Bob Thulfram's Forum Posts

  • I'm trying to wrap my head around events.

    Here's an example I'm working with. If the user clicks a mouse, I want ONE of two things to happen.

    1. Mouse click - If there is NO wall to the player right, I want the player to move 32 pixels right.

    2. Mouse click - If there is a wall to the player right, I want the player to move 32 pixels up.

    The point of doing this is to have the player climb over blocks, but only blocks one 32x32 block high.

    [attachment=0:abe90mzx][/attachment:abe90mzx]

    But I have that nagging feeling that I could write these events another way. Any advice?

  • Earlier I wrote a post on my blog about using Construct 2 to create platformers for Firefox OS. Aphrodite was kind enough to point out that it was more efficient to use tile maps than to pull in tile images one by one. So I wrote a new tutorial just on tile maps. I discovered that Construct 2 will remove white space and resize quite nicely as well. Thank you, Aphrodite!

    Here's my post on Tile Maps. http://firefoxosgaming.blogspot.com/2014/10/tile-maps-in-construct-2.html.

    And as always, I'm happy to know if I goofed up! I'm going to continue to write about Construct 2 for the Firefox OS audience, which is HTML5 all the way, same as Construct 2.

  • I just bought So You Want to Be a Game Designer!: A Balanced Book of Practice and Theory by Merijn de Boer (http://merijndeboer.com/) because it was only $5 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GV4O9LK/). I'm surprised at the amount of information in it for a beginner's book, not only on C2 but on game design in general.

    > Now if someone would just write a book on how to do a RPG in Construct, I'd be happy (or should I do it myself?).

    >

    Regarding the RPG, Ashley wrote somewhat of a tutorial early this year that could be the start of an RPG book.

    https://www.scirra.com/blog/142/make-online-multiplayer-games-with-construct-2

    I just went over to Amazon and bought the book. Worth the $5 for sure! The book explains lots of things about game design (but in a way I could easily skip through) and does go through in detail how to do Pong, Brick Breaker, and Asteroids. Definitely cool. Thank you, frn2000, for the tip!

    I'll look at Ashley's tutorial, but I think it is time I tackled this. As soon as I get back (I'm still on the road), I'll start working on it. I'm still 50/50 on the fence about whether I should write it in raw HTML5 or Construct 2, but maybe I can prototype in Construct 2 and then do a later version in raw. I'll probably continue to do things in my Firefox OS blog first.

    By the way, I noticed something very strange. When I went to look up something about Construct 2 and Googled "Construct 2" my review on my blog came up very high (5th) overall, but as some kind of Google+ listing https://plus.google.com/+BobThulfram/posts/Ff2o268xaUK. I still have no idea how Google+ works, but it's nice if it promotes Construct 2!

  • Neller, I haven't tried out the Bura code in a production environment and maybe I should for a complete review. Great follow-up: "I tried the code but it only ran at 16fps"....

    I think my biggest beef is that there are several ways to do things in Construct 2 but sometimes it isn't clear unless you've read every post and have a brilliant mind (we're looking at you, Kyatric). I recently wrote a game in Construct 2 (a simple platformer) and several people pointed out better ways to do the same kind of tasks.

    I'm going to do some testing.

  • Lots to reply to. Sorry, I've been traveling!

    Neller Here's the outline for the chapter on Tower Defense:

    Chapter 6 - Making a Tower Defense Game

    Starting the project

    Creating a spawn point

    Laying out the level

    Setting up the turrets

    Adding enemies and projectiles

    Rotating the turret

    Firing the turret

    Setting up the path for the enemy

    Setting up an enemy wave

    As you can see, it's just one level, but I feel like adding more levels is easy enough. It told me enough to make me feel like I could do a tower defense game in Construct 2 pretty easily. He does explain how to do touch with the TD sample, so I think you could do it with mobile.

    tordonero I feel bad if I sounded disrespectful about Dillon's book. I certainly think that it was a huge amount of work and I think it is worth reading. Especially since there aren't a lot of Construct 2 books out there! You gave me a clue when you said that you had taken classes from him. For whatever reason, I've tried to read the book a few times and I just can't seem to connect with the writing. This just happens with me and some books. Oddly enough, I've watched several video lectures of John Bura, so I do connect with him.

