Arima's Forum Posts

  • I'm sure I can't be the only one who finds game development hard, anyone else find this frustrating?

    Not just you - I think it's probably pretty common for game development to be frustrating at times. I'm currently frustrated with my rpg, Shards - it's turning out to be incredibly hard to design how it should play. I'm on my third prototype of the thing because each one has had some sort of significant design flaw - for example, the first one had a strategy that turned out to be a such an overwhelming advantage that there was no reason not to use it - which the ai could also use - which would result in the 'samurai standoff problem' with neither player actually doing anything because the player who went first had a disadvantage. Fixing that problem has been crazy difficult.

    As for the problem with your events, if you post an example, I'm sure people can help you out with it. C2 can certainly do what you're describing.

  • > Even the fastest programmer in the world couldn't get a platformer up and running from scratch as quickly as it can be done in C2, and there's lots of time savings throughout the program like that.

    >

    Don't let Tommy Refenes hear that

    Could he really get a platformer up and running from scratch in about 15 seconds? Even using libraries, I imagine it would take longer to add them and use them. I apologize if I'm wrong on the matter.

  • True, I forgot about those, being the non-programmer that I am.

  • Try Construct 3

    Develop games in your browser. Powerful, performant & highly capable.

    Try Now Construct 3 users don't see these ads

  • Arima

    What I meant is that, they weren't designed for programmer, as ints and floats are just "numbers" in C2, that's an under the hood, arrays are objects, they should be primitives just like numbers, that's an under the hood too, in my opinion, and C2's function have no return values and are actually just triggers, for a programmer, that's a bummer and an under the hood for beginner's, a programmer will see those as inconveniences to what he's used to, all of this to accomplish the design goal of being non-programmer friendly

    2: Well, that's preference, but i personally don't like code hiding from my eyes, that's why I code in C xD

    I think I see what you mean about the concept of floats are different from ints at a technical level being hidden, but I'm not sure why the alternative is better - it seems to be pretty much the same functionality. I agree that it would be nice to have arrays as variable types, but that's easily worked around by storing an array in a variable as a json string. Also, the function plugin does have the ability to return a value via the returnvalue expression (though it would be nice if we could return more than one, but again, there are numerous simple ways around that).

    I also think that some of the things that C2 does to simplify game making overall make up for the difference in speed writing code vs making events. Even the fastest programmer in the world couldn't get a platformer up and running from scratch as quickly as it can be done in C2, and there's lots of time savings throughout the program like that.

  • ... Finally, C2 is geared towards beginners, most notions like floats, arrays, pointers, classes, functions are all hidden or even removed from the user's perspective, which makes it not better than other languages, which are consise and allow you to do everything with a limited syntax.

    What? C2 has floats, arrays and functions, and they're not hidden at all.

    The event system is also partially a matter of personal preference. I understand how people with lots of experience writing traditional code might not like it, but I've tried traditional coding and I don't like it at all. I vastly prefer C2's event system.

  • C2 is fine for making a commercial game. The concerns about it being slow are due to it using JavaScript, which isn't as fast as native, but it's fast enough for pretty much any game on desktop. On mobile, reeling it in is required, but as long as you test frequently and keep the game simple enough, good framerates most certainly can be achieved there too (especially on newer mobile devices, they're becoming quite powerful). It also helps that the situation on mobile is improving quite a bit - iOS 8 will have webgl and jit for apps, speeding up both the logic and rendering considerably. I've also tested C2 with lots of assets on PC and as long as I keep it within the realm of what my hardware can handle (like not trying to load 5gb of art on a 512 mb graphics card, which native coding has to do too) it works just fine.

    The idea that C2 is only suitable for small prototypes is incorrect. Several commercial games have already been made with it, and many more are in the pipeline. Not to mention games that have been/are being made for the wii U. No, C2 isn't 100% problem free, but I've heard professional developers talk about bugs and problems with native toolkits too. C2 is updated crazy frequently, and bugs are being fixed and export options are improving all the time (ios's improvement being the most recent).

  • It sounds like normal behavior as I understand it. Node webkit and chrome have automatic memory management, if your computer's got the free ram available, it decides there's no need to remove stuff from ram (again, talking about ram here, not VRAM) and keeps it in memory in case it needs it later, which if it does it will be faster to load.

  • zenox98 - just because you aren't interested in 3D doesn't mean others aren't, so why would you hope for the plugin to put 'too much strain' on the engine? You don't have to use it if you don't want to. Optimally it would work just fine - as it has already been shown to - and we can have both.

  • Projects on disk are compressed. When images are loaded into memory, they are uncompressed and therefore take up more memory. It doesn't matter if your images are 256x256, if you have enough of them they'll still take up a lot of ram.

    Also, don't use construct classic for medium to large projects. It has problems with them. Use C2 instead.

  • Whoo HOO!! Both webgl AND nitro?? Awesome!!

  • > They say in the comments that you can't use any code written before June 1st for this contest, though you can use art assets made before then.

    >

    Isn't the game development period near the end of May?

    It states this:

    "May 29 - June 30, 2014 – Game Development period. Create an awesome gaming experience!"

    I started working on a game on May 29th for the FGL game jam, but it was rushed and buggy so I was hoping to edit it and resubmit since I ended up joining the game jam so late.

    Do you think this game would still qualify for the contest?

    Oops, the comment I read was incorrect, you're right, dev on the game has to have started on May 29th or later.

  • This is good news, my game is almost finish.

    They say in the comments that you can't use any code written before June 1st for this contest, though you can use art assets made before then.

  • A couple notes - you can also use system compare > tickcount%2 = 0 to run logic every other tick, that might be a bit more stable than every x seconds.

    Also instead of rendering everything to a canvas, you might be able to turn 'clear background' to off instead and get the same effect for far less CPU resources. If you still want to paste to a canvas though, use the paster plugin instead of the canvas plugin as it also supports webgl.

  • Wow, every issue? Awesome.

    I know you said the concept pictures aren't supposed to represent how it looks in game, but I hope you can get it close to that, because those would look terrific in motion!

  • Small update - Shards wasn't playing as well as I wanted it to, so I'm reworking it. Like usual, all of my estimates for when it'll be ready for presentation are way off.

    I understand now why so many game developers often don't innovate much. It's really hard to get right.