Ruskul's Forum Posts

  • newt

    watch this (Financial Summary)

    https://www.companiesintheuk.co.uk/ltd/scirra

    Believe me they are not poor, they have been doing very well selling software

    There was no reason to switch to subscriptions model

    Just to win more money

    But wanting to win more money can lose everything

    Well, half a million pounds isn't necessarily that much working capital for a software company... I don't know what there income/ expedentures was, but a million can fly out the window if you have to contract others, etc...

    But given their small size of team, the asset store, the new asset store for c3, I shouldn't think they need to go rental model. If they said they are going rental for financial security, then I would say there needs to be an argument of semantics.

  • >

    > > Well there you go folks.

    > > Another reason they don't share is that the members get to call them greedy, but people get all triggered if they respond as negatively.

    > > The positive side to that is that those members will go away.

    > > Of course those that can't deal with it will stick around to try to disrupt things.

    > > Or is that already happening?

    > >

    >

    > You do realise you are in the minority of actually being pro-subscription, don't you? I'm not sure what kind of brownie points you're trying to score here?

    >

    I'm not pro anything.

    Just anti-hypocrisy.

    I do think being vocal about about ones displeasure before leaving should be of value though. Scirra is making a product. It is a product I thought I may want but I don't think so- Given the huge amount of negative feedback, I would hope scrirra would respond in a way that addresses those complaints... if they value those customers - otherwise they are playing poker, assuming we will buy it either way. Other companies (like photoshop) did this too, but they had all of the cards - Scirra doesn't have all of the cards, thats part of the reason I think everyone is so negative about it.... imo idk

  • Maybe the subscriptions system is due to the fear they have because the tools are getting better and already has little room for improvement ...

    I kind of agree - but in a different way, I don't feel like a team the size of scirra, can actually bring the rent price worth of features every year...

    In my mind, the problem is that a subscription is stupidly expensive. C3 may be worth $125 out right, but it is not worth that much each year! Thats is a very steep price to pay. I could see a subscription costing like $50 a year... but lets face it, the scirra team is tiny - they don't push $125 worth of features in a year. I mean, come on, I would be happier with a product, that has a life, but you own it. You buy it because of what it is... not rent it so you can alsways rent it.

    The subscription model is one of the most dishonest ways to get more money than your product is worth to most people. Sure some can pony up the cash, but hobiests are always left out to dry with this model. Then of course... no editing your project this year if you didn't pay up. Stupid. Stupid . stupid.

    I bought adobe cs6, but I will not rent css. I'll use gimp, or something else before I rent software. Its a dumb financial move for everyone except a business.

  • > Random idea ( U know what would be awesome ?, Scirra to make a unity plugin with their visual approach charging 150 per year. No problem there. I would happily depend on unity's devs faults rather than ludei, intel etc..)[/size]

    >

    Random idea, my butt I already stated this idea in another C3 thread.

    Lol, I would buy it in a heart beat. I really do like c2's event editor for alot of things!

  • From what I have seen... c3 is basically c2 that you have to rent. Whats the point? I feel as though I am part of a c2 community that begged for just a few simple features. Features that you sort of need to actually make a decent game (something beyond flappy phone games)... Heck, even working box2d physics sure would have been nice. We weren't asking for 3d, we were asking for the basic tools any game engine needs. (collision filtering, raytracing, collision callbacks, swept shapes, ... I could go on) Not to mention extreme scalability issues when making complex games. And javascipt is stupid for games (but thats obviously a given, a compromise that wont be changed)

    Is c3 going to address these problems? I haven't heard, frankly, I don't care because I got sick of not having the tools needed for really making a game in c2 and so dropped it.

    And I'm not someone who thinks a behavior should make my game. I program. I have rolled 3 different platform engines on my own, and a custom retro based physics behavior for c2. I just wanted basic features literally almost every other engine has.

    I've been happily using Unity for free. With c#. Why would I rent c3 when I only use c2 for simple prototypes ?

    I don't care that it is on mac (see above). I don't care that its in the cloud (see above). I don't care that it has a 3 in its name if it doesn't actually fundamentally address the major issues with making a game with c2.

    Anyone have any insight?

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  • Zebbi did you ever hear back on this other than in this forum?

  • A tutorial would be great on this topic.

    Working on it!

  • Thanks for your post, I have also been frustrated by the limitations of the platform and physics behaviours - and I never understood why your simple modifications to the box2d plugin were not implemented. Thanks to your post here I have decided to try to create my own platform behaviour - to compare performance / to enable collision filtering etc (using the raycasting plugin). I've also started (slowly) learning C#.... just in case lol....

    Well, who knows if those modifications wouldn't break some projects, or needed a better ui (like with edge shapes). I know Ashley strives very hard to keep things clean and user friendly. The strong emphasis on beginner and beginner ease can often mean compromises when it comes to more advanced features. I thought physics was going to get an update, but I think not enough people want it to justify it.

    I know getting going with c2 is amazingly simple and intuitive most of the time. Unity as a comparison can be quite frustrating. The frustration comes due to lack of concise documentation and a large and at times overwhelming library of built in calls, and things you need to know. C2's frustration sets in after you start doing larger scale projects or need to implement functionality that isn't there out of the box.

  • While the Platform behaviour offers decent functionality, it lacks a lot of more complex stuff (like selective solid collision) and is hard to walk around it.

    For some time I wanted to build my own platform functionality using events, but didn't know where to start. I am interested in a mario/megaman/kirby type, simple platform with slopes. I would like to avoid Physics since are using more CPU. Which method should i choose ?

