Bob Thulfram's Forum Posts

  • Instead of just bouncing a ball, I implemented a very simple racquetball-type game I call PaddleFox. I did the same game earlier in HTML5, SVG, CSS, and JavaScript in a mere 268 lines of code. But it's a lot easier in Construct 2!

    Check it out if you're interested. My blog post is at http://firefoxosgaming.blogspot.com/2014/05/paddlefox-for-firefox-os-in-construct-2.html and I've written 95 lengthy blog posts on making games for Firefox OS.

    Don't forget, Construct 2 exports perfectly to Firefox OS. It calls the export "Open Web App" but that's really for the Firefox OS Marketplace. The Marketplace will be happy to let you sell your game in a number of countries and Firefox OS phones are growing fast in South America and Europe. They're avoiding the US because Apple and Android are too big to compete with. I'll be doing other simple tutorials showing how to make games for Firefox OS. And of course, everything is really Construct 2, so you can export to those zillion other cool platforms.

    There are nearly 1000 games in the Firefox OS Marketplace, but they need more! They need you!

  • I've had a Pebble smart watch ever since their Kickstarter and I use it every day. My main use is to get email notifications and also notifications telling me who is calling me on my phone (so I can ignore them if I don't want to talk to them ). I do have a Flappy Bird game on the watch and it seems like several simple games could be done for that phone, which has an SDK.

    Game and Watch is an obvious way to go. Maybe also early phone game or even earlier console games like the Atari 2600. Back when Pixels were king. Personally, I'm waiting for the Firefox OS watch! I have grown to dislike Samsung, so I don't want their big ugly watch. The Pebble just put out version 2.0 of their SDK. My original Pebble cost $99 but I think the cheapest now is $150 but they have flashier ones too. Mine is a nice black tasteful watch that don't attract a lot attention.

    Right now the Pebble store has about 1,000 apps in it!

    It looks like fun but I'm having way too much fun with Firefox OS (and Construct 2) to do much.

    For more Pebble info, check out https://getpebble.com/

  • I just wrote a tutorial on how to use Construct 2 to make a ball bounce in Firefox OS. After all, Firefox OS is 100% HTML5 (with some phone stuff added like Device Orientation) and Construct 2 offers a really good working export that makes it easy to put your game in the Firefox OS Marketplace.

    I did this as part of my blog on Firefox OS and you can see it at http://firefoxosgaming.blogspot.com/2014/04/bouncing-ball-in-construct-2-game.html. You can get the capx at http://thulfram.com/C2/Construct2.html.

    Or you can read about the six ways to bounce the same ball in HTML5 code using CSS, Canvas (two ways), or SVG (three ways), if you like coding.

    I'm going to do a series of tutorials and games using Construct as I see how well it fits. So far it fits just fine!

    As some of you may know, Firefox OS is growing fast, but you may not hear much about it because, not wanting to compete with Apple and Google, the Firefox people are putting their focus on Europe, Asia, and South America. With cheaper phones, too, like my unlocked $79 ZTE Open which I use every day to play with the OS (and make phone calls and play music).

    Construct 2 + Firefox OS is a great combination!

  • I still run Arturia Storm 3 and love it. They and I even traded emails on how I figured out how to run it on WIndows 7 using the Windows 2000 compatibility settings. Mostly I'm using Fruity Loops these days. Not French, but Belgian (almost as good? ).

    Update: I was just looking at this thread and went to the French site. They now seem to be more active and the cost is only $27.90, so I bought it and I'll see if I can create something in HTML5 and put it into Firefox OS. You can follow them on Twitter —

    I haven't tried lately, but I think also the problem was that Construct 2 doesn't didn't do tiles well. Now there is some kind of tile map feature that I need to investigate and I'm also looking at AutoTileGen which has a plugin for Construct 2.

    And I'm still looking at an option I tried a year or two ago of creating the rooms in GameMaker and then importing them to Construct 2. But Construct looks like it has better tile-based RPG features now, so more to investigate. So many things are happening. This is about to be the golden age of HTML5 game programming!

  • I wrote a blog post on how I submitted an app successfully to the Firefox OS Marketplace. It is far easier than Android or iOS or Windows Phone. http://firefoxosgaming.blogspot.com/2014/01/submitting-app-game-programming.html I've been writing a lot about game programming for Firefox OS but I'm going to write several posts on how to use Construct 2 for Firefox OS.

    If you want to know more, PM me here on the forum. Or read my blog at http://firefoxosgaming.blogspot.com/ or if you want to spend $4.99, read my book on Amazon on HTML5 Firefox OS game programming at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IZUYIGO. My focus has been on pure HTML5 code with no libraries, but I think is time to tell people about how easy it can be with Construct 2. I love writing code, but it's not for everyone, and Firefox OS can always use more games!!!

