another wave of Various Questions

1. Movies.

is there a way for Construct to play movie files except the AVI plugin? and if not - is there a way to set the movie to be played: a) fullscreen, b)without that ugly timeline tab c) without buttons.

as you propably guesed already - i need to put the game intro. but i just want it to play and be stoped/skiped when any key pressed. just like in most games. but not in "media player" way. it looks ugly, amature and just weird.

2. Displaying layouts on layouts. aka add object -> layout

Ive noticed theres a way to do that but i cant figure out how to properly use it. i want the layout to be scaled to the resolution of my desire and set the "camera" on things i want. but when i check "fit to screen" (or whatever that object atribute is called) it scales my layout just to much and goes outside of it.

3. minimap.

the original plugin doesnt fills my needs for various reasons. is there a way to make a mini-map by myself? or edit the plugin? my dream mini-map has a graphical frame and background, objects - depending of their types are displayed with diffrent icons ect. how is this possbile? is itat all?

4. Easy way of telling the bject to go MOVE from x/y to another x/y.

i know how to change the possition, but how to force the object to just GO there? imagine a UI slowly moving from top outside of game screen down to Y coordinats. which behaviour have this?

5. Beams.

My latest nightmare. basicly i want a beam to be displayed betwen two points. like a laser beam. exactly the way its been in "Rain" demo, from the Construct website. same technique - diffrent visiouls. i would check it myself but only the exe is available - not the .cap file.

6. Particles and Plasma

is there a tutorial for them? i will propably need them but i just dont know where to start. And by all means their usage is not clarified anywhere or user friendly.

7. Layout looping.

In RPVX there was this great and simple thing. every map had a box "loop verticaly/horizontaly". what it does? exactly what you can gues - it loops the entire map/layout so when the player or any object in that matter hits the layout border it comes out from the other side. but be aware that this is made very fluent and unnoticed. its just like the missing layout space is being draw without any transition. i know how to make it by conditions and position event but it gives more of a teleportation rather then loop effect, feeling.

8. How to properly import 3d .obj files/models? i tried using the "3D Object" plugin but the object doesnt display.

9 Canvas plugin

okey, what exactly are they? describe on examples please. both the theory and usage.

10. Object Pairer.

basicly - wth? i mean the obvious usage of this is to pair/link two or more objects togather. em i correct? and why.

11. Ribbon

How to use? or rather - how to place this ribbon distortion effect on a sprite?

12. How timeline and events are working betwen Layouts? basicly - imagine two levels, and two layouts being each one of them. now imagine an enemy, player character and a bomb. i come into level 1 from level 2, leave a bomb on enemy and retreat back to level 2. will that bomb explode after i leave the layout? and how to make it explode? or - how to make the other layouts run without players presence on them? like AI going here and there, colecting, searching, just exploring.

13. Make object "accesble".

Basicly, imagine a layout with nothing but ocean sprite. all the ocean cant be walked on as our player nor the character is "Jesus Christ. now lets spawn couple generic islands here and there. how to make it, so the player will be able to move long just within the islands borders. i know you can make the object "solid" so players must go around it, but is there a way to do the exact oposite? to make the whole Layout "solid" by default and pick which parts will remain unsolid?

Thats very important for me as i am trying to develope procedural generated planet surfaces. i know how to do that on paper and i knew how to do that in my previous engine. i just need the functions now.

14. Motion Blur

Call me noob and ignorant but what the heck is Motion Blur? i can set it by events but i dont exactly know how it looks.

15. someone really should add the tooltips when you hover over functions in conditions and events window. it would be soo much easier, and instead of wasting my time writing all this, and yours on reading all that - it would be all described in the engine window

16. Saving and enabling content to travel from betwen games.

imagine player X who have finished your game with outstanding score. you want to reward him by unlocking a new spaceship. so now when he starts the game again he has a new spaceship unlocked and ready to play.

17. Mouse Cursor

How to turn it off??? i want to use my own custome cursor not that generic lame white arrow. how can i make it dispear?

18. reverse particles

ive seen that "fontain" type particles that showers from one point. now the question. is there a possiblitie of reversing the movement? so the particles instead of being shoot - out, will be sucked IN? like a vaccum or something? this is extremly needed effect for me. otherwise ill be forced to do that on animated sprite

19. Fog of War.

Starcraft style. so:

unvisited area is left pitch black. when visited you see the terrain, some object types. and area currently seen without the blakness and all object types being seen.

20. Titled sprite.

when i fill the screen with that it looks okey. but if i zoom OUT i can see a tiny, white lines betwen the tiles, blinking with movement. ruins the whole titled sprite/terrain idea. any ideas how to get rid of that?

21. Bone movment

my inner sense tells me this movement is something incredible. to i totaly dont know how to use it. any manual our there?

