Ranch Dubois's Forum Posts

  • > - If I’ve got an attack that puts out multiple hitboxes, I’d probably need something that would prevent an enemy getting hit multiple times if it’s meant to be a single-hit attack. I have no clue how I would go about this. Do you have any ideas?

    I didn't think about this much, but here's what I would try.

    You could use a simple flag on the receiving object, isHit, true or false. When you check overlap with hitbox, this must be false, and it would be set to true so that following hit events no longer run until you set isHit to false again. Could be until the end of a tick, could be longer. Also can be used for invincibility frames, although I think the traditional way to do that would just be to remove the hurtbox entirely. Edit: Pick nth instance is probably the way to go.

    For the overlap check, you could also add a pick Nth instance (first). If there is just one overlapping, no problem. If there are multiple, it would only run on the first one. You'd have to work out some sort of priority system if there are hits of different types/damages that could trigger together.

    Otherwise just sticking with single hitboxes is perfectly valid too.

    I haven't tried this and there are probably kinks to work out, but I'm sure it can be done.

    > - Say if player one and player two swing a ground attack at slightly different times. Player 1’s attack ends first and the function that called for the Hitbox to be created calls for the Hitbox to be destroyed. Would this not prematurely destroy Player 2’s Hitbox? I’m also not sure how I could prevent this. Do you have any ideas?

    You would associate each hitbox with it's owner sprite. Most straightforward way is by instance variable. Upon creating a hitbox for a player, set the hitbox instance variable "source" to player.uid. You can then pick by this "source" instance variable, if you only wanted to remove boxes for a certain player.

    I think you can do something with hierarchies as well? I haven't explored that at all.

    > - When you say the hitboxes don’t have to be perfect rectangles, are you saying I can make an irregularly shaped area by overlapping multiple rectangles, or are you saying there’s some way to turn an instance of the universal hitbox sprite into a circle or oval during runtime?

    I was thinking irregularly shaped area with overlapping rectangles. But that was just an idea since you seemed interested in more accurate hitboxes.

    There's also nothing keeping you from having both a circle/oval hitbox along with your rectangle hitbox, besides a little more complexity. You could also make it the same way with a function and resize as needed. Those two basic shapes should get you quite far with possible shapes with minimal effort, especially compared with having to make a unique collision bounds for every frame of every animation you plan to have in the game.

    You can put the two shape hitbox objects either as different animation frames of the same object (which means you add one more parameter to your function to pick which kind to make/animation frame to set), or you can use two separate objects and put them in a family to treat them the same.

    Thanks for all the help! I think I got the ground attack and enemy damage/death to be fully functional. I used the same logic that I used to make enemies receive damage to redo and streamline the logic I used to make the player receive damage from different enemy types: youtu.be/q1FWmKGSKTU

    In the process of streamlining, I turned the Platform behavior for enemies into a family behavior, and added and tested some instance variables I plan to use in the future, namely YKnockback and TakeKnockback (boolean that determines whether the enemy takes knockback to begin with). These weren't made at the time of recording the short video.

    As for how to separate Hitboxes based on which player they belong to, I could definitely do that. Another thing I was considering was just making "Red Hitbox", "Blue Hitbox", etc. which might make it easier for me from a purely visual looking-at-my-own-code perspective, but I'll see when I get there.

    And as for making moves with multiple, possibly overlapping Hitboxes, I think I understand how to use nth instance, but if I don't it'll be something I can look at separately later down the line, especially because I'm not sure if I'll end up using it.

    Again, thank you so much for your help!

  • If you're setting up a function (decidedly a good idea) for creating hitboxes, you'll probably be able to use a single hitbox object and function for everything, including ground attack, air attack, and for every different characters and all kinds of attacks. This would simplify your events for what happens when an enemy overlaps a hitbox as well.

    You'll want a createHitbox function that you can enter the parameters X Offset, Y Offset, X Size, and Y Size (possibly add damage, knockback, and other potential values as parameters and hitbox instance variables). You'll even be able to run this multiple times to create hitboxes of varying shapes and sizes that don't have to be perfect rectangles and can have different properties, like the tip of a spear doing more damage than the shaft.

    I’m actually really glad you brought this up. I want to keep the “base moveset” for all for players identical, simple single-hit attacks. But, I do like the idea of eventually giving players “toys” to play with in the form of single-use power-ups that can score big damage, deal damage over a large area, and/or provide some kind of extra movement or stat boost, but that would be a little later down the line.

    With all that being said, it sounds like I ought to make that future plan easier for myself by seeing if I can get what you’re talking about to work with the basic ground attack ASAP so I can do the same thing with anything more complex down the line.

    But I’ve got a couple questions.

    - If I’ve got an attack that puts out multiple hitboxes, I’d probably need something that would prevent an enemy getting hit multiple times if it’s meant to be a single-hit attack. I have no clue how I would go about this. Do you have any ideas?

