Megabeard's Forum Posts

  • I have a question regarding the feature where you can make a collision mask in the animation tab and then copy it to each frame...

    Is it an obsolete method? Initially it worked great for me, but in revamping the sprites for my main character, their size changed, and I therefore wanted to change the size and position of the collision mask to make the collisions as precise as possible. But when I created the new mask and copied it to each frame, Construct became very buggy. At first the player just keeps falling through the floor; the sprite literally has no collision now unless I change it to bounding box or anything aside from per pixel. I tried everything from making every hotspot the same (Which I do anyway) to making sure everything was the same exact size, but the problem remains. Even more curiously is that Construct will just close without asking if I want to save after this if I close the program.

    I read up on other threads in the past where people were having similar problems, and it was never solved from what I could tell. People just acknowledged it as an annoying bug. I then read that this method was outdated.

    So my question is: Is there a better way to be doing this? It just seems like too much hassle, and I'm sure many people have found better ways...

  • Good game trailers, in my opinion, are a dead art. These days, Developers/publishers opt to show flashy cutscenes from their game over the actual gameplay, which is 100x more important. An example is Dead Island's trailer. It had everyone in a frenzy, and people thought it would be an incredible game based on the trailer, which was basically all one big cutscene. In the end though? The impression I got from everyone who hyped it up was that the trailer kind of mislead them. The game wasn't bad, but not nearly what they thought it would be either.

    What I take from that is that you should be more up-front with your target audience (Whoever that may be) and show more gameplay than cutscenes. There's nothing wrong with sticking story elements and cutscenes in here and there, but gameplay should be the most important thing.

    And going back to your target audience, you need to show them in this trailer your biggest selling point (Which of course would have to be in gameplay); that thing which will separate it from every other game in the genre. If you were making a platformer for example, you'd want to show them why this game isn't another Mario game with slight differences.

    Also, if you're looking for something to record with, I recommend FRAPS, but not the free version. The free version always creates bloated video sizes and can only record for 30 seconds at a time. The paid version (Which is pretty cheap from what I remember) doesn't have those problems.

  • That lizard brain speech was really well-done, though I think my reasons for leaning towards a rebuild are different. To be more specific, this game was a class project that I had help with from a friend. Now that classes are over, I'd like to change some concepts of the game and have all my own original work in it, in addition to the better programming I'd like to implement.

    But it seems the majority feel like a complete rebuild is a bad idea. I suppose I could just edit event sheets. Don't want my lizard brain thinking for me. <img src="smileys/smiley36.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

    On that note, here's the game if anyone feels like playing:

    dl.dropbox.com/u/42313097/Boss%20Man_Final_Corrected.exe

    Though this is the final version for classes, it still has its fair share of glitches and bugs, but it's perfectly playable. I figure maybe I can get some kind of critique before I start working on the new version of the game.

  • Hey guys, just wanted to know what your opinion was on rebuilding a game. eg. Is it worth it to start all over (Programming-wise) on a game you've already worked on for a few months? Or do you feel it's better to go back and manually edit your programming? Have you ever done so before?

    I'm leaning towards rebuilding a game I was working on recently, since I've now learned all kinds of new things over the months, and I get the feeling that going back and manually changing the event sheets would actually take up more time.

  • Forgot to respond... everything's fixed up now. No more crashes and I found a work-around. Thanks for the help Arima!

  • Okay, I can't even open a layout anymore without it crashing and I didn't even change much of anything... I think there's something seriously wrong with it. :(

    Edit: Upon saving and opening it up again, I'm able to load layouts thankfully.

    Same old problem remains, though. Guess I'll have to take your advice and start deleting chunks of code Arima.

    Edit 2: Not to clog up the thread with my little updates, but I seem to have fixed the NPC problem, at least. For whatever reason, it seems to have been the fact that I used the V key to continuously advance conversations. Now I can talk to NPCs and go to a new layout without it crashing. I'll have to do a full playthrough of the game and see if that fixed everything... <img src="smileys/smiley12.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

    Edit 3: Well never mind once again. It still crashes, it just decided to work a couple of times before. It's like the game is trolling me. <img src="smileys/smiley36.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

    Edit 4: <img src="smileys/smiley11.gif" border="0" align="middle" /> Well if this isn't the problem, I don't know what is...

    Following your advice to delete chunks of the events Arima, I deleted a group in the layout that would crash after talking to NPCs. I then deleted small parts of that group. It started working when I deleted this:

    <img src="http://i45.tinypic.com/mtmq8w.png" border="0" />

    Mind you, this is only an issue after talking to NPCs in level 1... very puzzling to say the least, because I don't think RTS behavior has anything to do with timeline objects...

