blurymind's Forum Posts

  • More advantages over construct2:

    • The debugger allows you to pause the game, and even frame by frame it! Plus many other nice features. <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

    Gamedevelop has a much nicer debugger.

    • very basic support for 3d (available only for native builds)
    • Dynamic 2d lights out of the box - officially supported
    • You can edit a part of a condition or execution without opening a new window
    • The platforming "automatism" has a LADDER type. No need to code ladder logic.

    -Reminding that it is the ONLY option for linux users who want to have a native construct2 look a like. I don't see construct being ported any time soon. I'd pay for it's license instead of donations, if the developer was willing to offer professional support like scirra does. I guess his strategy is somewhat different.

    • If he ported it to linux, that means that he is getting closer to porting it to mac. The engine is using platform independent libraries. Not sure if Construct2 can boast with that too.

    More disadvantages:

    • Has a bunch of starter tutorials, but no community created tutorials like construct2's. Nowhere near the number of tutorials scirra has gathered from its users.
    • Cant seem to uncomment multiple rows of code or a group. There are no groups, but you can still parent blocks to other blocks, but uncommenting a parent doesn't affect the children.
    • global and instance variables are generally harder to find in the ui.
    • less stable (the build on linux is fairly new though- give it some time)
    • The interface is good at hiding things from the user in the start. At first I though many of which are missing.
    • The sprite sheet editor has no painting tools

    A lot of things that are very similar:

    -there are too many to list. It will take me an entire day :D

  • how do you search and replace in the event sheet then?

  • it has much less behaviors than construct at this point.

    They SDK is open sourced:

    github.com/4ian/GD-Extensions and github.com/4ian/GDJS

    but not many people are contributing. Their community is humble compared to this.

    More cons to add:

    -smaller community

    -less documentation

    On the bright side- the main developer seems to be very active.

    It does have a tiled background plugin and a platforming one as well.

    The interface is somewhat different when you actually start using it- so some things look like missing at first- but are available.

    Check out the demoes that it comes with to see them.

  • Ok it is not completely open source, but it's plugin SDK is open source!!!

    The editor is free.

    Advantages over construct2:

    • The editor runs natively on both Ubuntu and windows
    • It has Search and Replace
    • The expression editor seems to be more advanced
    • Object Families (called groups here) for free
    • It has a built in sprite converter (gif to sprite, rmxp sheet to sprite)

    Disadvantages:

    • Can't lock layers
    • Can't ctrl/shift-select multiple code blocks on linux yet
    • no fancy Shaders

    -It seems that naming is not dynamic like construct. If you rename an object it wont update in the event sheet. Havent tested it properly though. The game still runs fine after renaming it though- when it should be broken.

    EDIT- this naming bug seems to be only in the linux version and happens inconsistently .

    I would be interested to hear pros and cons discovered by other construct2 users.

    It's interesting that the creator's family name is "rival". He's a french guy too. <img src="smileys/smiley3.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

  • It's called Gamedevelop and can export to html5.

    Runs on both windows and linux and has a very similar design to construct.

    <img src="http://www.compilgames.net/img/content/big_events.jpg" border="0">

    It is completely free and available for download for ubuntu users.

    If you would like to support their development, please consider donating.

    http://www.compilgames.net/

    So in fact Scirra Construct has a free clone on linux and real competition too- because right now it is the only option for linux users. <img src="smileys/smiley36.gif" border="0" align="middle">

    Did I mention that it is open source and completely free too?

    Maybe not on par in terms of features, but definitely worth a try.

    It would be interesting to see how many users it will gather. If I was Ashley, I would keep a close eye on it's userbase. Linux is turning into a very mainstream OS, with china making their own OS based on ubuntu, Valve adopting it for SteamOS and many other factors that are coming together.

  • it's pretty broken in wine. Check out this native clone :

    compilgames.net

    It's pretty decent and completely free :)

  • This is the closest you can get to construct2 on linux

    compilgames.net

    if you would like to see it get closer in features, they have a donate page :D

  • Is it possible to have the dialogue text of npcs in a spreadsheet (csv) and to just load it in NPC instances with a variable.

