Most-Needed AM Features

[CBSection31]

Given the new release of the engine, what do all of you think are the most-needed features right now?

For me, I think we need some more polish to help make our games look more professional. These are what I would consider to be the most needed features right now:

- Support for widescreen resolutions and automatic resizing/scaling. Users should be able to start an AM game and have it auto-resize to fill their desktop while maintaining its aspect ratio.

- Support for custom save/load GUIs. The Windows menu bars should never be seen in an AM game, in my opinion.

- Prevent Flash menu pop-ups upon right-clicking.

What are yours?

[ShadowHunter]

Hi,

Here a few of my thoughts... I'll add them as they pop into mind

Needed:

- PNG support (transparency)
- OGG support
- Full customable inventory
- Other then ICO for inventory
- Particles
- Easy to setup dialog tree with audio sync and subs
- Hotspot finder (hint button)
- Native support for inventory magnifier
- Full customable save/load with thumbnails, autosave/resume for last session

Nice to have:

- Diagram view so you can see how frames are connected (paths of your game)
- Native support for polygon hotspots
- Show on screen which hotspot ID an hotspot has rather than tooltip
- When save/load or other non game screen or dialogbox opens an effect, for the background like blur or disaturize

More to come

With best regards,

ShAdOwHuNtEr

[mercedes]

Most of these are already mentioned..

Definitely widescreen rez.

Alot of the games I play, ppl really appreciate it when the game is set to their screen. Some games get high ratings for that alone. And are downloaded for that as well..Not many engines support this, it seems.

- Customizable inventory--Should I list features I see in them..?
-More transitions-
-Transitions on hotspots
-Better video support
-Renuend/Lyberodoggy's, tool kit was handy;
Where you can import finished frames from other projects--[puzzles]
-Definitely polygonal hotspots.
-More Animation support..
--Better Message system--It would be nice if the message system was more like TEXT..No canvas, or create a canvas..But where it didn't pop up.
The same could be said about Dialogue, being as it uses messaging canvas.

I'll add some as i think of it..

[CBSection31]

Oh, I just thought of a REALLY important one: the installer needs to be updated! The Inno compiler has had a lot of updates since the version AM uses, and AM installations are really starting to look dated.

[Simon]

Most needed is that it works on my pc lol
Seriously, what would be great is that the actual version, as it is, would work on every PC without facing any error message

I agree with the others about high rez, transparency support (PNG) and particles.
And I'd add the possibility to put a picture in the installer background, the one made when you compile your .exe

Btw, is the problem of music when loading solved ? I read somewhere that when you load a saved game, the music won't be loaded. Is that true ? If yes, an improvement should absolutely be made !

For me it's more a matter of bugs here and there to change, because the soft is already perfect for making adventure games. Just have a look at the Myst series, or more recently a small game like The lost city, I'm sure you can do them with AM.

Oh, maybe the GUI could be modernised also ? It looks a bit old compared to softs like Visionaire Studio, but well, this is really not important.
Something that should be easy to do is replace the default "blue waves" background UI by something less... hum.... "old school" ? A basic black or grey background would be better by default

[GM-Support]

Thanks a lot for all these suggestions! I also invite all people who have not posted yet to post their top priorities as well.



@CBSection31:

Support for widescreen resolutions and automatic resizing/scaling. Users should be able to start an AM game and have it auto-resize to fill their desktop while maintaining its aspect ratio.

How should the program behave exactly? For example, if the original game aspect ratio is 4/3, how should the game be displayed on a widescreen monitor? Should it display black bars on the left and on the right of the screen? (in this case, isn't it already what happens?).


@Simon:

Btw, is the problem of music when loading solved ? I read somewhere that when you load a saved game, the music won't be loaded. Is that true ? If yes, an improvement should absolutely be made !

The recommended practice is to do one of the following:

1) EITHER: Put the music in the "Frame Properties" of ALL the frames of your game, so that, wherever the player resumes the game from, the music will always start playing.

2) OR: Only put the music on some specific frames of the game (for example on the frames that correspond to the entrance of a new area of the game), and then use the "Set Resume Locations" feature to make it so that when the game is resumed, the player is taken to a different frame (typically he/she should be taken to the frame that corresponds to the entrance of the area of the game where the player has saved the game - like a "checkpoint" in some action games, where the game resumes from). This way, the music will always start playing when a savegame is loaded.


Thanks again,
Best regards,
GM-Support

[Simon]

Thanks GM ! I'll try your solution !

Edit :
it works when I add the music in each frame ! I think it should be added to the help files, because that's a very simple solution and I didn't even think of it... I thought that adding the music in each frame would play the music from the beginning each time I change frame in the game... In fact no, so that's great !

[Simon]

Something that would be great is to allow the use of 16 bits icon files. Each time I want to include an icon (whenever it's a cursor, or an inventory item) I have to downgrade the picture quality to the maximum.

Now I have poor and awfull inventory icons and they make a big contrast with my in-game frames pictures...

See the result here in the picture below.
Or maybe there's already a way to fix this ? Without using plugins...

[GM-Support]

it works when I add the music in each frame ! I think it should be added to the help files, because that's a very simple solution and I didn't even think of it... I thought that adding the music in each frame would play the music from the beginning each time I change frame in the game... In fact no, so that's great !

Great! I'm glad it solves the problem. Thanks for the suggestion of adding it to the help document.

Something that would be great is to allow the use of 16 bits icon files.

Thanks for the suggestion. This is indeed very much needed. Many other people indeed suggested that as well.


Thanks,
GM-Support

[time-killer-games]

I agree with all of the above, inventory and PNG support is needed greatly, and they are on the top of my wishlist. Not as much of a priority, but these would also be nice:

-Sound during game installation
-Backgrouind images for game installation (instead of the default gradient)

Thanks GM!

[CBSection31]

^
Those would both be solved by updating to a new version of Inno Setup, which is in great need anyway.

[JSCharnley]

I'd like to second widescreen support. As in, making it possible to create a project with a resolution of 1280 x 720, 1600 x 900, and 1920 x 1080 with the option of having the program resize the player's display like is currently possible with resolutions up to 1024 x 768. With widescreen monitors being the norm now, often people are less enthusiastic about a game which won't fill their screen completely.

I'd also love to see an option to pause videos. That way if a player is watching a long cutscene and they need to do something else for a second, they can pause and then come back.