Is it possible to make a game like Terraria ?

Hi, just wondering would it be possible to make a sandbox game with Construct 2, A game like Terraria or Minecraft but obviously 2D ?

Thanks

If you search the forums you'll find this asked several times, with lots of discussion. People are working on this type of game now.

I have been looking for it but can't seem to find it, so it is possible then?

scirra.com/search.aspx

Is they any tutorials showing how to make a sandbox game in Construct 2 or not?

No , I don't think there would be a tutorial for such a colossal task

But you can find bits that you can after merge , by SEARCHING ...

Well a tutorial is meant to help/show you how to do things.

Why make a tutorial on something so simple to do?

Wait ... you lost me there , there's no tutorial on how to make TERRARIA because that would be a colossal and complicated task , as you need to make the terrain algorithm , lighting algorithm , crafting , blocks , bosses , etc.

and that's EXTREMELY OVERAMBITIOUS for a starter with the software , I recommend you familiarize with the C2 before tackling such a big project , and even there , it would be extremely overcomplicated

That's one of the reasons why terraria sells for $$$

Cheers !

It's certainly possible, I think it's quite simple if you understand how the mechanisms work in Terraria. In general, you'd need some experience with Construct 2 first, make smaller things to get used to Construct 2, and probably best to have a lot of experience with Arrays.

The tiles system would be somewhat easy as long as you have the knowledge about Arrays, optimising, ect. When a tile is made, you just have it check next to itself in each direction to see what tile is there, then you can set it's frame to what it should look like (Middle block, leftwall block, rightwall block, block with grass on it that connects to the left, there's a few lol)

Having the different biomes that spread slowly is possible, but again, optimisation: You can't have it constantly checking to spread the hallowed area into the grass every moment for the entire world ;)

Movement and fighting is very simple, definately nothing compared to the tiles and stuff.

Lighting should be comparably easy to the tiles system, probably involves some sort of pathfinding, though I don't think the pathfinder behaviour is currently a good idea AS it currently can't just "Pathfind" a certain section, meaning bad lag. Though another thread suggested for a "specific area" thing so you can just search around the area of a light source, say a torch, to light up around it rather than the entire screen.

Inventories, items, crafting, building, it's all arrays arrays arrrraaayyyys (and some WebStorage if you want peoples creations and characters to be saved :P )

Online multiplayer is always the talk of the Construct 2 forums, it's possible now, but lacks proper support (til the future perhaps).

Enemy AI in Terraria is simple in terms of AI mechanics; a slime enemy just jumps in the direction of a player every 2 seconds or so, with some extra factors involved to make it jump sooner. Bosses have a small pattern, there's no advanced difficult pathfinding algorithm involved, just "Go to player, kill player."

All in all, the tiles system is what makes Terraria, nobody was impressed by it's battle system, it's all about the tiles, and the tiles would be the most time consuming thing to create, which might be why there's no immediate tutorials around here (I haven't searched myself).

Getting it to run smoothly and lag-free, that's the challenge (unless you have the knowledge on how to optimise very well, then again, easy)

It's all about your knowledge, Construct 2 is extremely powerful as long as it's 2D!

I think there might be some interesting stuff and tutorials if you search on forums, I don't have anything to help other than my opinion :(

Hope this helped!

TL;DR: It is possible, however it requires quite a bit of game dev experience/knowledge, particularly in Construct 2.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think the biggest problem would be the inability to control the number of draw calls. Which doesn't matter for any game type except this one.

Let's say for example; You have a map with 100,000 tiles. Since you're at the very top of the map, only 50 tiles are showing. No problem, Construct only draws the 50 tiles that are showing but doesn't draw the remaining 99,950 tiles that are outside the visible screen.

The problem is, Construct has to loop through all 100,000 tiles to determine if they're in the visible screen and looping through 100,000 tiles each tick is expensive.

Being able to control the draw calls mean you can limit the check loop to only loop through the maximum number of instances visibly possible on the screen at any given time.

Is my thinking correct here?

Yes, that's the real issue. This is what Jase00 was alluding to. The issue isn't whether this can be done in C2, but whether the developer has the skill set to program the custom behaviour of shifting a set of tiles around, based on an internal data structure (array), and how many actually need to be created to fill the screen at any given time.

When you say "program the custom behaviour", do you mean using the Javascript SDK? or staying withing the confines of the Construct 2 IDE.

David Flook , For drawing correct tiles, I think if you do a "For" action and start it at "ViewportLeft" to "ViewportRight", and another loop for "Viewport Top" to "Viewport Bottom", you can then only load the necessary tiles from the array. The rest of the world wouldn't be drawn until you walk along into it (Which might make enemies/collision glitches happen). The entire world would all be stored inside the Array. There's a lot to think about lol.

Oh so you want to make Terraria hey?

Steps:

1)Copy the game

2)??????

3)Look at your poor re-creation of a multi-million (check that) software.

Try and do something original... not just an upfront copy. Why did Terraria get the big bucks? Because it was original...

Now, most new ideas (universally, not just in technology,) new IP are bits grabbed from here and there but actually re-designed and genuinely fresh ideas.

Why should a consumer buy your knock off Rolex watch, which doesn't work well, for (take the price down a bit) $40 when he could just save for $90 and get the real deal?

Hm. But anyway, just use the forum to look for randomly generated ground and digging tutorials from the FAQ, which is pretty easy to find if you were to look and not get completely spoonfed.

Sulli out.