rho's Forum Posts

  • reading up is always good and the best source of info, but a quick summary is as follows

    local variables: within a single event structure, I often use them for intermediate calculations, etc. they can only be changed within that event and using them means that you don't affect things outside of your event. so it keeps things constrained

    global variables: very useful for information that passes between events (on the same sheet as well as between sheets and layouts). they are also useful for long-term storage of information... eg scores, progress. global variables could be used for all cases of local variables but in my humble opinion it is bad practice as you should keep the number of globals to a minimum and use them only when you need them

    instance variables: these are variables that are connected to an object and are very useful for picking out a specific object from a group, or for having one object do multiple things depending on the value of an instance variable.. or could be used as the health indicator for a baddie (that was in one of the tutorials). so instance variables do not replace globals or locals, they are different things.

    for those not comfortable with instance variables, you could hack your way through global variables but then you are really missing a powerful tool.

    R

  • solado, I feel your pain and I have to disagree with some of the other commentators. No matter how good I practice, I am not going to be as good an artist as some - just as I expect others will not be as good at coding, and so on. One-person game creation is challenging on so many fronts, a team with complementary skills allows each to play to their strengths.

    I do agree on one point, if you can recognise what looks good, then if you are patient enough you can create basic images, or construct them from things that you see online. At the moment I'm use placeholders that I've found online. they can't be used in the real-game as I know there will be license issues, in some cases I use a power-point generated image that I copy over. (powerpoint.. surprisingly useful).

    if I get to the point of wanting to distribute the game, I'm going to have to replace all the art with something consistent and I think in that scenario I will have to pay someone... but at that stage i'll know whether it's worth it or not.. so my recommendation... placeholders first, build the game, and at the end do the art.. it de-risks the process.

    for the artists out there, I've seen a lot post beautiful designs but lacking functionality.. they're playing to their strengths, you play to yours.

    R

  • yes, you'll need php/perl/anything else to query the MySQL database and then return the data. look up cgi scripts and you'll see lots of exaamples. you can then use ajax to query the script on your server and then parse the data.

    just be aware that you will find it awkward to test as you need to have a server and get around the cross-site scripting issus.

  • —

    I'm using an ACER A1 tablet. it runs fine and on subsequent runs, the LUDEI flash screen popped up.. however that first run is the critical one.. so i'm not sure anything can be done but if you see a lot of quick uninstalls before anyone even did anything, then you might want to check that

  • nice game, well done.

    I thought it had crashed however as it took about 15 seconds to load up and the "powered by LUDEI" flash screen did not appear. nearly de-installed it on the spot.

    R

  • a link to a website would be nice... esp if your website worked..

    seems interesting

  • another part of the same question is when you have multiple "on start of layouts", is there any particular order in which they are done, are they done in parallel? startup conditions are never trivial and race conditions which is what kyuur is talking about are a real problem in any hardware or software system.

    R

  • i just saw this and it was the same problem.. can you update the documentation and in-line help so that it is not misleading

  • well there are a couple of imperfect hacks that would help you. you can use the exe export option, but you could hardwire in an expiry date for the code... so basically check the local datetime and if later than a certain date, you exit the programme, or stall on some sort of flash screen. of course you can hack this my changing the date on your local computer... but that's probably too much hassle for most

    you can then combine this with an access code for your players. a fixed code is easiest and for a beta i'm not sure how much more you want. the game play could be captured by a screen capture, the code is probably inaccessible anyway once minified... easier to do from new than to hack.

    alternative you could do as above and build in an sql system, but I think you'd fine cross-domain issues that'd you'd need to resolve.

    the easiest would be just to build a proper web-app and use a standard login system solution. avoid this exe issue.

    again... what is your problem that you are trying to solve? if you're beta testers are not trustworthy... then don't give them something you are not happy for others to see. As several people have told me... ideas are cheap and easy to copy, the execution of your idea is difficult and hard to copy - even when you see it.

  • line-charts... well define you chart boundaries, and then take a prototype line image and stretch to the appropriate length to go from your first point to your next point. you also need to get the angle correct. When I did it last, the length comes from the geometric equation for distances sqrt ( (x2-x1)^2 + (y2-y1)^2) . Angle is a bit more complicated. use tan inverse (delta y over delta x). however you need to add some extra code to get the right quadrant. with a little care, it works really well.

    it's easier if you have uniform spacing, but user-selected spacing is also manageable.

    if you want to do a bar chart, same idea but easier... just stretch a box to the appropriate height, with all boxes having the same bottom position, and perhaps even the same width.

  • absolutely... i'm doing something similar myself. my main map is currently 30K squares. now everything does go in memory, but if my recollection is correct, what is off-screen, is not tested or rendered.. or something like that. however when it gets that big, there is a performance implication, especially when starting a layout as it takes some time to populate all of that.

    what I have done is dynamically switched between large tiles and small tiles, depending on what area is of most interest at the moment. that way I can reduce my tileset by a factor of 256 (in my case). even with C2, you don't need to draw the entire world at the one time.

  • beautiful game, lovely idea, but you really need to add instructions.. I was banging my head trying to figure out what to do..

    with just a few instructions, it would be better than most games on kongregate already

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  • Hi all,

    I know that I can hit a web address and grab a file, but lets assume I want to download compressed files.. .gz or .zip in order to save bandwidth. Is there any way in construct to automatically decompress them?

    R

  • lovely game, worked fine in IE11 for me.

    had an issue in some games that when I died, I could no longer fire bullets. probably a counter issue somewhere.

    R

  • game got stuck waiting before starting. this was on IE and Chrome - for at least 30 seconds. I'm guessing it was a download issue as it then asked on IE for permission to exceed my normal save limits. If it because it was downloading content, it'd be good to have a progress indicator or something to tell us what is doing.

    It's not intuitive, but I like the game. however I don't see the challenge in the first 15 levels I played. I got bored to be honest.. so I think you need to make it a bit more interesting to hook people in those first few levels.

    very nicely done!!! keep up the good work