    Also, I've found the following tutorials to inspire from:

    http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/YoannPig ... hp?print=1

    http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_ ... mers-r2936

    http://www.hobbygamedev.com/adv/2d-plat ... -detection

    -

    I should also point out that there are some hacks to get around solid collision enabling/ disabling, which could allow for the use of the behavior that comes with c2. I didn't like that behavior for the reason you do, but I also didn't like how it handled slopes and corners.

  • Ruskul Can you give me some pointers regardless my previous post ?

    Sorry to get back to you so slowly. I haven't been online much as of late.

    If you want to make your own platform behavior in c2, I would recommend the point based system. Adding slopes can make things a bit harder, but totally still doable. I have a system moldering on my hardrive, but I used custom behaviors to make it rather than doing it all in events. This makes it faster if that is a problem but I also needed the flexibility of code due to a few "key" features.

    If you would like, I would be happy sit down at some point and go over how to implement such a system, specifically in construct 2 through events, unless you like coding behaviors instead... either way. If you like the way mario 3 felt, or kirby, then Its a great system, but there are some funny bugs that can be exploited (lots of mario 3 tricks, for example)

    I keep meaning to edit the original post to give more info on how to actually achieve it.- though I should probably do this in a tutorial series.

  • Wow, nice post. Yeah, I've been wondering what kind of 2D platformer engine the Sonic game used that he can run & rotate like a roller coaster in 360 degrees.

    But I understand Scirra Team wants to do it slowly, 1 at a time to make the program as stable as possible.

    Somebody, if I recall, created a sonic clone on game maker that was a gigantic project. You could dl the project at the time, but it was expert level game maker stuff. The loops are mostly achieved through trickery. Its not like it actually has a robust physics simulation controlling. I never played sonic much nor analyzed it but if I recall there is this magic threshhold where you either do the loop or bail. You couldn't stop half way through at upside down.

  • Thank you for sharing this information, it does provide a useful insight into how platformers work at their core. The only think I'd argue about is this: Making a simple engine may not be that hard everyone says it it, but making a general purpose, well optimized engine is not something that could be done easily.

    Making a general purpose anything when it comes to programming is difficult and typically should be avoided, unless that is the intent of the project (like making construct, yay). Most of the time, if you make your own, you will remake it next time, because even if you tried to make it general and flexible you didn't think of your next use case.

    The very fact that I make my own when construct 2 comes with a pretty good basic platformer is a testament to this. It just couldn't do what I needed it to do, so I had to make my own.

  • Hey all,

    I just wanted to share a quick blurb on 2d platformers and their implementations. I think it is quite common to hear that the engines are hard to make. They really are not. At this point (as a programmer that is self taught) I have successfully created 4 different types. I started with XNA and C# and wrote my own collision algorithm for my first. I am going to outline the general ideas involved with each type and what I learned from the experience. Briefly, here they are... of course, the distinction between the types can be blury at times...

    Raycast 2d platformer,

    Physics based platformer,

    Geometry based overlaps platformer,

    Point based platformer.

    RayCast Platformers

    Platformers using raycasts are common these days. They are fairly straight forward to implement. They are nice because you don't neewd to worry about resolving collisions. Instead you make sure that objects that shouldn't overlap never overlap. You do this by shooting raycasts from the characters leading edge and look for upcoming collisions. You use the distance between the character and the upcoming collisions to determine how far you can move the character. You can use engines like box2d to provide raycast functionality or you can role your own engine. But why invent the wheel when you already have rockets. Dustforce is a notable game that uses this idea. Most game engines have raycasts built in (c2 is an exception, but it shouldn't be).

    Physics based platformer

    Most people think of games that actually involve physics and have a certain feeling such as limbo. But in reality, you can make a retro style game like megaman using physics without too many problems. You have to create a number of systems to detect where the character is (on ground, in air, etc). This is most easily achieved using raycasts, but overlapping geometry can also be used. Using constraints and applying forces such as friction yourself, and directly controlling velocity, you can pretty much make any retro style platformer. It doesn't take more work than rolling your own engine, it just requires an excellent working knowledge of how the physics engine actually works. Box2d is a fine choice. One of the top hits in google when searching for "platformer physics" is a popular blog that says you can't/shouldn't use physics to make a platformer. I can only conclude the author is either not accomplished at programming or lacks creative problem solving. An important note is that in construct 2 , there are many features missing from physics that makes it much harder to use to make a platformer without compromises (such as tripping on internal seams).

    Geometry based overlaps platformer

    Rather than preventing collisions, this style of platformer moves the character regardless of collisions, then attempts to resolve the collisions after the fact. The overlapping algorithms are fairly straightforward to implement if you have to roll your own, but figuring which direction to resolve the collisions is the tricky part. C2 has a great collision system that makes using this method feasible in c2.

    Point based platformer.

    Welcome to retro land! This is one of the simplest and easiest methods to implement and was the choice method for a decade. Mario and sonic used this method at one time. Essentially you make a character have points that represent its head, sides, and foot. If the points overlap solids then the point react in a specific way based on where it is. In mario 3, if his head overlaps a tile the game simply changes his upward velocity to 0. If a foot overlaps it pushes him up. You get the idea. The trick is all about where you put the points and this takes some time to figure out. You don't want the foot to be overlapping at the same time as a side on the same surface. In the case of mario 3, to handle slopes mario actually changes the position of his foot points to be more narrow. If you play a level that has slopes, mario's collision boundary is actually different than in levels without slopes.

    All in all, regardless of the method used to make a platformer engine, adding slopes, ladders, oneways, moving platforms start to make it harder to make. Slopes in a raycast system or physics system are easier to add than in a point or overlap system.

    The best place to start when trying to make a platformer is to actually google it and start learning. Simply adding the platformer behavior without understanding why it works makes it really hard to customize.

    Cheers