22. Effects on sprites ect

there is REALLY lots of them. is there some sort of gallery where can i preview all them on screnshots or something before adding to the game? the descriptions really doesnt tell anything usefull beside the obvious.

thats it for now. dont hate me (too much)

Goodnight

whoa jeez.

Don't get me wrong but..search the forums, download examples, and most of all practice practice practice. Some things you just figure out after a while. Oh yeah and check out the wiki.

1. Can you not MAKE the intro in Construct?

2. What?

3. Probably. Sounds like the current mini-map obj can already do what you need.

4. Ball? RTS? Events?

5. Something like set beam.width to distance(x1, y1, x2, y2) I dunno I haven't seen the tutorial.

6. Actually it is. http://www.scirra.com/construct/demos.php

7. Wrapping? There is a behavior for that.

8. Canvas. Make destructible terrain or grab backgrounds for cool effects and stuff.

9. Construct � the free (2D) open-source game creator

10. Seems like the object pairer is meant to pair objects. Turrents and tanks for example. I feel there's documentation on that.

11. Haven't used it myself. Search the forums?

12.

blahblah

blah

14. Motion blur makes things blurry when in motion.

15. I'm sorry but why would you need that? "Start of frame" = The start of the frame. Seems trivial. Anyway...

Construct Discussion

Unstable releases posted here. Also post your feature requests, ideas, suggestions, and other general discussions here.

16. Save to disk, Array, INI, and many others. Take your pick.

17. Use the mouse and keyboard object.

20. Use a pow2 size texture? Not sure

21 Yes

22.There should be. Right now you just have to go through em one by one.

Play around with Construct. The only way to gather enough experience to make something worthwhile is to sit down and experiment. Also, search the forums for simple questions.

1.No way to put movies, AVI plugin sucks.

2.Question makes no sense.

3.Make it yourself with events

4.You don't need a behavior for everything, events can do practically anything. Hint, Use variables.

5.Events, math. experiment. search forums.

6.Construct isn't very documented or user friendly, you have to experiment.

7.No, not without heavy eventing or a custom workaround

8.it's probably too big, adjust scale

9.Draws it's texture at runtime. You can paste other objects or the entire screen into the texture, or draw lines. that's it. Very versatile.

10. UAYOWD (use at your own discretion) Not widely used, not fully tested/stable.

11.Search forums

12.Avoid at this point, too complicated for now. A layout just holds object positions and objects to be initialized, they run one at a time.

13.Just define the water as solid, or make the movement stop if it's not on land.

14.Don't use it.

15.No, use the wiki.

16.Variables and files.

17.mouse&keyboard action ->hide cursor

18.Use animated sprites.

19.Many ways of doing this.

20.Don't zoom out, or could be graphics card bug

21.Forummmmmmmmms

22.No, just add it to a sprite. Some effects are special and don't display anything like mask and erase. You need to experiment.

The best way to learn is to experiment. Open construct, and play with things. You won't be able to make a complex game as your first game. It doesn't matter how motivated you are, it is just out of your skill level. It's like trying to build a plane without even knowing how a wrench works. Forget about multi layout persistence, forget about massive stories or battles. Make a sprite move around the way you want it too, write simple output to a file, and get accustomed to how objects are picked and used in construct. Learn how layouts work, learn how sound works and learn how everything you think you will need works. I guarantee you that your core game idea will change based on what discover about Construct's inner workings, and It will be for the better. To use construct effectively one must work around it's faults.

Making a small game doesn't mean that it won't be a good one. Every successful game has been a small test (or part of one) which evolved at some point or another. All of my games have evolved from experimentation or testing of Construct's features. I've been using Construct for years, and still haven't looked at many of the objects. Don't plan out your game fully before you start making it, because it's design will change based on the tools you use. Play with the engine and let the game come to you. You can't rush game development. Get past the learning curve, (you asking these questions) and then you are ready to start work on a serious project.

[quote:1eqde4c5]2. What?

2.Question makes no sense.

fixed. check again

I hope you don't interpret this thread as cruel or unhelpful, but there's a certain amount of truth in the answers here: you're jumping in the deep end without knowing too much about the program, which makes it difficult to explain the answers to your questions, too. You're asking about the finer points of the chemistry of combustion before you've put fuel in your car. If you don't need to use something, you can safely ignore it: there are a lot of plugins, and several are tailored to solving very specific problems, which many users are unlikely to come across.

Instead of trying to figure out everything in one go, it would probably be best to go about making the games you want to make, then when you come across a specific problem, ask what the best way to solve that is.