    But as frn2000 and tordonero point out, Dillon is more about game design and Bura is more about using Construct 2 for well-known game types. I've bought nearly every game programming book I have ever seen (starting in the 8-bit days) and I always seem to care more about being told how to program a game I already know. What if I don't like Moon Wolf, Kitty & Katty, or Turkey on the Run (Dillon's games)? They don't seem to be interesting but they could be great games. But I didn't feel that when I read his books. Whereas with Bura's Shooter, Tower Defense, and Angry Birds, I have played that type of game and had actually been looking for a TD game sample. Now if someone would just write a book on how to do a RPG in Construct, I'd be happy (or should I do it myself?).

    I guess I'm saying that I'm more interested in nuts and bolts, not concepts. I am definitely recommending the Bura book, but I'd say that the Dillon book just didn't grab me but someone else might like it. You can go to amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IZL9O4O and read the TOC and index and see if you might be interested. Again, no disrespect meant, and I know all too well how much work goes into any book!

  • Packt asked me to review Construct 2 Game Development by Example and I did for my blog. You can read my review here:

    http://firefoxosgaming.blogspot.com/2014/09/construct-2-game-development-by-example.html

    The book is a bargain if you get the eBook from Amazon for $16. It is aimed at beginners, but actually walks you through three games in great detail. I especially was intrigued by his explanation of how to do a Tower Defense game as well as an Angry Birds game.

    John Bura is a really good writer and I hope he'll do a more advanced book (or I'll do it if he doesn't). This is a significant book for Construct 2 and you probably know all about it already, but I thought I would share my blog post. Thanks!

  • How does PhoneGap handle ads and/or IAP?

  • PhoneGap will work great from iOS 8 and Android L. Previously iOS and Android's webviews were very slow; from these releases they will be GPU-accelerated with WebGL support and full-speed Javascript. See https://www.scirra.com/blog/146/webgl-arrives-on-ios-8-and-more.

    Ejecta will more or less be obsolete after iOS 8; it will still cover older versions of iOS, but since iOS updates tend to reach about 90% distribution pretty quickly, I think it would be wise to simply target iOS 8+ only and enjoy the far better compatibility with a real browser engine.

    Crosswalk will still be useful for a while after Android L's release, since Android updates take such a long time to propagate. Until Android L+ reaches vast majority marketshare (like Android 4+ is only just achieving recently), Crosswalk will be the way to use a real browser engine to reach all Android 4+ systems. Hopefully their ads+iap support will come soon, they tell me it's effectively ready but needs to sort out some legal issues (don't know what those might be).

    Eventually though in the long term PhoneGap will basically cover both platforms with excellent performance and support.

    IAP support is already coded in for Ejecta, if there's a problem with it then please file a bug report!

    This is very exciting. I look for the day when PhoneGap can be used for iOS and Android. Especially Android!

  • OMG!

    Are you going to put Courier http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=252299679 on Wii U? The Wii U needs an RPG so badly!

    I'll be sure to vote for Greenlight on Steam for Courier, but I'm really amazed at how cool it looks. Is this really in Construct 2? The art is awesome. Really nice effects - I love the guy splashing in the water along the beach. A game like this could put Construct 2 on the map.

    Great music, too!

  • I hadn't put that into the equation because I'm still too far away from publishing to think about how to make money.

    It sounds like you just can't put an app in any app store and charge $0.99 for it any longer? Weird!

    I will be curious to see the new XDK release and how quickly Ashley will upgrade Construct to match the new features. I would suspect he'll work fast, and that XDK is a good long-term bet because it has those juicy Chromium bits inside.

