Sprite Orientation

I'm new to this forum, so I don't know if this has already been posted. Forgive me if it has.

I work with Construct Classic over the summer. I teach children how to make games in it, and I am a huge fan of it in general. One thing that has always been a bit weird for me, though, is that the initial orientation for Sprites is to the right. I'm actually fine with that, but it doesn't mention this anywhere, and our students have a low retention rate for fine details, so I often have to explain to students that the reason their bullets are flying the wrong way is because they oriented their image incorrectly. Is there a way to change the orientation for a sprite without doing the whole rotate image then resize dance that I find myself doing a few times a week? If not, I would love to see that as a feature in Construct 2 or future versions.

Thanks in advance!

I dont know the exact reason, but this system is used in most of the 2d game makers i have encountered.

Right is 0 degrees

Down is 90 degrees (bottom)

Left is 180 degrees

Up is 270 degrees (top)

Might be because, in most of early games (side scrolling) you always started off at the left of screen of screen, pointing towards the right? (So the default angle right is set at zero)?

If you want your bullets to always fire a certain direction, you could put them all in a 'family' and use something like:

+ System: Always (every tick)

-> Bullets: Set angle to 270

This would make the bullet fire up.

Thank you for the response, but I more meant along the lines of the actual facing of the image. When you load an image, it is facing to the right. My students forget this, so they end up loading images in a way that implies that they are facing upwards or to the left, and then need assistance to fix this so that their image and their sprite are facing the same way. I guess I'll just make a sign to remind them.

Thanks again!

The real reason to my assumption as to why all orientation is by default to the right is because by convention that's where all angles start in mathematics. And since most aspects of programing is mathematics it's logical to have it conveniently at 0 degree to be pointing to the 'right'.

So as to your problem notBatman. You could teach them about how the sprite object actually work visually like when we learned to count by using apples (or something in the real world).

You could show them your fist and say it's the object. Point a finger and say that's the direction. Prepare a small piece of paper and say that's your sprite. Have an arrow drawn on it and placed on top of the pointing fist. For the sake of the point deliberately miss align the arrow from the direction of the pointed finger.

As your showing this you could say that their image/sprite is facing a direction but the object is actually facing a different direction. Also mention how object controls the movement; as the hand moves in the pointed direction not the direction of the pointing arrow, try moving it as you say it too. So tell them they should point the arrow in the direction of the pointed finger (by aligning the arrow to it) so the arrow moves in the right direction.

I know from experience that children have an approximate retention of 3 facts at one time. So if the previous method didn't work, for the sake of their learning just say everything must face right because it's the right way. (quite archaic method but most times it works)

That's how I'd teach it from my experience of tutoring maths and science.