lucid's Forum Posts

  • Don't you think it would be useful to visually represent where the resolution of the window would be in the layout editor?

    yes

  • [quote:7u7r5om6]What I still don't understand is the ability to have these things (katamaris) grow. I'm not entirely sure myself of how it would work conceptually, not just on Construct. I tried adding the size value of the pickup to the size value of the ball when it picks it up but it didn't work out so well.

    make the physics sprite visible, and set the opacity to 20 percent

    make sure it is on top of everything else

    so you can see the physics circle, but you can see the trash and katamari through it

    now watch what happens when it gets bigger

    your bigger sprite probably isn't repositioning itself to be circling around the katamari and the trash, it's just making a big invisible circle around the original katamari.

    you have to figure out the math to make the new size be circling the katamari plus the junk.

    it should stretch to an oval, and set itself to an angle thats the best fit for the trash

    math is power

    and the math section of the system expressions wiki will come in handy

    for this to work, you may have to destroy the original physics sprite and create a new one in it's place in order to align the physics circle with the trash it's supposed to be circling. the physics behavior doesn't allow you to move objects without using the physics itself to do it. you can copy over the velocity and angular velocity to the new object so it will continue to move the way the original one did

    may also use a second invisible sprite to choose which objects should be picked up

    because if you think about it, if you pick up a pencil and it's poking far out from the karamari, causing it to roll differently, you don't want guys sticking to the tip of the pencil. it's a growing circle around the katamari itself, even if the trash is changing the overall shape with one or two odd items, it never loses it's roundness for too long, so the collision mask should grow, but not in the same way the physics object does.

    EDIT: For dropbox, make sure you put the file you want to share in the public folder of dropbox, and then rightclick and copy public link

  • You can already apply behaviors to canvases, what are you talking about?

    I'm not quite sure anymore....

    ...I guess I must've been tired and not realized I was on event sheet editor when I tried. I can't see why else I would've thought you couldn't. Well, at least now my feature request is filled.

  • I didn't watch the video

    but I was a big katamari fan back in the day

    I think the katamari has phyics, and I think it's kindof similar to the oval thing

    or else it would never roll with a big pencil sticking out

    check out the platform school tutorial...I'm not sure which one, but it uses an invisible sprite to control collisions

    it's quite simple though, you can try it for yourself

    I don't have much time at the moment to make a cap, but try this

    right click the ball we have now

    then right click on blank space

    right click - then paste clone

    this makes it paste a whole new object, not just a copy of that object

    now the new sprite

    go into behaviors, and delete the physics behavior

    edit the sprite of the original object

    just color it green or something

    make that sprite invisible

    it's at the bottom of the properties panel

    start invisible

    now make a new event

    system-always

    in this event create an action

    double click the new sprite (that looks like the one we've been using, but has no physics now, remember)

    doubleclick on the action set position to object

    and then choose the green physics object as the object

    create another new action under that one

    again with our new sprite(not the green physics sprite)

    the new action will be set angle

    now play it again

    it should look and play exactly the same as it did before

    if it does that means, you did the invisible sprite thing

  • it all makes sense

    you'd be surprised how nice the wobble would feel

    load up the original katamari thing I posted

    and stretch the katamari a little bit

    so it's an oval and then run a preview

    it has a nice feel to it

    very katamariesque <---that's a real word, look it up

  • apply behaviors to canvases

    you can put something there, and then make it do stuff

  • I think it's awesome as hell

    and I think the story is awesome as hell, too, the way each part of the story introduces the concept of the next levels

    and the puzzles are just plain brilliant

    I thought when I first heard of it, "oh great, everyone thinks yet another time rewind game is original"

    but I was totally blown away by all the creative ways it was used, and some of the crazy stuff you have to do in world 3 with the right left, forward rewind thing is...goodness

    it's just freakin badass,

    and just...