    - Say if player one and player two swing a ground attack at slightly different times. Player 1’s attack ends first and the function that called for the Hitbox to be created calls for the Hitbox to be destroyed. Would this not prematurely destroy Player 2’s Hitbox? I’m also not sure how I could prevent this. Do you have any ideas?

    - When you say the hitboxes don’t have to be perfect rectangles, are you saying I can make an irregularly shaped area by overlapping multiple rectangles, or are you saying there’s some way to turn an instance of the universal hitbox sprite into a circle or oval during runtime?

  • On the right frame, create hitbox, set position, set size, and optionally pin to character. Destroy it on the end frame.

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/fnuh7n3cipkil6i/hitboxexample.c3p?dl=0

    Thank you so much! The example definitely helped a lot. The Hitbox shows up just how I want it, so now all I have to do is make an enemy hurt function that activates when an enemy collided with the Ground Attack Hitbox, make functions and hitboxes for aerial attacks, and then rinse and repeat for the other three knights.

    Video of working hitbox: youtube.com/shorts/58pupev4Kww

  • Whatever fits your workflow most comfortably.

    Personally I don't bother with "exact fit" hitboxes, so creating a rectangular box in Construct's editor is no problem for me. For that matter, I only ever have to make one since it's just a rectangle and I can shape and size it during runtime, and they all serve the same purpose.

    If you want to paint exact hitboxes, it might be more comfortable to do so with your image editor of choice, with the ability to use layers, transparencies, brushes, and bulk export options. Again, I'd say that this isn't standard practice, and is probably going to cause more problems and headaches than it's worth...

    Thanks for the heads up. I’d like to try to take your advice but I’m a bit stuck on how to resize the Hitbox sprite during runtime like you said you do. It got as far as getting the Hitbox to show up when you attack and destroy itself when the attack frame ends or when the animation is forcibly canceled (by being hurt or falling off a ledge while sliding forward during your attack). But that’s about as far as I got. I took a short video that shows what I’m currently looking at. Is it possible that you could tell me how you’re resizing recurring sprites during runtime? Thank you in advance for your consideration.

    youtube.com/shorts/0BHunIUSrrw

    (Also, I think YouTube age-restricted the video. I have no clue why it would do that but if that causes any trouble don’t hesitate to let me know.)

  • That sounds about right, although I don't have a running example so best to just try it and see and modify and fix it as you go.

    Here's an example of what hit/hurtboxes look like if you were to be able to see them. There is usually no need to follow the exact curvature of your blade. Games "feel" better if you cheat a little in favor of the player - make the hitbox extend past what the blade looks like a bit. You also won't need to create/reshape a unique hitbox zone for every single frame of your animation this way.

    https://www.eventhubs.com/imagegallery/2016/mar/13/sf5-hit-and-hurt-boxes/14/

    The boxes do not always exist, and usually last for more than one frame. So they would be created when the triggering frame starts, and destroyed when the "active" portion of attack animation ends.

    Edit: More reading if you're interested game.capcom.com/cfn/sfv/column/131422

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Fighters/comments/by2hzu/question_fighting_games_where_hitboxhurtbox_is/

    Thank you!

    To follow up, do you think it would make the most sense to create the hitbox in the same sprite editor that I make everything else, or is there something within Construct that I can use to make polygonal/circular sprites that I can create quickly and give really cut-and-dried collision polygons?

  • Yes, it's just an invisible sprite, similar to how the base object is just an invisible rectangle

    So the logic would be something like...

    "Every time frame x of attack animation plays, create a hitbox sprite at player base (x,x) offset when facing right or (x,x) offset when facing left. After frame x is over, destroy hitbox sprite.

    On enemy collision with hitbox sprite, subtract x from enemy health and move x this way if facing right or x this way if facing left."

    Does this sound about right?

  • Hitboxes are often separated into their own invisible helper objects as well. You would create and destroy these hitboxes as necessary on the correct animation frame. This goes for hurtboxes, terrain checks, ect as well.

    Thank you! How exactly would I go about doing this? Would the hitboxes just be an invisible sprite? If you know of any tutorials for this, could you please direct me to them? Thank you in advance.

  • I'm trying to create a "hitbox" for the player character in my platforming game. I took after Kiwi Story and made it so that the character's animations are a "mask" that is constantly moving with an invisible "base," the base being what the player actually moves around. Now that I want the player to attack with a big swing of his weapon, I thought it would make sense to keep the "hurtboxes," the collisions with which the player receives damage from enemies and hazards, attached to the base and attach the "hitboxes," the collisions that the player puts out to deal damage to enemies, attached to the mask, since it would be easy to make the collision polygons over the attack animation smear.

    To do this, I would like to be able to make it so that during the player's "Ground Attack" animation, there is a single frame of smear with a hitbox over it, and the rest of the animation has no collision. However, I don't seem to be able to remove the collision polygon from the rest of the animation.

    (This is the only frame I want a collision on)

    Does anyone know how I might be able to detect the attack animation's collision for only the single frame I want, or is there some better way I should be going about this? Thank you in advance for any help.

  • It will do if you plan to put it on mobile, that is huge. Char should be something like 32x64 etc.

