lamar's Forum Posts

  • Are you cropping your sprite images in the editor?

    It looks like what happens when I forget to crop an image and it will leave odd spaces around sprites if you do that.

  • I assume you are using physics for your tilting platforms so set the pot physics to allow rotations and it should tip when you tilt the platform.

  • Hi Burvey- they appear to all scale to the same width of about 640 pix wide.

    Best suggestion is make your banner that width to eliminate any blurryness.

  • Hello everyone,

    I am LaMar a retired professional educator struggling with some health issues and I restarted designing games as a way to take my mind off my health issues and as an outlet to teach and enjoy the creation process of designing games.

    I am old- so old I started writing games on the Vic 20:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_VIC-20

    The Vic 20 had 5KB of ram and all coding was done in BASIC. Believe it or not you can write games in that small of ram which today would not even be enough for one good sprite. We used dots and dashes to make characters but mostly text based games.

    That got me hooked on game design and I graduated to the Commodore 32 and 64 and I thought that was heaven having 64 KB of ram. I designed one of the first typing tutors that included a speed game on the 64.

    When I became a teacher in treatment centers I designed a lot of educational games for my students and as the tech improved I took classes in any computer language that came available. Fortran, Cobol, etc. but none of them were good for designing games which was my primary interest.

    I started looking at the game designer programs a few years back and I liked the simplicity and power of using ready made scripts instead of designing scripts from scratch and I produced several games using GameMaker and 001 engines and Unity.

    They still took more time and dealing with sprites and game functions was a hassle and I was still looking when I found Construct2.

    What I like about C2 is they are constantly striving to improve it and take feedback from game designers seriously and there are many designers creating their own addons and effects to share. The Arcade is a good place for feedback and the tutorials and forum are great help.

    So here I am retired with lots of time on my hands and I decided to try game design again and I have created over a 100 games most of which were never finished but I have about 20 finished under my belt and I am getting better and faster at creating games now that I have some experience I think.

    I am not pursuing a career as a game designer as money is not the driving force for me and I am more interested in creating sandbox games that non-programmers can use to create their own games and that will encourage them to expand their skills and maybe become a game designer or pursue a creative field.

    My current projects are a Pinball Sandbox editor that allows the user to design their own pinball games and a Platform Sandbox editor that allows the user to create platform games with all the traps and tricks.

    When these are finished (time permitting) I will make them available free as a demo version and have the open source available for more advanced users that will carry on where I left off.

    I also use my games to educate and encourage my kids to enjoy gaming but also to understand how games work and how to create their own games.

    Anyway, that is my background and story and just enjoying the creativity of game design and sharing ideas with other creative people.

  • Set bullet to bounce but you need a boundary to bounce off of. Create a colored or clear box sprite and make a border out of those and set them to solid. The bullet will bounce off those and you can set them just off screen.

  • I use videopad video editor and handbrake for converting videos.

    http://www.nchsoftware.com/videopad/

    https://handbrake.fr/

    If you want to turn a video into an animated gif I use easygif.com

    http://ezgif.com/

    Lots of fun and good way to advertise your games. You can see my gif in my signature.

  • There isn't an easy way but it is possible. You will need to copy all your sprites and sound files in to your main game from the other games and then open each game into one main game and copy the event sheet and layout to a new named event sheet and layout and then erase the original event sheet and layout.

    If you have sprites or sound files with the same names in games but are different you will need to change the names before transferring them.

    It is something C2 needs to add to import an event sheet and layout but it is not possible any other way at present that I am aware of.

  • Hey nice job on reproducing Galaga one of my favorite games!

    I thought about trying that but could not figure out the waves so now I know there is a wave creator to help thanks!

  • This is an early Beta demo of my Spelunker Platform Game Builder.

    https://www.scirra.com/arcade/tutorial-games/spelunker-platform-game-builder-15283

    You can use this to create platform games using the ready made components, enemies, collectibles and switches. This is designed for people that want to create their own platform games using ready made components and I will be adding many more components so bookmark and follow the progress.

    Cursor automatically snaps to grid so you can build perfect platforms and edit, change and delete objects in edit mode or use play mode to zoom in for editing.

    This sandbox builder allows you to add weather effects of snow and rain and night time and day time lighting effects. Choose different background scenes and music and you have two players to choose from and over 200 ready made components.

    Enemies can be set using left and right direction sprites for custom movement. More enemy sprites will be added but you have 5 zombies, 2 insects, bats, plants and other non living enemies you can use for now.

    View it in full screen for best effect.

    Play the demo game by clicking PLAY on far right menu.

    Player Controls:

    Arrow keys move, jump and slide player.

    CREATE:

    Click E key to open editor.

    Left click on any object in sand box and Right click to place it on game screen.

    Click on Erase or D key in menu and click on any object on game screen to erase it.

    SPACE BAR resets cursor to normal in Edit mode.

    M key selects background music

    C key hides cursor while playing.

    Click on PLAY to work on your project in zoom mode.

    Delete the objects in the demo game or use them to start your game.

    NEW resets the entire game to beginning of Demo game.

    SAVE or S Key in menu to save your game for later play. Only one game slot for now.

    LOAD or L Key in menu to load your game.

    Click RESET to reset player to start of game and reset health and score.

    NOTE: Use SAVE often as you edit. When you open the PLAY screen click S key to Save.

    NOTE: You must have a player on the game screen to play. If you delete the player from game screen it will not have anything to focus on. Click E key and click on the player and position the player where you want them to start the game.

    NOTE: Once you SAVE your game it will be there the next time you play the game in the arcade. Just click LOAD and it will open. If you want to start with a fresh score and health click on RESET before clicking SAVE.

    That way you can share your platform games with your friends as long as they use your computer and browser and you can come back and edit it any time.

    NOTE: When you click SAVE or S Key wait a few seconds before you start playing or it will start your game at a later point in time. I will add a delay in a future update to fix that.

    Take a screen capture or make an animated gif of your creations and share them in the comments!

  • OK just excited that I finally have a game that is attracting some attention and made it to the top games list on Scirra arcade.

    Now before anybody rains on my parade you should know I have worked really hard to finally get a game that people like and will come back and play over and over and many of my games have been duds so take this as my way of encouragement and saying to keep trying and don't give up just because some of your games bomb. Rework them or learn from them and the feedback you get and put that to use in your next game.

    I learn something from every game I make and new ways of doing things and new effects and I collect sprites and sound effects in my library and skills for my next project from every game. I have over 20 games published on Scirra but probably well over a 100 games that I never finished for one reason or another.

    So here is my Pinball Sandbox with new Simpson's playfield and I am proud of this game so far and will continue to make it better and I hope people appreciate the hard work and time that goes in to our games.

    https://www.scirra.com/arcade/tutorial-games/pinball-sandbox-demo-13984

    Check it out and play the different playfields and let me know what you think please!

  • lamar

    love the simpsons board.

    i think i may be experiencing repeated ball pass throughs on the flippers because i am a chrome tab whore. does having a lot of tabs open negatively affect the physics performance?

    cannot wait for the flat table editor.

    i can see younger kids and older ones having a 'ball' with this.

    Thanks Harrio- Yes having tabs open that refresh takes the computer off task and will cause more ball misses. It is not a problem in the stand alone version. I realized that because I also have many tabs open that are refreshing all the time.

    That is why PS and Xbox were developed as dedicated game machines with quad processors so they don't get distracted with other computer tasks and miss a collision or event and they are only focused on the game.

    I have the flat screen editor done and just designing components but as usual I got distracted and started another project. It is a platformer editor called Spelunker that lets the user design their own platform game with wall, floors, traps, switches and collectables and move from one area to the next.

    The user will be able to save and share their platformer design and edit it any time. The characters can slide, climb jump, fight and interact with other characters and you will select the character you want to play as. There will be enemies and bosses and lots of tricks.

    Anyway, I have that going on today but I will get the pinball editor up and running this weekend.

    Have a great weekend!

    ADDED: The first few pinball layouts I have designed are for younger players that just want to hit the ball around and make things light up and hit targets. As I progress I will design some games with a mission to accomplish and more serious play action requiring more aim and shoot.

  • I get burned out doing any game for too long so I jump back and forth from game to game and one game gives me ideas for another. I think that is typical gamer ADD lol!

    Looks good so far.

  • Great job man. It looks like you've solved most of the bugs. I really enjoy playing the Simpsons version, probably because it has so many bells and whistles. The ball control is very good now as well.

    Thanks Burvey- yes I tweaked the controls and added just a tiny bit of friction to the ball so you can grab it with the flippers and aim it better. Seems to have helped.

    I just threw the Simpson's game together to show how decals and more sounds and action make it a better game. I will include a mission to accomplish like light up all the family members for a million bonus and I have more animated gifs to add to the action and a better layout.

    I also have a flat screen pinball editor almost done for mobile and it is much quicker to design layouts with that. I will try to get it uploaded by this evening so people can check it out.

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  • Let people know when you have done a major update like new levels to your games in the forum. I have my Pinball Sandbox in the top games and it bounces around a little but I use my own website and social networks to promote it and I use the forum to announce any major updates like the new Simpson's theme pinball layout I just added.

    Don't be afraid to ask your friends to play and leave a rating. If a game doesn't get high ratings at first it usually ends up buried never to be noticed again. Once it has some good ratings more people will play and rate it.

    See how that works

  • Looking good! Will it be an escape game or other puzzle?

    I have done a few escape games but my graphics were not so good lol!