John Cutter's Forum Posts

  • Hello dop2000,

    First off, I just want to say that your knowledge of Construct 3 is incredible! I’m always learning from your posts and trying to understand even a fraction of the things you do.

    That said, I’m still a bit confused about the picking suggestion above. I’ve built several fairly complex levels, and my simulation code plays through them 1,000 times (in less than 2 seconds!). I tried implementing your suggestion as well as the approach shown in my screenshot, but I’m getting the same results either way.

    I absolutely trust your expertise (after all, you came up with this approach in the first place! Even the best AI models couldn’t figure it out when I tried asking them), so I'm implementing your suggestion I'm just trying to understand the whole fam_cards vs spr_card stuff.

    Speaking of AI, I asked ChatGPT’s GPT-4o model about this, and here’s what it said:

    In a family with only one object type (in your case, spr_card is the only member of fam_cards), using “Pick spr_card by …” and “Pick fam_cards by …” will behave the same way in practice. That’s because there’s effectively no difference between the single sprite and its family—Construct will end up filtering the same set of instances regardless of which name you use.

    Where it does make a difference is if there were multiple object types in fam_cards. In that case, picking via the family name (fam_cards) would include all objects in the family, whereas picking by a specific member (spr_card) would only apply conditions to that one type. But if the family consists of just a single sprite, they are functionally identical.

    In short: If there’s only one member in the family, both picking methods yield the same result. Using spr_card instead of fam_cards isn’t wrong—it’s just more common to use “Pick fam_cards…” when filtering the entire family.

    Does this align with your understanding? Or is there another nuance I might be missing?

    Thanks again for all your help—I really appreciate your time and expertise!

  • I've been using the code in my original post for several days and it seems to work perfectly with any overlapping cards I've tried.

    Out of curiosity I just tried your suggestion. Is this the correct implementation?

    This seems to do exactly the same thing. It's a few events shorter so I'll stick with it unless I run into an issue.

    Thanks, dop2000!

  • You should try contacting the author of the theme.

    > but got a warning that any file saved with DARCSS will no longer load if I uninstall the theme...

    What??? Is this true? How can an editor theme prevent projects from loading?

    Yeah, I tried reaching out to the author a few weeks ago but he hasn't gotten back to me.

    Regarding the warning, it's actually a more generic warning in the Addon manager. When I tried to uninstall DARCSS I got this prompt:

    "If you uninstall an addon, you will no longer be able to open projects that use it. Are you sure you want to uninstall the addon "DARCSS"?

  • I'm really enjoying the DARCSS theme I purchased from the store, but today I was working on some javascript code and the search feature is basically unusable. The background is dark and the highlighted search results are a dark dark blue... practically invisible.

    I think I found the appropriate color value in the CSS file. Can I change this and then re-install the theme? (I changed c3addon to zip, found the css file and changed the color, then renamed the file.)

    I tried it and got a bunch of errors. So then I considered uninstalling DARCSS so I could re-install it, but got a warning that any file saved with DARCSS will no longer load if I uninstall the theme...

  • dop2000

    I'm testing edge cases, but this code has worked on everything I've tried so far -- including your two examples!

    Whew! I REAAAAALLY didn't want to have to mess with tons of different layers.

  • dop2000

    I just noticed an issue with the code you provided and I'm not sure how to fix it.

    It works perfectly when I have one card being covered by another card, or if one card is covering two cards. Unfortunately, it doesn't work when I have two cards covering one card. Like this:

    In this example, the highlighted card shows that it is being covered by the middle King, but not the one to the right.

  • I know there are browser restrictions, but is there any way to save over an existing file?

    I'm wrapping up work on my level editor and if I load "Level_42", fix a few things, and then click "Save" the file dialog shows:

    "Level_42(01).json"

    I can remove the "01" before saving, but there's potential for user error. Any way around this?

  • After maybe a dozen years with Construct, I'm starting on my first large Construct 3 game. I've always used the default theme for my little prototypes, but I recently switched to DARCSS and it almost feels like I'm using a new development tool!

    This dark, more modern, theme makes me feel more like a real game developer. (Which is a very strange comment from a 63 year old who has been a professional game designer since he graduated from College.)

