Tutorial: Platform School

pantaloons.

Pantaloons indeed, my good sir. That's the kind of spirit we need around this place. Pantaloons... for everyone!

<img src="http://i49.tinypic.com/2laao0p.jpg">

I've started organizing the first lesson. It's going to be a little bit different, having two layouts to start with, and will go into more detail about how and where things are set up. I'll also try to wrangle in info about private and global variables, since Ghost Shooter doesn't cover globals at all.

I'm also going to be trying some new methods for controlling Charlie, mainly custom masks, which will take some experimentation since I haven't really done much with them.

Some things may need in-depth explaining, such as how to set up the custom masks in the image editor, so I'm toying with the idea of making short video supplements that can be uploaded to youtube. Mind you this doesn't mean I'll be making the entire thing into a video tutorial, just certain sections that are hard to explain in small text boxes. I'll have to do some experimenting with video capture stuff, I haven't done much of that really.

I've been ignoring these tutorials ever since they broke from that one version way back and little did I know that they actually work now... the intermediate AI lesson is just what I need to finally get my enemies to move around as intended and it's much simpler than my crappy method (involving RTS and platforming).

Thanks Deadeye for these incredible tutorials

They work post 98.9?? Huh. I... don't think they do. Not 100%. You have to mess with the control events and stuff. And there's new features for jump and sustain gravity that mess up swimming, and countless other little things.

Anyway, you're welcome .

Just a heads up, I do have some lessons for the next generation tutorial finished, but they're not going to be released until v0.99.83. Barring any breaky bugs with that version, that is (but I don't think there will be).

Here's a hint for some of the major changes in the new tutorials:

• No separate hitboxes! Charlie and the enemies are all just their own single sprites.
• No control-based animation events! I'm going to try to use states only.

And I know I said I was thinking of making some video tuts to go along with this, but honestly I don't think I'll need to. There were two things I thought I'd need to make video tuts for: Showing the IDE features, and creating collision masks. I've worked showing the IDE features into the first lesson without a video, and David already has a video showing how to make masks. So... no videos. Sorry.

Just a heads up, I do have some lessons for the next generation tutorial finished, but they're not going to be released until v0.99.83. Barring any breaky bugs with that version, that is (but I don't think there will be).

Well it turns out there are. Apparently the Platform behavior fixes that David made didn't make it into v0.99.83. Since Platform School requires these in order to work properly, that means that it's still on hold for now. Sorry, everyone.

Hopefully everything will be sorted out for the next build.

What kind of fixes were being included?

Well honestly so far it looks like the only remaining bug that is affecting Platform School currently is that you fall through vertically moving platforms. But that doesn't happen until lesson four. I might be able to release the first three lessons until it's fixed, but then again there are some collision mask issues that could be addressed as well that could make a difference in how I present my tutorials.

So I'll think about it for a while and see. I'm probably just going to hold off on them for now though, so don't hold your breath.

Again, sorry for the delay.

You are revising the tutorials, huh?

I hope you will also do past the 9th tutorial.

It is great to learn by your levels, and unfortunately they still stay at level 9

You are revising the tutorials, huh?

I hope you will also do past the 9th tutorial.

It is great to learn by your levels, and unfortunately they still stay at level 9

Yes, I will finish them . The reason I didn't before is because everything broke and I was tired or rewriting them all the time.

Thanks for your tutorials they have really helped me. Keep up the great work deadeye.

nice tutorials ^^, thanks

I also want to thank deadeye for the tuts, although I noticed thet charlie (the character in the tutorials) don't turn around when pressing the left arrow but I did how ever manage to fix that.

The first thing I tried was to change the Auto flip property for the character but that didn't seem to do it so I went in the event sheet editor for the animation and noticed that the Pleyer 1 "Move Right" is down was written like this

Player %1 "Move Right" is down

Once I re-opened the event and saved it again (no editing) the % sign dissapeared and now charlie turns/flips around like he was supposed to.

Oh and I'm using the 0.99.84 (unstable) version of Construct.

Cheers!

Brilliant tuts! Fun and interactive, I'm actually still awake after going through them! Kudos!

Loving Construct

~t

Having a bit of trouble with one thing regarding the combat in the tutorial, I've managed to use the "same" combat system as in the tutorial except I kill my enemies with a sword instead of jumping onto them, but my problem is this:

Once an enemy gets killed every other enemy (same kind difference instances) gets killed at the same time

Any ideas to why this happens? When I run the Combat tutorial in debug mode only once instance of the enemy gets killed, I've been over the tutorial like a hawk but don't seem to exactly find where the problem might be. I'm using a spawn point, enemyBox which has the Platform behavior and another enemySprite that follows the enemyBox (as in the tut).

Still using Construct 0.99.84 (unstable) (don't think updating to the latest will fix my problem).

It will depend on how you set up your events for the sword (which would be totally different from the events for a Mario style jump-kill, BTW). You are obviously not picking the enemy properly, so construct is applying your actions to all of them.

What you need to do is filter out your enemies using the SOL (selected objects list). Initially, all objects are in the SOL, and by using events and conditions you filter out all of the ones you don't need until you are left with the objects you want to work with and the actions are applied to them.

For example, if you have a separate object for the sword, you might do this:

+ Sword: Sword overlaps Monster

-> Monster: Destroy

Which should destroy only those monsters that are overlapping the sword.