  • I stand corrected:

    http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1013446/raiden2.cap

    edit: although I think maybe a cubic curve instead of a quadratic might look cooler, and crazier

    edit2: fixed cap, so now in start of layout you can choose the number of segments

    also, in the last version I had a -10 pixel offset leftover from cutting and pasting

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  • it's probably possible to make a chain of sprites and some distortion there to smooth it out if necessary without having the distortion change the collision much

    just to fix the connecting edges

    I don't know...I just haven't seen the smooth sprite chain done yet (or if I did, I didn't know it)

    may be misplaced skepticism

  • ok, did the double hinging thing (thanks soldjah boy)

    there are much fewer events and objects now

    http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1013446/katama2.cap

    there's a problem now

    it should be easy to say, if you're stuck, and you collide with them, they get stuck to you

    however, if they're both the same family, it won't be easy to make events

    that say hinge one to two, and two to one, because they'll both be picked and they'll both be the same family

    there's a hacky way out of it, which is to do kindof what we were doing before, which was to replace the physics one, with a nonphysics one

    this time, it would be to replace the physics one, with anotherphysics one

    but from a different pickedup family

    that way we can instruct construct about them separately

    maybe soldjah or someone can come up with a better way than that. I suspect there might be, but it would definitely work, and I'll try to whip it up before my kids get home

    [quote:2u37aa4z]Will construct still think the katamari is 5cm, because the katamari and the object are only hinged together, but not considered the same object? In MMF2, I'd fix this with flags.

    you can use private variables in the katamari to update it's size, by adding together the size of everything that's on it.

    but seriously, I know it's getting annoying by now, but read some of the tutorials and the wiki, you should really have known about private variables at least before you started this project. I'm not discouraging you from doing it, or even doing it now. I'm just saying at least one wiki page or tutorial a day. they don't take long, and you'll feel more comfortable. I don't mind helping, and I'm sure neither does anyone else. but at this point you're not going to learn as much as you would if you had some more of the basics down. and you're having other people develop your game, when it starts turning into a real game with your own graphics, and your own custom features, it's going to get bigger and bigger, and you're not going to want to give up just because you don't understand all the code so far, or because you can't recruit coders. construct is really easy, but different from other languages and dev packages. just make it a point to learn at least one thing a day, and then when you have a question of how to do something, you'll at least know where to look in the wiki for the basic stuff. know what I mean?

    so...your first assignment is: http://apps.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/c ... _Variables

  • davioware

    or maybe a chain of invisible sprites for collision detection?

    I haven't tried the chain of sprites thing yet, does it come out looking smooth?

  • The pink ball is a great idea, but I'm not well versed enough in Construct to even start thinking about how to code something like that... I'm sure someone could do it though. I need a team of people for this game, I'm thinking.

    That was my initial thought, although I couldn't find a way to get the objects stuck to the katmari stick to each other. See, an object that is stuck to the katamari needs to pick up other objects that it touches. But the objects can't stick unless one of them is stuck to the katamari, otherwise you'd have objects stuck together everywhere. So we need something like this...

    If the katamari touches an object...

    If object is smaller than katamari...

    Stick the object to katamari

    Turn on variable "stuck" to object

    If variable "stuck" is on...

    On collision with new object...

    If new object is smaller than katamari...

    Stick new object to object

    Turn on variable "stuck" to new object

    I'm actually working on a lot of art and sound for this game and it's going to have an interesting paper cutout style, or perhaps a retro one. But if anyone is interested in joining the team with me and helping with coding, I'd love it.

    Another important feature is that every object is assigned a size, and that the katamari automatically picks up anything smaller than it. This way you don't have events for EVERY OBJECT that the katamari picks up. Something like this.

    (Object is 5cm, size is a variable. Katamari is 55 cm.)

    If Katamari size is > than object size, pick up object.

    On collision with object smaller than katamari...

    Stick object to katamari

    Add object size variable to katamari size variable.

    So the katamari should now be 60cm.

