kingstonwall's Forum Posts

  • 15 posts

  • hi peeps! still lurking the classic section

    so i have this sort of billboard that follows the player.

    i want to show different kind of graphics and visualization on this billboard object. i use particles and stuff on it, so my problem is:

    for example since the billboard is moving along with the player object, particles etc fly off the billboard, when i want everything to stay inside it. its supposed to just show visuals as if it was just a screen.

    i thought about making a layer with 0 scrolling and put all the possible visualization there and then just project that image into the billboard. question is, how exactly would this be possible? using canvas? ive tried but i really dont know how to achieve this. any kind of help and guidance would be greatly appreciated!

    EDIT: just wanted to make sure: animating the billboard is out of question because it would need an enormous amounts of animations for what i want to show in it. also i use this slowmo effect occasionally and i would have to have lots of animation frames to keep things looking smooth. im avoiding using animation frames as much as i can. to simplify, i just want to show a certain part of the layout as a continuous image on a sprite/object.

  • excellent! i got it now. i was on the right track but this made it all clear.

    much appreciated!

  • thanks for answering!

    that first issue was embarrassing, how did i not figure that out, ugh.. but much appreciated!

    but so, the second issue. ill try and keep it simple for the sake of discussion:

    right now i have that max 500 units for global var. (stamina).

    i was thinking of making another global var, lets say "level up".

    every 10 enemies killed levels up, global var sets to 0 again. no problem so far.

    that level up adds, say +50 to that 500 globar var, so the first level up would be 550.

    the problem is:

    to regenerate the stamina bar over time, i have a condition/action as follows:

    always--> if global var (stamina) is less than 500 ---> add 2 to global var (stamina).

    that becomes a problem if im going to level up the max stamina over that initial 500.

    basically this is the whole issue im having here.

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  • anyone still lurking here at the old support forum?

    if there is someone kind enough to help, i have 2 issues:

    1. so im making a sort of stamina meter (ability meter to be precise). i have a global var that is set to always fill up to maximum of 500 units. i have these abilities in game that the player can unlock and use that take set amount of units from the "stamina meter". my issue is that the global variable can go to a negative number, and i dont want that, because it kind of messes up that recharge balance. if i have an ability that takes 600 units, it reduces the global var to -100. how can i make it so that abilities drain the global var only down to 0 and not further down to negative numbers?

    2. next issue is connected to the first, kinda: im planning on making a level up system for the "stamina bar", so that the player gets more powerful the more he plays. so occasionally (from killing enemies mostly), the stamina bar gets bigger, starting from that 500 units. how would i have to implement that? . do i have to use another variable to reference that max "stamina" value? that level up (increasing the max value of global var) confuses me, but it would be critical to the nature of the game.

  • thanks! i tried additive, but it didnt work the way i wanted. then i tried additive plus and it started working.

    BUT:

    theres a strange anomaly. i have a quick photo

    the small square is on the "character" layer, the bright sphere inside the square is a sprite that has the additive plus effect, but there shouldnt be that sharp outline, its supposed to be a smooth gradient. am i doing something wrong?

  • hi guys!

    hope there's still some people around this part of forums...

    i have a quick, simple question:

    is it possible to have an additive effect that only works on a single layer?

    im having a hard time figuring it out. basically im using an additive light effect on a layer where characters and environments are, but then i have a background layer behind it and i dont want that additive effect to show on that. any help would be most welcome !

  • many thanks!

    at first it all looked a little overwhelming, but i think i understand the code (mostly).

    however i still have issues with that gravity thing and to make matters worse(or better?), im planning on not using the gravity (that preset world gravity) of the physics behaviour, but simply use add force, mainly because i want to be able to decide the direction of gravity at will. would it be too complex to implement in this example? if say the gravity was made like,

    -always:

    --add force 175 (y component)

    ?

  • hi jayjay and thanks for replying!

    ive been on a holiday, so i havent been able to try out what you suggested, but im gonna give that a shot sometime this week. although im not completely sure how to make that work, so if you got the time id still be very interested in seeing some kind of an example .cap!

  • Hi folks!

    Hope theres atleast some ppl still browsing the classic section...

    Im having issues trying to figure out how to store a sprites velocity in a certain way, ill try and explain the best i can:

    i have a physics object(sprite1) and when it overlaps sprite2, i want sprite1 to slow down a bit, and then when its not overlapping sprite2 anymore, id like the sprite1 to get back its original velocity(what it was before overlapping sprite2), but i just cant figure out how to manage this. i did manage to do this with only using either X or Y velocity, but i have problems when sprite1 is not moving completely horizontally or vertically.

    if theres still anyone out there willing to help id be most grateful.

    sorry bout my poor grammar btw.

    thanks.

  • Hey rojo, i found this while poking around here (requires math plugin):It pretty much mostly does what i was looking for. I wasnt aware you could scroll textures within a sprite, thats why i was going to use Tiled background, but now i can pretty much just use spites for the road (i hope).

    I havent tried yet to combine that curve displacement thing with the scrolling and i thought id ask if its possible (or feasible)?

