CJK's Forum Posts

  • Schoening - thank you!!!

    Haven't yet tried it, but the idea is something I've missed so much since moving from Unity 3D couple of years ago.

    Huge, huge thanks for your contribution!

  • [quote:32sz2bxl]The entire game is stored (uncompressed?) in RAM

    1) Audio files are not supposed to be loaded into memory ahead of preload/play call

    2) Audio files can be read "by name", so - by design - the game has no way to figure out in advance which files it would need to load. It actually works flawlessly, as I produced a game with 300Mb+ audio assets loaded this way

    3) On a desktop game (NodeWebkit) the delay you might be experiencing upon startup, is caused by unpacking on the fly the contents of the zip file with game assets. Try unpacking the whole stuff to the app folder, delete package.nw, and compare the startup time - you'll be surprised

  • Hi Nitro187

    I wouldn't bother notifying C2 that you're changing the files. Audio is being kept as-is, so you can just replace your audio ogg etc files in /Files project subfolder with new ones, and C2 will use the new versions automatically. Of course, it is easiest if you use .cap rather than .capx.

    And, you need to replace all audio formats for a given file.

  • Hi —

    I second the opinion that your "Wait" action is the most likely source of problems. Be aware, that your script does not stop while "Wait" is executed - it simply skips the remaining part of sub-event, but all other remaining events do run without waiting!

    "Wait" might cause really non-intuitive behaviour with variable assignments, especially when used with local variables.

    Try removing "wait" to see if your app behaves OK without it.

    G.

  • cirra can sell their base product super cheap for the hobby game builders like they do today AND make money from a store for people who are wanting to go beyond the hobby phase.

    That would be grand! I hope to see something like this soon.

    About the possible fee structure changes idea I mentioned - I do love the "one fee for a lifetime" solution, and I admit it was one of key factors for me to choose C2 in the first place. And it seems to be gaining popularity with other products (see e.g. UltraEdit, recently introduced "lifetime upgrades license"). It was just an example. My point was simply that the tool should grow on both ends (end users and tool developers), and *if* this requires some license fee restructuring, then maybe it's worth to pay the price ;-)

    I wasn't aware that Scirra was already trying to get extra devs to join the team, it it's a great news to me! And I understand how difficult it can be to find an approriate person.

  • Hi ErekT

    Indeed, this might be the case.

    Now that I think about it, I own FLStudio as a simple beat making tool, exaclty because of their "free lifetime upgrades" policy.

    But then, there are so many other options here - like having more paid versions. I mean, it's probably possible to calculate - e.g wait a year from now to get the modularity for free, or pay extra $ (not big, I would hope) and get the functionality in 3 or 5 months.

    Look at how Unity does this - they have a very capable free version, and are moving modules from the paid to the free version (like mobile deployment), but there is, if I recall correctly 100+ team behind the development.

    Or, let me rephrase the question: is it possible to turn C2 into a more mainstream tool just by getting more "serious" users/teams of users to make games with it, or maybe this requires changes on both ends of the stick? ;-)

    Cheers,

    Greg

  • Hi ggibson1

    Thank you for what you said. IMHO it is not often that people with very solid programming experience share on this forum their detailed opinions in such depth, and I was so glad to read about your approach to "code" everything in C2 in a reusable way.

    I am not a programmer by education, but I have 15+ years experience of coding - on and off: Delphi,Python,JS,PHP etc - enough to appreciate and exploit OOP. During that time, I worked with many "real" programmers, and discovered that compared to most of them, I hate to reinvent the wheel from scratch, if it can be avoided. Hardcore programmers often seem to have this approach - if it can be coded, I'll code it - who cares it will take me 10x longer than if I found an opensource block/module that does the job ;-)

    I love C2 exactly because it does just that: has got all the standard building blocks already prepared, while staying flexible enough to enable pseudo-OO work - as you said, with families and functions, one can do a very reusable "code".

