BattleJenkins's Forum Posts

  • Hey there everyone! Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I revisited this problem on a whim and found a solution:

    I just made a copy of the Platform behavior called Platform (non-stick) - it's identical, except I found this block of code and commented it out. It seems to work just as intended with no problems! This would be really useful to have as a simple toggle available in the behavior properties, though!

  • I ended up coding up my own not-perfect-but-functional platform movement based on the custom movement behavior - but it would be pretty nice to be able to turn the 'sticking' aspect of the behavior on and off! The height-changing floor is a clever solution, but not really one that'd mesh well with other aspects of my game - I may end up giving it a try anyway, though!

  • I'm not just doing a flat scrolling floor - I'm doing a dynamically generated landscape of tiles. Otherwise, the invisible / immobile ground thing would work, but, alas!

  • Hello there! I'm working on a side project that involves a platform movement object going over an unlimited scrolling tilemap - to accomplish the unlimited scrolling, I have the tilemap and player slowly move to the left at a constant rate, and periodically shift it a tile's width to the right every time it moves a certain amount off the screen, as well as simultaneously shift all of the tiles along with it by transferring the tilemap's data to an array, deleting a column, and then transferring it back in one tick - giving the illusion of continuous movement.

    Unfortunately, because the platform behavior will automatically shift position along with whatever the object is standing on automatically, this causes various problems - like the player sliding at double speed to the left while standing on solid ground, as well as jumping 16 pixels every time the tiles reset. I've tried to compensate for this behavior in my code by disabling the scrolling movement on the player while the player is standing on solid ground, but this doesn't produce satisfactory results - you can still see the offset for a frame.

    I would just re-code the platform behavior from the ground up using custom movement, but I would like to avoid it if possible - is there any built-in way to remove the built-in behavior meant to emulate moving platforms?

  • This'll solve my problems! It is bought!

    Should I be getting an e-mail automatically, or do I have to wait for the plugin creator to manually send it?

  • Aahhh! This is perfect! Thank you so much, I really owe you one! Once I have a bit more time, I'm gonna really delve into this and try to puzzle out how it works - switching to one big circular tester instead of a bunch of tiny ones was definitely a really good call.

    Let me know if there's anything I can do for you in return! Once this project is done and I get paid for it, I wouldn't mind sending you a pizza or something, hehehe

  • I'm working on a Puzzle Bobble clone for a web design client, and I've got the basic mechanics in - but I couldn't get any of the flood fill examples provided by forumgoers to work right. I eventually devised a flood fill method that works, but very poorly - it's slow and system-intensive, and doesn't loop right. This means that there can be a delay before a bubble match is recognized, and an especially long delay for bubbles that are no longer connected to be recognized as such and be forced to fall - especially when the screen is full of bubbles.

    Here's the capx:

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/3pb7uwssfw9fs ... .capx?dl=0

    And here's a live web demonstration:

    http://battlestudio.com/bubblepop/

    The controls are - left click to shoot a bubble, middle click to make a new bubble row on the top. There are also touch controls implemented, but no touch debug key for making new bubbles yet.

    I can probably make a workable full game with this imperfect method, but I'd really appreciate it if anyone could help me put together something more solid! And of course, feel free to learn from my code if you were curious about making your own game of this type!

  • Try Construct 3

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

    Try Now Construct 3 users don't see these ads
  • Over the past few days, I put together this little engine for automatically picking appropriate tiles out of a tileset! Included are functions that load / save a tilemap to an array, and perform bitwise functions on the array in order to choose the appropriate tile for every space. I'm not sure if this is the right forum to put this, but if it's not, feel free to move it!

    This system is perfect for creating your own level editor and saving time on fitting all the right tiles together - you can also use it to make really good looking randomly generated terrain, or for adding and removing tiles in real time for a really good looking "mining" effect!

    You can mess with the example here! http://battlestudio.com/TilePick/

    And you can download the .capx here! I commented the code the best I could to explain how it does everything: http://battlestudio.com/TilePick/TileArray.capx

    If you'd like to see this expanded or would like to see more of these kinds of examples from me, please consider checking out my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BattleJenkins - one of the rewards nets you an hour of my time every month, if you wanted me to help you figure out other Construct 2 tricks!

