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Catan

Member Since 21 May 2005
Offline Last Active Yesterday, 08:21 PM

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Gmsdb - Game Maker Simple Database V1.2

15 March 2013 - 05:38 PM

GMSDB
GMSDB is an extension for GMS and GM8.1 (GM8.0 users, see this) written entirely in GML that provides a set of functionalities to manage an in game database. This extension is born, and is still available, as a set of scripts. If you prefer to use the scripts (to see how they work or extend them), please refer to this topic

Features

Comprehensive database system with no external dll or extensions required
Allows creation of an unlimited number of tables and table columns
Data retrieval scripts that allow complex sorting and filtering of records
Reads and saves database tables to the file system with its own format
Can read an save records to CSV files, to be edited in Excel or text editors
Tables and table columns are global and identified by name, no need to store and pass around table_id variables or similar.
Works on GM8.1 and Studio

Download V1.2.0
The zip file contains the extension, examples and scripts for GM:Studio and GM8.1.

IMPORTANT: The gex includes all the database functionalities, but the zip files contains a .gml scripts file that has to be imported in your project along with the gex itself. Please refer to the manual for more info.

Documentation
An online version of the manual can be found HERE

Example snippet

Spoiler

db_init(); //initialize the database. Should be called before any other db call and only once.
db_table_create("weapons","name|string","weight|real","type|string"); //creates a table called "weapons" with 3 attributes (columns): name,weight,type
db_record_insert("weapons","excalibur",30,"sword"); //inserts a weapons of type sword and weight 30 named excalibur
db_record_insert("weapons","lucky sword",20,"sword"); //another sword
db_record_insert("weapons","golden axe",54,"axe"); //an axe

first_query = db_record_find_ids("weapons",-1,"","weight DESC",-1,0); //returns a ds_list of weapon ids ordered by weight

second_query = db_record_find_values("weapons","id,name",db_op_equal,"type|sword","",-1,0); //returns a ds_grid containing the id and the name of every sword in the database.

third_query = db_record_find_values("weapons","id,name,type,weight",db_op_gt,"weight|25","",-1,0); //returns a ds_grid containing id,name,type and weight of every weapon in the database with weight greater than 25.<br>

excalibur_id = db_record_find_first("weapons","name","excalibur"); //returns the id of the first weapon with name excalibur.
excalibur_weight = db_record_get("weapons",excalibur_id,"weight"); //returns the weight of the sword found in the query above.

Questions about texture pages

15 February 2013 - 12:46 PM

I'm starting a small and simple project with GM:Studio to understand how the program works and the differences from GM8.1, but I have some problems understanding some texture pages behaviours. Probably the questions are trivial, but I haven't found an answer in the forum nor in the manual:

1. I've read on the manual about the "texture group not scaling" option, but I really don't get how this can be useful. I suppose this avoids the texture from being scaled if the resources in it don't fit in the texture page size, but what's the point this if by checking the "texture group not scaling" the resources get cropped? Does this forces the creation of another page in case resources don't fit?

2. How do external resources loaded from the file system or the web with background_add, sprite_add etc... relate to texture pages? Are they put in some hidden texture page managed by GM just form them?

3. This is probably a bug, but just to be sure... In global game settings, when I try to preview the texture pages i get a long error message followed by "something went wrong generating the texturepage for viewing". Am I doing something wrong or is this a known issue?

I'm using GM:Studio Professional v1.1.805

string_insert: problem with accented characters

08 October 2012 - 09:37 AM

I have a problem using string_insert with strings containing accented or non standard english characters. I narrowed down the problem to this example code:

draw_text(x,y,string_insert("a","è",2));

This should display "éa", but instead shows "?a?". Note that without the string insert accented characters are shown correctly.

Am I missing something here?

Find max font height

07 October 2012 - 06:55 PM

Is there a way to get the maximum height a string written in a certain font can reach? The problem is that I need to draw a generic text on a surface, when creating the surface I know the font but not the text itself, how can I find out the right surface height? Consider I'm working on GM8.1 and only on single line text.

Thanks in advance!

surface_save and supported file formats

06 July 2012 - 04:43 PM

I'm trying to save a surface image to file and figured out that using .bmp as extension, gm saves a correctly formed bitmap file. The documentation doesn't mention this possibility, but instead tells that only png files can be saved this way.
Moreover, after some simple tests it seems that saving a bmp file this way takes MUCH less time than a png.

Does anybody know more about this? Is it ok to use bmp instead of png to speed up the export of the surface to file? Is this something that will be removed in the next versions of the program? What about other file formats?

Thanks in advance