BadMario's Forum Posts

  • Unity does a lot of things for you and you don't need to know C# or javascript to start developing a game with it. One can take a few days to go through tutorials, get the basics down ( C# syntax and Unity interface ) and start development. Then learn the rest as you go.

    Now the question is whether you really need Unity if you are not developing 3D games

  • No, currently don't use any of those game distribution sites. I distributed a couple of games myself, basically by emailing 4-5 bigger sites, and it went OK. These are just your regular portals, not the ones that distribute games to other portals.

    Problem with Construct games is you can't just ad CPM Star ads anywhere in your game like you could with Flash games ( I'd have a pre loader ad, and end game ad on the side, so it would not disrupt gameplay.

    The whole thing sucks compared to Flash days, so a different approach may be necessary.

  • I am curious too about some of these game distribution portals that share revenue with you. They only give you 20% of ad revenue in some cases which seems low.

    In Flash days I used to get over 3,000,000 plays each month and kept 50% of revenue with CPM Star.

    If Scirra paid attention to what really is important ( incorporating adsense into HTML5 games ) then we could have something like that again. If not, as soon as I have enough games code my own, ( or pay somebody to do it for me since I am not really a javascript programmer ) and create my own game distribution portal.

  • Obviously it depends on what you have in your game, but I usually have big background images or crowd animations in sports games.

    Running those sprite sheets ( after export from Construct ) through tinyPNG ( or some similar program ) does reduce file size by up to 70%. Image quality looks pretty much the same, but I don't do it with main elements/sprites in the game. They are usually smaller in file size anyway, and I don't want any compression applied to those.

    So yeah, a 15 MB game may easily drop down to under 10MB simply by doing this to some larger images in the game

  • Well, that only works on Scirra arcade. They should make it so it works everywhere or they should stop blocking outgoing links from the arcade. With links being blocked I don't see the point of publishing anything to the arcade.

    So you will have to use either something like Google play or your own database if you have that with your web host. There are tutorials around how to do this with php.

  • >>>You just need to reload the page and it will use the new version. The first load after an update detects the update, but loads the old version; the second reload starts using the new version. <<<<<

    Never works. In Firefox I can keep reloading until my arms fall off, still shows me cached version. Same thing on Galaxy phone, their browser or Chrome for Android. And it has never worked, not even once for me.

  • Arrays are the way to go, but if you don't know them my idea could be used, and of course you can always combine the two. You will have to create platforms and position them on top of the scenery. I would suggest learning Arrays too, but you could use instance variables to set their position for each segment or attach via Image points to actual scenery sprites. But, that could be more time consuming than just learning Arrays.

    This is an ugly image of what I was talking about

  • You could simply use 2 background image sprites, each one containing parts of your track ( frame 1,2,3,4 etc.... ) First one is on screen and at frame 0, second one is behind it to the right and set to frame 1, they will scroll left at same speed. So as the first one scrolls left and gets out of the view reposition it behind the second one currently on screen, each time you re-position advance 1 frame. This way you create a background scenery loop. It will require some graphics work to make it look seamless. You can also measure distance based on which frame is currently showing. If each segment is 20 m., then at frame 10 you'd be around 200 m.

    This way you don't need arrays nor huge levels, just normal level size, squirrel does not actually move, scenery does.

  • [quote:3rxrn9d9]That's why there isn't one single plugin existing, because there is no standard, and it all depends on the network you are going through

    Well, then it should include a couple of plugins if necessary, but I don't think it is. Google is really the only game in town. One could actually argue that there is far more variety with mobiles for which there is an official plugin.

    Construct 3 ad plugin is admob ( which is Google ), so for HTML 5 games just make one for adsense for games ( still exists I guess? )

  • So now that Construct 3 is out of beat what is the situation with ads and IAP. More interested in ads right now. I know about Ultimate ads plug in, but that is for mobile stores which don't interest me right now. I am more interested in implementing the usual browser/google ads before game starts, between levels and so on. Does any of that work in Construct 3 or we still have to code our own stuff?

  • One could argue that "real" programmers do not use Unity since Unity does a lot of things for you and also forces you into its way of doing things. It's just that compared to something like Construct it requires more coding knowledge, that's all. Whether that's good or not depends on you and what kind of games you want to make.

    I agree, major failing of Construct is crap export options and integration of ads. Not being able to see the forest from the trees comes to mind. Making sure export options and ads worked flawlessly would have made all the difference. As nice as Construct 3's new features are they do not make any difference in the real world.

  • Custom explosions are easy, just have animations of fireballs, smiley faces you mention, and whatever else you need. Then add some particles in Construct and use a combination of those.

    Tracking the player is easy, never tried that with custom movements you describe, but I think it's all doable within reason.

    The limitations you may have to worry about will be in the area of "exactly how many of these can I have on screen at the same time"

  • Then I would have a global variable, something like "whichsound" if whichsound = 0 you play sound 0, and switch variable to 1, so next time event is triggered it plays sound 1 and switches back to 0. Sounds will alternate and you only need a single trigger.

    In my sample you have a variable ( call it triggersound or whatever ) that's reduced by 1 each tick, from 60 to 0. When it reaches 0 event is triggered and variable reset to 60 to start the countdown again . Now 60 is the starting value stored in a variable called stress. You simply set this to stress = 30 and sound will be triggered twice as fast, you can set it to anything to speed up or slow down triggering. That stress variable can be set by anything you want ( in my sample by position of the square you drag ).

    To simplify ( hopefully )

    soundvar = 0

    rate = 60

    triggerspeed = rate

    System Every Tick > subtract 1 from triggerspeed

    if triggerspeed = 0 trigger sound ( 0 or 1 )

    If sound 0 played, set soundvar to 1 so next time it plays sound 1 ( and the other way around )

    set triggerspeed back to rate

    Changing rate variable will speed up or slow down triggering of sounds

    I am sure there are other ways to do it, but I am used to using timers like this.

  • Something like this? This is a single heart beat sound sample though.

    http://www.deusx.com/heart/

    Could be refined further by using different sound samples for faster heart rates ( sounds realistic up to 120 bets per minute, after that I would switch samples ) , but events pretty much stay the same

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  • That's not gonna help him, he will need to code his own plug in or maybe, just maybe do it using google pre-roll ads. Construct 2 and 3 are really lacking in this area and Scirra does not understand that this is far more important than Construct 3, which ads practically nothing to Construct 2 ( Anything anybody can do in Construct 3 I can do in 2 and in the same amount of time, so I am really puzzled by this lack of understanding of what really matters ).

    make it easy to insert ads at any point within a game, the way CPMStar works with Flash games, and then you have something that really counts and will increase sales.