havenrocket's Forum Posts

  • The problem is that when I create a tiledbackground with a ground graphic for the whole level (4000x768 for example) and I change its behavior to solid. The player sprite collides with the transparent, empty space of the tiledbackground. The engine should be able to recognize if the part of the tiledbackgrund is transparent or has actual graphics.

    Exactly. I was hoping I wasn't the only one scratching their heads at this.

    space Ape - Tiles are as effective as using dozens of the same sprite- the blank space of the png still causes a collision.

  • So, if somebody has already tackled this, maybe you could point me towards that tutorial/thread? I don't mind searching the forums on my own, but I've been at it for about two weeks without much luck...

  • Yep. That is definately not photoshopped.

  • Good question... I'm thinking using invisible collision masks (invisible sprites?) with the collision polygon set to your desired shape and then, as sqiddster indicated, put the pretty stuff on top.

    I too am up against this problem. So far, I've only been able to solve it using tons of sprites whose Opacity is set to zero.

    The ideal solution would be to make a png of a hill or wall or whatever, and use that- except when I bring the png in, the player collides with the whole image. I tried going into the animation editor and changing the collision area, but it only gives you 9 vertices to play with.

    I'll keep searching, but if anybody has discovered how to make the png collision map work, I would love to hear about it!

  • Howdy.

    My name is Cael Hath. I used to spend most of my time at caelhath.devianart.com, but... life happened.

    I have always been interested in games. When I was very young, my stepfather worked at PG&E in California, and he would bring his work home with him. I learned how to spell and write using the first few editions of Volkswriter, an unforgiving but very beautiful word processor that I found on his green-screened computer.

    He inevitably brought home an orange-screened computer, which is where I discovered a rather amazing game called Tetris. I also played a few games I doubt anyone would recognize- text-based Superman, text-based Star Trek, and of course Jump Joe, which I understand is called Janitor Joe in some versions.

    Because my family was strictly religious, my first Nintendo was destroyed, and I was never again allowed to keep the money I made from mowing my neighbor's lawns. However, my stepfather acquired a beastly, outdated green-screen machine in his yearly company auction, and with this, I taught myself as much as I could of BASIC, forgoing games in lieu of calculator apps which my mother used to determine the amount of taxes she was to deduct from her Avon customers. I also built clocks, timers, weather trackers and most importantly, a journal entry system that incorporated a password and my beloved Volkswriter.

    Years have passed, and time has not been all that I had hoped it would. My schooling backfired, and I discovered rather bitterly that everything I learned in college was already available online. My Associates degree was stifled by a vengeful communist that insisted I write a paper against my personal beliefs. I have nothing against armchair communists, after all, it all works out on paper, but this gentleman told me that he was going to take the paper I wrote and send it to the government as the basis for his personal campaign against something I care very dearly about. My advice to anyone seriously considering school is to chuck your morality, dreams and tact at the door, and attend your courses with every intent of destroying all that is sacred and beautiful in this world. Otherwise, you're wasting your time, and that of your instructor.

    My desire to create games is not as pure as my desire to write. Having said that, one could argue the purity of continuing to breathe air. I love games, and I love the fact that Construct2 has been created. I will never stop writing, nor will my desire to create cease to spill over into other mediums.

    With Construct2, I aim to create a number of games that I myself would wish to play. I could waste time by trying to analyze the market, adhering to every little whim that the gaming community desires, but in the end, if you cannot entertain yourself, who can you entertain? I would like to think I have played enough games to determine what is fun and what is not.

    My deep dark plot involves creating a host of games that will eventually fall into the hands of a creative, hardworking team, and that these games will fund my writing. Games today are analogous to writing in the forties and fifties. Back then, a writer could make a living off of his short stories. Look at Asimov, Heinlen, and all the other greats.

    These "old-school" and "portable" and "browser" games are no different. Granted, we can't all be Angry Birds, but I have played many a free game whose site has operated unattended for weeks at a time because the developer and creator of those games is somewhere in Germany buying a Fiero with the money he's made.

    I'm here because those who are happy are those who do what they love. I love to create, to entertain, to see the looks of surprise, fear, joy and emotion that my hands are capable of evoking. I once entertained a troop of missionaries who were prohibited from all forms of worldly media, simply with a notebook of stories. These were average high schoolers, no more godly than I, who resented their forced piety and would gather every Wednesday at five for an hour of stories they couldn't find anywhere else.

    Construct2 is more than just a game-maker to me. It's a chance to follow in the footsteps of the old writers of yesteryear, to make my way in a world that needs hope. Some of you will see me as commercially minded. I'm not offended by this. Creating media is my passion, and if you can't make money with your passion, you're wasting your life.

    I am very pleased to meet you all.