  • I tried all the suggestions in that topic and decided to stay with what I had. My problem is that the screen edges are important because I'm bouncing a ball off the edges (using invisible sprites for the edges) so the screen you see has to be the same as the actual article. Ashley's article is more for games where the edges don't matter and you can scroll.

    But that's not a problem for a lot of games and I'm actually happy that the letterboxing works just fine for such a drastic difference in the two phone size/ratios.

    And the great part is that Construct 2 exports to the exact format needed to make the Firefox OS App Manager happy! It sounds like what I want (exact knowledge of the screen size before I display anything might just be too difficult at present. What I want is for Construct to read the inner height and width of the screen and adjust the output exactly to those numbers the way I did in my blog with raw HTML. But that's not even close to a showstopper for me.

    What I learned by this exercise are three things:

    1. Construct is incredibly easy. I hadn't done anything with it in over a year, but it was easy to come back and pick up.

    2. Construct is a lot easier than writing HTML5 code!

    3. Responsive Web Design for Construct isn't there yet, but the letterboxing is good enough.

    Thanks for telling me about the article!

  • I missed that. Sorry! I'll try it and get back to you!

  • Wow, this game looks fantastic. I think Construct 2 is ready for the big time and you're part of it. I'm excited to see you're going to try for a Wii U version as well. The first Wii U HTML5 game is out now - Blok Drop U - and it is a Construct 2 game!!!

    PS: I just pledged $12 for your game. 13 more days - looking good!

  • And a few months later I'm back after having been completely immersed in Firefox OS and writing umpteen blog posts and a book on it at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IZUYIGO. My blog is at http://firefoxosgaming.blogspot.com/. I've come back to Construct 2 to write a series of blog posts about using Construct 2 to make games for the Firefox OS Marketplace!

  • I'm using the export to Firefox OS happily, but I'd be happier if I could poll the device and see what the screen size is and then adjust the picture accordingly. I can do this in HTML5 raw code now (see my blog post at

    http://firefoxosgaming.blogspot.com/2014/04/responsive-design-game-programming.html)

    using 

        var boardWidth = window.innerWidth;
    var boardHeight = window.innerHeight;  [/code:1bqrtjar]
but I can't figure out how to do this in Construct 2.

My problem is that Firefox OS has different sizes of phones (320x410 and 360x570) and tablets are on the way! Has anyone solved this similar problem with Android, which at last count had umpteen different screen sizes? 

I've been creating some tests with Construct for Firefox OS using the smaller size (ZTE Open) and then using Letterbox scale which sort of works, but it would be really neat if I could just say make it the size of the browser. Ideally I'd like to say something like "100%" for height and width for the screen size.

The point of the Firefox OS phone is that the apps are 100% HTML5 so Construct 2 is a natural fit. Here's how my test app (bouncing a ball) looks on the larger phone (Geeksphone Peak at 360x570) using Letterbox even though the screen size was set for the smaller (360x570) phone. The Letterbox handles the width difference but not the height difference.

Any clues? I'm going to write a series of blog posts showing how really, really easy it is to write a game in Construct 2 and export it to Firefox OS!

[img="http://thulfram.com/1GAM/PEAK.png"]

  • I just saw this article on the Mozilla Hacks site:

    Mozilla Hacks - Getting Started with HTML5

    It talks all about doing HTML5 games, and outlines two approaches: using a "game engine" or using a "game maker". And, they give a table of HTML5 Game Engines and Construct 2 is at the top of the list with a 5 star rating. I notice that GameMaker comes in 4th with a 3.5 star rating.

    As you all know, Mozilla is pushing for HTML5 apps for its new phone (I want one!) but its nice to see they can tell the difference between Construct 2 and GameMaker. Wooeeee!

    Anyway, a nice article on how to think about HTML5 gaming and very positive for the HTML5 field in general.

    I really want to buy a Firefox phone but every time I try, they are out of stock.

  • Has anyone played with Microsoft Spark? This seems like a "no code" development environment sponsored by Microsoft.

    https://www.facebook.com/joinprojectspark

    I'm suspicious but curious. <img src="smileys/smiley36.gif" border="0" align="middle">

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  • about the tablet it has many things that you will don't like it in the future like camera,3g and so on... but for gaming its really good ^^All I want is a game machine!

    This tablet is the new HTML5 game console!

  • So what's that like in comparison to an i5 or other tablet processors. Given the current state of processors, I've heard that the CPU is slightly faster than iPad and the GPU is slightly slower. There's only so fast you can make 'em run these days. It won't seem slow compared to other Android tablets, but until it comes out, there aren't any easy comparisons.

  • Looks like a cool tablet, hopefully its powerful.Pretty powerful. Quad-core Tegra from Asus. Specs at http://www.google.com/nexus/#/7/specs

    I want one!!!