helena's Forum Posts

  • And now I am back and I can do some C2 work again.

    Arima: I am so sorry I forgot that one. My ipad is ipad4.

    Joannak

    THANK YOU for taking a peek too. You said many things I already knew by now, and some new things too.

    Now I hope I can figure out the "find all the blocks in the level range and render them enabled in collision checks" :)

    And now I am going to remove the capx from my server, thank you. I might add again later improved version.

  • Doing all nighter, so I need go and get some sleep.

    But maybe you could help me with one small thing meanwhile.

    I disabled collision on all the blocks by default. Then I thought if I could do like this:

    At start of Layout:

    LevelPositionSprite is overlapping Block: Block set collision enabled

    (and have similar event after level change)

    but nope...

    But of course, I need sleep too. ;)

  • and newt, ok! I will look up if it will work with tiled bg for the follow camera, and for the overlap checks.

    I also realize now I can change many of the objects to tiledbg instead for sprite.. The purely decorative ones, non animated. LOTS of work ahead. haha.

  • Thank you for being the first one to examine.

    That's why I decided to show the capx: I am a novice by almost 2 weeks now. :D

    Background have collision enabled, that's no good. hahaa.

    Too many collision.. mm not surprised.

    Ok, will change 9-patch to normal sprites OR do away with them entirely, I am almost on verge doing it already because I do not want to make the special cover blocks for them too... But the hard block would work best as 9-patch.. maybe only that would be ok?

    Thank you again, now I know what's eating power, and now I am gonna optimize the collision checks.

    Thank you again, I feel humble.

  • I have debated with myself and I have decided. You are welcome to take a peek in my capx.

    I have been talking about ideas on optimizing but I haven't tried to implement any of them because I wasn't really sure what is causing the slowdown. The version you have, have background image included. You are welcome to remove the object to compare.

    Bunny in Space capx, latest version (r157)

    Thanks. <img src="smileys/smiley27.gif" border="0" align="middle">

    Also realizing I forgot to fix the bug with the ball escaping, sometimes. I have tried to fix but I discoverd my fix is not fixing entirely. ;) Gotta remember to figure out a better fix. :) Just wanted to say if you test and see that ball do funny bouncy "stuck" dance on borders.

  • Thank you. :)

    Realized only now that I have to pay 99$/year to Apple to test on my real ipad, through Ejecta. Not that I got it working on the mac, it get stuck at the login screen (game center) <img src="smileys/smiley11.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

    At least I am progressing nicely with the normal version. The question is however if I should still try on optimize before adding things or get down the basics first. Got another idea for special cover-blocks.. block with dropping that freeze the paddle for a while.

    Another solution is to make the web game nicely and then present it to someone more capable in proper coding and team up.. haha. But I like to develop.. ahh. :D

  • This is my thread and maybe you can agree to disagree? :)

  • I want to repeat that even with the background removed it is still same slowness. >_<; I might share capx but I would rather do it personally. Just let me know.

    Right now I am going to try to get Ejecta working and see if it is any better than cocoonjs.

  • Writing more.

    I got C64 in late 80's. Yes it was basically at the end of C64's "life". I was so happy, I wanted to have it so much.

    Then after that I got the nintendo's.. NES, Gameboy, SNES, N64, GBA, GC, and last: Wii.

    Not playing much anymore, though. Lack of time, and also I think the games are not as fun anymore. I loved the era of SNES, big gigantic games that were so well made. Hey, Super Mario World and Zelda: A Link to Past. But also the NES era, Zelda series, Mario series. I could sit and play for hours and hours.

    But also C64 time, I played for hours too but the games were frustrating so we gave up a little quicker ;) Also being younger, more subjective to parents rules. Bubble Bobble, Giana Sisters, Boulder Dash, many many more.. Turbo tapes... (along with some real games too of course)

    I wanted disk but never got it, it was expensive after all, not rich parents.

    I also dabbled in basic at that time. No one else in my friend circle did that. But not much anyway, I did not understand much, I only typed to see what result I got. :D Yes I did understand some but not much. It was at later stage I started to understand. (I used Visual Basic a lot back in mid-end of 90's to start of 2000's and made a number of software)

    We got our first PC in -93 that was 486 sx 33 and I basically claimed it. ;)

  • I am here because I thought it would be good platform for me, because I do not work well with normal typing syntax coding.

    I do not know where else to go to make ios apps and out of the three software I reviewed I liked Construct2 best so I bought a license.

    But I also like that I can make for web so it is a good fallback, even if it is just for fun.

    I now understand HTML5 is not exactly the gaming platform. Hey, if I did not know about this I would say "HTML5?" Isn't that HTML, hypertext markup language? Website pages? haha. ;)

    But apparently it is possible to make games using HTML5 or Construct2 would not exist, right?

    And apparently you should be possible to make stuff for iOS or else there should not be any exporters, right?

    Maybe it is a matter of 1. optimizing, optimizing, and 2. wait for wrapping software to catch up and optimizing THEIR code too.

