Fengist's Forum Posts

  • And, I found a workaround.

    I turned WebGL off for the project and I stopped when the text plugin size reached 102k px height, which should be plenty for my purposes.

    For some reason the WebGL has an issue with creating huge text plugins.

    Fortunately, for my purposes, WebGL isn't essential... but it did make things work smoother.

  • For those who are curious as to my decision...

    I purchased C2.

    Thanks for the advice.

  • Thanks for the idea LittleStain,

    Again, I know this sounds odd but should I pull it off, I'll put a version up on the arcade. Let's just say it's something VERY different from anything else I've seen made in construct.

    Multiple text boxes wouldn't work. First, I'd have to figure out how much text and at what font size fits within the 16.4k size. That means running multiple checks to see at what point the box exceeds that size. Then, if the text is larger than 16.4k, in order to make it look like one continuous block of text, I'd have to somehow split the text based on lines rather than words or tokens (difficult to do with wordwrap). Then, I'd have to position the next text box below that one and track it's position. etc...

    It would be nightmarish.

  • Ok, I realize this is a really, really strange question but trust me, I have a need for a VERY large text box.

    What's the maximum size, either in total pixels or height, that a text plugin can be?

    When the size of the text plugin reaches a height of around 16,400 px, the text vanishes. The contents are still there and the box itself seems to be inteactable but the fonts just disappear. As soon as I reduce the height below 16,400 px, the text reappears.

    Am I reaching the limitations of the text box plugin or is there some way around this?

    Thanks

  • One thing to watch out for, neither of them 'rotate' the browser when you select landscape. You'll probably still need a mobile for that.

  • I don't mind cocoon's splash screen - they have to eat too. If you look at my game, their splash screen is on for less than 3 seconds. Not saying that that works for everyone but I think it's fair.

    If you're using their free service then yes, I'd agree, they do have to eat. A splash screen is more than fair. If this splash screen is still present once you start paying them a monthly fee then no, that's greed. And if they're demanding $500 to remove their ads on top of the monthly fee, that's outrageous.

    ---

    Thanks — I'm not looking for a free ride, by any means. I am a published shareware author with another language (Delphi) so the inability to program isn't an issue and I'm a decent hack with PHP/MySQL (I do have one WordPress plugin out and about) and, after beating my head against Unity for another project, I can now write basic stuff in C#.

    From what I've experienced, C2 does fit the bill for a RAD (Rapid Application Development) platform and I have no doubt that it's worth the investment... provided the whole act of deployment doesn't bring the process to a screeching halt. And I also am well aware that, when learning a new language, there is a learning curve involved. With C2, that seems to be a rather flat curve for me. For publishing though, it seems pretty steep for most.

    While I haven't given up on the hope of purchasing C2, I've put the brakes on. While the free version does give a great opportunity to work with C2, I can also see how it's severely misleading in that you don't get to experience the next step in the process, publishing using someone else's software.

    After posting that I did find a thread with a guy claiming to make $150/day from admob. So there are seeming success stories to counterbalance the horror stories. Right now though, I need to know before I invest the money, and more importantly the time, that I'm not going to run headlong into a brick wall trying to figure out how to get published (like the guy in another post who just discovered after a year of creating his game, he's run into a 100mb APK limitation).

    But I'll shut up now. I want to hear more of these experiences just like part12.

  • Yea. Screenfly seems to not only give you the resolutions, it's screen shrinks down to give you a physical size representation. Handy if you want to know how big your sprites are going to appear. The chrome plugin just resizes the browser.

  • Fengist you don't need to export the game, just run the C2 preview and copy/paste the preview url " " to screenfly.

    I'm not sure what voodoo they use to access my local network but... ok.

    If you are using chrome, then there's a nice little extension . Been using it for over a year now and it works flawlessly.

    Thanks, this does seem to work too. Only thing I don't like about it, you don't get a physical size representation, only a pixel by pixel. But for a quick test, it'll do.

  • This thread does not sound encouraging to some one who's still considering purchasing C2. I've read all the posts and seems like the 'experiences' have ranged from minor frustration to keyboard smashing aggravation.

    Kazaa seems to have found several sources of income from Construct (which is encouraging) but 3 things struck me.

    • Since you claim that's your first month, that's impressive. But I suspect you've spent many months getting to that point. Nobody is going to write a book on Construct in their first month.
    • For those of us just diving into Construct, I seriously doubt we'll be raking in $1400+ a month off of clients.
    • Re-skinning a game is more about art, creativity and a good paint program. I also notice you plan to create an online course and have written a second book and you create templates. It seems to me the niche you've dove into isn't publishing with Construct, but rather making money off those who want to publish with Construct (which isn't necessarily a bad thing.)

