seven's Forum Posts

  • BUMP: I didn't share the file correctly before. My bad!

  • https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwP9Dg ... sp=sharing

    I am attempting to create dynamic lights and shadows using bump mapping. The idea is that we are taking a bird's eye view of the scene which the sun is orbiting (rising and setting) around. Clouds should scroll across the screen and block the light from the sun, and shadows should project out from all sprites based on the sun's position and height. The bump-mapping part was easy enough when starting from the C2 example, but I don't know how to cast shadows or what webGL effects to use to make the clouds display correctly. Looking forward to your advice. <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile">

    Note that the shadows I'm talking about here are different from the ones provided by the Shadow Caster Plugin, which is focused more on visibility. Shadows here are sprites with an opacity and angle, rather than raycasts. Think like this:

  • Let's say you've picked several instances of Object X which has instance boolean Bool and instance number Num. Let's say we want to pick an instance A of X whose Bool is false and check if it is overlapping any instance of X (let's call it instance B) whose Bool is true. If so then A will set Bool to true and its value of Num to B's value of Num.

    Basically my question boils down to: if I'm making comparisons between multiple instances of the same object, how do I distinguish between them? I've read all of Construct 2's documentation and I still can't wrap my head around how the instance-picking works. Thanks for your patience.

  • I am building a digital board game inspired by WWI trench warfare. It is like Risk but with two players, faster pacing, quick decision-making and no luck. The game will use dynamic lighting, so it needs real 3D models for its game pieces and board (will be implemented as 2D graphics with normal maps).

    My functional goals for the graphics are that they are:

    • Readable. The player can tell at a glance what's important, what she can interact with, etc.
    • Self-explanatory. Every image's appearance should imply what it does.

    My aesthetic goals for the graphics are that they are:

    • Tactile. This game targets touchscreen devices and is inspired by board games. The graphics should make the player want to reach out and touch it.
    • Iconographic. A single soldier on the game board represents a battalion. Every piece should feel like it is a representation of a larger whole.
    • Grounded in the real world. The game will actually look like a board game, with a physical board for the playing field and pieces standing on top of it. The pieces and terrains should represent something from the real world, but also look like they are built from real world materials. So soldiers look like they are made of plastic, mountains are made from mounds of sand and dirt, etc.

    Payment negotiable, but it will be <$1000; I am just a student with ambition and free time. You get paid in stages, for each piece, not at an hourly rate. In any case let me know what I can do to inspire your confidence.

    What follows is a description of literally everything you would be doing for this project. I didn't want to leave out anything important!

    _________________________________________________________________________________________

    Pieces

    There are two players in any game and each have their own primary color. Right now those colors are orange and blue, but this may change (it won't make any difference to the normal maps so it's an easy fix for me). Every pieces is cast in that primary color but is not necessarily monochromatic or a silhouette. Still, much of the visual information for the different pieces should come from their shape.

    The game is played on a small grid, think like 12x6 (but the final number isn't decided yet and is irrelevant for now). Each piece is the size of one grid space unless otherwise stated. Each piece travels in four cardinal directions so any animations will need to be rendered for all four of these and be recognizable from all these angles. Pieces are an amalgamation of board-game pieces and the real world objects they represent. So a soldier might be standing on a circular base like a board-game piece, but his feet are actually moving and lifting off the ground. You have a good amount of creative freedom to figure out any other details.

    • Soldier. The basic building block of any army. Generic SMG-toting, helmet-wearing soldier like you see in lots of board games. e.g.:
      Has several animations: walking, walking while wounded, digging a trench with a shovel, firing, and falling over dead.
    • Spy. This game is anachronistic but styled after World War I, so this spy should recall early spy films, propaganda, etc. I hope you know what I mean but if you don't I can find some examples. Honestly there is probably not a lot of room for detail on the piece that would make it easily recognizable so this one may be a challenge. Only animations are walking and standing.
    • Supply truck. A camouflaged cargo truck carrying supplies, represented by wooden crates. The truck and crates are rendered separately as each crate disappears one by one. No animations except for basic movement.
    • Engineer. Looks like a mechanic or engineer out of the 1920s. Animations are of him walking, and of him planting an object in the ground (object not shown in model).
    • Planes. Planes fly above the board and are not restricted to the grid. I recommend looking at lots of photo references of planes from WWI and II, they have very distinctive looks. Suggest a model plane you'd like to use as a reference. There are two types of planes: bombers and gunners.
    • Tanks. Tanks actually take up 2x2 grid spaces. The turret on top of the tank rotates 360 degrees independently from the base. Think like this:
      Grungy, cheap and Soviet, with huge treads and a long gun extending from the top. The only animation is of it moving.
    • Mines. The kind of mine-design you might see in a cartoon- but of course, they actually existed.
      Dark and spherical with long feelers extending out in all directions. This is the only piece not cast in either player's color. The mine needs to be rendered in various stages of being buried in the ground; no other animation is necessary (I'll do the explosion with particle effects).

    Terrain

    Some of the terrain need normal maps as well. Mountains should actually extend out of the board, and rendering some imperfections in the wood of the board itself may add that extra bit of realism (I'm not certain though, we can do some mockups and see if a flat 2D rect is enough for the board). Each of these terrains is rendered as an individual tile, with as many variations as necessary to break up any visual monotony (should not need many). Terrain should provide visual information but not distract from the pieces moving around on top of it. Know your color theory, etc.

