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Newcomers AppGameKit Corner / AGK Virgin saying hello

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askewd
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Joined: 29th Dec 2016
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Posted: 29th Dec 2016 12:29
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Hey!

I'm really excited about AGK2 Just installed the demo with full intention to purchase. Many year ago i programmed AMOS and BlitzBasic on the amiga and since then i've been out of the loop - but with a burning desire to CREATE again! AGK2 seems perfect for my needs ... the thought of sharing my apps on Android and IOS is so exciting - I already have a good idea for a game/app. Can't wait to get stuck in!

Just wanted to say hello really, and ask a couple of general questions.

1) Is APK2 constantly loved and maintained by the developers? ie are they constantly updating it and polishing it? This is important for me before i commit long term.

2) I've literally only just launched the IDE for the first time - but the graphics are very blocky and 2000s looking (I'm on MacBook Pro with Retina screen). No other mac apps look like this anymore - is there a way i can switch to HD mode or something? If not - can the DEVs please fix the issue?

Warm regards!
DALE



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BatVink
Moderator
21
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Location: Gods own County, UK
Posted: 29th Dec 2016 15:31
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Welcome

Quote: "1) Is APK2 constantly loved and maintained by the developers? ie are they constantly updating it and polishing it? This is important for me before i commit long term. "


We get a new release with new functions and bugfixes every 2-3months, but there is no set schedule.

Quote: "2) I've literally only just launched the IDE for the first time - but the graphics are very blocky and 2000s looking"

This will make your game HD-resolution...

SetWindowSize( 1920, 1080, 1 )
SetVirtualResolution( 1920, 1080 )
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Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur
TutCity is being rebuilt
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askewd
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Posted: 29th Dec 2016 18:54
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Thanks for your answers!

By "blocky graphics" I was not referring to the game screen - but the actual IDE /text editor Itself. It looks as if i'm on an old C64 screen Are devs aware of this & is it fixable?

Best
Dale
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damothegreat
User Banned
Posted: 29th Dec 2016 20:23
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Welcome

Could you possibly send a screen shot - perhaps from a mobile phone picture of your screen only then maybe we or maybe even @Paul if comes on, could see what your IDE looks like on your MacBook Pro and the Retina screen.

Retina screen - are you just meaning a CRT / TV monitor connected to the MacBook? If this is the case, what does the IDE look like just on the MacBook itself? The same?

It maybe something more cause you asked that there are red blocks in the code from your post in my 4D Experience thread..

AGK is an awesome game development tool - once you get into it, there will be no turning back

Enjoy!!

Damo

Using Tier 1 AppGameKit V2
Started coding with AMOS
Anything is possible if put mind to it
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Dybing
12
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Location: Bergen, Norway
Posted: 30th Dec 2016 02:28
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Hi and welcome. Another AMOS veteran here

You got a lot to learn though, so eventhough you got some ideas and ambitions already, before taking the big plunge into some big project - take some time and create a few little 'toys' as it were to get familiar with AGK2. As far as dev-tools go, it is not too complicated or difficult to get good traction. No external frameworks, no external libraries, no high levels of abstraction removing you from the nuts and bolts of your application.

Regarding your questions:

1: Yes. Over the last year or so, we've gone from v.2.16 to 2.22 - so roughly a patch with new features (and fixing the few bugs that get discovered) every other month.

2: I'll agree that in its default state, the IDE looks rather ugly. But you can customize it to your liking with a bit of tweaking.



Here on Ubuntu with custom theme and changed some fonts (all monospace size 9) and a few other options.

Now, I'll grant it do not look quite as modern as say my favourite little lightweight IDE...



...Visual Studio Code, here pretty much in its default configuration. If there were an AGK2 extension for VSC, I'd change in a heartbeat!

On the bright side, at least the AGK2 IDE isn't a monstrosity like Eclipse...
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Ortu
DBPro Master
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Location: Austin, TX
Posted: 30th Dec 2016 06:04 Edited at: 30th Dec 2016 06:14
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It does look dated, much like these forums, but for many long time users, that's part of the charm I think.

None the less, it has come a long way from the IDE for TGC's old Dark Basic Classic language that we actually used in the 2000s



Personally, I use Sublime Text 3 for most of my coding, just keep the editor open to hit compile.

@Damo: 'Retina' is just fancy Mac marketing for high resolution

The Googles wrote: "
All 15-Inch Retina Display MacBook Pro models (A1398) have a 15.4" color display with 2880x1800 native resolution at 220 ppi and all 13-Inch Retina Display MacBook Pro models (A1425, A1502) have a 13.3" color display with 2560x1600 native resolution at 227 ppi.
"
http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

A single player RPG featuring a branching, player driven storyline of meaningful choices and multiple endings alongside challenging active combat and intelligent AI.
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MikeHart
AGK Bronze Backer
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Posted: 30th Dec 2016 10:14 Edited at: 30th Dec 2016 10:20
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Dybing wrote: "2: I'll agree that in its default state, the IDE looks rather ugly. But you can customize it to your liking with a bit of tweaking."