    I've also looked at what C2 apps on Flippa sell for and if what I saw was an example of what people pay, I have to ask, did you spend more than 20 hours re-skinning those apps? Because if you did, I make as much money per hour driving a school bus.

    I realize that making money with Construct is a lot like those get rich quick ads you see on late night television, "your experience may vary". And I also realize that creating a profitable app is not something everyone is going to do right out of the gate (artistic skills drawing a big line in the sand). But if I'm going to shell out $129.00 (which will still buy half a cart of groceries or 2 tanks of gas) and then, fork over 10% of my first $5,000 (which I seriously won't mind doing should I get to that point), I'm not really encouraged reading about spending a month creating a game and another month getting it published, or worse... having to pay someone to help you get published or worse... having to buy a plugin just to get published because the ones with Construct don't work... or even WORSE, $500.00 to remove a splash screen because your choices for getting published are THAT limited? Seriously?

    I understand the point of this thread is to convince Ashley that Construct needs to be a start-to-finish solution. Here's what I'm convinced of:

    • The speed at which I'm able to learn Construct and create working apps/games is amazing.
    • The experiences I've read about in this thread totally negate #1.

    I honestly can't see spending the money if I'd end up like one response: One game published but 5 sitting on the hard drive because publishing is such a pain in the ass.

    Conclusion - The lack of an in-built exporter is the single biggest weakness of Construct 2 and I can absolutely see how it could be a complete show-stopper for new developers trying to build their game using C2.

    Thanks for your honesty. Until I learn a lot more... the show has stopped.

  • Dunno if you'll see this LittleStain but here's a tool I found invaluable for testing these values

    quirktools.com/screenfly

  • So I've been testing the ability to do a dynamic layout, automatically adjusting itself between portrait and landscape and making everything resize properly. One snag I ran into, I only have one mobile phone. I searched the forums for this and didn't find anything so, here's a resource I found that does work with C2.

    quirktools.com/screenfly

    You'll need a url to upload your HTML5 export to, but once you do, I can verify this tool works. I created a test project and using Screenfly, it properly reported WindowWidth and WindowHeight for every 'device' and tablet size it had listed. More importantly, my app was also able to get accurate Viewport information. As the Screenfly device size changed, the Viewport readings changed. And it continued to report accurately when the Screenfly screen was rotated (essential information if you want to keep things centered)

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  • AH HAH! Thank you! I may have read one of your posts earlier about using this technique. I was looking at what happened when I ADDED the bottom and top. I didn't even think about subtracting the top from the bottom to get the size. DUH!

    Once I did that, to set the size, it properly resized everything in both the desktop and the mobile and it resized properly when I rotated the mobile.

    Now, I can make an app that works both in landscape and portrait!

  • Ok, I've been doing some testing on how to make a flexible app (not a game).

    First, I set the project into crop mode. Then I created a sprite and position and resize it based on viewport and window sizes. From there, I can 'arrange' the objects on it and have everything automatically rearrange itself depending on whether the mobile device is rotated vertically or horizontally.

    For example:

    I use ViewportLeft(0)+20 and ViewportTop(0)+20 to set the x,y coordinates for the location of the sprite.

    I then do WindowWidth-40 and WindowHeight-40 to set the height and width of the sprite. Then I position my controls on top of that sprite and position them based on it's size and position.

    On a desktop, when I resize the browser (works on Chrome, Edge and IE) and reset the layout, it works perfectly. The sprite stays perfectly centered and perfectly sized.

    However, when I test this on an Android Chrome or the stupid Samsung Browser, the x,y are correct but the sprite height and width are too large. I'm thinking this has to do with the fact that these browsers are reporting their full size and not the size of the actual browser window (i.e. they're adding in the URL bar to their height).

    So here's my question. When I decide to deploy, go full screen and get rid of that URL bar, should this size properly?

  • rgb(random(255), random(255), random(255))

    But, that just sets the canvas to a random solid color.

    This is just a guess, but one solution might be to create a grey gradient background in a paint program and then, to get random color you can add an 'effect' like 'color' to the sprite and randomize it's parameter. I haven't experimented with it though.

  • I agree Usman. I'm liking it so far. While waiting for opinions on this thread I'm testing out browser scaling on my android. As I mentioned, one of my big concerns (which was somewhat alleviated by an earlier reply) is that what I'm seeing as easy now will become much more difficult once I purchase C2 and try to deploy what I've created.