    Feel free to use this code as you like! You don't need to credit me, but it'd be really appreciated! (Just don't take the credit for yourself if you repost this anywhere!)

    I hope this comes in handy!

  • So far this is the only feature I can see that's glaringly missing from Construct 2, and I really hope to see it included soon. The fact that game creators don't have the power to control the framerate of their games is surprising, and bordering on unacceptable, in my opinion! The framerate is something that can dramatically alter the experience of any visual medium in motion (just ask people who saw the Hobbit at 48fps), and as such it should be in the hands of the game creators. Even if hovering between 40-60fps is "better performance" by the numbers, a constant 30fps would offer a much better experience.

    There's also the fact that one might want to limit the framerate for purely aesthetic reasons, perhaps emulating the experience of older computer games that ran at a low frame rates, or limiting your game to 24 fps for a "cinematic" feel - reading a post by one of the C2 creators saying there's "no good reason to do this" made me feel a little insulted!

  • Hello, everyone! I've been enjoying Construct 2 immensely, to the point of relying on the game I'm making with it for my livelihood. Now that's confidence in a product! It has absolutely every feature I ever needed or expected to need! That is, save one!

    Construct 2 seems to be very, very stubborn about the way it handles frame rates. The option to set a frame rate cap doesn't seem to exist at all, despite the multitude of reasons a game creator might want to (I.E. for aesthetic reasons or to ensure more consistent results/performance out of certain devices).

    Another option that's missing seems to be the ability to choose to have the game slow down rather than start dropping frames after the frame rate gets below a certain point. I've run into problems with this in my game, Grapple Force Rena; at low frame rates, the game doesn't register collisions as reliably, and the main character's grappling hook starts to 'pass through' and miss pieces of the environment, enemies, and objects. Games that value precision collision detection over game speed (I.E. 'bullet hell' shooters, which require incredibly precise collision handling) might become borderline unplayable under these conditions.

    I've created an example of how to replicate the 'slowdown' behavior in Construct 2 using events, but since the engine only updates the frame rate it reports once per second, it isn't perfect. I've provided the example as an attachment, and also uploaded it here: http://battlestudio.com/c2slowdown/

    Are there any plans to put more options in the hands of game creators in terms of the way Construct 2 handles performance issues like these? And when will we finally receive the ability to control the maximum frame rate manually?

  • Thanks for the kind words!

    I did end up adding a prompt to skip the dialog - maybe you still have an old version cached, if you tried it earlier?

    You can see it up in the upper left corner, there.

    Also, the website does have a section for controls, in addition to a "How to Play" section that hashes things out in more detail!

    http://rena.battlestudio.com/controls/

    http://rena.battlestudio.com/how-to-play/

    If these were all too easy to miss, let me know!

  • Don't worry, everyone! It's not THAT polished.

    https://storify.com/BattleJenkins/so-long-suckers

  • Joke's on you - you could skip the dialog at any time by pressing "Enter!" You suffered through all my cheesy dialog for nothing!

    You're not the first person to bring this up, though, so I added a little prompt in the upper left corner of cutscene segments making this explicit. Hope that helps!

    (Also, thanks for the kind words!)

  • Most of my mobile devices are old and I don't own any Apple stuff, but my engine tests ran really well in the iPad browser. I built a native Android version too, which ran pretty smoothly even on my off-brand Android hardware. I don't want to get too deep into mobile development until I have more to test on, though!

    I actually came up with a pretty novel way of scaling the game that works like integer scaling but adapts to any aspect ratio - it detects the size of the screen and sets the zoom level based on that, and positions all the HUD elements based on where the screen edges are. It still looks off on some devices with odd screen sizes, though - the further you get from a multiple of 360p, the more there's a chance that things might get cut off. I'm still working that out!

  • Thank you very much for the kind words! I really hope I can keep making this game and keep updating it with new courses!