Mr Wolf's Forum Posts

  • DB Pro $69.99

    Free Unity is Stripped down

    Unity Pro $1200.00 ($1500 soon)

    In the end it is the programmer not the engine. a beginner with a super engine will never compete with super star using any engine.

    Final note: Better be up on your 3d modeling before you even think about any 3d system.

    Unity Pro is for companies making over $100,000 a year. The Indie (regular) version of Unity3D is free. And why should anyone limit himself with a terrible and slow engine? It'll just waste his time when he could be learning with a better engine. The skills someone learns with Unity3D will be extremely useful for other programming too. DB isn't even Object Oriented Programming...

    Also, "stripped down" meaning? You lose a few features; features that DB could never dream of doing to begin with. Still, the engine is left hundreds of times more powerful than DB and can create damn good games.

  • Currently, Drop Down Through Platform does not have an action. I tried using the Allow to Drop Down action and it SEEMED to work (though the wiki says it shouldn't do this) but it was totally buggy and weird afterwards. Can't really do enemies with the platform behavior without this working.

  • > Actually, DarkBasic is not a good program and I would not suggest using it. It is not even a comparable program/engine to something like Unity3D. It puts out bad code for one thing and your coding/scripting language learned in DarkBasic will NOT transfer over into other things. If you're going to put the work into a 3D game, you might as well make sure your learning isn't exclusive to that program. That way if you ever want to graduate to something else, you already know a language.

    >

    Languages do not put out bad code, bad programmers do. LOL

    But actually Dark Basic can teach you the basics, loops, variables, really all the basics to get out a 3d game. Great way to lean cheep.

    Depends on how it compiles/interprets it now doesn't it? In any case, it's slow, buggy and super limited. Also, this depends on which version of DB you're talking about. There's DB Pro too.

    Besides, loops, variables, etc., can be learned anywhere. A simple JavaScript lesson can teach someone about loops and variables in 15 minutes. (I just read one the other day.) Also, Unity3D is completely FREE. Also, learning JavaScript or C# is going to be more useful than learning Basic when you go to graduate to a better engine.

    I could go on and on about why it's best to stay away from DB, but I won't. My advice is to not use it.

    /warning

  • I think it would be amazing to have a Platformer Pathfinding Plugin. It could give the AI a few abilities such as Climb (climbable objects like ladders or walls, if it can climb them), Jump (for getting around in most cases), and anything extra could be marked as a Special A-B Point where it acts like a path, but when the AI gets to A, it performs the special way of getting to B (e.g. swing across a ledge via a vince), then continues on it's regular pathfinding.

    Whatever can be done with this kind of plugin would be super helpful. The more options the better.

  • Actually, DarkBasic is not a good program and I would not suggest using it. It is not even a comparable program/engine to something like Unity3D. It puts out bad code for one thing and your coding/scripting language learned in DarkBasic will NOT transfer over into other things. If you're going to put the work into a 3D game, you might as well make sure your learning isn't exclusive to that program. That way if you ever want to graduate to something else, you already know a language.

  • Actually, JavaScript is hardly more difficult than doing events in Construct. Event Sheets are just another way to show scripting. Using Construct isn't THAT much easier for a lot of things, just PERCEIVED to be easier and is therefore less daunting and more people get into it. It reminds me of a quote about Algebra, "Algebra is not difficult, just different." When I started to learn basic JavaScript, I was honestly thinking "This is almost exactly the same as events, just in text..."

    Any extra difficult will really come from 1) Doing more complex games since you have so many more possibilities readily accessible. 2) 3D games being a bit more complex in general.

    So if you want a 3D game and have the drive to put in the effort, you'll have a great time with Unity3D.

    Also, Unity3D uses a lot of commands the same way Construct does. There's easy premade equivalent commands for a lot of things to interact with the program. Think "On start of layout" or "Mouse is over here" type stuff that you write in text instead of selecting from a list. Unity3D makes 3D games a lot easier. It's also documented really well. That's why I don't think C2 should ever try to be a full 3D (note the "full" part) engine. Unity3D already does that well enough.

    So, it is by no means easy, but it isn't as hard as it looks.

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  • There ARE ways 3D could be simplified. Unity3D, for example, simplifies quite a bit of it. You still have to script things (which isn't as hard as you might think...trust me), but it handles collision and a host of things that a 3D engine should. 3D in C2 could also be a much more streamlined version of 3D and therefore, even easier.

