CaptainOblivious's Forum Posts

  • DEADEYE uses FAIL. It isn't very effective...

  • That article is certainly scary, but I've been studying the issue over the last few days as the news broke on DA.

    First off, it's easy to get up in arms about it. All the underlying arguments in that argument are valid to a point. However, the final conclusions are flawed because they are based on a common logical fallacy: slippery slope.

    This law has less to do with us Construct users piddling away at our creations and more to do with large scale copyright issues. Ever wanted to slap "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine" onto your commercial? Well, you'll have to pay some moron to do so because he's been keeping the rights to it alive even though he has nothing to do with the original creators. This is where the orphaned work argument takes place. Is a century-old song grounds for royalties? Well, I guess that's currently a matter of opinion, and the person claiming the rights will certainly speak loudest.

    The legislation doesn't even really change how US copyrights are protected. So long as you're living or have surviving relatives if you stop living, your copyright is still covered, registered or not. Even then, you're rights are protected for a few decades after you die. The difference is whether your copyright is the Hydrogen Car or "You are my sunshine."

    That's not to say I completely support it. I can see it hindering as much as it helps. It offers a legal route for people who want their folk-songy ads to not cost them buku amounts of cash. On the other hand, if you invent the Hydrogen Car and don't have the foresight to protect such a thing, it also offers wiggle room for thieves.

    Is it as bad as that article makes it sound? From what I've gathered so far, no. No it isn't.

  • Actually, I like that idea a lot. It's something I'd have to get used to, but it makes a lot more sense. I'll incorporate it into the next build.

    Down arrow will probably be used to fire bombs. Seeing as how the game is transitioning to 2D from its 3D original, I don't need to have boost or brake commands, and there are no weapons to cycle through.

    2 fire buttons

    2 tilt buttons

    4 directionals

    Deadeye, PM me your mailing address. You just earned a cookie.

  • I'll start:

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  • I see what you mean and, normally, I'd agree. However, keeping true to my source material, there are some gameplay devices that will eventually require having separate tilt keys. Also, and more importantly, consolidating the tilt keys into one would decrease the [strike]difficulty[/strike] expertise of movement substantially. What's to stop the player from holding the key continuously?

    Things will be much better when controls can be mapped by the user, and even more so when gamepad support is added to Construct. Normally the tilt functions are handled by a controller's shoulder buttons, and keeping them that way is what lead to my current choice of default control scheme. I know very few people use WSAD, but there are far more people who don't have keyboards with numberpads (most laptops), so I can't use LEFT SHIFT and NUMBERPAD 0 and expect my game to run on all platforms.

    If it would help you, try changing the left tilt to the F key. Or, should you find a better solution that still allows me to have separate tilt buttons, I will listen with undivided attention.

    EDIT:

    It's a little difficult to control movement and tilting and barrel rolling all with my left hand at once.

    That's because you're not supposed to. The final control scheme uses the G and H keys for weapons and bombs. ideally, you use WSAD and shift with your left hand, and G H and J with your right hand. This is meant to simulate a game controller layout.

  • YES, a barrel roll.

    This is finally starting to feel somewhat like a real game.

    If you could sourceforge it this time, I'd be grateful. I can't quite tear myself away from what I'm doing right now. Thanks.

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  • Wrargh! I was finally able to get what I wanted, but i have to use unreliable means of achieving this effect. For anyone even remotely interested, and for my future reference, here is what I came up with to get the "Arwing tilt and spin" system to work without using animation registers.

    http://strouperman.com/Special/StarFox_ ... mation.cap

    (if you get 404, add the www)

    To test it:

    Arwing moves with WSAD

    Tilt the ship left with LEFT SHIFT

    Tilt the ship right with J

    Fire lasers with G (numbers 1, 2, and 3 change laser type)

    To do a barrel roll, double-tap the tilt buttons.

    ::Arwing moves faster in the direction of tilt.

    ::Arwing moves slower opposite direction of tilt.

    ::Spinning the Arwing temporarily super-spikes movement acceleration.

    Combining these techniques allows for a (hopefully) tight and precise control scheme.

  • Deadeye, we're making progress.

    Your method works when outside of the animation system. I'm still hindered by the one control I need that isn't working.

    Coming out of a "Spin" animation, I need to set everything back to normal.

    + Animation "Spin Right" finished

    • Set Sprite.is_spinning to 0

    The value never returns to 0, because the animation never reports that is has finished. This produces an animation freeze as well - even under no restrictions, a non-looping animation will refuse to return to default.

    I can work around this using discrete timers, but I'd rather do things right.

  • The problem seems to be that because construct is not reporting the animation name, I'm very limited in controlling which animations trigger under which conditions. For instance:

    While Animation is NOT "Spin"

    Value Sprite.tilt is 4

    -Sprite: Set animation to "Tilt"

    -(play current animation?);

    Value Sprite.doublepress is greater than 0

    On control "Spin Right" is pressed

    -Sprite: Set animation to "Spin"

    -(play current animation?);

    The above events will always trigger the Tilt animations, over-riding the Spin animation instantly, because Construct cannot determine which animation is playing (or not playing, in this case).

    I can always load another variable to compensate, but I'm getting into upwards of 30 events for what should be done is about 10.

  • Okay, I'm getting results by using yet another brute force method. Setting single frame animations based on a private variable.

    Here's another question. I'm trying to make a "double click" of a control using yet another variable. Variable remains on for a short about on time, as planned, and is supposed to trigger a separate animation when the key is pressed again while the variable remains on. Currently, it is failing to do so.

    I have to be missing something..

  • I'm still having trouble manipulating basic animations. In the debugger, a sprite's animation is always registered as "animation." Is this why Construct isn't returning to default, or following my orders to change the animation on command?

  • Jeswen, I haven't seen one cheery post come from you the entire time I've been here. I would find it very helpful if instead of you putting down our entry level demos, you wrote up some of your advanced demos for everyone. The project needs examples of all varied difficulties.

    And I agree with Deadeye. This thing's pretty cool. It's versatile enough that I was able to turn his lighting effect into a sustainable fire effect in under 5 minutes. Right now, I'm considering all the different ways this could be modified to suit my needs. Water splashes, smoke effects, ect.

  • What a juicy update! Thank you for working in the efficiency update into 0.94. I'll provide any results from my testing later on. I am particularly happy about the animation stuff. Things are starting to show promise in my arwing fighter now.

  • I stopped just short of adding a lens layer on top of the flame to simulate heat distortion.

  • Assigning new instances of sprites to new instances of other sprites is something I've never done. Deadeye and Doppel should be online shortly - they'll probably have some advice on where to begin.

    EDIT: Yeah, I'm not even gonna try. I nuked the .cap making my own events. What my method would be, not having done it before, involves assigning all new instances of the sprite and its colliders an instance number, and modifying my events to run commands on like objects.