Daiz's Forum Posts

  • I would like to use the program completely via commandline, so that I can use it in a batch file that has some time-consuming operations that do not need to be monitored when they're running, which is why it would be ideal that no input is needed from the user when the program actually runs, as everything is defined already in the batch file.

    Basically I want to use my program like this:

    app.exe -t template -i input -o output[/code:hh7yzyxg]

What it would do is to open the program, load the input, do things to the input based on the template, save the output to the specified file and terminate the program.

  • Construct wasn't really designed for this, it's primarily oriented as a game creator.

    I know, but it's a shame if Construct will continue to be a lackluster choice for application development. I would say commandline switches are quite vital for this side of development.

    Maybe, AutoIt can help?

    Might be, but it'd add one more software required for using the thing via commandline, which is quite inconvenient in terms of distributing the software - there are many people that would benefit a lot about this software if it were easily usable via commandline.

  • Additionally, functionality to run other commandline programs and read their stdout would be very useful. For example, I'd like to use this little utility called dumpsuid.exe that dumps the SegmentUID of a Matroska media file, with the simple usage of dumpsuid file.mkv. Since there's really no way to achieve this functionality within Construct (nor would it be really necessary), having the ability to use cmd utilities / software like this would be great.

  • I'm currently building an automation application, and for that purpose it is pretty much necessary that I can use the program via command line, basically by doing something like this:

    application.exe -i input -o output[/code:2lb4pubd]
However, no kind of functionality exists to read commandline switches, which is why I request this could be implemented in some form.

  • The graphical style is very nice, but the gameplay is extremely repetitive, boring and to put it simply, not fun. Pretty much the only way to beat enemies without being hurt is to move in front of them, press shield, wait until they stop shooting and then shoot them back. Even this feels like too much effort since there's no real penalty to dying, I mostly just shot them until they died without caring about my own health since you're bound to respawn near anyway.

    What it'd need at least is shooting/shielding while moving and enemies capable of shooting into multiple directions to become interesting. Also, lot more variety in weapons / enemies to allow multiple approaches and varying tactics for situations.

  • Personally I've done a similar thing except I allow changing the aspect ratio. The zooming is done based on the height of the window, and with the code I use for scrolling it should allow the player to always view the about same area around them no matter what the size / aspect ratio is. The zooming is done based on the height rather than the width, and the resolution isn't set to the monitor size in the beginning, rather the user can change it in the options.

  • And now to bring this back on topic, here's a short video of some pause menu tests I've done.

    http://planar-studios.com/video/flvplay ... 84y722.mp4

    EDIT: Pause menu isn't the only feature this thing is packing:

    http://planar-studios.com/video/flvplay ... 0y1080.mp4

  • > Possible? Yes? No? Chickens?

    >

    Chickens. Save the timescale, set the timescale to 1, and immediately timedelta begins returning non-scaled values, which you can then use on some custom movement events (for example). Set the timescale back to its old value at the end of the events, and then you have a loaf of events inbetween which use an unscaled timedelta.

    I was wondering about the same as the thread starter today to have timedelta'd actions while the game is paused and this solved my problems easily. I just put "set timescale to 1.0" to the beginning of the actions, did all my timedelta stuff in the middle, and in the end I just set the timescale to 0 and voila, timedelta stuff working like it should while the game is paused!

  • Well, it certainly reads the files on the fly if you don't set it as a resource, seeing as you can edit something in the .ini file while the game is running and it'll update in real-time (as in next time the value is called).

    You could also test the resource thing this way, as if it's loaded to the memory it shouldn't update changes made to the file itself, unless it monitors the file for changes or something.

    Some sort of INI caching would be nice though in order to avoid the slowness of reading from disk for things that won't really change during runtime.

  • Hey, he asked, I answered But yeah, for further discussion it'd better go to the open topic forum if necessary.

  • >

    > > i recommend VLC

    > >

    >

    > > Anyone having video playback issues should download and install

    K-LITE CODEC PACK

    found

    HERE.

    > >

    >

    > Could you please not do this. Both VLC and K-Lite are rather inadequate playback solutions.

    >

    > I recommend either Media Player Classic HomeCinema (MPC-HC) or Combined Community Codec Pack, both playback solutions superior to the quoted two in basically every way. MPC-HC can be used as a standalone player (like VLC), while CCCP is a completely DirectShow-based playback solution (that comes with MPC-HC and another great DirectShow player called ZoomPlayer).

    >

    I fail to see how you can classify VLC or K-Lite as "inadequate". I have never had a problem with them when installed... VLC plays every file format (more than Media Player) plus it's far more light weight AND easier to make playlists with.

    I also do large amounts of video encoding, re-encoding, creation, and Video DJ'ing.... and not once have I had a codec or playback issue.

    Also, I prefer to NOT have 3-4 different players installed.

    How is what you recommended "superior"? I would like to know, because if it truely is I might check it out... but if you are plucking words out of the air based on assumption then I'll stick with my "inadequate" products thanks.

    ~Sol

    First of all, video playback is more science than opinions, but I think you know that.