    One thing im still really confused about is this:

    Since the curves are made with mouse movements in that fake 3D road example, im afraid i lack the knowledge to convert that to a different command. What im trying is to get the curves come up on command, possibly from a global variable. So the track would just be a series of commands to call upon, I.E straight -> curve(medium right) -> straight -> hard left etc..

    As i said, i dont know how to manipulate the displacement code properly (frankly, at all, havent really used it). Id need a few pre set of curves (medium, easy, hard, long, short curve for example), but i dont know how to translate that from the mouse movement in the example..

    I would be really grateful if you could guide me in this in any way possible, even just slightly. I feel like im close to breakthrough , and every other aspect is pretty much in place and worked out. just these dreaded curves are giving me a hard time here..

    EDIT: hmm, i couldnt post the link or upload the .cap...

    But the .cap is called "tiled-distortmap-scroll" if youre aware of it possibly?

  • Thanks for replying!

    Actually i just found that fake 3D road example from my example folder this evening, if its your doing then thank you, very enlightening in many ways!

    However, i still have issues:

    im currently doing my road/scenery scrolling with tiled backgrounds and im having a hard time trying to figure out how to implement that in this case? do you have any suggestions? im not using the "stripe" method for the sense of movement, i have textured road and environment.

    Also, the distort map curves from the middle, thus making it appear wrong(in this case), when it should curve only from top (as in, the bottom should always stay straight)? EDIT: (Ugh, disregard that, its actually just as it should be, its only an issue of positioning the camera properly that i need to work out somehow. this is what happens when you work late and try to figure these things out when you should be sleeping )

    oh and please, just say if im not making any sense and ill try to explain myself a little better

  • Hey all!

    I dont know how popular this section is anymore, but i still decided to see if theres anyone lurking and willing to help me with this issue:

    So, i have this simple concept/ idea of a single screen, top down, local multiplayer, physics based racer, where the cars stay on a single, immovable screen and the environment, road and everything else kind of just scrolls from top to bottom.

    Now all this is pretty much a-ok and working, after doing some simple tests. scrolling isnt really the issue.

    What really stopped me was kind of important though. I have no idea how to make curves, and i really need to implement that. straight road would get boring really quick. What im thinking would be something like the curve effect in the old game Pole position, or the old commodore 64 classic pit stop, only top down, instead of that pseudo 3D effect.

    Does anyone have ANY good ideas how to make that effect? Or maybe some example of an effect that does this?

    Any piece of advice would be greatly appreciated at this point since im kind of at a dead end here and cant come up with a solution on my own..

    Anyways, thanks for reading!

  • hello and thank you for replying.

    i actually tried something along the lines of what you described last night. one thing that i couldnt really get to work is that number 3 - the margin of error, i dont quite know how to do that. do you mean it like:

    store the last known position to variables (XY) and then compare it to current position? how does that look as a code with the margin of error?

    second thing that came to mind is still the collision, ive read that the RTS behaviour doesnt like solids,so im kind of confused how exactly would i need to tackle this. would it be best to give each enemy a dummy sprite in container with collision( i would very much like if they collided with each other, instead of overlapping)?. although i feel the collisions wouldnt have to be pixel perfect at all, just some kind of rough implementation would do just fine.

    anyway, thanks for your time!

  • I started to experiment with the ghost shooter demo and RTS object to try and figure out the best way to move my large groups of enemies.

    enemies are really simple,slow and small (only about 32x32 or so), and they need to only know where the player is and how to get to him. So obviously i encountered performance issues, since im using alot of enemies. about over a 100-150 (i really want to try and push the envelope here, so its prob going to increase)on screen at once. first tests tanked my cpu when i put all the enemies constantly trying to find player location. i realize this isnt the proper way of doing it. second, i tried something like trigger once and everything was smooth. but this raised a new problem:

    what if the player moves and changes the position?

    that raised alot of questions again. i started thinking that maybe i could find something really simple, not cpu intensive pathfinding.

    i came up with the idea to make a single dummy object for a large group of enemies, make the dummy handle its way to the player by using RTS object and make the enemies as simple, rough physics objects, constantly adding force to the dummy objects position and when they are close enough and have line of sight to player, add force towards him instead.

    i havent tried this(or any other alternative) yet, and i wanted to ask if anyone else have been struggling with a large number of AI pathfinding or is the RTS object pretty much the way to go? or perhaps someone has even found a great cost effective solution?

    i know physics object is cpu intensive too, but it sounds tempting cause it gives great collision options and reaction to force and such.

    i could really use any kind of guiding on this matter.

    thanks.

  • hi people of construct!

    new forumer here, though i have been using CC for a while now.

    i stumbled upon an issue that i cant really solve by myself.

    i tried to make sort of a post process effects with lighting effects on a layer, that has no scrolling. for example, an object that is on a layer that has 100% scrolling collides(or just overlaps) with object placed on a layer that has no scrolling and something should happen. but it doesnt.

    i know its probably because collisions are based on the layer's positions and not exactly how it shows on screen, is this correct?

    if so, is there any possible workarounds for this seemingly small issue?

    my math skill arent really anything to write home about, so could there be some kind of algorithm or calculation to determine the relative positions of objects placed on different layers with different amount of scrolling settings?

    i tried to make this as simple as i could and i already tried searching for answer but didnt find anything really like this issue, so thats why im here   <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

  • 15 posts