impossible game I started but never released a version of. This second one was meant to be an AGI remake of the Scott Adams adventure game. I even talked to Scott and got his blessing on the project but somehow got distracted with other things.

[lance.ewing]

Unfortunately it would appear that I have broken the Step line tool in the Milestone 6 release. It isn't that surprising since I completely refactored how it stores the picture data. I had very nearly released Milestone 6 a couple of times early last week before discovering various bugs at the last minute, which is why the release was a few days later in the month than I would normally release it. It seems that there is at least this one bug that I missed. Step line doesn't work at all.

Let me know if you spot any other bugs. There are bound to be a few more.

[sact]

• PICEDIT 1.3M6
  
  * Overall responsiveness and speed. I know java applications and games can be somewhat unresponsive. But when I added all the possible stuff in to the picture, background image, dual mode, priority bands and ego, ego's speed got slow, with multiple pictures simultaneously, and addiotional stuff turned on, PICEDIT 1.3M6 got really slow.
  
  How about showing just one picture at the time. If showing multiple simultaneously is so resource consuming that PICEDIT turns slow, maybe PICEDIT could automatically create temporary backupcopies of each picture being edited, thus requiring resources for displaying only one picture at the time while not requiring user to save other pictures being edited, viewed and or tested with ego.
  
  Besides with full zoom, the only real option for 1920x1080 and above, other pictures currently just barely are visible from background and the only reasonable way access them is via Window-dropdown menu. Hotkey for switching between opened images and or those thumbnails shown in the sketch might be nice.
  
  Ego
  
  * It's a very spiffy feature, like you said, feels just like in the game, mouse control maybe as well?
  
  * I hope in future there's an option to set.horizon?
  
  * Could the views for the ego be chosen directly from AGI project in addition to possibility selecting from externals views?
  
  * EGO's movement speed adjustable?
  
  * Maybe some icon could blink etc if EGO steps on either green, cyan, and or blue control line. Option to toggle blue, conditional obstacle?
  
  Bug
  
  * File -> Open Recent -> That file no longer exists.
  The item, file that no longer exists, stays in the recently opened files nevertheless.
  
  
  PICEDIT has come a long way from mere picture editor. With the current direction it is going, I reckon the final version will be more like Java AGI IDE than mere picture editor. Which is not a bad thing. Thanks to ScummVM, AGI regardless it's age, works almost in every platform there is. And PICEDIT is a prime example that so can the tools... Well almost.
  
  I'm just hoping that the ScummVM team just would fix even the basics of the AGI engine. 1.4.0 version and still no proper inventory item support...
  
  
  Yet another sketch based on the latest version...
  
  

[clone2727]

I'm just hoping that the ScummVM team just would fix even the basics of the AGI engine. 1.4.0 version and still no proper inventory item support...

Is there a bug report for this? We're always accepting patches too.

[Raziel]

I wonder if @sact means a lack of support in the original engine, or actually a bug in ScummVM...not sure if i understand his remark

[sact]

I've reported about lack of inventory item support to bugtracker at sourceforge or what it was as well. Sierra made games work well afaik, but should you try to alter any values of inventory objects with commands like:

Code: Select all

  get(i241);             // i241 set to 255
  v40 = 15;        
  v41 = 255;
  v42 = 0;
  put.v(v40,v41);       // item 15 value is set to 255
  get.room.v(v40,v42);  // copying inventory item 15's room to variable 

  if (has(i241) && has (i15)) {print("%v42");} // ScummVM won't react, original Sierra DOS-interpreter and NAGI will print 255

ScummVM however, will output following into ScummVM Status Window:

WARNING: AgiEngine::objectSetLocation: Can't access object 241.
!
WARNING: AgiEngine::objectSetLocation: Can't access object 15.
!
WARNING: AgiEngine::objectGetLocation: Can't access object 15.
!
WARNING: AgiEngine::objectGetLocation: Can't access object 241.
!

