Plugins & Behaviors in development

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I start a list of plugins/behaviors that developers are developing or are planned to develop.

Send me by PM, your list with a little description as below. Thanks.

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• <font color="blue">Wastrel</font> is working on plugins/behaviors:
• AI : a Finite State Machine.
• AI : a Behavior Tree.
• He's also thinking of including a simplified verison of a Finite State Machine, which he's calling GameState.
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• <font color="blue">Rexrainbow</font> is working on a behavior:
• Shell Behavior : a behavior which executing loaded javascript.
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• <font color="blue">Septeven</font> is working on plugins:
• iScroll : an adaptation of the Matteo Spinelli's plugin, which lets you make iPhone's native scroll. I started to think it as a plugin for app makers, but Smitchell needed it for his game, so I tried to orient it to both. It will have to be updated considering of users feedbacks.
• MobileTools : some functions that javascript lets us to use for mobile devices.
• I also started few week ago to develop a GMAP plugin. It might be available in the next weeks.
• On my 'wish-todo list', there are also plugins for app makers, particularly an adaptation of jQuery Mobile (but it will be REALLY a bunch of work to do this).

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I thought that it could be a good idea to open a thread where all third party developers could talk about their in-development plugins/behavior and/or their projects.

First of all, as plugins developer, I was often wondering if someone would be developing the same, or pretty the same plugin than me. If it did, It would be a real waste of work and time. I think it's important to be aware of this.

Also, if we know who's working on what, we'll be able to share our knowledge, some tips, some advices, .... as well as users could share their own feelings and needs.

In the future, maybe that thread won't be enough, and it might be more appropriate to open a category, but for the moment, we have to play the game, all developpers as well as whole users. Don't forget that our pleasure is to help the construct 2 community.

Feel free to join us ;)

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For myself, I try to improve the app development side of Construct 2 as well as its mobile device development part. I'm not a game developer. I do essentially applications.

That's why I'm in the end part of development for an adaptation of the Matteo Spinelli's script, iScroll 4.

You could find some informations on his website

There's a bunch of work on it. This is more a plugin for mobile device development but works pretty well on computers (even though I think it won't be really usefull for that).

Beside, I'm working on a Mobile tools plugins, which will bring together some standard and simple functions actually available for mobile devices.

I was also developing a GMAP plugin when I started plugins development but I didn't finish it. I think it could be released not so later.

After that, I have a bunch of ideas as e.g starting to adapt functions from the jQuery Mobile framework.

My field of interest for a long time has been AI.

I am currently working on several behavior- and plug-in-based methods to implement both a bottom-up strategy (where the AI rules apply to one specific object and its instances), and a top-down strategy (where the AI rules are more generic and can apply to many objects and their instances). Each strategy is useful in different situations.

The results so far have been encouraging, but the interfaces are very clunky and need a lot of optimization to be easily usable.

That's basically all I have been working on recently.

When I first read your post, septeven, I have to admit that I got that selfish twinge of "what if someone steals my idea". But after thinking about it, you are right. The plug-ins and behaviors we create are for the good of the community, and will only help (hopefully) to make the experience of using C2 that much better.

My biggest concern has been that third-party plug-ins can't be used in the arcade, but I am confident that Tom and Ashley will figure out a good solution.

I got that selfish twinge of "what if someone steals my idea".

Yes but finally, it's not that kind of 'fear', for myself, I was afraid that someone else did the same work, because I didn't want to "lose" my time on something, while as I could work on another plugin. Hope you see what I mean...

septeven

Really nice post mate! Great idea!

Currently, I'm most interested in the multiplayer aspect of things. You can have a look at what I've done so far over here: http://www.scirra.com/forum/multiplayer-demo-in-c2_topic47724.html

Cheers

Seems like a good candidate for a stickied topic.

talkinghead

Yes, I just saw that. Your work on it is just amazing ...0_o

Arima

Great ^^

septeven, talkinghead,

I actually have a game ready to be published onto the AppStore. For iPhone and iPad. But I'm waiting on your plugins to give my users a better experience. I got audio to work using JavaScript. So I'll show users about that once my game is published ;D, septeven really cannot wait for yours!!!! It's going to make my game look & feel 10 times better. And talkinghead, yours is going to blow my mind away, giving my users the ability to play multiplayer is simply amazing!!!! You two are amazing

Currently, I would like to take a rest for my eyes, just review older plugins.

I think there are many requests in "How do I..." or others forums, so there still need some plugins to help users.

More particularly, plugin maker can focus on some kinds of game logic. For example, how about a plugin to help user make tetris/card/chess game more easily? How to make a plugin easy to use and still have flexibility?

Yes but finally, it's not that kind of 'fear', for myself, I was afraid that someone else did the same work, because I didn't want to "lose" my time on something, while as I could work on another plugin. Hope you see what I mean...

Yes, I understand. Even then, if two people are working on the same idea, there's a pretty good chance they are using different methods. There's no reason why multiple people working on the same idea can't collaborate on their work.

Wastrel Oh sure, I totally agree with that. And that's particularly why I wanted to open this kind of thread

I've been meaning to make an enum plugin. I really miss them from other languages.

I end up having a lot of global variables such as UPGRADE_MOVESPEED, UPGRADE_SCOREMULT, etc so that I can then do things like upgradeData.At(UPGRADE_MOVESPEED, UPGRADE_PRICE) without having to remember which entry in the array the upgrade I want is at.

There's many more examples of cases where I find this approach is useful but I end up with 834239012093 global variables that I treat as const's cluttering up my variable list.

The plugin would let you do something like this:

• action -> create enum "UPGRADES"
• action -> add "PRICE" to enum "UPGRADES"
• and then you can use expression UPGRADES.PRICE

Any thoughts / advice before I start this in the next few days?

I've been meaning to make an enum plugin. I really miss them from other languages.

I end up having a lot of global variables such as UPGRADE_MOVESPEED, UPGRADE_SCOREMULT, etc so that I can then do things like upgradeData.At(UPGRADE_MOVESPEED, UPGRADE_PRICE) without having to remember which entry in the array the upgrade I want is at.

There's many more examples of cases where I find this approach is useful but I end up with 834239012093 global variables that I treat as const's cluttering up my variable list.

The plugin would let you do something like this:

- action -> create enum "UPGRADES"

- action -> add "PRICE" to enum "UPGRADES"

- and then you can use expression UPGRADES.PRICE

Any thoughts / advice before I start this in the next few days?

That actually sounds a lot like rex's hash table plug

http://www.scirra.com/forum/plugin-hash-table_topic47637_post298284.html

There's certainly some similarities, and it would theoretically be possible to achieve what I want with a hashtable, but I really don't need the extra functionality of having to worry about matching keys->values. I like the simplicity of enum's that create & manage unique numeric keys behind the scenes for me.

Parsing strings isn't a real big deal atm, but the number of plugs that can load a file type is kinda low.

So what does everybody think would be the best overall type?

I'm guessing xml myself.

I could see myself using that <img src="smileys/smiley20.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Also the plugin you linked me above parses JSON->hashtable and can convert to string, which sounds pretty useful. Maybe you could team up with Rex and add XML to his plugin? Just a thought.