Nhdeitmers's Forum Posts

  • Thanks! I'm not sure that example can help my case.

    I know I can set a variable to any rgb value by code. Dealing with r,g,b individually makes matters more complicated. I mean, I could create instance variables for all components, but that would also mean copy/pasting them individually every time I change them.

    The beauty of instance variables is that I can create different instances with individual properties by copy/pasting them in the editor, which is basically the only place where I can see my game elements and tweak them in context. For color that's more important than anything.

    So since I'll need to do that step anyways, (setting the font color to see how it looks on a particular instance), it would be great to be able to just copy it from the color slot to a variable slot of the already selected instance, instead of going to the event sheet, finding the variable there and pasting the value so the game can set the variable for me.

    If comparing font color by code would work, things would be even simpler. I could just have dedicated objects for my color presets, tweak the color of those and be done with it, because at runtime the game would just reference the template objects. That's what the whole idea of templates is all about, and it works great for sprites, but not for text.

    By the way I'm not trying to do rocket sience here. ;)

    I have one type of button with different colors based on context. Active, inactive, right answer, wrong answer. All I'm looking for is a convenient way to setup a template for each of those colors that I can edit intuitively.

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  • Hello everyone!

    when I joined the forum I didn't really say hello or introduce myself. I'm also not sure if this channel is still being read, but why not share a bit of information about myself for those who might be interested... :)

    My name is Nils Henning. I'm from Hamburg, Germany and started working in the games industry in august 2010, at a company called Bigpoint.

    Today I am still there, working as a senior 3D generalist, currently on a new mobile game called WeFarm.

    My experience is mostly in 3DS Max and Photoshop, Flash, Unity3D and some basic stuff in Zbrush, 3D Coat etc..

    The reason I'm here is because my passion for creating games got me into scripting as a hobby so I tought myself Macromedia Director and Lingo (when shockwave was a thing years ago) to start and develop some simple horizontal space shooter and a poker game, just for the fun of it..

    Since I'm also passionate about playing the guitar I decided to create a learning App. (Basically a fretboard notes trainer with a game mode for CAGED scale degrees) Because none of the apps out there fully meet my requirements and some of the concepts I have in mind don't even exist. (They're probably quite specific, but hey..) That's when I started researching 2D game engines and came across Construct 3, which I found incredibly comfortable to pick up, and enjoy using a lot!

    I'm happy to see there is a nice community here, helping each other out, and I'm looking forward to learning more about the specifics of Construct to be able and contribute and help as well... Thank you and Happy Constructing, everyone! ;)

  • I tried reading up on effects, but the manual is not very helpful with specifics.

    The emboss effect sounded good on paper, but in practice it's not really usable for me.

    1. it seems to affect the whole image, including transparency. This is obviously not what I want.

    2. I was unable to get highlights and shadows without the entire sprite getting desaturated at the same time.

    3. The range of the effect is very limited. If the first two points were not a show stopper already it would only be suitable for very hard and thin appearances

    I'm quite disappointed in the effects I've tried so far (except the water shader), because they are all advertised along with the rest of the features, and for the most part they are the same old well established effects I've been using for 10 years plus in various Adobe products: (glow, emboss, blur etc).

    I understand this is not a software for artists, but I'd rather have a few well implemented effects than a wide range of choices that will never give me what I need.

    If I had to prioritize I would say that in most cases something like emboss is not really essential to change at runtime.

    But Glow for example is one of the most widely used effects in the industry and the current implementation simply does not do the rest of this fine software any justice. Having a more powerful glow effect would allow for creating higher quality graphics.

    The beauty of it is: the tween posibilities are all there already! :)

    Here's an example of how I applied simple glow effects working on the browser game Farmerama, using Flash. If you skip to 8:20

    youtube.com/watch

  • Thank you, InDWrekt! I appreciate the thorough answer.

    yes, that's what I'm using. But variables won't accept these expressions as initial values. (I actually found a 9 y old post, where Ashley confirmed it wasn't possible "yet", apparently nothing has changed there.)

    So it looks like I have to set up a global variable for every color and then on start of layout I need to set the value to rgb(r,g,b)

    Quite cumbersome. I wish I could just assign the expression to a text objects instance variables.

    For sprites I found a workaround: leaving dummy objects with the needed colors in the layout and at runtime putting their color values into global variables.

    This might not seem like a big difference, but it is, because colors need to be adjusted all the time while a project is in progress, so it's crucial to be able to change them in as little steps as possible.

    Unfortunately for text this workaround is not possible, because the color property of fonts seems to be "write only" for some reason. So I can't go like

    set ColorRight = ColorRightDummy.ColorValue

  • I was just playing with the glow effect for the first time.

    Is it really that limited in size? I had it on a 100*100 pixel buton and could see a thin, weak glow around it at a 100 percent. Going higher burns the color closer to the object to white, but doesn't create a bigger glow.

    I remember creating all sorts of glow effects in Adobe Flash for a browser game called Farmerama. It was basically the same thing. horizontal and vertical glow in one effect. But the size was never an issue. I could create long beams or big soft glows and tween back and forth between different colors.

    I was hoping to find something of the sort here, too. But this seems to be more of a one trick pony... ;)

  • Is there any way to set initial values of variables to an rgb value?

    (string won't help, because when I try to use that to set a font color it says it doesn't accept a string)

  • I know, it's just such a simple thing that it seems odd it's not possible. I mean font color IS obviously a property, so why not make it accessible?

    I have a bunch templates for buttons with text. On start of layout I read the colors from those and save them to variables.

    This way I can make my tweaks WYSIWYG directly in the layout without manually having to copy/paste rgb values every time I decide to adjust a color.

    Make font slightly darker, deselect object to see the actual color without the blue selection tint, reselect font scroll back to color swatch, open and copy rgb to clipboard, open event sheet, find the corresponding variable, double click, select value, paste and close... you get the idea.

  • I'm confused. I'm trying to read the color from a text object. But apparently there is only the Set font color action, but no way to read the color and store it in a variable?

    How would I set a new text objects font color to match another already existing text object's color at runtime?

  • Perfect, thank you. I did not see that :)

  • Any luck? I’m trying to do the same thing.

  • I was testing twith the browser plugin.

    I would like to have a dedicated layout for landscape and portrait mode.

    I managed to move between layouts, but the viewport size appears to stay the same and only work for portrait.

    How would I fix that?

  • Thanks for confirming, lions_. That's what I did now and it works.

  • Awesome! Good to know, thank you! :)

  • Thanks. I know.

    I guess I'm spoiled by other software where I see the text change color the moment I pick it in the color field. Not only after confirming and deselecting the text field.

  • My goal is to pick one of the three instances with the highest values at random.

    I was thinking of the ordered repeat , which lets you specify a number and repects the order of values, so I could use the loop and save the UIDs to a local variable to pick from afterwards.

    But there should be an easier way?