    However there is a problem with this too (other than the fact that I don't know how to code it.) The katamari needs to only pick up objects that are at least 40% or maybe 50% smaller than it. You don't want a 200cm katamari picking up a 199cm object.

    im in a bit of a rush, so im probably answering in the wrong order, but the last thing you said, to code stuff, just learn to say the problem in construct:make a family-pickupables

    on collision with pickupable, if pickupable.size, is less than katamari.size/2...then do whatever.

    soldjah boy is right, i had done that by mistake, and didnt think of the usefulness at the time..double hinging will stick the object.

    theres a solution to the other thing too, but breaks over

    gotta get back to work

  • wow, that was super helpful, thanks tons!!

    no prob

    okay, a couple things. the example looks pretty good. do you suggest the actual ball should grow as more and more stuff is picked up, or just that the stuff is getting more and more?

    I'd suggest the second one, although you might need to do what they did in katamari, and have smaller versions of each sprite that you load up as it gets bigger to save vram, also maybe something using canvas to paste all your sprites to everytime you get a major zoom , so you're not keeping track of the rotations of hundreds of objects

    you lost me on the invisible stuff but it all sounds very good on paper....

    imagine that you made the exact same red circle, without physics

    and you made a pink circle with physics the exact same size, but set to invisible

    every frame you told the red circle to set it's location and angle to the invisible pink circle

    so far it behaves the same, but when you pick things up, you figure out a math formula that will change the shape of the invisible pink circle so that it circles the redball and the junk, and you'd have to find other formulas and expressions to position the ball on this new pink one, but the idea would be something like this:

    <img src="http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1013446/kata.jpg">

    .... also, how will i be able to have the camera zoom out as the ball gets bigger? would there be an easier way to "simulate" this effect? and how will the ball know to only pick up objects that are bigger than it?

    really, before you tackle this you should go through all the tutorials and the wiki, there are zoom commands here for layers: http://apps.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/construct/index.php?title=Layer_Properties these might affect physics...not sure

    and as for the size of the objects, you say 

    On collision with PickUpableObjects
System-Compare-If PickUpableObject.x*PickUpableObject.y is less than or equal to [the total size of your ball+junk]
then stick things to it[/code:39ux9du4]
gotta go, gonna be late to work
but seriously, I know construct is superfun and easy, but, play around with all the tutorials, and read the wiki, construct has a lot of awesome stuff to make things easier

have fun

  • k

    first, this is a harder project than you think, mainly because I don't think construct physics are stable and refined enough to take center stage on gameplay, you're going to need to be comfortable with construct to make something like this work, let alone playable and fun

    that being said, you asked for some help to get started, I have to get to bed, so I can't go into detail of how it works, but you can examine the cap, and if anyone else is awake they can help you as well

    this is to help you get started, some ideas of how some things might work

    it's a physics ball, with left and right arrow keys to roll, and spacebar to jump

    and when you run over things they stick and roll with your ball

    http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1013446/katama.cap

    some more info:

    I originally tried making them stay real physics objects when you picked them up, using stiff hinges, but they didn't turn with the ball

    you'll have to find a way to fix it so your ball rolls differently when things are stuck to it,

    one idea which will work fairly well considering how easy, is to make the sprite for your ball not have physics on it, and make your ball sprite always update it's position and angle along with an invisible physics ball sprite of the same size. until you pick something up it would look exactly the same as it does in this example

    every time the ball hit's an object, use math to change the shape of the invisible physics ball, so it encircles both the sprite of the ball, and all the things attached to it

    if you're using ellipse physics, it will still be able to roll, but it can have a wobblyness to it, as it get's stretched more in certain directions

    this should be a pretty good starting point

    if you're unclear about the idea of using invisible sprites, a different example is in deadeye's platform school tutorials. I won't post a link, because if you haven't already, you should familiarize yourself with all the help resources

    good luck, and welcome to construct

  • if one picks BoxA (member of BoxFam) and pairs it with CircleA

    one should be able to say

    for each paired BoxFam, pick CircleA

    or

    for each paired BoxFam, pick CircleFam

    or

    for each paired BoxA, pick CircleFam

    etc