DrewMelton's Forum Posts

  • Okay, so if we had a top-down or isometric game, and we wanted a hero to move to an exact location, how do we go about this?

    I set up a quick capx example. Now, the blue box should be "completely" overlapping the green box, but it always stops right in front of it. I tried playing with cell size and whatnot, but it didn't ever seem to stop where I wanted. I want it to land on it dead center.

    Think of the green box as a marker rather than a sprite. It would be an invisible marker that indicated exactly where the hero would stop walking. While it is close enough for normal games, it would not really work as well if you wanted tile-based floors since the hero would never be centered (the green box would be centered on each tile).

    I don't know if what I'm trying to do is even possible, but I thought I'd post here and see. Obviously, this could be done with other behaviors than pathfinding, but I need them to walk around obstacles or walls.

  • blekdar

    Yes I'm doing every area as a seperate layout. This is so I can make add new areas really quick and have the player go to a random area each time he leaves one.

    Just a quick thought, but what if you put them all in one layout separated by some space between them. Then, you could put a trigger at the end of each area that teleports the player and the camera to new coordinates which will be where the next area starts.

    It'd load faster than going to a new layout (of course with maybe a longer set up time in programming). I couldn't say how well it would work without testing it, but maybe set up a function (or use "choose" or something) to choose the coordinates for the next area randomly (from a list of each area's starting coordinates). It would probably also require events or enemies to appear/activate once you enter each new section. You may also need to set up blocks so you can't move or pan the camera past the borders of each area.

    Like I said, I couldn't say how well it would work without testing. I just thought I'd throw it out there.

  • "But from the perspective of someone trying to learn enough programming to make a game"

    Yeah... I don't even know what to say to that. It is clear you have very little experience with software development or why it's such a highly paid in demand career. If you think writing an engine from the ground up is somehow trivial, you are sorely mistaken.

    But we were not talking about programming advanced software or creating engines. Just learning enough to make games is not as involved, especially with the visual approach of most game engines.

    If we are talking about really advanced stuff that requires full-time study, then yeah, fair enough.

    If he is going to learn enough about programming to do that, I would wager he would not have time to do any art at all anyway.

  • "Art is harder to learn than programming because it requires practice."

    These words could start a war in most offices. I find it difficult to refrain from refuting you.

    I guess it would start a war, lol.

    But from the perspective of someone trying to learn enough programming to make a game vs getting good enough at art to create high end graphics, I'd say art is harder because it's less straight forward.

    Of course, in the end, it depends on your goals and what you want to make to see which is harder.

    And well, we'd have to take into consideration what people are naturally good at. Some people are good at art from the get go, others are good with math and whatnot.

    I'm not going to argue or say anyone is wrong. This is just my opinion based on my personal experience. I've watched people struggle with art for years.

  • I was an art major in college. Here are my thoughts.

    Art is harder to learn than programming because it requires practice. You can't get good just by reading a tutorial. You need hands on work to train yourself.

    Depending on the type of art the game requires, there are many things you might need to learn such as human anatomy, perspective, composition, color theory, animation principles, light and value, landscapes, and so on.

    Programming is more of a science than an art. You learn the rules, and then do it. You may need practice to help engrave something into memory, but that's it. Over time, you learn techniques and figure out better ways to do something. How well you can code depends on how much experience you have, though creativity can make problem solving easier.

    Unlike programming, there are no rules for art. You can make the game look however you want. However, if you work for some company, you may need to be able to make your art blend in with the game. If the game is realistic, they won't want you doing cartoony bosses.

    Working for yourself, you have complete freedom. You can do both programming and art. If you work for someone else, you will probably just do one thing, though it helps to have some experience with more than one skill. For example, in a video I watched by a concept artist from Naughty Dog, he mentioned that concept art these days can be done in 3d to make it better integrated into the pipeline and give the 3d artists a starting point. so, it helps to have enough skill to be able to be diverse.

    Construct 2 is pretty easy to use. In one year, I can make about anything I can think of. I spend most of my time doing the hard parts like art. Creating animations and good level graphics are where most of my time is being spent. Keep in mind that I'm 32 and have been doing art since I was born practically. Don't expect shortcuts to good art.

    Programming outside of Construct 2 will be harder to learn. I like C2 because it is visual oriented. Learning code seems like a chore to me, and I've even made my own websites in the past, so I know a bit about html and css. If you really want to learn it, it will take a while, so focus on one thing at a time rather than becoming an expert at every programming language at once.

    I would pick an area of focus. Either concentrate on art or concentrate on programming. Then, learn the other skill as a secondary skill that you spend less time on. My choice would be art as a primary, but be honest with how well you could do at it before you decide. If you think of yourself more of a programmer, then concentrate on that instead. Then, divide it up, maybe 80/20. So, 80 percent of the time you are training, you are focusing on art, and the other 20 percent of your time is devoted to learning programming.

  • Hmm, well if that's the case, I guess it's not a bug. I guess I missed that part in the manual.

    But if I say press A to start, what if they are using another controller? A ps3 controller has "X" where the A button is, whereas "Start" is pretty universal across controllers. I guess it's not a huge deal, but I may have to live with it.

  • I fired up an old project, and I noticed that I still have an issue getting controls to work at the start.

    The analog sticks, d-pad, and even the start button do not work until I press a button like "A" on the controller.

