Elliott's Forum Posts

  • Merry Christmas one and all!

  • Great work Auntie Val, I'm also looking at the possibilities of C2/web-page integration, and though I'm tearing my hair out this has given me some hope!

  • If you have Personal licence or higher you can make short work of this with Families: scirra.com/manual/142/families

    If not:

    A) Buy the Personal license, it's the best Christmas present you'll ever get!

    B) You can make clever use of variables and events, so you could have a sprite that triggers a bool, and the true/false state is a conditional for your sound events

  • Unfortunately the account details you provided don't work, when using my own it worked fine, accessing the payment screen:

    i.imgur.com/A5YlU.png

  • I haven't tried it yet myself, but going off what andreyin wrote, it's worth noting that you need a specific sandbox account to use PayPal's sandbox mode.

  • Is the ActionScript your own work? If you know how to write a situation in AS "converting" to C2 is very easy!

    After a brief look at your code, it looks like the first stanza (I like poems!) deals with the default behaviour of the turret, you can do this easily in C2 with a boolean variable as the condition for your entire event,just make a boolean variable called TurretActive.

    Second stanza looks like a cooldown effect, this is also quite easy with events, simply make a variable called Cooldown that is set to a number (Let's say 3) every time the turret fires, and decrememnts by the value of 1 every time the turret fires.

    Finally you've got your turret actually firing, for this you want to make sure that you have three conditionals for this event. The first is that TurretActive is set to True, the second is that Cooldown has a value less than or equal to 0.

    The third conditional is the distance from the target, again this can be a boolean variable, and can draw it's values from the .distance expression, comparing your turret and target sprite. Set the bool to true if the distance is close enough (say 500?)

    When all of these conditions are met, it's a simple matter of spawning a sprite with the bullet property at the angle of your target, which you can do with the angle expression.

    You can add all kinds of finishing touches like rotating you turret, imagepoints and the like; if you're dealing with many targets it will be worthwhile reading up on unique IDs and sprite picking.

    C2 is effectively pseudocode, if you have a good grasp of your mechanics it's an absolute joy to use.

  • Is it simple shape or an animated character?

    I've produced a great trail effect in the past by having a duplicate image with the fade behaviour spawn every half a second or so at my player object's position (With the conditional of movement), the only hiccup being you have to get creative with layers as the z-order is messed up with the spawned objects.

    EDIT// Just read you want it permanent, you could keep the fade but have the conditional for fade start as a key release or boolean flag?

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  • This looks like something that could be pulled off with the distance expression and MagicCam?

  • If you've got a guarantee or even slight interest from Nintendo in writing it would be pretty easy to get a government grant, or maybe contact an angel investor organisation?

    That said, it's good to see someone planning to use KickStarter that ISN'T a massive multi-million dollar company with a PR team and VAT exemption!

    Hope everything works out well for you :)

  • You won't needs VPS for just some websites, shared hosting is absolutely fine!

    I own a small UK web-hosting company, and whilst I won't advertise here, I will say be VERY careful of any company that offers "unlimited" disk-space or bandwidth; as others have said it simply doesn't exist, and theres always the chance of being slammed with usage fines if your site really takes off!

    What you really want to be looking for is a good, well supported Linux shared server, preferably with a good number of MySQL databases, and with either cPanel or eXtend 2.0 for your control panel.

    If you're in the US the best company for price is HostGator, and for quality and support SoftLayer are excellent, though pricy.

    If you're in the UK or Europe, 123Reg offers strong European hosting, but can be beaten by several other companies like LCN or Heart Internet.

    I'd definitely recommend getting a good geo-location for your sites, if your TLD is country specific, get your hosting from there! <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

  • Not sure if this has been posted, but BI break down why HTML5 is the way to go!

    ---

    HTML5 is a new technology that allows developers to build rich web-based apps that run on any device via a standard web browser.

    Many think it will save the web, rendering native platform-dependent apps obsolete.

    So, which will win? Native apps or HTML5?

    A recent report from BI Intelligence explains why we think HTML5 will win out, and what an HTML future will look like for consumers, developers, and brands.

    Here's why the Apps-vs-HTML5 debate matters:

    Distribution:

    Native apps are distributed through app stores and markets controlled by the owners of the platforms. HTML5 is distributed through the rules of the open web: the link economy.

    Monetization:

    Native apps come with one-click purchase options built into mobile platforms. HTML5 apps will tend to be monetized more through advertising, because payments will be less user-friendly.

    Platform power and network effects:

    Developers have to conform with Apple's rules. Apple's market share, meanwhile, creates network effects and lock-in. If and when developers can build excellent iPhone and iPad functionality on the web using HTML5, developers can cut Apple out of the loop. This will reduce the network effects of Apple's platform.

    Functionality:

    Right now, native apps can do a lot more than HTML5 apps. HTML5 apps will get better, but not as fast as some HTML5 advocates think.

    In full, the special report analyzes:

    What HTML5 is, giving an overview of how it is a technology done by committee.

    Why the HTML5-vs-Apps debate matters, breaking down its impact on distribution, monetization, platform power and network effects, and functionality.

    The pluses and minuses of HTML5 vs. native apps, comparing each by cost, user experience, features, distribution, and monetization.

    How and when HTML5 will take over, laying out how it has all the hallmarks of a disruptive technology.

    The success of an HTML5 pioneer, The Financial Times.

    What an HTML5 future will look like, with the promise of richer and more interactive experiences.

    You can read the full report, though you'll need to sign up for some kind of free trial... Still, the bullet point argument is interesting!

    businessinsider.com/html5-vs-apps-why-the-debate-matters-and-who-will-win-2012-11

    Personally, whilst I massively support HTML5, I think the article is being a bit generous. It hints at the fact HTML5 is designed by committee, but doesn't follow up to say that as a result of that the standardisation of the tech could result in browsers having massive performance differences, making it impractical for dev work.

    Your thoughts?

  • I can't view your capx as I'm running 108, but some context would be appreciated; like the genre of game for background knowledge.

    Is the spell a bullet? Is the same enemy destroyed each time?

    A prtscrn of the event sheet would be helpful (Y)

  • Quick fix would be to have a variable called SoundTimer that decreased by 1 every second until zero, each event that activated a sound would set the value of SoundTimer to the length of the audio clip in seconds; and all the sound events would have the conditional of SoundTimer = 0.

    Didn't know C2 could only play one sound at a time though?

  • It seems a bit backward to me, Construct (At least to me) isn't so much a beginner's program, it's an incredibly advanced high level visual based language, you might not program line by line, but the logic of an event sheet is effectively identical.

    If your class is aimed at people who haven't programmed before (You mentioned it's an entry point) and doesn't entirely focus on the programming (You mentioned modelling and animation, hefty subjects on their own) I would say Construct is not suited, it's far too powerful, you can accomplish in minutes what would take C or Java hours to implement let alone learn, and if you started the class with Construct one week with people making platformers in seconds and the week after spending a hour teaching them how to make a menu in C++, they're going to wonder why they're learning near machine level programming when last week they were busting concepts in seconds!

    Back in my youth we were introduced to programming with a FORTRAN exercise and switch programming, it definitely made us appreciate C afterwards!

  • From a brute force perspective you could use other physics objects to constrain the single axis object.

    For you scales example you could have the scale (...) holdy-thing (Brain block!) sandwiched between two immovable and invisible physics objects, similar to a chute or vertical tunnel, and using events disable collisions between these constraints and every other object except the scale.

    Could the clamp feature be of any use here? I'm a bit miffed on how the feature works but I've used it to constrain an object to an axis before.