Jase00's Forum Posts

  • Yep exactly that.

    I often organise my objects into folders, so I am looking around this area of C3 often.

    I am an idiot. But I'm a happy idiot now that I know this exists!

    Very informative!!

    Thanks again for the insight into this, I feel like I understand a lot more now.

    I totally know what you mean, especially when editing an existing system or something. The knock-on effect is unpredictable.

    After thinking this through, I think I can see the possible issues by adding something seemingly easy. Whilst it wouldn't affect existing projects for sure, if people began to use "force jump", it could interfere with double-jump, and then you'd end up with a bug report with a specific case for this, which leads to editing double jump, which could lead to many unexpected issues that DO affect other projects.

    Many thanks for the insight.

    I was curious about this specific request for a "force jump" action - would it actually take longer than an hour to code this into the platformer behaviour? I don't do plugin creation so I have no idea, maybe it takes a whole day to add/test this, I don't know, but it's why I'm asking.

    I get that there could be gotchas like, maybe it conflicts with another action, but like, all existing projects wouldn't be affected because its a new "action" and nothing more.

    Isn't it literally just the jump code but without a "is on ground" check?

    Out of curiosity, how long would it take for Scirra to add a "force jump" action to the platform behaviour?

    I figured the code is already there for the regular jump, so it's just copy pasting existing code and excluding the check for "is on ground"? Not much to test, wouldn't break other projects.

  • Absolutely! I wonder how many others are working on "big" projects and tend to get a bit lost when navigating around multiple event sheets with thousands of events.

    The project view search was such a huge revelation to me. I used to forget which folder an object was in, so I would go into a new event, search for the object and click it, go back, and then it'd tell me the folder it belongs in, which was a ridiculously long-winded way of finding an object! The search is a life-saver and I'm kicking myself for not realising it existed sooner, even though it was in plain sight all along.

  • Yeah the tips I posted were things I've done to speed things up in the current state of C3, although it's not ideal and I'd definitely be interested in seeing updates to find/bookmark bar. I also wonder if it would ever be possible to change object icons, because often it gets confusing having many families, arrays, dictionaries, etc. with the same icon.

    I'll throw votes at this, but please consider the bookmark bar suggestion too - If this was enhanced, then once some bookmarks are placed onto events that you often jump between, you may not need to use "find" as often in this case (whereas right now, if you bookmarked common events, it might build a huge list of bookmarks and it's not clear what each bookmark is there for. Even just giving each bookmark a text label would be a major improvement and I wouldn't keep clearing my list of bookmarks!)

    Also I use C3 all the time and endlessly read the manual, but somehow I never knew there was a "project view search". Thanks for highlighting this!

  • No probs, glad it was useful! I use C3 with 2 monitors, so I always have "find" and "find all references" popup windows on a 2nd monitor.

    3 other small tips to help with big projects:

    I often want to find when an object was created. If you search "create object sprite" or even just "object sprite" or "ct sprite", you'll often get the correct result fast.

    You can leave comments with "tags" within. Say you have a complex HUD feature that links to many different events and event sheets, I'd write comments such as "TagForSearch: HUD System" near each event. You can then do a search for "tagforsearch: HUD system" to find all related events of a system you created. You can also do a search for "tagforsearch" to list all of your "tags", which can be useful. Bonus points if you use autohotkey to map a key to auto-type "tagforsearch" so it saves time typing this when doing a search.

    Finally, emojis! Sometimes you might be working with, say, 3 different arrays, or multiple families. You can't change the icon of these types of objects, but it is very useful to have a visual indicator to what object is what, rather than having to read their name each time. Simply rename the array or whatever object to have an emoji such as a 🔴 or 🔵 or something distinctive, and you'll always instantly know what array you are looking at. You will even see the emoji within expressions as you scroll through your event sheets. Don't put the emoji at the start of the object name, or else you cannot quickly type its name when adding events, actions, or expressions. To be honest, I use this tip less, but I once had to do a massive change in my huge project to replace a spritefont object with a sprite object - by using "find all references" and giving the old spritefont a red 🔴 in its name and the new sprite is given a 🟢 in its name, it reminds me that "red is bad, this needs to be updated", and "green is good, this is correct". Sure I could have just kept using find all references, but seeing the little red dot amongst expressions helped me quickly edit my events to get the job done faster. Also just in case you didn't know, you can quickly get an emoji window to appear in Windows 10 by pressing "WINKEY + ." (Windows key and the period key).