For example, you may be off making your game, and you need to attach certain pairs of objects together. Due to the particular circumstances, 'natural' pairing (i.e. equal numbers of both objects) doesn't work, and the container system doesn't help. If you then ask how to do it and the answer is "Try the Object Pairer plugin", it'll make a lot more sense. If you just ask "What is the Object Pairer plugin for?" without having much experience with the program, it's hard to know what to say: "Umm, well... things normally pair up together automatically... usually if there's something wrong with that you can use the container system (which is useful for a whole load of other things too)... in certain specific situations outside of that, Object Pairer is useful." That's a bit vague and not really helpful, and you won't get the "Ooooh!" moment of understanding you'd get when the answer solves an actual problem you're having. That's probably why the answers you get to this type of question are, well, terse.

Also, being a part-time volunteer-developed open-source project, the documentation is sketchy. It's a well-known drawback of Construct, unfortunately. I'm kind of going nuts with university work right now, so I don't have much time to fix any of these problems - most people get by with forum searches, practice and using what is available on the wiki. I've asked in the past for users with experience to help flesh out the wiki, but it hasn't really seen a great deal of contributions, which isn't that surprising - it's hard work.

Some of the issues you pointed out are also simply badly designed parts of Construct. These should be fixed in the next version - Construct 2 - and should also include a better help system, but that's somewhere just over the horizon, don't depend on it turning up any time soon.

Still, I hope that helps, that you enjoy using Construct, and that you get everything figured out - it's just it looks like you're trying to go a little too fast. Please do feel free to ask more questions, maybe just aim them at what you're currently doing, then we can help you better too

Alright here's some of my help

1. The only way I would use the AVI object would be too place it so the controls are out of the view. But the best way would be to use python. Im not that familiar with python but I do know that you can display videos with it. You would have more control over how the player is and all.

2. Im not sure what you mean here. But im thinking its more to do with the camera. I would get the plugin MagicCam you can do wonders with it. Very easy to set up has a example so this should help if this is the problem. http://www.scirra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=7550

3. If you look here you can see what I did with the minimap. http://www.scirra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7787 I am having problems with it too. You can texture the background using events and for objects you can set different colors but you can't set different sprites. And for a frame just make a sprite with a a place for the minimap and have that sprite part of the hud with the minimap in front or in back of it.

4. Do mean like having a drop down menu? Like you click on the bottom edge of it or something and it slides down? If so use something like Custom Movement. Have it move and a slow speed towards a invisible object on the hud.

5. Im not sure really how to do this. Would be nice if a cap was released for it but Im not sure.

6. http://www.scirra.com/construct/demos.php There is one for Plasma and one for particles. Theres example files for both so you can look how they are made. I haven't really got into those yet so i don't have much info on them.

7. Under behaviors there is one called Wrap this is what you want

8. I don't know. There no info really that I found about this.

9. From what I understand from it that its like something you can draw on. either by events or setting a brush like tool up.

10. Seems to me like it copy's what the other object it is paired to does. So if object 1 jumps the other object jumps with it. Not really sure other then that.

11. I also wondered what this is too. I don't anything about it.

12. I have read on the forums that a way to do this is to basically have it a random thing. Like random predict what they did. Other way would be too have it running in the background and then saving it to a file to be opened when your on the other layout. I wouldn't even know how to begin with this.

13. Depends if its topdown its a little more work then side scroll. Maybe make a invisible wall? so the player can pass? About random islands I am clue less how to get it to generate. I read here of the forum before of a guy with a I believe a python script that generated stuff like that. But I wouldn't know how. And I don't know of anywhere on the site were its explained.

14. If you ever play some of the newer FPS you see that if you turn fast that the screen kinda blurs. Or even like if you turn you head fast it kinda blurs. Same thing

15.Post in Construct Discussion forum a feature request. And you might see in a a version of construct.

16. Write it to a file I would suggest a encrypted one so that people don't edit for there gain lol. Im not sure much on this yet as I haven't tried it but I know its possible.

17. IF you have the mouse and keyboard object in your layout. Under events have it disable the cursor and then have a image of your chose on ever tick positioned at the mouse. Make sure you have the image hotspot at the point were you want to click.

18. I am not sure about this i haven't tinkered with the particle system yet.

19. Not sure how to do that from it being pitch black to some light just not showing objects. Only way I could think of is to using lights but i would image have all those lights would slow the game down.

20. Its a graphics bug try making the tiles a different size and see if that helps.

21. Here is a great place to read about them http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/construct/index.php?title=Bone_Behavior

22. Nope the only way would be to test each one. Sounds bad I know lol there's alot. But right now there nothing really telling you what they do or showing you.

Hope this helps some if you need anymore help feel free to ask

2. I think the layout object is what you're looking for, but I've heard it's very buggy.

DELICIOUS KNOWLEDGE

ill pay you 10$ to make this guy a moderator or official Construct helper.

seriously hire this guy as user support.