    But really, VLC has it's fair share of problems, but for the most part the biggest problem is that it's dragging behind every other playback solution by many years. Only recently in version 1.0 it got instant pause, something that other players have had for literally years. It's H.264 decoding has been quite unstable for years, causing blocking every now and then on videos that have been encoded without problems. The seeking in VLC has always been horrible, causing blocking, a lot. It doesn't also support quite many advanced subtitle and container features because it contains outdated libraries (such as outdated libass, libmatroska or whatever they use these days, etc) that simply do not work with them. There's also nothing that you as an user can do to fix this as it is a standalone player. You can't even use external codecs like you can with MPlayer. For one example of recent VLC failure, during version 0.99 it couldn't open Matroska files with ASS (Advanced SubStation Alpha) softsubs under Windows 7. At all. Sure is modern media player we have here, incapable of opening modern media files on a modern operating system! The reason for this was simply the fact that the developers had bad code - they were using libass, the subtitle rendering library, incorrectly, causing it to stall forever on loading files with ASS subtitles.

    As to when it comes to K-Lite, there's just a single word for it: bloated. Very, very, very bloated. It comes with tons of outdated DirectShow filters, tons of overlapping filters (ffdshow + the tons of decoders for stuff ffdshow already decodes perfectly fine), hell even different versions of the same filters (different versions of VSFilter for example). It also comes with VFW components, and even x264vfw, which is something that the x264 developers hate due to the fact that VFW and H.264 video are simply unfit for each others. In fact, even the K-Lite installer suggests that you shouldn't use it, yet comes with it anyway. Combined Community Codec Pack on the other hand only comes with the bare minimum, yet plays 99% of everything K-Lite is capable of playing, with the exception of RealMedia and QuickTime Video, since technically speaking the components K-Lite use for those (Real Alternative and QT Alternative) are illegal to distribute, thus you'll have to install them separately with CCCP if you want to watch Real Video or QuickTime Video. CCCP comes with two players since they're both great DirectShow players - however, you're not forced to install both of these. In fact, you can use even something completely different DirectShow player, like Windows Media Player, if you want, but be wary that they might not be as good as DirectShow players as the two that comes with CCCP are.

    If you need a portable player, or aren't using Windows, there's always MPlayer. MPlayer has always been far more stable and capable than VLC - most people have probably just ignored it since they think it's a CLI-only player, which isn't true. There's plenty of good GUIs out there for MPlayer, such as SMPlayer. Nowadays MPlayer is also capable of doing everything that you can do under DirectShow (up until recently, most advanced subtitle and container features have been Windows-only things). They're not in the main branch yet, but there's plenty of builds around that come with these things patched in. Even without them, though, MPlayer is far more capable and stable at video playback than VLC is and has always been. Also, when it comes to being portable, MPC-HC alone is also a good solution if you're only going to use it on Windows computers, as it comes with plenty of decoders built in as well.

    I've had CCCP installed for years. I only have one additional thing with it, CoreAVC, for more optimal decoding of H.264 video. I've never ran into any video that wouldn't have played with the combination CCCP+CoreAVC and the MPC-HC that comes with CCCP. Ever. I have VLC installed as a backup player if something would happen to fail (and for occasional live streaming of something), and I've never had to actually use it as a fallback.

    I do large amounts of video encoding, subtitling and muxing. Video compression and related technologies are my another big hobby along creating games. Needless to say, I've done lots of study on the subject and have extensive knowledge about video encoding, video playback and the capabilities of various media players. I've also instructed tons of people in the subject of video playback. Most problems that people face stem from having bad software - like VLC or K-Lite - and have been successfully solved by replacing them with proper playback solutions, like CCCP or MPlayer. Actual playback errors are pretty much nonexistent with these - the biggest problem people have is A/V desync with HD H.264 material, which is caused by insufficient hardware (and is most often solved by installing a proper multithreaded H.264 decoder like CoreAVC or DivX H.264 decoder).

    But yeah, that's some food for thought.

  • One good thing to remember about INI files: Reading/writing information means reading from/writing to the disk, which is notably slower than reading from/writing to memory.

    I learned this the hard way with MMF2 when I was creating a SHMUP-style game that had all the enemy wave information saved in an INI file. Every time an enemy spawned the game lagged notably.

    In the end, I made the engine load the wave information to an array at the start of the game and then reading all the information from this array during runtime. This solved the lag problem as the only reading from disk happened during the start.

  • i recommend VLC

    Anyone having video playback issues should download and install

    K-LITE CODEC PACK

    found

    HERE.

    Could you please not do this. Both VLC and K-Lite are rather inadequate playback solutions.

    I recommend either Media Player Classic HomeCinema (MPC-HC) or Combined Community Codec Pack, both playback solutions superior to the quoted two in basically every way. MPC-HC can be used as a standalone player (like VLC), while CCCP is a completely DirectShow-based playback solution (that comes with MPC-HC and another great DirectShow player called ZoomPlayer).

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  • you can

    Indeed you can, but it requires canvas - again. With antisolid attribute, all you'd have to do is add it to the bubble and it'd be done - no events required besides moving the bubble.

  • If I understand correctly, you just want an attribute that undoes 'solid' and makes its opaque area count as non-solid space?

    Exactly.

    I'm not sure using hundreds of anti-solid sprites for destructible terrain is a good idea performance-wise - it might be better just to use lucid's suggestion, especially given it could be tricky to program an antisolid attribute.

    That might probably be the case, but I'd say this would still come in useful, for example if you have large destructible terrain but few ways to destroy it. Like for example a scrolling platformer where you get grenades - you could make pretty holes with the grenades without having to use canvas for the whole level (or every destructable part of it). You could also do temporary passageways and other similar neat things.

    As a sidenote, Clickteam's products have this - you just place an object marked as "not obstacle" over an obstacle. At least this was the case with TGF, I don't remember if this is the same with MMF/MMF2, but I think it is.