  • Try using an array that stores the data you need to check...an array will even let you alter the map and update the info as needed...look up up the various tutorials on the forums and the manual entry on arrays..they can be used in just about any way you can imagine

    Hope it helps...its basically what you are doing anyway....CS2 has a built in function for that...:-)

    Thanks Mystazsea.

    Arrays are a great tool, I just wish I understood them better. I've read the tutorial and several forum entries, but I still have no practical way of understanding them...

    For example, I could do something like:

    System / On Level2 Start /

         System Create S at 0,0 //create sand tile

         System Create G at 100,0 //create grass tile

         System Create W at 200,0 //create wall tile

         etc...

    But that's like a hundred lines of "System Creates" for five levels of 5x5 grids. 5 levels of 20x20 grids would be astronomical...

    I'm not looking for somebody to make my game, but any help on formulating the proper way to make such an array would earn somebody an Associate Producer credit...

  • 1. You'd have to test it and see, and then it would also depend on the device. Generally the size of the image doesn't affect speed. Image size does affect memory usage, and keep in mind that mobile devices have less memory than PCs.

    Yeah, this is true, you can't be sure of anything until you've tested it thoroughly. I'll have to believe that if angry birds can have a ton of unique maps, then so can I...

    2. You can do that approach. Load the text file with the ajax object and utilize the System text expressions to read parts of the text.

    Okay, so Ajax, eh? I had no idea... I will try to research this more.

    Thanks —

  • This is a great thread. I am very curious about this as well.

    My preferred model is League of Legends- the game is free and everything that you pay for is something that you can get for free... as long as you're patient, or if you don't mind not having unlimited access to it. For instance, you can play as any of the characters, provided they're one of the several available that particular week. If you're patient enough, you can eventually earn enough points to unlock that character and have access to it all the time. Alternately, you can just pay five bucks for it and be done with it. Sadly, you can't unlock any of their alternate costumes- each one I suppose is a little less than five bucks as well.

    At any rate, it's one of the ways you can ride the line of being a developer with a community conscience and a person who is not living on the street. Computers and development time require at least a little nourishment in the way of financials. And we gotta eat, too.

  • I can't wait until I'm smart enough to understand servers. That's going to be an awesome day.

    Thanks for the info guys, I'll keep checking back.

  • How Do I Make a Better Map?

    Okay, I started making a top-down game based on the ghost-shooter tutorial. Things are going well, but I'm worried about the size of my game now.

    The basic concept is to make a background that isn't simply a single repeated tile. At the moment, I have a 2000x2000 pixel image that serves as my background, and I've used about 20 sprites or so to create walls for my character to collide with and enemies to climb over.

    This serves fine for demonstration purposes, and people are enjoying the game- they just want more of a map to explore.

    My first thought was to set up "Edge of the Map" sprites, so when the hero runs over them, the layout disappears, and a new one appears in its place, with the hero standing in the appropriate place. In other words, Zelda 1 Style.

    This is where my problems occur. I don't want to bog down my loading or my game with 20 2000x2000px maps... I'd rather just use 15 100x100 pixel images and make some tile maps.

    I did this once in Visual Basic 6... I made a subroutine that would read a text file and create the map I wanted accordingly on Form Load. (Layout start, here.) For example-

    W,W,W,W

    W,G,G,W

    W,G,G,W

    W,W,W,W

    These four lines of text would be translated into a 4x4 grid that would have 4 Grass tiles surrounded by 12 Wall tiles. But in everything I've read, I don't know if Construct2 even has this capability.

    THUSLY...

    1. Would 20 large background images (like 2000x2000 pixels) be too much for a game I hope to use on mobile devices?

    2. If that's a bad idea, then what about the text file approach? Using only 15 small images sounds like it would save a lot of space, but does the technology support it? I'm not after random maps here, I'm after a 20x20 grid that has a purposeful arrangement.

    3. Is there a better way? Something I'm totally missing? I'm not married to any particular method. I just can't accept having one small image tiled a thousand times without any variety.

    I know this is an incredibly long post, and I thank anyhow who reads it. I doubly thank any who reply, even if it's only to tell me that my post is too long.

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  • In order to fade away the layer, you'd do something like:

    System > On layout start > Black Screen > Set Opacity to 100

                               System > Wait .5sec

                               Black Screen > Opacity 80

                               System > Wait .5sec

                               Black Screen > Opacity 60

    etc.

    So basically, every half second, you'd be lowering the opacity of the object until it reaches zero. At that rate, the screen will transition from black to invisible in about 3 seconds.

    If the transition is too blocky or takes too much time, try something like lowering the opacity by 5 every .1 seconds. This would change you from black to clear in about two seconds, with a fairly smooth transition.

    Or you could play around with fade. I haven't found a fade button yet, so...