HOW? I found the menu for changing the color theme of the coding window but that was about it. How do you change the IDE to look like yours?

EDIT: Found it.
Running Windows 7 Home, 64 bit, 8 GB ram, Athlon II X2 255, ATI Radeon HD 4200. Using AGK2 Tier 1.
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BatVink
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Posted: 30th Dec 2016 10:33
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I have used the IDE on a MacBook Pro and it looks fine, even with the default settings. Not sure what's going on there.
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Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur
TutCity is being rebuilt
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damothegreat
User Banned
Posted: 30th Dec 2016 11:23 Edited at: 30th Dec 2016 11:26
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Just red blocks may just be a display thing and non running of code maybe something, like different document encoding set

Can you advise us what your default Encoding is set to.

To find...
-Click Document (menu),
- Hover over Set Encoding

You will see many here like West European, East European, East Aisian, SE & SW Asian, Middle Easten, Unicode etc

This option maybe chosen on starting up AppGameKit depending on your O/S Language and settings

Can you hover over yours and you should see a little dot on the one that's been chosen..

Mine and as well as all of ours may

Unicode --> Unicode UTF-8

I have systemastically selected some of the others and my Apps wouldn't run cause of bad encoding set

I might be talking cods-wallop here but worth a try and looking and setting it to Unicode 8

When you run it, do you get an O/S Error message about the language at all??

Damo
Using Tier 1 AppGameKit V2
Started coding with AMOS
Anything is possible if put mind to it
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askewd
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Posted: 30th Dec 2016 15:40 Edited at: 30th Dec 2016 15:50
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Wow you guys are fast! Awesome community

Ok regarding the issue of the blocky text... i think this is simply that the program hasn't been tweaked to work with HD latest macs. Macs went HD screens a few years ago and all the software looks super crisp and no 'jaggies' in the fonts etc. AppGameKit editor probably simply needs to add whatever lines of code Apple recommended to make it work right. Here is a screen grab of the screens: https://my.pcloud.com/publink/show?code=XZu3vxZYO0RvKSY7cFg26X9VvqzEJjMSCp7 (AGK ide text on left, smooth script system text on right). I also noticed there is another thread on this forum about it so i am not the only one.

Regarding the issue of the red blocks - i think this is indeed a character/Unicode thing. The included demo programs run fine.... it's just that when copying & pasting from this forum that the issues creep in. Pasting seems to drag in odd invisible characters which AppGameKit is having issue with. Currently mine is set to "Without Encoding (none)" and it seems i can not change that. Maybe I have found a bug (or is a limitation of the demo?) in that those menu items will not change. All the other menu items work ok but changing "document/set filetype" and "document/set encoding" menus have no effect whatsoever.

Cheers!
DALE

edit - i've just realised people looking at my screengrab on a non HD screen may not be able to see the smooth text in it's full smooth glory ! aghh not sure how to get around that...other than trying AppGameKit on a retina mac yourselves..

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damothegreat
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Posted: 30th Dec 2016 15:51
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- ok cool regarding block text that others have identified too, without having a MacBook (same as yours) I cannot go further with this support - it genuinely maybe a bug - your images look ok to work with until resolved.

- Ahhh your on demo, indeed there will be limitations

If there is a bug of copying and pasting in the demo and for your interest - cause you tried it on my thread

I have attached the MAIN.AGC file for the 4D one - maybe could give that a try -maybe there are limitations on amount of lines AppGameKit demo will run maybe?

- Create a new project - TEST or something

- Close AGK

- Replace this attached main.agc with the one In your test.agc folder

- Reopen AGK

- Run

Damo
Using Tier 1 AppGameKit V2
Started coding with AMOS
Anything is possible if put mind to it

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Dybing
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Posted: 30th Dec 2016 15:56
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Hmmmm, that screengrab looks as if the fonts have been rendered at a given low resolution and then the bitmap of it have been scaled up. Which is odd to say the least. Unfortunately (or luckily, depending on point of view) I got little to no insight to the inner workings of Macs and OSX.

Is there some kind of way to make the AppGameKit IDE to run at native resolution - ie not autoscale? If there is, all text and icons will be pretty small, but you can fix that by then going into the preferences and increase the font-size and icon sizes until you can again see them without resorting to a magnifying glass

I know Win10 got a similar 'feature' where the OS will autoscale things for you. Which I turned off - or rather set to 100% rather than the default 200%.
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damothegreat
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Posted: 30th Dec 2016 15:57
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I try and put this a different way when you feel happy with what it can do.

With the cost of AppGameKit at the moment and to open up the limitations and do more with it - its a missed Saturday night on the town!!

