jbadams's Forum Posts

  • The saving time is barely even noticeable for most of my smaller projects, and only around 5-6 seconds at most for my larger projects.

    I'd say there's something amiss -- perhaps an incompatibility between your system and the software, or a general problem with your computer. Are any other programs on your computer experiencing difficulties?

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  • I, for one, would much rather efforts be continued to improve the existing system and add new features.

    The work required to allow scripting as well is potentially extensive, and given the flexibility of the current highly-capable event system -- as well as the JavaScript plug-in SDK -- I would much rather than effort be spent on more awesome features, bug fixes, and improving performance.

  • CannedEssence:

    Ah yes, I see what you mean now! Hadn't actually tried to use multiple returns in Construct 2 (I consider it a bit messy in the majority of cases) and realised that execution continues after a return.

    Plenty of programming languages allow you to have multiple return points from functions, but you're correct that it would be extremely unusual -- i.e. I can't think of any examples -- where this doesn't also jump back out of the function.

    Apologies for the misunderstanding! <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

  • Just for reference, there are actually quite a few programming languages which allow multiple return points.

    Different languages have different idioms, and it really depends on the language and programmers involved whether or not multiple return points are considered a good idea.

  • In that case you should probably take the linked page offline, or at least add a prominent notice that the program is no longer active.

    If nothing else, at least disable new registrations.   <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

  • 3. You can use 3rd party engines like C2 and unity.

    Are you definetly serious? Is like windows 8 app publishing?

    All the things listed in the original post are just things mammoth hopes, and have not yet been confirmed by Microsoft.

    It's great that they're making an effort to be indie-friendly, but that doesn't necessarily translate to you or I being able to target the platform; there's a big difference between an established independent developer with a budget of $100,000/year or more, and hobbyist or small-time indie developers working on a shoe-string budget, and it wouldn't be at all surprising to find that the features discussed are for the former type of "indie" rather than the latter.

    Given the popularity of XNA and the creator's club for XBox 360 it's likely they'll have something accessible to any every-day person, but we'll have to wait and see just what that might be.

    I don't see what's exciting about paying a $100 fee

    It would be another publishing option that's actually accessible to indie developers of almost any level. Professional development is a whole different ball-game involving the exchange of huge amounts of money, and traditionally (excepting home-brew which isn't generally commercially viable) consoles have been inaccessible to the majority of indie developers.

  • The current version of Construct 2 doesn't officially support multi-player at all, other than providing the very basic facilities offered by the AJAX and WebSocket plug-ins. These provide some basic functionality for establishing connections and sending/retrieving data, but nothing higher level and obviously nothing server-side. They would be sufficient for most turn-based games, but in the general case won't be suitable for more real-time multi-player games, and you'll have to handle all higher-level logic (such as synchronisation) for yourself. This may be further addressed in future releases, as multi-player functionality is a pretty popular request.

    That leaves you with third party plugins anything you can find in the forums. I've seen some good progress from some users, but don't have any links handy or specific advice on it -- other users might have more information for you.

    Hope that's helpful. <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle">

  • You could fake 3d (with for example, isometric tiles, or something similar to the old "2.5d" dungeon crawlers), or you could use something such as the 3rd party polygon plugin or another plugin to draw lines, but Construct 2 isn't really designed for 3d, and I would personally suggest looking for a better suited alternative -- perhaps Unity3d -- if you want to work on 3d projects.

    Construct 2 is absolutely fantastic for 2d, and you could probably force it to do something 3d-ish, but you'd be fighting against the strengths of the product rather than working with them.

  • +1. This would be really useful to a lot of users.

    The work-around of targeting a secondary object is very usable, but for many games that's a lot of additional objects that shouldn't really be necessary to get proper functionality.

  • Alternatively Construct 2 can also be purchased through Steam, which may allow some additional payment options based on where you're located.

  • It's not that complicated a suggestion guys... the suggestion is that pressing tab would indent an event, thereby making it a sub-event of the one above and that shift + tab would do the reverse (un-indent, making a sub-event it's own event at the next level up).

    I'm pretty indifferent to this one: I guess it could lead to a faster workflow once I got used to it, but I don't find this to be a major slow-down in my process anyway.

  • cesarzevil

    Perhaps you could give the latest beta release of Construct 2 (r129) a go -- it includes experimental support for using the native version of Box2d (the physics engine Construct uses under the hood) for CocoonJS exports and can potentially offer 3-4X increases in performance; note however that it is currently still experimental and had a couple of small known issues which are noted on the update page. Based on past experience we can probably expect Scirra to have these (and any other issues) fixed pretty quickly.

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  • While pixel perfick's response is commonly accepted practice amongst many hobbyists and would probably be good enough to keep you out of trouble, it's not strictly correct.

    If your work is based on an existing piece -- even if you create the new piece completely from scratch; drawing your own version of Mario for example -- it is considered to be a derivative work, and you risk running afoul of copyright infringement. This covers your numbers 2, 3 and 4 situations, and technically there is no amount of changes you can make to the work that makes it legally ok -- the only way you can safely use someone else's copyrighted work is to get permission*. In practice of course, if you make enough changes the work won't be recognisable as something based on the original and you wouldn't be taken to court.

    Your current situation (listed as #1 in your post) however is not a derivative work; you created your character completely independently and without intention of copying existing work, and only later realised it is similar to the existing character. Technically you're in the right and aren't violating copyright. Unfortunately however this still doesn't guarantee you're safe from legal action...

    You can be sued for any (vaguely rational) reason at all, and even if you're 100% in the right you could still be taken to court. If you're really in the right hopefully the judge would decide in your favour, but the process of going through the court case may still be quite expensive, especially if you're fighting a large company.

    If a company thinks you're using their work, or a derivative there-of they will usually send you a cease & desist letter asking you to stop; they can however simply choose to skip this step and go straight to legal action, in which case they would file a case against you. It's then up to the judge who hears the case to decide whether or not you are actually infringing and if you are to award damages you would have to pay. If you're just a fan with good intentions and you haven't made much (or any) money from your game, you would be forced to cease your project, but probably wouldn't have to pay a lot in damages. However, if you've done as Pixel perfick suggests above and given credit to the original creator it may be decided that your infringement was "willful infringement", which can potentially result in much higher damages being awarded.

    It's up to you to decide what's an acceptable level of risk to take, and if you'd like to be more certain you should speak to a lawyer experienced in video games and entertainment -- you can find a list HERE. Is your character similar enough that an employee of the company is question is likely to genuinely think you've ripped off their work, and are you using it in a way that they would be likely to object to? You could spend forever trying to play it completely safe, but there will always be some minimal level of risk -- it sounds like you genuinely didn't copy anything in this particular case, so unless your character is bears a striking resemblance it's probably a pretty low risk to take.

    Hope that's helpful! <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle">

       

    * Technically there is another way you can safely copy a copyrighted work without permission; Fair Use. Unfortunately however this is not a protection you can reliably depend on without legal advice, as only a judge is able to rule whether or not your particular usage qualifies, so you would have to be taken to court before finding out if Fair Use applies.