DrewMelton's Forum Posts

  • Also, why is this forum so buggy? I have been denied making simple posts like "thanks for the help" in other threads because I didn't have "permission", and now I can't add the following line to my post above "oh, and both are pinned to a hitbox with platformer enabled." because all the sudden it says I can't post links or something. There are no links in my edit, so I'll just make a whole new post to say what would have taken one line. *sigh*

    Anyway, thanks for the help to anyone who answers my question above.

  • Okay, so I set up an enemy to attack when I get close, and it worked. I thought I would try to give him an idle animation, but no matter what I do, the idle animation nullifies the attack animation.

    Here is a screen shot. Note that I also just got Spriter, so I'm trying this with both a regular sprite enemy, and the new spriter object.

    Enemy (red) and the myfirstattack Spriter thing are two different things. I'm trying to animate them both. Though I will remove the enemy once I get Spriter working. I have been using "enemy" to figure out a.i. and just got Spriter yesterday, so I'm still working on it.

    That's just the part that I need help with. The full event sheet is too big to show, but it worked fine before. I just can't get it to work with an idle animation and an "attack on contact" animation. The enemy is set to attack when I touch it. It only works if I disable the idle animation.

    I set the idle animation to play when the enemy is standing still. It plays the idle animation with the enemy.

    With the idle animation enabled, the Spriter guy just stands there. If I remove the idle animation from the Spriter guy, he attacks non stop.

    Obviously, there is something I am missing. Surely, it's something simple.

  • I need to get my pc set up to allow me to test on my cell phone. I may have to uninstall Zonealarm firewall. It may have been causing problems.

    My main thing for now though is just at least making sure it runs on pc's pretty well. But to be safe, I'd like to at least test a little on mobile.

    My phone is a Nokia Lumia 920.

    I just got Spriter. It's hard to decide what to focus on when everyone keeps announcing updates.

    I think I will go ahead and do my main character. I had planned to spend the rest of the month doing the rest of the characters in the game, and then next month doing the levels.

    jayderyu, as far as not filling the background I have it set to "clear background: no" I don't know if that's what you meant or not.

  • Thanks, I'm going to do some experiments tonight and see what I can figure out. I'll report back soon.

    The game will be similar to Castlevania. It will be combat focused and somewhat difficult, so I don't need huge levels. I just want to make them look good, and not find out that it won't run at all on cell phones. I mean, I guess releasing on Steam only or whatnot would be fine, but I'd like to have options.

    I'm also looking into a program called Spriter to see if that would help optimize animations for characters.

  • Okay, so it seems that larger (but not too large) images are the way to go.

    I am going to have multiple layers so I can get some parallax effects.

    I wouldn't really need anything to fill the entire layout since there will be some variation.

    Can we go by the numbers that Construct gives us? Like if it says it is using x amount of memory, can we know if we are safe or not?

    I can make a game look nice, my main concern is just making sure it will run. I'm just trying to plan ahead a little bit.

  • I'm getting ready to build my first real level, so I thought it would be a good idea to figure out some do's and don'ts.

    I've searched for this info on the forum, but most posts were of older versions, so I don't know what's changed. I also thought some answers were a bit vague, so I want to make sure I get things cleared up.

    Let's assume that we are making a fairly large level, and we need to fill it up. Maybe we'll target a standard resolution of maybe 720p, but our layout needs to be big enough to provide a worthwhile level for a platformer, so at least maybe 3000 to 4000 px or more.

    Now, we want the level to look as good as we can, but at the same time not need a supercomputer to run well. We might even want to put it on mobile platforms as well.

    Here is a chart showing some ways to fill the level. The numbers are just placeholders for example purposes.

    A: we could fill the entire level with a sky, maybe just use a single color and using a tiled background.

    B: we could fill areas with single color tiled backgrounds that are a bit smaller

    C: we could fill large to medium sized areas with fancy tiled background for areas we want detail

    D: we could make a bunch of individual sprites to fill the areas

    E: we could make a bunch of sprites but each one would use an animation frame (like the platformer tutorial I read on here).

    F: we could use background tiles that are various sizes broken down into chunks and then placed side by side

    G: we could use sprites that are various sizes broken down into chunks and then placed side by side

    H: we could use moderate sized tiled backgrounds like 500px by 500px

    I: we could use moderate sized sprites like 500px by 500px

    So, I mean we have a lot of choices for what we use to fill out the level. On one hand, we can end up with a lot of objects if we use smaller sprites. On the other hand, we can have fewer objects but larger images to work with.

    I figure we will use a combination of sizes. I just need to find out what the limitations are so I know what will break the game and make it run poorly.

    I've read warnings about using too many objects and warnings about using too large objects. I'm trying to figure out where the best comprise is before I start working hard on detailed artwork.

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  • Here is some of mine. I've done a variety of art over the years.

    Here is a free hand computer painting based off an old Sega game:

    This one is pencil on paper:

    And this one is an oil painting on canvas:

    I've been getting ready to do some high quality pixel art for games. I've got photoshop ready with some custom brushes and brush sets for doing the pixel art, and I still have my Wacom pen tablet. As soon as I figure out how much I can get away with and how to optimize levels and art in games, I'll be getting started. I'm new to making games and just started learning the software a couple weeks ago.

  • Aha! That worked. I added a large image and my status bar showed the memory and size again. Sweet.

    I had recently deleted some sprites to clean things up a bit. I guess that's why it disappeared, it went below the minimum size.

    Thanks guys.

  • Thanks, I actually already had a text showing something similar, though it did not have the memory and cpu added.

    I'd still like to figure out why the editor stopped showing the memory usage and download size though in the status bar. It was there when I started the project, and it made it very easy for me to see the effects of adding different sized sprites and backgrounds so I could figure out how to best optimize a level without having to leave the editor.

  • On the status bar at the bottom, it used to show the download size and memory usage for a project. Now it just shows how many events there are.

    I've opened other capx files, and sometimes it shows it, sometimes it doesn't.

    I really want to see it because I am going to get started building my first level soon, and I want to know how I am doing.

    I've tried right clicking on the status bar, but everything is checked, and there is no option for memory use.

    It used to show memory size for this project, but now it doesn't. I'm not sure what I did to make it stop.

    I hate to make this my first post, but it's really bothering me. Thanks!