But I certainly don't want to influence your decision

I certainly made the right choice to miss that Saturday night

Damo
Using Tier 1 AppGameKit V2
Started coding with AMOS
Anything is possible if put mind to it
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askewd
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Posted: 30th Dec 2016 18:08
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I just bought it and very happy to do so

will report on the possible bugs & findings once i install it

Best!
DALE

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damothegreat
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Posted: 30th Dec 2016 18:31
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Cool - I'm sure you will be vary happy, like we all with the product. I'm very sure we all are to the much loved game programming guru's here

By all means stay with us in case you have any queries, how to's, idea's, faults etc etc and I'm sure everyone here (which has a vast array of knowledge in all areas would
assist you going forward)

Note:- please remember to remove the Demo version first or install the full v in a brand new directory, so the libraries don't get mixed up


Damo
Using Tier 1 AppGameKit V2
Started coding with AMOS
Anything is possible if put mind to it
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askewd
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Posted: 30th Dec 2016 18:33
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ok all installed

Those menus still won't work, so i guess that one is a bug...

The blocky IDE is not ideal but i can live with it for now. I think Dybing's assessment was correct. Would be great if that can be fixed as it does kinda 'cheapen' the experience when first trying the demo.

Thanks for making me feel welcome already

DALE

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GarBenjamin
AGK Developer
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Posted: 30th Dec 2016 18:44
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Welcome to the "club". I am pretty new here myself.

It seems like a good number of folks around here (including myself) programmed in AMOS and / or Blitz Basic on an Amiga once upon a time.
Be cool if we could bring all of them over here. I've started doing some promotion on my Twitter to help reach such folks.
TI/994a (BASIC) -> C64 (BASIC/PASCAL/ASM/Others) -> Amiga (AMOS/BLITZ/ASM/C/Gamesmith) -> DOS (C/C++/Allegro) -> Windows (C++/C#/Monkey X/GL Basic/Unity/Others)
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damothegreat
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Posted: 30th Dec 2016 18:44
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How does you full IDE window look like,

Out of interest, I zoomed up my window abit to look similar to your one you shown earlier

Could you possibly take a screen shot of the full IDE and code window to see these font issues

My window fully zoom is in the attached pic

Damo
Using Tier 1 AppGameKit V2
Started coding with AMOS
Anything is possible if put mind to it

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DavidAGK
AGK Developer
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Posted: 30th Dec 2016 20:41
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Francois Lionet really did inspire a whole generation of coders!
Using Tier 1 AppGameKit V2
Started coding with AMOS (Thanks Francois Lionet)
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Dybing
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Posted: 30th Dec 2016 23:22 Edited at: 31st Dec 2016 00:27
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Quote: "Francois Lionet really did inspire a whole generation of coders! "






edit: I used that to get an 'A' in CS in our local equivalent of High-School. Now naturally, my teacher had neither an Amiga nor any other means to check the code of my project, which was kind of cool as it happens. When I say teacher here I mean in the loose sense that he was the adult supposed to teach us anything - which apart from teaching us Word Perfect (yes, I'm that old) he couldn't. So anyways, I provided the source on a continuous ream of paper printed out from my dot-matrix printer - remember that, with holes on the sides for the printer to feed? Anyhow, turned out it was good enough. And just good enough for my grade average to get into University and do 'proper' code using Modula2 (I told you, I am no spring-chicken), SQL (still usefull I suppose) and later C++...

I suppose the 'teacher' in question just looked at the 10+ pages of source code and went 'Sure, better than the rest of the class that can't even copy-paste...'
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damothegreat
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Posted: 31st Dec 2016 09:48 Edited at: 31st Dec 2016 09:50
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My passion was for Amos Professional - when I saw this out and available. I just couldn't wait to get my hands on it and get that manual read letter by letter (5 times) before popping those floppies into
my Amiga 500.

Some exceedingly good memories for me

If I can get hold of the bundle anywhere these days, I would buy it again for nostalgia purposes.


Damo
Using Tier 1 AppGameKit V2
Started coding with AMOS
Anything is possible if put mind to it

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MikeHart
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Posted: 31st Dec 2016 12:54
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AMOS, STOS. Both were great dev tools which came with everything you needed back then, Loved them.
Running Windows 7 Home, 64 bit, 8 GB ram, Athlon II X2 255, ATI Radeon HD 4200. Using AGK2 Tier 1.
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DavidAGK
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Posted: 2nd Jan 2017 19:41
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Struggling to hold back the nostalgia!!! Loved AMOS and the Amiga! Awesome to see the original AMOS manual and disks!! I remember talking to Aaron Forhergill (he coded tome, the map editor) and he said there was a compiler that made Amos almost as fast as machine code..... but for some reason it was never released..... and then I think the amiga started to die. That compiler would have been awesome!
Using Tier 1 AppGameKit V2
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