Mr Wolf's Forum Posts

  • Action/Adventure/Platformer here.

    hell... anything that is ???/Platformer I try to do.

    Even RPG?

  • > What graphics card and CPU do you have?

    >

    >

    This game which I made uses 4000 star objects in one room: http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/arca ... pace/1733/

    If it runs smoothly for you, your computer is fast enough.

    My computer is above mid-range, but it can run the game hundreds of frames per second.

    Yes, I can easily run that, but that doesn't necessarily mean throwing thousands of sprites on the screen to make an effect is always a good idea. Especially things more complex than expanding circles while there's all sorts of other game stuff going on at the same time. Also, when you use that technique, you can't really use shaders because it can slow things down a lot. I also need things to be semi-transparent. So, um, the lesson is that it depends HOW you are using the objects too, not just that you can have X number in X scenario. What I'm doing is much fancier and therefore tougher to do without slowdown.

    Anyway, I have something working now without tons of sprites. Thanks for the help guys. Nice picture Krush. What I'm doing requires a LOT more drops on the screen as a one time splash and then all of them fade pretty quickly, but your method looks perfect for when I need not as many but hitting the screen continuously. I'll probably use that in another effect I want.

  • When testing a game fullscreen, it would be incredibly useful to be able to retrieve the framerate as an expression to put in a small text object in the corner. I hear you can do this with events, but it would be easier as an expression.

  • Oh, sorry. I looked at the .cap but must've understood how it worked. Thanks, Tulamide.

  • What graphics card and CPU do you have?

    Edit: Sorry, Krush's post wasn't there at first. I mean True.

  • Lots of sprites = slow. I went with a particles thing.

  • Okay, imagine this:

    Tiledbackground, O is particle or sprite

    =================================

    |

    | O

    | O O

    |

    |=================================|

    So there's an object covering the screen which is completely hidden EXCEPT in areas that are covered by the particles (or overlapped, whatever). So the tiledbackground image is effectively a background behind each particle because it only shows in spots where the particles (or sprites) are, but still covers a much larger area even though you can't see it.

  • I'm trying to make a cool effect where water can be splashed onto the screen and look like it is evaporating or sliding down the glass (the glass of your screen like you are looking through a camera). You could also make it red to look like blood. I've tried a whole bunch of things with effects but they seem to slow things down and don't even look quite right. I'm not ever sure how to go about figuring out how to make it and I'm a novice to this sort of fancy stuff. If anyone wants to try to come up with a method or just give me some direction, I'd appreciate it. I know quazi did something similar with his Whine engine blood splatter if that helps.

  • I'm having trouble with a special effect with particles and shaders. When you apply something like Distort to a Particles Object then put on something like Tint Plus or Flame or anything like that, instead of having particles that have kind of a colored distortion to them, it does the distort then it draws a large box of the next effect (Tint Plus, Flame, etc.) that always expands/moves to cover all the particles. It covers all the space around them too in this big colored box. This is a big problem for me. I want particles that can use a distort-like effect and color the effect (rather than a clear distort, magnify, etc.).

    I was wondering if there's a way to have a large colored sprite (or tiled background) or something behind the particles that will only be shown in the spots where the particles are. I'm not sure how to do this or if it would look right, but I really don't want a lack of color to ruin my special effect. Does anyone know how to make this whole thing work?

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  • I agree with both of you mostly. Actually, with the plants, I didn't mean animation as much as just using plugins and effects.

    Once a month sounds good. Originally I was thinking that someone could take most of the week to make something so they wouldn't have to cram in a lot of work all at once, but once a month still might be better. I'm sure most people are busy with their own projects too.

    As for using ripped sprites, I'm not exactly in favor of that because no one can legally use ripped sprites even for non-commerical stuff.

  • I was thinking it would be cool for there to be a weekly themed competition. It would be fun for the community and we would get to show off some of Construct's cool features and abilities. These could be either small games or just tech demos. Examples of themes could be:

    Weather (Rain, Snow, whatever)

    Plants Are Alive (Moving plants)

    Boss Fight (The most creative and fun boss fight)

    In The Dark (Lighting)

    Fish In The Sea (Underwater game)

    I just thought I'd put this on the table in case anyone wants to do this at some point. You could modify how it would work, but I think having something every one or two weeks would be good.

  • It would be nice to have some menus to change weapons and armor and stuff. Also, in the final version (or around the time you put in main menu, options menu, etc.), I'd recommend letting people change the control scheme. I, for example, like jump to be Z, X attack, and C for platforms, but someone else might like a different set of keys. You wouldn't want something as simple as controls to get in the way of people enjoying your game.

  • I also think that would work but my only problem is, I don't want the empty space, because when you have a transparent space in a sprite it makes selecting objects with the mouse in the layout editor difficult. Its difficult because when you click on a sprite in the layout editor construct does't make distinctions between the visible part of the sprite and the transparent part of the sprite. For example if you have a 300 x 300 sprite that has a small 10 x 10 rectange in the middle and you click on the transparent part of the sprite construct will select the whole object which could cause issues with designing levels. I still think it would be more conveient if sprites and their collision masks have their own individual hotspots.

    The transparent part would only appear in the animation frames. It would look like a normal 32x32 box the rest of the time, including in the layout window.

    Edit: Well, it is only the animation frames that are larger than 32x32. For each frame, you just add the appropiate amount of empty space (in the image frame itself in the image editor) below the sprite (32 pixels by the end of the animation). As long as you keep the hotspot 16 pixels from the bottom (remember it is getting longer), it will work perfectly.

  • use a finite state machine instead of enabling-disabling groups.

    There's a plugin for it now.

    I was at first thinking of something like Mipey mentioned, but I'll definately look into the state machine thing.

  • My two cents:

    One thing I do miss about Game Maker over construct, among other minor things, is that you can explicitly control how to handle drawing events for objects: where as you can draw another object, or clones of the object, or nothing at all...

    My two most missed applications of the above feature are one:

    -Pasting a grass sprite (for example) and it draws randomly sized and colored copies around itself. You can quickly make entire fields of grass this way, or apply the same technique to make an epic explosion look soo much cooler...

    Idk, the main thing I liked about GM was how tight it was with GML. It just worked. (And the syntax was close to C based languages, the learning curve is next to nothing)

    First of all, I'm sure you can do something like that with the grass in Construct.

    Second, GML can be a very confusing language to read and work with. Also, GM does not compile code for the computer. Its .exes contain a an interpreter and the actual sheet of GML code. It has to translate everything for the computer constantly. This makes it much slower than compiled languages like C++.

    Just thought those were worth stating.