[fuzzie]

I've reported about lack of inventory item support to bugtracker at sourceforge or what it was as well.

If this is bug #3095169, then sev requested a game for reproduction over a year ago and there has been no response at all...

[lance.ewing]

Overall responsiveness and speed. I know java applications and games can be somewhat unresponsive. But when I added all the possible stuff in to the picture, background image, dual mode, priority bands and ego, ego's speed got slow, with multiple pictures simultaneously, and addiotional stuff turned on, PICEDIT 1.3M6 got really slow.

The main culprit with that set up will be the dual mode. It is slow even when activated for a single picture and seems to get worse the higher the zoom factor. I've been aware of this for some time. The way it is implemented isn't ideal. I could make it a lot faster, so at some point I'll go back to that feature and rework it a bit. What I might do is add some timings around the various bits such as the dual mode, the background image, priority bands and then try different approaches to see what seems it up.

How about showing just one picture at the time. If showing multiple simultaneously is so resource consuming that PICEDIT turns slow, maybe PICEDIT could automatically create temporary backupcopies of each picture being edited, thus requiring resources for displaying only one picture at the time while not requiring user to save other pictures being edited, viewed and or tested with ego.

Thanks for the suggestion. It already does limit what it draws for the unselected pictures but I might be able to make that better.

Besides with full zoom, the only real option for 1920x1080 and above, other pictures currently just barely are visible from background and the only reasonable way access them is via Window-dropdown menu. Hotkey for switching between opened images and or those thumbnails shown in the sketch might be nice.

Nice suggestion. I will certainly add this.

Ego

* It's a very spiffy feature, like you said, feels just like in the game, mouse control maybe as well?

* I hope in future there's an option to set.horizon?

* Could the views for the ego be chosen directly from AGI project in addition to possibility selecting from externals views?

* EGO's movement speed adjustable?

* Maybe some icon could blink etc if EGO steps on either green, cyan, and or blue control line. Option to toggle blue, conditional obstacle?

The horizon, view chooser and speed adjustment are all things I have on my todo list, so hopefully we'll see those features in a future milestone. I was trying to think of a way to show ego hitting the other control lines. Yeah, the blue obstacle needs to handled. I was playing around with Space Quest 2 the other day within PICEDIT and noticed that the obstacle lines were mainly blue. So I guess what we're suggesting here is some sort of ego settings dialog where we can change all these things, with speed maybe being handled with a hot key of some sort.

Bug

* File -> Open Recent -> That file no longer exists.
The item, file that no longer exists, stays in the recently opened files nevertheless.

Thanks for the bug report. Should be easy to fix. I'm surprised that there weren't a lot more bugs. There was quite a bit of rework as part of the multi picture support and command list.

PICEDIT has come a long way from mere picture editor. With the current direction it is going, I reckon the final version will be more like Java AGI IDE than mere picture editor. Which is not a bad thing. Thanks to ScummVM, AGI regardless it's age, works almost in every platform there is. And PICEDIT is a prime example that so can the tools... Well almost.

Yet another sketch based on the latest version...

<picture removed>

At one point during the development of Milestone 6 I did have a Pictures tab next to the Commands tab. The intention was to do what you suggested previously where all the pictures for either the current physical directory or a selected PICDIR would be displayed. But I ran out of time to implement that. I'll get back to it in a future Milestone.

Thanks for the feedback and sorry it took a while to get back to you. It is that time of year. With everything I've said that is on my todo list, it seems like I've got enough for a whole Milestone simply to tidy up the usefulness of the features I've already released. So maybe one of the next Milestones will be such a tidy up Milestone and won't introduce any new features as such.

[8BitAirwaves]

Hi thank you for your hard work- could you possibly provide a fresh link? The Google link hosting the program doesn't seem to work anymore. Thanks mate!

[sact]

http://www.agifans.com/files/picedit-1.3M6.jar

[8BitAirwaves]

http://www.agifans.com/files/picedit-1.3M6.jar

Thank you! Looking forward to giving it a go