Thank you Tricky. you saved my day - again!

thank you soooo much!

I'd like to touch on #'s 1 and 2.

1. I no longer use the AVI object, the timeline bar it has is a deal-breaker, and there probably won't be any upgrades to the object again. No problem however, because a guy sent me a pm about some free software that will perfectly extract every single frame of a video and export each frame as a .jpg file. So what you do is make the extraction, resize the files to whatever size you want it to be in your game window, and then run the frames as an animation. It works flawlessly. Here is the software suite:

http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/free-dvd-video-software.htm

With this, you'd easily be able to make FMV games, or use super high resolution animated video as your in-game background.

2. I'm not 100% sure of the question, but I have a comment... I hope the Layout object continues to get attention in development. It's really useful, but the bugs did a bad number on my last project when I turned the .cap into an .exe. That was strange considering that it worked perfectly and never bugged as .cap.

[quote:26td0dc9]So what you do is make the extraction, resize the files to whatever size you want it to be in your game window, and then run the frames as an animation. It works flawlessly. Here is the software suite:

Yes that will work but you wil end up with one big capfile.I tried this method and the cap was about 100 megs just for one intro.And not to mention the amount of vram it eats up.My 4GB card could hardly handle the intro nevermind the whole game.the video was a mere 320X240 resolution vid.

[quote:3qyxmt9k]So what you do is make the extraction, resize the files to whatever size you want it to be in your game window, and then run the frames as an animation. It works flawlessly. Here is the software suite:

Yes that will work but you wil end up with one big capfile.I tried this method and the cap was about 100 megs just for one intro.And not to mention the amount of vram it eats up.My 4GB card could hardly handle the intro nevermind the whole game.the video was a mere 320X240 resolution vid.

That can be true, but a lot of that depends on several factors:

1. The quality of the .jpg's themselves. This can be controlled/cut-down by the developer.

2. The data in the .jpg, also dev-controlled.

3. The number of frames used. This too can be controlled by the developer. For example, I took a video that was 150 megabytes and extracted only a certain number of frames, resized and degraded when necessary. The resulting sequence of frames came out to just 2 megabytes.

Also consider that some people make larger games than the norm with 2D creators. My last project made it mandatory that there be lots of animations and therefore lots of animation frames. If one makes an FMV game or uses video in their game in general, they would expect to be making a bigger game than normal anyway, so the only time this could really become a game-killer is if the size were unexpected. The major objective here is for the developer to figure out how to reduce the size and still maintain a high-quality... it's the same challenge FMV game makers had back when they were still highly visible in the market.

[quote:2qhycts8]1. I no longer use the AVI object, the timeline bar it has is a deal-breaker, and there probably won't be any upgrades to the object again. No problem however, because a guy sent me a pm about some free software that will perfectly extract every single frame of a video and export each frame as a .jpg file. So what you do is make the extraction, resize the files to whatever size you want it to be in your game window, and then run the frames as an animation. It works flawlessly. Here is the software suite:

http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/free-dvd-video-software.htm

With this, you'd easily be able to make FMV games, or use super high resolution animated video as your in-game background.

i know how to break animation/movie into frames, but thank you anyway. my question is - are you aware how much space it takes? even with a "slideshowish" 1frame/second a 1 minutes long "movie" will need 60 frames. now get this: my intro is almost 5 minutes long and has been recorded and directed for 60FPS. now thats 300 seconds x 60 frames per one. thats 18 000 frames dude. 18k images. now add 48000freq 32 bit float audio and youll end up with blue ray-size video.

even if i would make then jpg and kick all the needless parts thats still a massive weight. the lone intro would propable weigh more then the actual game.

seriously, cut this for me http://www.viddler.com/explore/irbis/videos/1/

and tell me how it came out. thats my intro

Learn al there is to learn about Python.You can do some amazing stuff when you combine python scripting with Construct.And it's not as difficult as the dreaded c++ language.

Learn al there is to learn about Python.You can do some amazing stuff when you combine python scripting with Construct.And it's not as difficult as the dreaded c++ language.

learning Python defeats the purpous of learning Construct wont you agree...? if i would be able to learn ANY programing language - i would do that long time ago. i am here because i HAVENT, and i cannot now. simple as this.

but you can help me if you wish. as i understod you have the skills of Python scripting.

i would be most greatfull.

Well the simplest way is to use the avi object.Examine my tutorial which i have uploaded.It shows a full video within the window and that's done without any python scripting.And learning Python is part of learning how Construct works as well.Most of my problems were solved by using python scripting.

As for teaching you lol i would probably confuse you more than teach you anything.There are tutorials on the wiki and google.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7658043/VideoExample.zip