    This seems to be an issue only when starting the game from scratch. I made a temp title screen and pressed A on the controller to move to the first level, and the controls still worked. So, I guess moving from layout to layout is fine. It's just when starting the game for the first time that this happens.

    I remember this being brought up, but that thread is like 2 years old. I'm using the old Xbox wired controller. It's worked fine for games (non-Construct games), and I've used it quite a bit. I can see this being annoying for some things. For example, what would I put on the title screen, "press any button except start to start"?

    So, is there a fix to this? Should I make a bug report?

  • It's cool. I noticed that the attacks have been slowed back down, and you can no longer attack while jumping or falling. Were these changes intentional? Just making sure.

  • No problem!

    My advice from here on is to compare this to the original so you can learn from it. I want to make sure you can do this on your own so you can tweak it or add new features.

    Study some tutorials, follow some videos, and when you get a "specific" thing that you need to fix you can ask in the "how do I" section here.

    Learning how to organize your event sheet is a skill in itself. As the number of events grow, this becomes more and more important. Try to find a way to create groups, add comments, or organize events in a way that makes sense to you. If you get lazy here, prepare to spend twice as long debugging issues.

    Whenever you want to experiment or make major changes, save the game as a new version (v1, v2, v3, etc.). This way you can go back if you don't like it or mess it up. I also have needed to go back to old versions to look up something I changed or removed. I think I'm on like version 37 on my game now. I hope to get it posted within the next few weeks after I get the character models done. I've been focusing mostly on code. Since it's a turn-based strategy game, it's quite complex. I'm up to like 1,800 events already. You can catch a sneak peek in the Open Topic section in one of the 3d threads.

    Anyway, I can further explain anything I did if you do not understand what I did or why. It was good practice for me, so I didn't mind the work.

  • Okay, I have made some changes and fixes.

    Compared to the original, you should find this VASTLY more playable. The attacks trigger better, and the enemies die better. The level is easily beatable but still challenging.

    Now, you will want to spend some time on this to further refine the combat system and improve the game. You can tweak the hitboxes or whatever you want from here on. I just wanted to fix a few things and get you started. Normally, I would spend a long time on this step, but I did what I could in 1 evening.

    notes:

    1. Animation triggers were tweaked to not interfere with attacking. This means you can now attack while walking, jumping, or falling. I ended up just putting everything as a sub group under a condition that attack was not playing.

    2. I changed right and left buttons to be held rather than pressed. Before you could walk back wards if you held both buttons or pressed one while holding the other. I think this works better.

    3. I delayed the mirroring if you change direction while attacking so it attacks before turning. This is the way it was in the popular game "Rogue Legacy" which I have played quite a bit. Feel free to modify this if you do not like it. I thought it worked well for the game.

    4. I got tired of not knowing if something was getting hurt or not since there were no life bars. For testing and debugging, I added a number health bar to the player and each enemy will spawn one. This is just for testing and can be hidden or disabled in the final game.

    5. I moved the enemies HP to their body rather than their box. Mixing "for each" with enemies and hitboxes became a chore, so I changed it a bit.

    6. I added some groups and comments to organize things a bit. I did not fix everything though, so continue to organize things. This makes testing and debugging MUCH easier. Trust me.

    7. I removed all instances of the enemies' boxes, and put them in a container so each enemy will spawn a box of their own and destroy it as well.

    8. As a couple posters suggested, I added some subtle tweaks. I sped up the attack slightly (to 15), and I added a screen shake when you hit an enemy (triggers when the enemy gets hurt). This did not take very long really.

    9. I did various other little things like disabled some code that was bothering me. I have not fixed everything though.

    10. For some reason, the enemy on the far right at the bottom does not spawn for me. Everyone else does though. Maybe replace him or figure out what his deal is.

    In all honesty, I can't remember what all I did, but let me know what you think and if you have any questions.

  • Cool, I'll give it a shot. I'm going to be drunk tonight, so if I pass out, I'll check it out tomorrow. Either way, I said I'd help, so I'll see if I can get the attacks sorted out.

    By the way, don't be ashamed of anything. I wouldn't expect anyone to be an expert until you've had lots of practice, and even then, we all need help tackling an issue that we've never dealt with before. I've asked for help numerous times as new problems arise.

  • I think firefox just sucks for games. By comparison, I can still keep mostly 60fps, but my cpu usage doubles or even triples up to 50 or 60 up from lower 20s in chrome.

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  • My pc is decent. In chrome, I get 60fps and lower 20s cpu.

    I am working on an isometric game as well. It is at 60 fps and 13-20 cpu, but I have a lot going on. I have a 3 person party with heroes and enemies pathfinding, destructible environments, many variables being monitored for the turn-based system, z-order sorting for dozens of objects on screen, custom cursor icons, and whatever else.

    That effect you are using for the lighting/fog must be very taxing because I don't see much else going on that would affect anything. I was actually thinking about implementing something like that in my game, but I don't have much performance to spare.

  • Hmm, if you are still having issues with getting the attacks to work as they should, send me the code via a PM, and I'll see if I can figure out what's wrong. I had to deal with similar issues in my game before. I don't think spawning objects is necessary, but I'd have to see how you have it set up.

  • I "think" you can fix the attack by adding a condition that you cannot attack while the attack animation is playing. So, where you have the code for pressing space to attack, add a condition that says something "animation attack is NOT playing." You will most likely need to invert it to get it to say not attacking.

    This will prevent people from being able to spam the button while he is attacking causing him to spazz out.