Ashley's Forum Posts

  • What's so bad about the persist files? Sure, it would have been more convenient to store the data inside the .cap file. But you can also keep your own UI settings when someone else sends you a .cap file. And if you delete them all you lose all your saved UI settings...

  • There is often confusion over the term "antialiasing". Multisampling is the only form of true anti-aliasing in Construct, but it degrades performance quite a lot since it gives the graphics card several times more work to do, so I wouldn't recommend it. This effectively draws the screen at several times higher resolution (eg. 4x multisampling draws the display at 4x the resolution, and hence runs 4x slower), then does a high quality resize down to the window size (that's not exactly how it works, but the end result is the same). This is what is meant by "antialiasing".

    You can achieve nearly the same with linear sampling (the default in Construct). This makes rotations and scaling look "smooth" and high quality and runs just as fast, but it is not antialiasing, it's just a different way of deciding which pixels to draw. This is incorrectly sometimes referred to as antialiasing, but it is actually a texture sampling mode. It looks similar, but is much faster and the algorithm behind it is completely different!

    If you get sharp edges on sprites with linear sampling, try adding a one-pixel transparent border around them, which allows linear filtering to blend the edges with the background. This works in both fullscreen and windowed mode - no features in Construct are specific to fullscreen mode.

  • Ash, I'm not sure the DX license allows you to place loose .dll's like that. You probably can bundle the redistributable though.

    That's often the case, but I think I read otherwise somewhere. I'll err on the side of caution and make sure I get a solid reference that that's allowed before I implement it. Some of those DLLs are from different components though, so it may be the case that it only applies to some of them.

  • Download Construct 0.99.8 (unstable)

    This is an

    unstable build. You can help Construct's development by downloading it, trying it out, testing and reporting bugs. If you have projects you want to work on without possible bugs getting in the way, stick to stable builds.

    Link to previous build (0.99.72) changelog

    Some more bug fixes and Python improvements. I haven't had much time to do much recently, so this is mostly Davo's work. Thanks, Davo

    Full changelog

    Plugins

    [ADD] - Canvas resize action

    [FIX] - Rewrote some code in particle spray so if you spawn a large number of particles they spawn in the exact time period (prevents gaps appearing)

    [ADD] - Used linear interpolation with the spawn position of the particle spray, so if you have a high particle count and the particles are following the mouse there wont be gaps.

    [ADD] - Particle Spray - Every action and condition to change the appearance and properties of the particle system.

    [ADD] - Particle Spray - Rate is now a float, allowing you to make a particle spawn every 2 seconds (ie. 0.5 particles per second) if you desire to.

    Behaviors

    [ADD] - Physics - The custom mask editor has been improved thanks to code changed from Linkman2004. You can now move points around, delete them by right clicking, and insert points after a specific point by clicking it. Also the layout editor is whitenned to make it easier to see the black lines in a dark level.

    [FIX] - Bone - No longer crashes when you rename the first animation.

    [CHANGE] - Bone - Moving bones and rotating them is smooth, no more snapping to the nearest pixel stuff

    [FIX] Platform Movement - You no longer fall through moving platforms.

    Python

    [FIX] - No longer crashes when an application has an attribute in it (this will probably fix python for a lot of people since nearly every game uses attributes )

    [FIX] - Objects like array were trying to add functions with names begining with brackets (either ( or <), which is illegal in python

    [FIX] - Heap Corruption error when you used expressions which returned strings. Eg: Text.text

    [CHANGE] - Runtime no longer unzips the python included files as python can read from a zip archieve. This means the only file required is StringIO.

    [FIX] - Should no longer require python to be installed on your computer to use python. The necessarily files are included.

    Editor

    [CHANGE] - Can now position objects in float co-ordinates. Hold alt when dragging or resizing to position in decimal co-ordinates, or enter in decimal co-ordinates into the properties.

    [FIX] - Can now copy events between applications

    Picture Editor

    [CHANGE] - The palette at the bottom now has proper colours in it to select from

    [CHANGE] - Changing the colour no longer affects the palette

    [CHANGE] - Using the slider in the edit box's for chosing colours no longer crashes in certain situations

    [CHANGE] - Using the gradient slider on the right of the colour rainbow, it now reaches 0,0,0 at the bottom instead of 3,3,3.

    Effects

    [ADD] - New 'normal distortion' shader. Works like distortion, but uses a normal map instead of a heightmap.

    [ADD] - New text effect called 'Text'. Apply it to any text object and it'll look better when it renders. Its just like smart text, but doesn't use any shaders so its faster.

    Runtime

    [FIX] 'normalrandom' expression always returned 0.

  • Just an update - if anyone hasn't stopped by the IRC chat yet, there's usually a crowd there, so do drop in! Myself and Davo are also in there from time to time.

  • This would be a useful feature, so I'll see if I can squeeze it in before 1.0. However the DLLs will add a few megabytes to the file size, they're not that small.

    You can try it manually by putting the following DLLs in the same directory as the game EXE:

    DINPUT8.DLL

    D3DX9_39.DLL

    XAPOFX1_1.DLL if you use XAudio2. (There might be another one I missed but that's the only one showing up in dependency viewer)

    All of them are installed by the August 2008 DirectX update.

  • I've used Cubase a fair bit. Some will argue it's not the best, but I'd say it can do a professional quality job for sound recording, editing and processing.

  • Hehe, love the idea of a Construct theme I bought a nice synth recently, which has some really impressive sounds. I might have a shot! I've thought about using it to do my own music for games as well.

    I think you can't really go wrong with buying a MIDI keyboard for a PC, if you do music on a PC it's pretty much an essential. You can also look in to downloading some software synthesisers to get more interesting sounds, and control them with the MIDI keyboard. I would say, though, don't buy the very cheapest - it might be annoying/hard to play, and cheap ones tend to have annoying velocity responses (eg. pressing the key hard vs. soft doesn't make much volume difference). Spending ?50-?60 might be a good idea to get an OK one. M-Audio are a good brand though, and you could also look in to Korg, Roland/Edirol and Yamaha. If you're in the UK, I've used http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk several times before and they've been good, and cheaper than amazon, who tend to rip you off big time on postage, which makes it more expensive even though their per-product prices might be less. Try both and go as far as checkout and compare prices there.

    Also, if you want to get in to music, have a look at some music theory too. Learn scales, chords, chord sequences, rhythms like triplets, and so on. It helps tonnes with composing.

  • Something like #include for Construct would be nice...

    Do you mean something different to the existing 'Include event sheet'?

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  • Well, the official line has been Construct is still in beta (since it's pre-1.0) so it would be wise to think twice before starting a large project, but I think a few others are currently working on large projects without so many problems.

    The problem really has to be isolated for us to do anything about it. Another way you can try to find what's causing it is delete parts of the game away bit by bit (back it up first obviously) and see when the problems go away - then the last thing you deleted it probably caused it. Also, for the record, one global XAudio2 object is the intended way to use it, although there shouldn't be any difference to a per-layout system other than it forces all sounds and music to stop between layouts and might be a bit slower (since it's closing down and reinitialising the audio engine between layouts).

    Did you try 0.99.72?

  • So Shakespeare was talking about your eye then?

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  • Can you reproduce these issues in a new .cap and post them to the tracker? I haven't heard anyone else having that kind of problem.

  • You have a worm blocking certain websites? Are you sure that worm isn't affecting Construct?