Lost my Keys's Forum Posts

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

    She?

  • It's kind of like the erase effect, but it erases based on the alpha values of the image. If a pixel has an alpha value of 0, it will completely erase what's behind it, an alpha value between 0 and 1 will only partially erase, and 1 won't erase at all.

    It doesn't even do that for me. It seems to be doing something in the layout when applied (everything previously transparent in the image becomes black, and fades to transparent for the previously 100% opaque area's), but in the runtime it completely vanishes except for a faint pixel thin outline. If I change the layer to use force own texture, it'll then vanish completely in runtime.

  • OK, that one's fixed in next build.

    Awesome, you rock!!

  • There's the mask effect but I don't really get it yet, so I can't really explain.

    On the other hand, you just gave me an idea for a weird effect

    It's my idea, no stealing!!! haha, just kidding

    I had a look at the mask effect too but didn't get nowhere with it either.

    The projected "fake" shadow works perfectly (and looks great), and using eraser sprites/tiled backgrounds does work to limit where they appear, but only in very few, specific and unrealistic situations, so isn't a viable solution either. What would work would be some way to limit how many layers deep a layer can effect.

  • Please - report bugs to the tracker, and include a clear explanation of the problem, what you expect to happen, what you see happening, and steps to reproduce. I just ran that .cap and it looks like everything is working fine. What's not working?

    The canvas is set at a specific size and looks fine in the cap, but when run, it appears as a small square less than a third of the size it should be, like in the pic. It's already been mentioned in the tracker too as far as I'm aware, a few weeks back when I first mentioned it, someone else said it was a bug and then reported it.

    The example in the cap is an over the top one with it made much larger, to show the difference.

  • Canvas is still broken

    <img src="http://steamgauge.com/misc/construct/example1.jpg">

    Download: .cap

  • Awesome! *downloads*

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  • The Problem

    Ok you've got four layers in your layout, from top to bottom, in the following order.

    A character layer, for the actual player/npc's etc.

    A shadow layer, where sprites of fake shadows are placed.

    A middle layer, lets call that "walkway".

    A background layer which is supposed to be empty or far away, lets call that "stars".

    As the character and NPC sprites moves around, the shadows under them follows correctly and all works great, except the shadows appear where they shouldn't, in this case they appear OVER the stars layer in the background, rather than being clipped at the edge of any artwork in the walkway layer like they should. Resulting in it just looking wrong.

    The Question

    How do you stop the shadow sprites from appearing over the stars layer? You can't use Canvas (and wouldn't work for this anyway), you can't erase the shadows around the edges of the walkway layer by using eraser sprites because the artwork has an intentional irregular edge as well as many small spaces within the artwork from alpha channels (think the spaces between branches of a tree) and therefore you'd be having to use thousands of perfectly shaped sprites to do so, which isn't a viable option (even though it works, it just isn't usable in this case).

    I trust this is possible to fix though. The sprites in the shadow layer must not appear over or effect the stars layer in any way. However sprites in the characters layer may cross unaffected. This only applies to the shadows.

  • well he was asking about using hot spots in effects and why effects always use the center of an object, i was asking why an effect did this when going in a diagonal direction, seemed different enough questions to me, *shrugs*

    but whatever, thanks for the reply.

  • please don't take the effect out of context.

    I posted it for this thread, where I am asking for angles and correct hotspot information within an effect.

    http://www.scirra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5210

    Please continue discussion in that thread.

    yeah this has nothing to do with hotspots tho

    but whatever, i just want to know if its intentional or a bug, i dont care about getting credit for its discovery so lock this thread if you want lol.

  • I didn't notice this until trying Madster's clip disc effect.

    Download here

    Use the arrow keys to move around, note how the effect matches the objects size and shape correctly ONLY when going up/down/left/right, but when going diaganoly it morphs into a square. Surely that's not right?

    I know it's not a huge deal or anything, and unlikely to come up in actual real world usage. But I'm curious if it's a bug or just a limitation of DirectX.

  • lol that's funky. I see what you mean.

    Could it use image points instead?

  • What I meant was that this is basically just a raw engine... it handles rendering, input, collision detection, and not much else. Someone using this would pretty much just be limited by their programming skill... it's not like you couldn't make whatever kind of 2D game you wanted.