    Overall, though, if you want to make a 3D project, you might want to just use Unity3D. Even Construct 2 will be a primarily 2D engine and who knows what sort of issues or hurdles there will be with making a 3D game? Using something that is designed for the job seems like a safer bet.

  • 6fix - I must have misunderstood you then. I thought you meant that as though C2 is supposed to not be meant as mainly a 2D program. Sorry about that. At least what I said hopefully shows the technical difficulties for those who still want C1 to have more 3D support.

  • 6Fix.

    Construct 2 is going to be for 2D too. Your reason isn't really a good reason because the same reasoning applies to C2 as well. The main issue is that C1 wasn't made well enough to support the addition of 3D. It keeps breaking as the devs change things between versions. Supposedly C2 will have all these things done right.

  • Arima, you aren't quite understanding which textures would be put in VRAM. Let's say you have a huge game level or world. All your character animations and everything around you is in VRAM. As you walk through the world, everything X distance around you gets put into VRAM and stuff beyond that is dumped. I'm talking about that sort of thing. A lot of 3D games use all sorts of ways to manage their resources. They are big companies and have tons of people to work on this stuff, so I don't think it'll happen in Construct, but it'd still be nice to have some of this. I'm just going to work with what Construct has since it probably won't change.

    I only mentioned the definition of "streaming" because I saw it the other day being used for what looked like on-demand loading of character models, though I may have been mistaken. It doesn't really matter.

    manontherun - Their engines were made to do those things. The Construct engine is a generic and straightforward engine. It wasn't made to handle those kinds of things. Diablo II for example, doesn't use full color PNGs I hear. They optimize their engines for what they need.

  • 3D boxes are still broken though from another bug. At least in 0.99.82+ and the previous versions have other problems I think.

  • Construct can't do texture streaming and it has to spawn the objects, it can't just keep the objects "there" without textures. With spawning objects, it is entirely cumbersome and not at all dynamic. I'm not entirely sure about all the different definitions of "streaming" and although I could discuss the wording of it, I'd rather not take the time. There's two different things here: 1) The type of loading when you change outfits in a game. Somtimes there's a tiny pause of the character model though not of the game itself, as it changes the model. 2) Only keeping textures of things in the immediate area of the object in VRAM. I would presume they still exist, just without their normal textures. I'm not sure how much of this sort of the loading is normally scripted and how much is dynamic.

    Really, Construct is limited with these kinds of things. I do not know all the details of implementing this for Construct, but I'd like to see something being worked on. Resource management is a must in 2D games as they are more VRAM hampered than 3D games. I'd really like to see loading that doesn't pause the game for one thing.

    Edit: What do you mean "unload them when leaving a layout"?

  • Loading an image at runtime still uses VRAM. In terms of VRAM usage, it's no different than having it stored as an animation frame. Construct loads it once to VRAM the same way all other textures are loaded to VRAM.

    The only benefits of loading images at runtime instead of having them as part of the cap is it makes it quicker to preview and save, and if you want to update your game and save bandwidth/download time, the players don't have to re-download all the images they already have.

    I know that, I was referring to a sort of "on-demand putting into VRAM." From the other topic which is kind of related to this issue, I've found out that everything is stored in RAM until it's loaded into VRAM when you load the layout. I'd like to be able to decide what gets loaded into/unloaded from VRAM better. My post was a little unclear, sorry.

    manontherun - That's sounds like Asset Streaming. 3D games really use it. It loads on-demand what it needs. That's why there can be a little delay before your character model changes.

    Unfortunately, Construct is very limited with how it can use resources and a lot of features that 3D game engines use (and can really be in 2D games too!), aren't in Construct. Construct was originally made to just run everything from a single .exe. It is not a good practice and a lot of people don't like it, so the whole encryption thing is a hot topic.

  • I seem to recall that texture streaming isn't possible with DirectX - might it be possible with OpenGL for C2?

    Isn't possible? 3D games (using DirectX of course) can stream textures. It's a VERY useful thing. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 uses it. Also, it may be 3D, but it's still using DirectX and 3D doesn't mean it can't be used in 2D.

  • Okay, good to know how Construct actually works. I kind of wondered about the transfer time for that stuff. This kind of thing would work for, say, checkpoints in the save level though wouldn't it? Some games load stuff around you as you move through them and compress everything else. That probably couldn't be added to C1, but an interesting idea anyway.