    • Mountains. Dry, desert mountains. Primary color brown. Dusty, evokes the Middle East.
    • Grassland. Has no special properties so it isn't visually important. Just plains, but maybe rolling hills are enough to justify a normal map? Hard to say without mockups.
    • Wasteland. Indicates land that cannot be fortified. Two types: desert (either sand or cracked, dry earth) and tundra.
    • Farmhouse. These tiles produce resources and are highly desirable. They represent abundance and production. So, farms? Factories? Share your ideas with me.
    • Trenches. Player fortifications are an extremely important part of the game. Trenches have several stages of completion as they are being dug, represented by how deep they are. Trenches are made up of dark earth and dirt and should look grimy and makeshift.

    That's everything, I think! Thanks for reading all this. Here's my email again for your convenience:

  • I disabled the else, and the above event, and cpu did go down a bit, but to be honest it looked like garbage collection was working on my end.

    Well the CPU usage is still high (and I can bring that down mainly by making the simulation less realistic in ways that aren't noticeable) but now that I'm not adding an infinite number of audio effects the CPU usage doesn't grow over time. So that was definitely the problem, not C2's garbage collection (I am a bad workman, I love to blame my tools).

  • pffffffffffffff thank you. This is the first time I've toyed with advanced audio effects and I had no idea what I was doing. I'm surprised that was categorized under Event sheet though!

    Thanks again

  • https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwP9DgG02uRoYzc1SC0teXk4Z28/edit

    I'm experimenting with a rain effect using the Bullet behavior. I haven't optimized it except for destroying any off-screen instances, but it still shouldn't be behaving like this. I run it in the debugger and see that the event sheet gradually eats up CPU cycles until the browser kills the game. The number of instances remains relatively constant. Either I or the garbage collector is missing something; I'm hoping it's me. Suggestions?

  • Awesome, thanks.

  • This is mostly self-explanatory.

    I started with this (thanks Yann!) http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23551572/C2/gridMovement.capx

    I tried to rework the code to handle multiple actors moving on a grid.

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25752478/c2examples/multiplegridmovers.capx

    How it should behave: Each actor that isn't going to walk into a wall should move. If some actors can move and some can't, than those that can move should and those that can't shouldn't. Straight forward. But it doesn't work that way.

    I'm guessing the problem has something to do with choosing instances of an actor, as only the first actor instance gets checked for passability. Help?

  • If someone posts a thread and no one replies to it, there should be 0 replies, not one. Right now the first post is counted as a reply, which doesn't make sense.

  • Needed to create a duplicate thread; last one was closed due to broken link. The URL was automatically shortened with a "..." because of its length, and then it was made plaintext because I didn't have enough rep for hyperlinks. Now I do. That should probably be fixed!

    Problem Description

    When the browser window is resized/fullscreened any CSS styles are removed.

    Attach a Capx

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/257 ... s-bug.capx

    Description of Capx

    It is a simple modification of the multiplayer chat example which changes some CSS styles and runs at a different resolution.

    Steps to Reproduce Bug

    • Resize the window
    • Cry
    • Use disabled event provided in capx to try and reapply CSS styles for Browser: On Resize
    • That doesn't work either

    Observed Result

    The text becomes larger than it was before. I know the font size is proportional to window, but the proportion itself changes. If others can't reproduce this I can make a video.

    Expected Result

    The CSS style should not change.

    Affected Browsers

    • Chrome: YES
    • ???

    Operating System and Service Pack

    Windows 7 x64 SP1

    Construct 2 Version ID

    beta r165

  • Problem Description

    When the browser window is resized/fullscreened any CSS styles are removed.

    Attach a Capx

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/257 ... s-bug.capx

    Description of Capx

    It is a simple modification of the multiplayer chat example which changes some CSS styles and runs at a different resolution.

    Steps to Reproduce Bug

    • Resize the window
    • Cry
    • Use disabled event provided in capx to try and reapply CSS styles for Browser: On Resize
    • That doesn't work either

    Observed Result

    The text becomes larger than it was before. I know the font size is proportional to window, but the proportion itself changes. If others can't reproduce this I can make a video.

    Expected Result

    The CSS style should not change.

    Affected Browsers

    • Chrome: YES
    • ???

    Operating System and Service Pack

    Windows 7 x64 SP1

    Construct 2 Version ID

    beta r164.2

  • newt: you didn't read the link in my first post.

    Ashley: Yeah, after reading some more about Tiled I think I can make it work for me. The ability to zoom in on the Tilemap window would still be appreciated, when you find time for it. Thanks.

  • Bumping after r150, which did not address these requests. I'm hoping for a reply, at least.

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  • Link to .capx file (required!):

    dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25752478/c2examples/tilemapbug.capx

    Steps to reproduce:

    1. Create two layouts

    2. Create a tilemap object

    3. Add the tilemap object to both layouts

    4. Edit the tilemap in each layout individually

    Observed result:

    This is difficult to explain, so bear with me. Construct will only recognize the tilemap from the first layout you run. The second layout will ignore the tiles in that instance of the tilemap and instead will use whatever tiles were present in the first instance of the tilemap before it was copied to the second layout. If the tilemap from the first layout was blank before it was copied to the second layout, you draw different tiles for each (ie neither layout is blank but the two instances of the tilemap are not the same), run the first layout and then go to the second layout, the tilemap will be blank.

    Expected result:

    The tiles drawn on each instance of a tilemap object should be saved for each instance. C2 should not expect there to be only one instance of each tilemap object.

    The obvious workaround is to create a new tilemap object for every layout, but there are a number of reasons not to do this, the main one being added complexity. What if multiple layouts share the same event sheet and have events which reference the tilemap object? It would require you to duplicate events or create a family that acts as a container for all the tilemaps. What if you have many layouts using the same tilemap image, and have to edit the image? You would need to make the edit to every duplicate tilemap object. etc.

    Browsers affected:

    Chrome: yes

    I have not tested on other browsers. If you think the browser is relevant then let me know.

    Operating system & service pack: Windows 7 SP3

    Construct 2 version:

        r149