    So I guess I don't see how one would be stuck making "basic" or "crippled" things unless they were to cripple their own project with their own basic Javascript skills.

    Don't get me wrong, you have a lot of good points and I agree with you on most of them. But this tool seems jim-dandy for someone with Javascript knowledge who wants to make browser games, and it's not like they're advertising that their engine does anything but... so... yeah.

    Kind of like hating on toasters simply because you don't want to make toast, I guess.

    Well yeah that's true, it's probably fine for someone with enough javascript knowledge or the time/willingness to learn it.

    I couldn't find any examples or people's creations beyond the ones included on the first page though. I would have liked to have seen more of what it could do.

  • > It looks ok for basic stuff, but I wouldn't expect miracles with it, and it's probably crippled with what it can do simply due to the way it works.

    >

    I don't see any reason why you might think that . It looks pretty capable of making whatever kind of 2D game you want. I mean, it's Javascript so yeah... real programming language and all.

    Yeah, never been a fan of the Javascript scripting language (I wont call it a programming language). To do anything more than the basics though you need to understand how to use javascript as it looks like it's integrated with just about every aspect of the application. And if you know enough javascript to make something decent, you may as well just write it from scratch and not be tied to the site at all.

    I see make your own type applications like this, construct etc. as being aimed at the casual user, or the artist, or the guy in the bedroom who just wants to have a bit of fun. To give those with no or very little programming knowledge a chance to express their idea's that they might otherwise not have the chance to. It's not much fun if 90% of that time is spent learning some other scripting language just to do more than bounce on a platform and shoot a bad guy. When it becomes more about the underlying scripting language than creativity, you may as well just learn C++ and start from the beginning, it would be more beneficial to you in the long run.

    It's why I like construct, well one of the reasons. Sure, the event system is basically a scripting language, but the way it's presented and used, is entirely visual and very appealing to a none-programmer. You can jump in and with very little effort, setup a complex working event without having to understand some confusing language or worrying about where to put a curly bracket or a semi colon. If the events were replaced with XML, LUA, Javascript, Python etc. etc. that would be a whole different story.

    An example

    http://www.effectgames.com/effect/#Arti ... sion_Guide

    Not very newcomer friendly to someone with no experience in those kinds of things.

    And before anyone says "But X language is eeeaaasssyy", yeah, course it is. So is working in Machine Code if you've been doing it long enough, but you wouldn't have a clue if you'd just come along and it would take months of solid learning to even understand the basics of it. The biggest userbase for programs like these are casual creatives, not coders. A proper coder could do more, in less time, by simply working from scratch, grabbing the libaries they need and doing it themselves. So when they start including complex scripting for more than the basic stuff, it sort of defeats the point and pushes a lot of people away.

    Scripting languages - A programmer doesn't need them, an artist doesn't want them.

    Besides, you're games on there are only allowed to be 100mb or less, at least that's how much storage space you get, unless you request more (for a fee? I don't know). 100mb doesn't go a long way these days.

    Also being javascript, it looks like all your code is open for anyone to look at, take, change, it's not like PHP where it's compiled server side and only the output is shown to the client, or true programming languages that are compiled.

    You're also relying on the site themselves, and problems they have, become your problems.

    I don't like how their ident appears on your game as it loads either (I'm gonna guess "for a small fee" you can remove that, heh). Construct however doesn't force any of that on you, you can even change the icon and hide the fact you used construct completely, go sell your game and do whatever the hell you want. Because of that, I'm quite willing to say I used construct, but when it's forced on me, I'm looking for a way to remove all signs of it. To me it would be the equivalent of Adobe putting a "Made with Photoshop!" watermark on anything saved in PS. Or ads on sites, if I think your site is worth it, I'll donate, purchase your product or advertise you myself to others. Force ads on me and I'll keep ad-block and no-script on.

    So yeah, that's just my personal opinion, I don't expect others to agree. But if I spend more time wrestling with a program rather than doing something productive with it, it's not for me.

    This was originally just going to be a simple "yeah not a fan of javascript" reply, but I guess I felt the need to explain a little more, ya'll can wake up now

  • As soon as you hit save in the picture editor, the image is converted to PNG and stored inside the .cap. They're also exported to the runtime as PNG. So what you use before importing it doesn't matter, although I'd recommend something lossless obviously.

    Awesome, that's good to know! Thanks!