  • [quote:3vhnrnfy]I struggled to get the game optimized for hours and hours on end, and couldn't figure out what the problem was. I went through so many changes, only to find out that my HUD was slowing the game down. I had a tiny line of code that checks if the character is overlapping the "cannon counter" on the HUD, at which point the HUD will turn 50% opaque. Because collisions are happening on different parallax layers, the Wii U didn't like it, and slowed each level down to a crawl!

    This sounds like a bug in Construct 2. But one that sounds very hard to track down on the Wii U. I suspect this might be due to the Wii U browser, but of course only Ashley and Nintendo know that.

    [quote:3vhnrnfy]My developer license was approved at the end of February, but my game was finally submitted in March... then again in April... then finally in May. Each time I failed wasn't due to the game, but due to something being wrong with the game's manual. The last time it was submitted was delayed by E3, and I pushed it back a week so I didn't clash with Shovel Knight! So yeah... it's been a long road getting an already completed game onto the Wii U.

    Yikes! It sounds like the manual-creation guidelines weren't very clear.

    But at any rate you should be congratulated for going through the process and having a great game on the Wii U. I look forward to your next game. I hope you can keep working with Construct 2 and Wii U.

    And thank you for answering my questions. I'm now convinced that if I want to follow in your footsteps, I need to understand a lot more about Construct 2 optimization.

  • I've been looking at this also, in part because I have a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud which includes PhoneGap.

    The word on the street is that PhoneGap is okay for simple stuff, but isn't really aimed at gaming.

    The crux of the problem is what HTML5 browser bits are available on a particular phone. Nobody seems to be getting this right 100%. Right now Construct 2 is recommending Ejecta for iOS and Crosswalk for Android, but CocoonJS is hanging in the background.

    I'm more interested in Android and my impression is that Ashley likes to export for Crosswalk because it has more HTML5 bits than Cocoon. But there's the tradeoff of a big company like Intel (Crosswalk) supporting something small, vs. Cocoon, which sounds like a small company with their developers in Spain, but their company is one the line if they can't do it well, whereas Intel has many other things on its mind.

    My own experience is that Construct 2 exports flawlessly to Firefox OS, pretty well to Windows, and only sometimes if you're lucky to Android and iOS.

    And I have to compare that to GameMaker, which is you pay them lots of money, will export to native iOS and Android. But I find GameMaker hard to wrap my head about and the people running it seem not very responsive. I like Construct 2 because the people here will answer questions and the developers seem to be really on top of things and communicate well. Ashley's blog is an education in itself. Of course the main issue is where does HTML5 fit in, and I think we're still moving toward HTML5 as a universal platform, but a little too slowly.

    When browsers are good and standard on phones, that will be the day that everything just works. If it wasn't such a quagmire, I'd be more interested in Windows because at least they use a standard browser. Now that IE 11 supports WebGL, I have more hope for them, but it sounds like no one is using their phones anyway. (Although hiring 25,000 people from Nokia may change things.)

    So the answer is nothing is working perfectly and that the answers seem to vary for iOS and Android. But both iOS and Android are pushing out new versions every day and they seem to be committed to HTML5, so I'm still hoping that Construct 2 will meet them somewhere in the middle.

    I keep coming back to Construct 2 because they are improving by leaps and bounds and the communication here is very good, both among the users, and the devs!

  • I missed this because it wasn't in the general forum, but in the announcements. https://www.scirra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=148&t=109452&p=802287#p802287.

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  • You mentioned over on NintendoLife that you had to cut features or something. What did you cut to make it work? The game seems cool now. I bought it and liked it.

    Is it missing levels? Did you have to cut back the art? I can't see anything missing but I don't know what was there.

    Is there anything that Construct 2 could have done to make the game better?

  • Yes, and I've played it on the Wii U and it looks just like the video.

    I chatted with the author over on NintendoWorld and he said he had to cut the game back to run it on the Wii U, but I don't have the details yet.

    I'm learning that optimization of Construct isn't a well-understood task! https://www.scirra.com/forum/using-construct-2-to-create-a-platform-game-for-firefox-os_t108313.