  • Edit: Never mind

  • As far as I know, copying and pasting between layouts is fine, between .caps is not.

    That's what I figured, and it would seem it wasn't the issue after all.

    <img src="http://i48.tinypic.com/2jcsw0g.png" border="0" />

    That's what I used to show my time. It's not layout specific though; it should apply to all of them. Is there something in here that could cause a crash? Whenever I toggle the set text above, the layout works... I just don't understand why text has such a powerful effect on the layout. <img src="smileys/smiley18.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

  • Are crashes caused by copy & Pasting from different layouts? I think I've read about that happening but it was a while ago. Seems like whenever I have certain text that I copy/pasted from the first layout, it crashes the level. If I take that text out (Which is needed), it seems to work just fine.

    Edit: Nope, never mind, it doesn't work just fine. <img src="smileys/smiley36.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

    How frustrating.

    Edit 2:

    Okay, so I think I figured out the problem... it's my text for showing time. It works perfectly for my first layout, but for the second, it refuses to work. When I get rid of it, it works. When I try to replace it with different text, however, it doesn't. This is all so very confusing to me. <img src="smileys/smiley5.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

  • I'm seeing some bugs in my game lately, but from old threads I've read, it seems to be nothing new.

    Whenever I switch from my first level to the second level, I have to be careful not to move right away, or the game crashes. If I stay still for a second or two, it works fine, but otherwise, it crashes if I try to move straight away.

    Also, in what appears to be a separate bug, whenever I talk to characters in my first level, then go to the second level, it crashes no matter what I do. I had originally thought it had something to do with my timeline event sheet, but even when I delete that include from the second level, nothing changes. It crashes every time.

    I have no "OR" events or transitions, which I've heard cause the bug, so would anyone know why this is happening?

  • > ... though I'm still confused about how to get that extra zero in there, I should be able to figure it out somehow. There are various ways to make it.

    For example, just combine two strings and use the expression Right()

    If 'seconds' is a global number variable and 'strSeconds' a global text variable, then

    +some trigger

    -> System: Set 'strSeconds' to Right("00" & 'seconds', 2)

    would first create a string like "001" and then take only the rightmost two letters -> "01"

    Even easier is using ZeroPad():

    +some trigger

    -> System: Set 'strSeconds' to ZeroPad(global('seconds'), 2)

    It worked! <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

    Thanks for all the help tulamide. My score system can now fully function thanks to you!

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  • No problem! <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

    Also, just curious, but are you setting the angle of your character to something like "Slope.angle"? (Or whatever you've named the slopes?)

    I think the minor problem of your main character standing as if they weren't on a slope towards the end has to do with the collision box overhanging from the slope. That would mean that the programming is telling it to both stand at a normal angle and the sloped angle at the same time, since it technically fulfills the condition that allows the angle to be set to those things.

    I'm having the same problem myself actually, so unfortunatley I can't help out here. I'm sure someone else has the answer though.

  • I know it can be hard to find especially older caps on this forum. So I had a look at my online database. Here is the analog clock:

    http://www.mediafire.com/file/mkdnhwwzzym/watch.cap

    Don't try to move the window, that functionality is broken, due to changes to the window object. The clock itself works.

    Thanks again!

    ... though I'm still confused about how to get that extra zero in there, I should be able to figure it out somehow.

  • I'm not sure how much I can help here, but I'll try anyway. <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

    On the topic of falling through the platforms, the first thing that comes to mind is what kind of collision detection you're using. Are you doing per-pixel for the main character? Do you have a collision box for all animation frames?

    Also, it looks like you have a bunch of different platforms combining to make one slope. I've experienced problems in the past when two slopes were conjoined with each other. Maybe a solution would be to make one slope and rotate it to an angle you like?

  • So if I understand you correctly, you don't want collisions to reach the original circle (Without glow effect)?

    What method did you use for making the collision mask? If you haven't tried it already, I would suggest making it in the animator tab. Make an animation called "Collision mask", then make a slightly larger circle than the original (By a few pixels or so), add it to the first frame of the collision mask animation. After you've successfully added that, right click the frame and choose "Copy collision mask to each frame".

    Just as a fair warning, this will make every frame of animation you may have for the circle the collision mask, so save before just in case.

    After you've applied that, it should work the way you want it to. Though if you already tried that, I've got nothing else. <img src="smileys/smiley36.gif" border="0" align="middle" />