    This is a huge exaggeration, but the default theme almost makes me feel like I'm using something like Scratch, where DARCSS makes me feel like I'm working in Unity or some other more professional tool. It's been two weeks and the feeling I get when using it still hasn't worn off!

    NOTE: To be fair, DARCSS has a few issues. My biggest hassle is that windowed features, like the sprite editor, are nearly the same color as the background. On the plus side, it's more compact so I can see more of my code without having to scroll!

  • Thanks ROJOhound, I think I'm starting to get it.

    Is there a difference between For Each mySprite and Pick All mySprite? (I know the latter allows me to check PickedCount...)

  • I've read some other posts on this subject but I'm still confused. Could someone explain it to me?

    Let's say I have a sprite called mySprite, with an instance variable called "big". There are multiple instances on the screen.

    This works:

    if mySprite.big = 1 then Set Size to 25x25.

    It's my understanding that "mysprite.big = 1" iterates through all the mySprite instances and "picks" the ones where big = 1. In that code block anything I do to mysprite will only affect the picked sprites. Is that correct?

    So when do I need to do this:

    For Each mySprite

    mySprite.big = 1

    Then [Do Something]

    Tagged:

  • Let's see the actual event sheet, and also is it actually loading i.e. is the key press condition correct and working?

    I'll take a look at dop2000's example next.

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  • I thought this one would be easy. It's so straightforward I don't know why it's not working. The AI hasn't been helpful this time so I turn, once again, to the geniuses here in the forum!

    Just to get the basics of my one level Undo working I added:

    + Keyboard: On Space pressed

    -> System: Save game to slot "undo1"

    -> System: Create object fam_cards

    + Keyboard: On Z pressed

    + Keyboard: Ctrl is down

    -> System: Load game from slot "undo1"

    Why doesn't this work? I press space to create a sprite, then press CTRL+Z and the sprite is still there.

    Tagged:

  • I finally decided to snap single selected sprites directly to my grid. For multiple selected sprites, I now set an anchor pin on the lowest selected sprite, pin all selected cards to it, snap the anchor to the grid, and then unpin everything.

    At first, I was trying to do all of this in a single action, which wasn’t working. Adding small (0) waits seems to have fixed it, but it feels messy.

    Is there a better way to handle this in Construct 3, or is this standard practice?

  • Thanks, dop2000! I hadn't seen this tutorial!

  • I've been working on this problem for the last two days and I can't figure it out. Yesterday, I turned to the new Claude 3.7 LLM and it gave me some super helpful pseudocode that does everything perfectly... except my sprites don't align to the 32x32 grid in my level editor. (When I try to drag one sprite under another one, they are not left aligned.) I think this is due to sprite offsets from my pin anchor, but everything I've tried to do to fix this has failed.

    What the Code is Supposed to Do:

    - Allow me to select sprites using single click, or CTRL click

    (I have other events that do multi-select with a rectangle)

    - The sprites snap to my 32x32 grid while being dragged

    spr_card = my card sprite

    fam_cards = family with spr_card as only member (has selected variable, 1 = selected)

    spr_anchor = anchor for moving multiple cards

    (spr_card and spr_anchor have a center image point)

    My Code:

    ----+ System: Every tick

    -----> System: Set snapped_x to snap_enabled ? round(Mouse.X ÷ gridSize) × gridSize : Mouse.X

    -----> System: Set snapped_y to snap_enabled ? round(Mouse.Y ÷ gridSize) × gridSize : Mouse.Y

    -----> spr_anchor: Set position to (snapped_x, snapped_y)

    ----+ Mouse: On Left button Clicked on spr_card

    ----+ spr_card: Pick top instance

    --------+ Keyboard: Ctrl is down

    ---------> spr_card: Set selected to Self.selected = 0

    --------+ System: Else

    ------------+ spr_card: selected = 0

    -------------> fam_cards: Set selected to 0

    -------------> spr_card: Set selected to 1

    ------------+ fam_cards: selected = 1

    -------------> fam_cards: Pin_Edit Pin to spr_anchor (X: True, Y: True, angle: True, width: No, height: No, Z: False)

    ----+ Mouse: On Left button released

    -----> spr_card: Pin_Edit Unpin

    Tagged: