Lost my Keys's Forum Posts

  • > For example can the canvas grab everything below it, including other effects.

    >

    Yep, and this is what Davioware meant, for fullscreen effect processing. You want to set it to grab the layout before drawing (it means "grab layout before drawing the canvas"). That means it works like this:

    Layout (everything beneath the canvas) is fully drawn

    Canvas takes a snapshot of that

    Canvas processes an effect (assuming you added one) and draws on top of everything

    End result: you see everything with an effect applied.

    'Grab after drawing' means it takes a snapshot after the canvas has already drawn itself. That's useful for frame feedback effects, such as an effect mixing the previous frame and the current frame (usually the canvas has to be semitransparent for that to work).

    Yep got back a few minutes ago and gave it a try soon as I sat down, worked perfectly! I'm using that bloom effect you posted way back actually, the blur horizontal x2 / vertical x2 + glow. Looks really nice. Plus having it on it's own layer makes adding options to turn the effect on and off, really simple.

    I also noticed the canvas bug where using different size canvases with a pre-drawn texture ends up with it removing entire chunks of it, doesn't happen at all when grabbing the layout. So making a canvas of only 8x8 and stretching it to fill the entire display works great! Doesn't effect the quality at all, but runs much faster and uses barely any extra VRAM!

  • > I tried to play Subject 66 a few days ago and that writes a file to the hard drive and windows said no way. I had to run in administrator mode to get it to play I'm sure it would do the same thing for registry keys.

    >

    Vista and 7 allow the application access to certain parts of the registry and disk. For example, an application can write to temporary files without security privileges, but not your Windows directory.

    If the application steps outside this boundary, Windows hits the user with a UAC prompt. You just have to know what you're allowed to do, and you can avoid it. It's fully documented on MSDN, Microsoft want everyone to know what these limitations are so applications are more secure.

    > Then when they buy a full version off you, compile a customized copy of it just for them

    >

    Try that when you're selling 10,000 copies.

    Hey if I'm selling 10,000 copies of a game I made. I could afford to hire people to do it for me, lol.

  • Just release a cut down version (delete a few layouts from it) as your trial version. No saving anything to the registry or modifying ini files and uncrackable on account of it not containing the rest of the files to begin with.

    Then when they buy a full version off you, compile a customized copy of it just for them, along with their payment/address details displayed within the game intro and no anti-piracy protection (the pirates aren't going to crack something that doesn't need cracking.. no sport), and if Joe Bloggs tries passing around their paid for version to the rest of the public, all their private details are made public.

    It's not perfect, but it's the least amount of messing around. Course the data protection act might have issues with you including their credit card details in it.. Just say you left a briefcase with their details on a train somewhere, always works for politicians.

  • Well, make a .cap in an early version, load it in 0.99.7, and if anything's different, put the .cap on the tracker with the usual details (repro/expected/result).

    Nah it's cool. If you say you haven't touched it then I must have imagined I did it that way and was more than likely using just one layer. If it had been possible and suddenly wasn't, I'm sure lots of others would have mentioned it by now too. So yeah, I'll have got it wrong, sorry :

    > Am I right in thinking that previously adding layer effects worked on empty layers, essentially effecting everything below?

    >

    No, it was never like this. For a full screen post process effect pass, go with a canvas, with grab layout before drawing.

    Had a go trying that, couldn't get it to grab the screen (I think I was using -after- drawing though, so will give it another try when I get back), is there anything special that needs to be done? Are there any limits to it? For example can the canvas grab everything below it, including other effects.

  • BarneyGumble44,

    are you making crush-the-castle remake?

    http://www.kongregate.com/games/ArmorGames/crush-the-castle-players-pack

    Damn you, there went my morning, lol. I just quit playing that after clicking your link! That's a fun game, never seen it before!

  • I haven't touched any of the layer effect code for months myself, so I don't see why this would have suddenly changed. Have you got a before/after .cap that demonstrates an actual difference? Are you sure you're not setting it up wrong?

    Well I have been up all night again, so the latter is quite possible Maybe I was working on a single layer and thought I'd done it on an empty layer above or something, it was a while back now while I was still getting used to the UI. Damn :\</p>

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  • newt,

    I can't open your cap

    Construct 0.99.62 crashes with message "An unknown error occured while accessing an unnamed file".

    Is it known issue? It's strange. How did Lost my Keys open it? : ()

    I'm guessing both me and newt have the latest version. Update (if you want to) and it should work fine.

  • Platform:

    a raised flooring or other horizontal surface, such as, in a hall or meeting place, a stage for use by public speakers, performers, etc.

    a horizontal surface or structure with a horizontal surface raised above the level of the surrounding area.

    a flat, elevated piece of ground.

    Hmmm, perhaps something like a custom movement behavior for this would work.

    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/666516/cmslide.cap

    Thats $%&? AWESOME!!!! I didn't even know that was possible. That's what I'm looking for with the platform controls (because there are still platforms, but also lots of more natural shapes, hills and so on, which this method would be perfect for!).

  • Am I right in thinking that previously adding layer effects worked on empty layers, essentially effecting everything below? Was this changed for the newer releases? I vaguely recall playing around with blur and glow shaders on a layer above all the others to get a nice working bloom effect, but now it doesn't seem to work (possibly changed in the most recent or the previous release).

    I could have sworn it worked before though. If it has been changed, is this intentional or accidental, and can we expect to see it back at some point?

  • > I talked with Ashley about it, so maybe she can do something

    >

    Hehe, whoops

    Maybe he talked to Ashley on the phone and he's got a really squeaky voice? lol

  • It says under lesson four how to do slopes.

    There's a friggin' slope right there in the picture in the first post for crying out loud.

    Edit:

    Use v0.98.9

    Yeah, you did your slopes just like I've been doing them. So I have been doing them right all along, they just wont work until whatever bug broke them is fixed (I can't downgrade, that breaks other things).

    Hmm, I wonder, would taking the platform behavior files out of 98.9 and overwriting the latest version with them work..

    And yes there is a pic of the slope in the forum, but not from the (apparently broken) links on the wiki which is where I went first (and selecting the environment one as that seemed the obvious choice) before coming back to the forum to grab it from the thread instead.

    The important thing is I was getting it right, it does work, it's just bugged right now. But by the time I need it to work, it'll be fixed. Which is a good thing!

  • Hmm ok so it's not me doing it wrong then, sloped platforms aren't working in your tutorial either, you can get part of the way up one then you stop in your tracks (you can go down them easily enough) just can't go up.

  • So you still haven't taken my Platform School tutorial? Sheesh.

    No, really... it covers this . Yeah, it only shows 45 degree angles, but you can alter it easily to include in-between angles.

    Also there have been some other examples around the forum that use different methods (even in the Platform School thread, I believe), you may be able to find something with a search.

    Oh I've checked your tutorials out, I think they were one of the earliest things I looked at once construct was installed, originally learnt quite a bit from them, but as per your warning on the thread, they do tend to break after the basics. Then I found a post by you that said you weren't planning on covering slopes, so didn't think the rest that weren't working would have them. So I did search, just didn't find much pertaining to this problem (found a lot of posts on how to make Sonic rotate, and how to make most characters change angle on slopes) but that wasn't what I'm looking for either.

    I'll give your tutorials another look, they might work in the latest version now, hope so!

  • Done a search but found nothing conclusive.

    The problem, well, slopes and irregular terrain basically. For example, imagine the following image is part of some game (it's not, it's just an example):

    <img src="http://steamgauge.com/misc/construct/Untitled-4.png">

    As you can see, the terrain is uneven and goes up a slope, the player would be expected to be able to follow the terrain as they move along.

    The thing is, how? Now I know of the trick with using invisible platforms for the actual collision, and keeping those as simple bounding boxes while using the actual terrain as nothing but background art, and that works as expected.. for walls and flat platforms.

    So I thought, well just rotate one of them a little, build up sloped invisible platforms like that. Doesn't work though, firstly if using bounding box, it remains a bounding box and doesn't rotate with the object in question, so you've not got an invisible block in the way (not good) regardless of the objects rotation.

    So I tried pixel collision with the invisible collision boxes, but that's a little too accurate and the player would get stuck on individual pixels.

    So how do you handle slopes and irregular terrain then? I did somehow get it partially working, but the player ended up having to take a slope at speed or they'd stop half way up the slope. If they intentionally stopped while on the slope, they couldn't move onward/up the slope, only back down again to the bottom of it, and often even when they could do it once, a second attempt would fail, so I guess it didn't work at all, heh.

    I really want to avoid having to have the player bunny hop up slopes and over hills, or end up just using flat platforms and ladders to reach higher area's.

    What would probably be perfect, would be a custom bounding shape, like the kind found in the physics behavior. The control of per pixel collision, but without the tripping up of errant pixels. But as we don't have that, what other ways can it be done?