    There was something mentioned about it at this forum, but no example files anywhere.

    It's really really hard to do the simplest npc dialogue box. This same thing is extremely easy to do in rpg maker engines for example.

    It's an often requested feature and rarely have i seen it implemented well with construct.

    Wouldnt it be great if someone wrote a behavior for construct that mimics the way NPC dialogue is handled in rpg maker?

  • is there no way to just use a bunch of text variables (rows) then?

    I want something that will later be super easy to change on each instance.

    This whole array business sounds like hardcoding dialogue inside the event sheet rather than on the instances.

    My goal is to keep all the dialogue text outside of the event sheet

  • i couldnt find a single example of a dialogue system in scirra that is manageable. The complicated examples (dictionary,jason file,etc etc) are all in words and not one capx file to look at. The ones posted lead to dead links :(

    I just want to make an NPC that can be instanced and reused with different text.

  • Hi, is it possible to get the value of a variable whose name was acquired through an expression?

    ----

    So basically my npc text is split into 10 npc.row1 npc.row2 and so on text variables.

    I also have a curRow variable that gets +1 every time a button is clicked during npc conversation.

    As a result I have to make 10 sepparate curRow conditions -for each row variable to update the text in the textbox with it's value.

    Is there a better way to do this?

    Basically I want to add another variable called curText. And say

    npc.curText=npc.row2

    where the 2 at the end of curRow is the npc.curRow value. Is this possible to do in an expression?

  • TokenAt() is a good way to do that. Then C2 manual say:

    tokenat(src, index, separator)

    Return the Nth token from src, splitting the string by separator. For example, tokenat("apples|oranges|bananas", 1, "|") returns oranges.

    tokencount(src, separator)

    Count how many tokens occur in src using separator. For example, tokencount("apples|oranges|bananas", "|") returns 3.

    So, rather than "(av:james) Hi my name is james" you might just want to have "james|Hi my name is james"

    then tokenat("james|Hi my name is james",0,"|") will return the avatar, and tokenat("james|Hi my name is james",1,"|") will return the text for him to say.

    You can chain together strings, using different tokens if you want.

    "james|Hi my name is james#susan|Hello there!#ben|Good day, eh?"

    just be sure to use tokens that wont appear in your text, or if you are going to pass the strings to php (to save in a database) don't use a symbol that may cause trouble there (like "&")

    This is super awesome!! Much rep to you sir. :)

    What a great solution. And thank you for taking the time to explain how tokens work <img src="smileys/smiley12.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

  • Hi, can you elaborate a little bit more? I am still learning this

    :)

    I was thinking of using the find() expression but couldnt find any examples of that in action.

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  • Hi, I am currently making an npc system and using string variables to input text.

    So what I need is to also use the same string variable to call an avatar image while the npc is speaking. The string variable may look like this:

    "(av:james) Hi my name is james"

    Basically I need to tell construct to not print out the part of the string variable that defines the avatar(av:james). And at the same time use (av:james) as a condition to display the avatar of the character james.

    Is it possible to make construct check a string variable for a keyword and if it's in the string variable, to remove it from the printed text.   <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

  • If a family has an instance variable each member of the family has the instance variable. you can adress the member directly, but you can also adress the family. so the variable can be different for each member of the family.

    I tried it on a simpler situation and it works as you said.

    But i am a bit confused about this set up still.

    To clarify:

    Calling an object through the family simply adds the "any" to the condition.

    So in your set up its saying

    If the picked object is overlapping with any object from that family with a value set to x, then do this to the picked object.

    In this case families are extremely useful and what you just showed me makes my life much easier in some of the other things I want to implement.

    How does this work on triggering a change in variable level?

    If I trigger a change of a variable on a family level - it changes it for all the children?

    <img src="smileys/smiley32.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

    Much rep to you sir for showing me this!!! Sorry it took me a while to figure out