Debugging

When developing a game, the debugging features may be helpful. Debugging is controlled by the debugging options:

• Invert regions: if selected, the region the mouse is over is inverted; use this to test whether the shape of the regions is correct
• Show errors: if selected, errors detected by the adventure engine are reported in a message box
• Show MCI errors: if selected, errors encountered when using media files are reported in a message box
• Show debug window: opens the debugger window (see below)
• Show control window: opens the control window (see below)

You may open the debugger and the control window from options/debugging or by pressing F11 / F12.

Note: Since debugging does not make much sense without item names, turn off the output of item names when compiling a game to disable debugging. This disables all debugging features.

The Debugger Window

The debugger window shows the values assigned to variables, allows tracing of the game interpreter, and displays the current mouse position in the status bar. You may change the values of variables and the position of the player character in the scene. In addition, you may perform actions.

The left column of the debugger window contains the assignments for item variables and the middles column for integer variables. Each entry consists of the variable name and the assigned value. For the meaning of variable names that are not letters, see the definitions. The other variables (i.e. those defined by the game programmer) may be changed by double clicking on it or by selecting it in the list and using the according menu entry.

The menu entry 'Change > Character position' opens a dialog to change the character position, scaling, and orientation, but only if the current scene has a character that is controlled by the mouse.

With 'Perform action' in the 'Change' menu, you may specify the name of an action (i.e. executable item) to perform.

The right column displays tracing messages. These messages are generated by the adventure engine each time an item of the game is interpreted. A message consists of an event type, the type and the name of the item, and in some cases of additional information. Only those messages are displayed, that are selected in the filter menu. The following event types exist:

• Message: all other messages
• Error: errors on item interpretation
• MCI error: errors when playing media files
• Image error: errors when displaying images
• Time event: the period of the timer resolution elapsed
• Timer: the interval of a timer elapsed
• Animation: next frame of an animation
• Motion: next frame of a motion
• Character: new position of the character
• Click: a mouse click of the player in a region
• Action: an action is executed
• Condition: a condition is evaluated; the result of the evaluation is displayed
• Region in: the cursor entered a region
• Region out: the cursor left a region
• Character in: the character entered a region
• Character out: the character left a region

The Control Window

The control window allows you to control the game state. It is useful to test a scene or dialog without the need to play the complete game to reach this part.

It consists of lists for the scenes, the dialogs, and the objects of the inventory. You may select the current scene, start/stop a dialog, and add/remove an inventory objects.