Adventure Creator original thread

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Re: Adventure Creator main thread

Postby tlaero » Mon, 15Oct12 00:03

I've uploaded AC 6.7:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/six8f ... reator.zip

New option "Remove tiny areas" in the Edit menu. If you set that checkbox, when you open and save an htm file it will filter out any hit target areas that are smaller than 35x35 pixels. If you have a bunch of these extraneous hit targets in your game, the easiest way to get rid of them is to set that checkbox and do File->Update All.

You should no longer be able to create hit targets that are smaller than 35x35 pixels. You used to be able to create a bigger one and then shrink it down. Now AC should block you from going smaller than that size.

AC now removes extraneous <br>'s from TopText. If you want new lines at the end of your TopText, put a space after them, and AC won't touch them. (I originally planned to just remove the last one, but I changed my mind. It remove all of them in this release.)

ImageViewer colors the Memories when they have an image stored.

ImageViewer now has a "Clear All" button to clear all the memories.

ImageViewer now has an "Unused" checkbox by the image filter. If you set this checkbox, it will filter down to the images in the current image directory that aren't in any htm pages. Note that this function uses GameView, so if you don't have GameView open, it'll populate it first. That can take some time.

Major caveat: In testing, I realized that this new functionality thinks animation images are unused. I've got to think through a way to handle those cases.

Wolf, since BEW is a destruction test for AC, I ran this there. I was surprised by the number of images that AC thinks are unused. But I did a few findstrs to spot check the images it says are unused, and didn't find them. I figured out the animation issue later, so maybe the BEW ones I saw were all animations, I'm not sure. Anyway, if you folks find cases where the "Unused" thing isn't working (besides animation images) let me know. That feature ran more afoul of how much AC is showing its seams these days. It's possible I messed something up. There was also a concern that Unused would slow down the opening of GameView, but I didn't see a slow down in BEW, and if it doesn't slow down there, it's good everywhere. (-:

You only need to update AdventureCreator.exe. Nothing else has changed.

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Re: Adventure Creator main thread

Postby tlaero » Mon, 15Oct12 01:11

Okay, I had intended to sleep on the right way to handle animation frames in Unused, but the solution came to me sooner. I just uploaded 6.8 with that fixed. AC now correctly recognizes animation frames you use as used image files.

I also added a new _functions.js that has some infrastructure for adding ads to your games. I had done that for the mortzeart.com version of DwE but forgot to add it last time. If anyone wants to know how to add ads, let me know and I'll walk you through it.

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Re: Adventure Creator main thread

Postby Wolfschadowe » Mon, 15Oct12 06:36

Thanks Tlaero! I'll look at it tomorrow. Looks like a fun update.

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Re: Adventure Creator main thread

Postby Adotes » Thu, 15Oct29 03:07

Thanks tlaero for this great tool.
I am planning a new game using it, hope to see it getting daylight soon.
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Re: Adventure Creator main thread

Postby Super » Thu, 15Oct29 04:23

Adotes wrote:Thanks tlaero for this great tool.
I am planning a new game using it, hope to see it getting daylight soon.


Great to hear! If you need help, you know where to ask. I would help as much as I can but others can help more probably. Still, would be willing to help as much as you need and can't wait to see what you're cooking up :p
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Re: Adventure Creator main thread

Postby tlaero » Wed, 15Nov25 00:59

I'm making some minor tweaks to optimize my workflow, and one thing I'm doing is cleaning up the tab order. I've found that I often change the filename, then the toptext, then the says. So I'm removing some of the tab stops and reordering others to make it quicker to cycle between those boxes with the tab key. I figure it's fine to click with the mouse on boxes I don't use as much.

Question for Wolf. Do you change the page comment on most pages, or infrequently? Would you want the tab order be
Filename
TopText
Page Comment
Says

Or
Filename
TopText
Says
Page Comment?

I've currently got the comment coming after the says, but I could make it do the comment first if it's showing or something.

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Re: Adventure Creator main thread

Postby Wolfschadowe » Wed, 15Nov25 01:38

I would just go with:
Filename
TopText
Says

or for expanded:
filename
Toptext
Says titles
says href's
says onclicks

I only use page comment occasionally, and even then it's only to note my intent for something like a Choose or function in onclick.