    Makes sense. Thanks for the heads up.

  • I'm not sure what happened because the one you're saying is wrong looks correct and I would expect the others to also be 1024x1024 since you exported them as images of that size. Also as a side thing isn't 512x512 huge? I'm not an artist but it sounds massive for sprite art and memory usage.

    Alright, so I fixed it by manually changing the size of the image before I exported it, which is not something I've ever had to do before, so I'm not sure why this is the first time, but at least the sprite is the same size as all the others now.

    On 512x512 being big, yeah it's pretty big. When I first started making the first sprites for this character, I thought it would be smart to make them all on the same canvas so I wouldn't have to resize anything within Construct. Fast forward to now, I have a couple of animations for this character that take up significantly more space than his Idle or Walk, but 512x512 is still a little large. I'm just hoping it's not something that comes back to bite me later and then I have to fix every animation one by one.

    Thank you for the help!

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  • This was something I thought I foolproof-ed by drawing my little character on a large canvas so when I animate him in such a way that something in the picture extends far past his body normally does that I wouldn’t have to change the canvas size and this have to jimmy anything in Construct, but here I am anyway.

    youtu.be/bpT2roqQUSw

    In the video I show that in my sprite animating workspace, everything I do for this character is on the same size canvas, he himself is always the same size, and his center of body is always in the same place relative to the rest of the frame. However, when I import the animation to Construct with the animation strip export, this one animation turns out exactly double the size of all his other animations, and appears as such in the animations editor. The only explanation I can think of for why it appears this way in Construct would be that this animation has him lashing out with his weapon, making the actual sprite take up more space.

    I’m really at a loss how to fix this, so I’ve just got my fingers crossed that someone here knows the fix and that it’s an easy one. Thank you in advance for any help!

  • This is caused by the bottom of the collision box being a different height from the image origin on the different frames. In the animation editor, click the Edit Image Points button right above the collision bounds button and make sure it is the same distance from the bottom of the bounding box on all the frames.

    Got it. The animation is looking good now. Thanks a bunch!

  • youtu.be/GDSQtva6U0Y

    I came across this problem yesterday and tried some more fixes today, but I’m really stumped on this one. I’ve got a little bug enemy that walks around and his walking animation has his head bobbing up and down. However, since I use the same canvas size for all my character sprites, the little bug was on a large canvas so I used Construct 3’s cropping tool. Upon doing this, it cropped the sprite so that the frames with the bug’s head down closer to the ground (the vertically shorter animation) was centered inside the same box the taller animations were. When I changed the collision box to line up with the bug’s feet, this caused him to jitter into the air every frame he put his head down.

    I’ve tried using the resize and crop tools, but I can’t get that thin black rectangle that contains the sprite to go flush to the bug’s bottom on all frames. The best solution I can think of is go back to where I made the sprite and fiddle with the canvas size and the position of the bug, but I’d prefer not to do that because I have some more dynamic animations lined up and I think it would be a lot more efficient to figure out how to position each frame so a character’s body doesn’t jitter when it changes height.

    The most puzzling thing about this is the red knight (also shown in video) gets some significant air in his walking animation, but I never had a problem with his sprite being where it’s not supposed to be on a given frame.

    Does anyone have any insight on how I can fully control the alignment of my sprites or manually edit the black rectangle that contains them, or if I should just reduce my canvas size? If anyone needs some clarification, I’d be happy to show my more of the Construct project and/or sprite animations. Thank you in advance for the help!

  • I can't replicate that issue, I can see the variable values tweaking slightly as they try to reconcile the movement but it never results in more than a 1 px change from the original position of the viewport to either the right or left. I wouldn't worry about it considering it's unlikely to come up during normal gameplay unless someone was specifically trying to do it.

    All cool. Again, thank you so much!

  • Hey, the Y issue in the families example is because I was lazy and didn't think about jumping. As the player moves up the screen their distance to the middle of the closest viewport is reduced and the variable will be set to their position. Using the non-families method won't have the issue because it is comparing each players x position to the other and not comparing the distance to the edge of screen or any Y values.

    As for the warping through the blocker, no idea on that one sorry. None of the code for the camera influences the movement behavior in any way. The standard platform behaviour shouldn't be able to move through a solid. Even if the viewport was shifting position when a player was jumping, the jumping player should just be pushed backwards as the solid blocker moved back. It could be some edge of use bug when a platformer and a solid object are moving against each other.

    Thanks a million! The alternate method works great, no stuttering, warping, or anything funky as far as I could test for. Only thing is, after fiddling with it for a while, if two (or any number of) players are trying to push the camera in opposite directions by running against the barriers, the player(s) running to the left tend to be able to push the whole viewport left. I can change this by adjusting how much the barriers extend into the viewport, but even if they extend into the viewport an equal amount, you can still push the viewport (very slowly) left but not right. Do you know anything about this? I don't think it's much of a problem and I'm definitely ready to move on, but I wanted to see if you had any knowledge/guesses to why this may be the case.