Excal's Forum Posts

  • Dave Hailwood

    Thanks for the heads up! I've changed my tags appropriately :)

  • I'm in. Telecollaborating with Tobye and an artist from Australia!

  • Does low screen size can boost FPS?

    Low screen size by itself does not boost FPS.

    It's the same as having a high-end GPU render on a 11-inch monitor at 1440x900. The results will most likely be good because the resolution to graphics power ratio is low.

  • I tried uploading this live, but now I get a black screen :(

    Icarus Test

  • Now that my NG game jam submission is 'done', I'm going to move on to turning my space shooter into a full game. The first thing I'm working on is getting my title screen right (the 'game' itself is disabled so don't worry about the gameplay not working).

    If anyone has experience with creating spaceship AI, I would like to talk to you.

    I'll actively update this thread as I slowly develop my title screen.

    First problem: How do I confine the player ship and enemy ships so they don't fly too far off the screen?

    Icarus.capx

  • Red on the title menu (using setcolor, so you won't see it on IE). Other colours if you visit different planets (e.g green at the green gas giants). If you want it to show up in different colours on all browsers without using Setcolor, I guess you'd have to have different coloured versions done in a paint package.

    Where is setcolor?

  • farflamex

    Can you share a bit more about how you created the atmosphere? How many layers are you using? I think I am seeing:

    -Very slow moving background

    -Slightly faster moving background (some planets or so)

    -Fast moving atmosphere/gas

    -Gameplay layer

    Is this correct?

  • Yann, thanks for the fix.

    And yeah, that was a pretty face-palm error, haha.

    About the cell size error, so many globals and different numbers everywhere (I'm trying to keep track of all this in my head), sometimes I forget to update something!

    I did the formula for placing startsprite and endsprite very late at night, but now I see what you mean.

    And yeah, I figured I was creating an infinite loop when I saw nothing but gray on my screen ;)

  • I deleted my 'old' submission on NG because a lot of users gave it 0/5 stars due to the common browser controls interfering with the game controls (spacebar by default scrolls you down the page).

    Here's the new version on NG: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/616172

  • wretchedshark

    That works, thanks!

  • NG won't accept my .zip because the programs I use create a subfolder. For example, instead of /IcarusWA.zip/index.html as the path for the index.html file, the path is instead /IcarusWA.zip/IcarusWA/index.html

    NG needs the index.html to not be in a subfolder, but in the root right after extraction. If anyone has submitted to NG is able to do me a favor and zip up my file correctly, that would be awesome.

  • You may be on the road of disappointment if you chase money. No game is guaranteed to make money. Even if it's the current trend. Remember, there are teams of people out there who notice trends too and can do much better work in a shorter time. Then the market gets saturated before you're even halfway through!

    Just do a game YOU want to play. That way you'll want to keep working on it no matter what. Plus, you'll KNOW if it's fun or not. If it makes money, GREAT! If it doesn't, then at least you'll have something to play ;)

    The great thing about C2 is how fast you can prototype your ideas. What would normally days, could take a few hours in C2.

    This is sadly the truth. I remember reading a Gamasutra article on a successful indie, and by successful indie I mean one man actually living the dream indie life. The issue is, this guy was a pro game developer of 20 years who knew the industry inside and out, from preproduction all the way to marketing. One tip he said in the article was, if you're pro, you understand how to make games sell, you understand the average consumer for certain genres, and you also understand how to identify which genres/gametypes are trending. With this in mind, you can crank out prototypes quickly and destroy the competition because you understand the market and customer base better.

    I honestly doubt any of us have 20+ years of professional game industry experience. We're more or less hobbyists/indies, and because of this we can't expect our game to sell even if we follow trends and make a game that's 'trending'. Companies like Zynga are composed of game industry veterans who understand how to make a 'better trending game' than you probably ever will, so you should focus on making the game YOU want to share with others.

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  • So far my forum searches show people who have claimed their project will eventually be on iOS, but I have yet to see many complete that goal. I believe I did find one person who had something on the iTunes store, but there were some crashing issues to be had.

    I'm planning on taking my space shooter all the way and adding a campaign mode. If anyone here has actually published an iOS game, I definitely want to talk to them and ask some questions.

  • Thanks Ashley, this is great to hear!

  • Regarding the OP question, the peak memory use is probably identical. However each option affects when Construct 2 loads the object images.

    If objects are placed in the layout, Construct 2 will pre-load all the object's images (for all animations with Sprites) at the start of the layout.

    If the object is not placed on the layout and you create it at runtime, Construct 2 probably has released the object's images to save memory. This means it has to load them the moment you create the object. This can cause pauses/stuttering at runtime.

    Apart from that it should be identical. Basically, any objects you use on a layout should be placed on the layout, even if you destroy them on startup (C2 will still pre-load them).

    Thank you for the clarification. Now I have another question: is it possible to preload layouts, then? A lot of other games have loading screens. Suppose I am making a large game, and I want to send the player to a 'loading screen' layout while the gameplay layout is preloaded (and have some kind of loading bar sprite update on the loading screen). Would it be possible to do this? I would rather have a loading screen than have the game 'hang' while its loading a large layout.

    Before I go further, is this even needed at all since GPUs don't render what's on the screen? I understand the CPU is still tracking everything that isn't rendered, and mobile CPUs aren't very powerful right now.

    The alternative is to implement some sort of manual background loading and have the layout load in segments, kind of like what procrastinator suggested. However, this is a complicated issue for non-grid games and coming up with a working approach might take some time and math to do. If this is the only way, procrastinator would you be willing to help me figure something like this out? The benefits of having some method of loading large layouts would be good for everyone who uses C2.