So basically, I'd run through the three says titles, then the three says href's, and then the three says onclicks. That would be best fit for my workflow. I don't mind if the rest of the tab stops go away completely. I can use the mouse.

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Re: Adventure Creator main thread

Postby tlaero » Wed, 15Nov25 02:19

Thanks Wolf.

I'm going to keep the Says the way they are (href1, onclick1, title1, href2, onclick2, title2, etc) because any other order would warp my brain. (-:

I've also made it so that if you add a new file such that it wouldn't be on the screen for GameView, I scroll to have that file at the bottom. It annoyed me that as I added a bunch of files, I needed to scroll down to see them.

I'm thinking about doing some work to have AC do magic with quotes and apostrophes. It's too confusing that in some places you have to do
varPlus1('happy')
and others you can do
varPlus1("happy")

While I'm there, I should probably make it possible to put quotes in the says too.

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Re: Adventure Creator main thread

Postby tlaero » Wed, 15Nov25 23:40

Hey Wolf, you never actually use any of the things in AdvancedUI (OnMouseDown, etc), right? I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who ever used those things, and I've got a better way to do it now. In the next version of AC, I'm removing the option to show the AdvancedUI (Page Comment is still available). At the moment I'm just disabling it but leaving the code in place. So I can put it back if there's an outcry. But, if not, I'm going to go with the simplified UI.

Also, I was never able to adapt to not having "Show Game View" at the top of the edit menu, so I'm moving "Show Image Viewer" down. Sorry to make changes after people started to get used to it.

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Re: Adventure Creator main thread

Postby kexter » Thu, 15Nov26 00:02

No, we are not using OnMouseDown, etc for BEW. Nor are we planning to, so the hiding and/or removal of AdvancedUI won't affect us.

Also, seeing as you are tinkering with AC, I was wondering if you could add a post-save-event-hook for us. Basically I'd like to run a script automatically after I save a page in AC. So maybe on the Configure Editors form there could be a "Run after save script" or "Build script" or something option where I could specify a path to a script or exe that would be run automatically after saving. I'd love to have this so that we could automatically run our cleanup and future build/test scripts.
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Re: Adventure Creator main thread

Postby Wolfschadowe » Thu, 15Nov26 00:24

Nope. Not a big fan of the mousey wiggly stuff personally, so never used it. Won't be an outcry from me if it goes. :)
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Re: Adventure Creator main thread

Postby tlaero » Thu, 15Nov26 05:07

Hey Kexter. Sure, I can do that.

For the other two editors there's a path to the exe, a pre-argument, the filename, and a post-argument. Which of those do you want for your script? (Easy enough for me to do all 4).

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Re: Adventure Creator main thread

Postby kexter » Thu, 15Nov26 12:02

Thanks, I'd only use the path+filename to the script at this time but I see no harm in adding an extra edit for arguments for future use.
Code: Select all
For Example:
------------
Script Path: [X:\BEW\test.py]
Arguments: [--test ETATO --verbose]

// I think the working directory would need to be set to the script's, in this case "X:\BEW\".
// So the C# code to call it would look something like this:
string saveScript = @"X:\BEW\test.py";
string saveScriptArguments = "--test ETATO --verbose";
string workingDirectory = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(saveScript);
Process process = new Process();
process.StartInfo.FileName = saveScript;
process.StartInfo.Arguments = saveScriptArguments;
process.StartInfo.WorkingDirectory = workingDirectory;
process.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = true;
process.Start();

I wrote the above code from memory, so it's probably wrong. Maybe Process.Start(saveScript, saveScriptArguments); is enough, but I seem to recall that it wouldn't set the working directory to "X:\BEW\" by default.
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Re: Adventure Creator main thread

Postby tlaero » Thu, 15Nov26 19:17

Wouldn't it be best to have the working directory be set to the base game folder? That way you can get at any of the files you want.

I'll make it configurable. It'll default to the game folder and let you override it.

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Re: Adventure Creator main thread

Postby kexter » Thu, 15Nov26 21:29

tlaero wrote:Wouldn't it be best to have the working directory be set to the base game folder?
Yes, that would actually be better. That way the script could be located in one place and used across multiple projects.
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