    EDIT: I made a suggestion a year ago, for enhancing the bookmark bar. Looking at this again, perhaps "colourful bookmarks" isn't user-friendly to those with colour-blindness, but perhaps bookmarks could have unique icons or tags against them instead. Either way, consider voting if you are a C3 user that has a huge project to navigate! construct3-21h2.ideas.aha.io/ideas/C321H2-I-4

  • Yeah I agree, this and the bookmarks bar needs some love and attention, especially for those with a big project with several thousands of events.

    A small tip that I discovered: If you use the find window as a popup window, then you can click into the address bar of the find window, press ctrl+f, then you can use the browsers find feature to search through your find results.

    E.G. Say you are trying to find an event related to visibility of an object. You could do "find all references" on an object, and you might get 300 results, but if you change the find results into a popup window, you can use the browsers find feature to search for "visible" to save time hunting through the 300 results you initially had.

  • I see what you're saying. I have tested on a 60hz monitor on the same computer, but still jittering and such.

    I'll double check stats later but on 60hz monitor with vsync, generally cpu is like 10% usage, gpu unsure but it is heavy gpu stuff (video playback, particle effects, layers with effects, etc.). I do feel competent with designing my events efficiently, but everyone is capable of mistakes.

    I wonder why would it work so nicely without vsync, but jittery with vsync, even if it is related to cpu and gpu usage. It makes me worry, if I can lower the usage of cpu and gpu on my high end computer to fix the vsync jitter, then great, but it might jitter on a low-end computer, even if they see it says its a solid 60fps. I still think it is vital to give the player the option to choose.

    EDIT: Just to add, the video playback, when vsync is off, it is buttery smooth. With Vsync on, it's very noticeably choppy. Again, not been able to reproduce on blank project, could still be gpu related and such, but it's such a tease to see my whole project working perfectly when vsync is off (ironically using more resources but giving a smoother experience).

    EDIT 2: Another way I would approach this issue, even without jitter issues: If I were a player, the first thing I would do in a game is make sure video settings are set to my own preference, such as when I play a rhythm game or FPS, I turn off vsync and such. It doesn't feel right to NOT offer a way for players to disable vsync, when like every other game, old or modern, does offer the option.

  • Ayyy,

    The main question I have, is, is it POSSIBLE for C3 to have a "max FPS" option for those who want to disable vsync, or is this impossible to add in? Whether or not Scirra feel it is right to implement, I'm mostly curious if it is an absolute "no this is impossible due to how C3 is designed" or not.

    I'm a year into a Rhythm game, desktop only, which I plan to release, but there's two thing at the back of my mind that could be a deal breaker when release day comes: lack of control over vsync, and no way to set max FPS.

    I haven't isolated the issue yet on a blank project, but my project is a bit jittery when vsync is on, as well as slight input lag (as always with vsync). This happens even on a 240hz monitor with vsync on. Obviously it is unacceptable to release a rhythm game where the notes aren't smoothly moving and there is noticeable input delay.

    With vsync off, there is no more jitter at all, input feels perfect. But as we know, the downside is the fps shoots up to like 600, which is bad for laptop battery, and makes the fans of your computer go wild.

    Like many other desktop games, I'd love to be able to add an options menu to allow the player to choose to have vsync and whether to cap their framerate.

    Gdevelop has an option for max FPS, as well as any Source engine game (altho hidden as a console command, but it's set to 300fps by default), spyro reignited has a FPS option, etc.

    There are other uses for a max FPS feature, such as someone on a lower-end device might want to cap their FPS at 30fps, so that they don't have a variable framerate if their device floats around 40 to 50fps.

    Anyway, yeah, I really hope I can pinpoint the jittery issue with vsync being on, I tend to forget it exists because I almost always run my game with vsync off, but I know this won't be acceptable on release. Unless I made 2 builds, one with vsync on, one with vsync off, which sounds like a very sloppy workaround, and still has the issue with players on laptops as we can't limit the max FPS. I'm worried and hope I can find a solution.

    Thanks for reading!

  • I'm always looking to using the most effecient events. Whilst my project works perfect on a high-end desktop computer, I want to cater to low-end computers too. My project can end up with hundreds of a specific object existing at one time, so I like to be as efficient as possible, just to get that little extra performance for anyone with a weaker device.

  • Ohhh I see. Yeah it can really feel like your world is crumbling when you encounter glitches and bugs in software, but I guess you realise now that the developers are happy to help and resolve things, especially bugs that can be reproduced.

    It can also be hard to be critical on yourself, but sounds like you might have learned a thing or two since your last encounter here.

    Assuming you didn't outright insult anyone, good luck with your future game creations!

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  • Out of interest, what made you feel negative enough to leave in such a way?

  • I'd be curious if you see any measurable difference!