    Oh, nevermind. I am happy you got into a discussion in my thread. So I am not just whining for no reason. But of course, I am doing the classic newbie mistake: see "make your own games", come of beautiful ambitious ideas of making games, trying to make it, only to get the hard truth thrown at you for your too ambitious ideas. ;)

    Now back to my project.

    The thing is that even if I removed the background (entirely gone nothing left, not even the object itself), and just it be empty layout, albeit still long strip, the game is ssllooooow at same fps rate in cocoon. So I start to wonder what's causing it to be so slow. Is the

    bullet behaviour causing this maybe?

    I have checked the event list for "every tick" and there's none.

    Or would it be all the collision checks?

    The "splash" animations every time the block is hit and some more similar stuff?

    I wish I had a separate monitor because my 5:4 ratio monitor... I can't see the debug window AND play at same time. ;) I can change windows, and see, but not see in action. hahaa.

    Now I have shrunk the level strip from 20 to 10. So it is 7680px high.

    Funny thing is that in my normal firefox browser on my desktop computer, when I had one solid 1024x15360px background it is less "choppy" than when I removed that and placed 10 pieces of different backgrounds 1024x768 each. (level shrunk since that). Or maybe it is because of my addition of ice blocks and its snowflake particle effect and animations..

    If it is the block's fault then I had an idea that may require quite a lot of "coding" but is to store all the block positions in array (or something suitable) and load the level's blocks when you arrive to that level, destroying everything else. But of course, I have to update the array when player destroy blocks, because my game allow to go back in levels as well as forth... Do you think this will improve the fps? Right now I only have 5 screens out of 10 filled with blocks, though..

    Or somehow, set the blocks outside the level area to not be checked for collisions.. hmm.

    Back to making ice block animations.... Yet more.. lol. This for the "gleaming" effect once in a while..

    And CTRL-C saved me.

  • Yes. Commodore 64.

    And yes!

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  • I wrote a long nice reply, and of course error message.... <img src="smileys/smiley7.gif" border="0" align="middle" /> <img src="smileys/smiley11.gif" border="0" align="middle" /> Have to start to remember always do ctrl+C! (however I wish Scirra could code so that the text could be retained even if error message is shown. some sites do that)

    But I want to thank you all for your replies, both the bluntness and the encouragements.

    I will write again later or tomorrow, so tired now.

  • Funny that about the Safari thing because the other browsers are slower and Safari has best performance. Could be other things too...

    I actually tried the Add to home screen route quite quickly remembering my iphone, but on my ipad it still retains the browser bar. Either it is my ipad4 or it is the new i0S....

  • I know I am expecting too much!

    I have this great idea of making a game with hand drawn graphic as background. Imagine a long vertical strip, think Bubble Bobble but going up instead for down when think of level change.

    The graphic is about beginning at the surface, at the very bottom.. grass, mushrooms, travelling up, to trees, then oh a lake, then again, land, then up in sky, further up in sky clouds, then yeah you get it... all the way up to the space and moon!

    But yes.. graphic intense!

    Oh the game is kind of break out style but with some twists and different approach for lives and losing.

    That graphic I haven't drawn yet but I have done sketches on paper. I have placeholder graphic now.

    The screen is 1024x768, and the play area is 768x768 square but the background cover the entire screen. Gui to left and right, also serving as "touch" areas. The Layout is taller than that, right now 20 levels high so 20x768, and the position is set by scroll to sprite a big sprite the same size as the screen size. Using LiteTween to the change level and I love it.

    On my computer it works nicely. No problems.

    When I tested the same game on Safari on my ipad, the background is gone, and the game is slightly slower but playable. But hard to play because of I am not able to remove the bar at top, it is not possible to use safari in fullscreen mode.

    Now I thought, eh better to try out the basics properly.

    At first I was going to use MobileGap but I did not understand any thing about the signing process. Ok, I have a macbook I can borrow for the signing part. But where to get the certificate? The file prepared?

    Scrap that.

    Go to CocoonJS instead. Ok. Uploaded the zip file to my site, installed Cocoon app on my ipad. Started the game... oh omg, only 5 fps! NOT playable. And lots of glitches too.. .It is so insane compared with Safari! And this still persist when I removed the background altogether.

    I then looked at app store for browsers that support fullscreen, installed a few of them but apparently Safari is best optimized.

    What do you think? Should I give up my idea? Or maybe only for web? And make another style game for ipad instead?

    Small ideas I have: make the level strip a little shorter. maybe 10 or even only 5 levels high at a time, and have a kind of intermission game (maybe to collect extra lives) between the layout strips.. hmm.

  • Are there anyone developing behavior/effect that let the background scroll seamlessy as a kind of wrap around effect. It is good for many kinds of games. Easiest to do would to be up/down or left/right but any direction would be nice too.

    Actually the Kaleidoscope effect (by Gamewarp Studios, found here at forum) is demonstrating it to some degree but distorted in kaleidoscope pattern.

    If you could change direction of the scrolling ingame it would be perfect.

    I am not talking about normal scrolling where you scroll until the edge of background, but rather continuous seamless scrolling.

    I hope you understand what I mean. :)