    The only thing that I wish C2 could allow for is creation of an object by name (or at least by UID). This is the same reason why I never use booleans - they require "pick-me-by-mouse-click" approach - so it's much easier for me to code something like "boolvar=1-boolvar" to flip it.

    Now I will come with a suggestion that might put me in flames by other forum users, but nevertheless I will say it, as I can see it in my (and possibly others) interest:

    Can we get Ashley to determine how much, in terms of the cost of the software, would it be for Scirra to employ one more programmer, to speed up the (already extremely fast) development of C2?

    I mean, if Ashley told the paid license holders "you need to pay a yearly fee of �20 or �30 for the personal license upgrades", but this would allow Scirra to employ additional programmer (s) - how many of you would say "we'll be more than happy to do it"? I would.

    I wonder how others see it?

    Greg

    P.S. Forums session timeout would be a nice fix indeed ;-)

  • Hi RamPackWobble

    By all means, please do post the capx!

    Thank you,

    Greg

  • HI immanuela,

    I think you can't reliably do it in all browsers - see this thread:

    http://www.scirra.com/forum/how-do-i-run-game-continuity-at-browser-minimize_topic44773.html

    G.

  • he most crucial part of my game in mind is the cut scenes.

    Somehow, I think that a great game needs a great mechanics + nice some nice audio/visuals can help (But, as "Thomas was alone" (non-C2 game) shows, you can make an incredible game with just grayscale boxes ;-) )

    I'm not sure if great cutscenes alone can make a great game, but I wish you success, and I hope to see one :-)

    Anyway, have a look at "Arcade" - there are quite a number of games with downloadable source.

    You can also take a look e.g. at gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com for more C2 tutorials.

    Merry Christmas!

    G.

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  • Hi zipman,

    You need to detect when is the time to go to the next level - you can do it e.g. picking all instances of bricks, and checking if count of picked objects equals zero.

    (But you might have already resolved this, so onto your main question).

    Once you want to go to another layout, in the event sheet add an action system-> goto layout , or (which I would choose) system -> goto layout (by name) - as you can simply name your levels/layouts "L1", "L2" etc, and then just jump from one to another, by using a global variable that keeps track of which level you are currently on.

    Hope it helps,

    G.

  • Hi majikk

    Having a 50MB project might cause issues while downloading your game - users might have to wait quite a bit of time, before they can play.

    Several workarounds here:

    1) If you are creating a multimedia-heavy game, consider releasing it as an executable with NodeWebkit/Cocoon etc.

    2) Create a smart loader with a mini-game, that will keep the player busy until the main part downloads

    3) For audio, use lower bitrates to keep file sizes smaller.

    Your node-webkit solution will be *smaller* than the web-export, if you use a lot of sounds - as Node-Webkit only needs an OGG format, while regular web-export will have to keep wider compatibility and use multiple sound formats.

    Cheers,

    G.

  • —

    True :-)

    So, thinking about how I'd approach the "enemy drops an item" problem, I would try to:

    1) Create an "Item" sprite, with separate animations for each item type (e.g. coin, dagger, bomb), and naming the animations appropriately

    2) put the item type as an instance variable in an enemy

    3) upon killing the enemy, spawn "Item" object, then set the animation to whatever I need - e.g. "coin".

    Then, if your "Item"s have different functionalities, you can easily code these by checking what animation your "Item" is playing.

    This allows easy adding new item types, just by adding new animations.

    Cheers,

    G.

  • Another solution, from the manual:

    ====

    Create object

    Create a new instance of an object type on a layer at a given position. If a Family is chosen, a random object type from the family is picked, and an instance created for that.

    ====

    So, add all your enemies to a family, and then spawn a new family member ;-)

    G.

  • Hi majikk

    From your description I suspect that you are asking the projectile to respawn itself ;-) - and so it can only work if the projectile exists somewhere in the current scene.

    You can get any other object to spawn the projectile for you - e.g. catapult -> Spawn another object, or use sytem->create object as suggested above.

    Cheers,

    Greg