signaljacker's Forum Posts

  • If you don't want to use physics you can also use the bullet behaviour if you tweak the settings enough you can get some nice bouncy drops. I tend to spawn 4 or 5 things, randomize the angles slightly and randomize the scale and speeds a bit. The settings I'm using are speed: 500, acceleration: -500 gravity: 1000, bounce of solids: yes, set angle: yes - and it seems to work ok for what I need. Don't know on what the cpu footprint is compared to using physics but it gives a similar result.

  • Hi, I've been recently looking into how Spelunky generates its levels and wanted to try something similar in construct. The reference I'm looking at is on this page which basically details how the rooms and solution path are generated. While it seems fairly easy to understand, I'm having a bit of trouble finding a good way to make the solution path. I'm not following it exactly, but using it as a sort of guide.

    I'm using a 4x4 array and generating numbers which then generate tiles that correspond to those numbers.

    I start by choosing a random number betwen 0 and 3 for my starting room on the top row and set it's value in the array to "start" just so I have a reference (I'm not worrying too much about room types working together at the moment just want to understand the solution path)

    I have a global variable called "picker" I choose (0,1,2) and set picker to one of these numbers - 0 will be left, 1 down and 2 right

    I then look for "start" in the array using a For each XY element loop and then depending on what number the variable picker is adjust by either adding or subtracting to the array.CurX or CurY and placing another key word - this time "path" - this will be my second room.

    This seems to work ok, but I can see it will get more and more complicated with each iteration as I will need to keep track of a bunch of different things like whether or not the last placed room has moved on the y axis of the array or remained on the same line etc

    I've tried placing a third room "path2" and already things seem to be falling apart. There must be a better way to go about this, but I don't seem to be logical enough to work it out.

    I've linked my work in progress below, it's messy, buggy and probably more confusing than the ramblings above. I think though that I'm probably going about this the wrong way and while it might eventually get me there it won't be efficient and it's already becoming unwieldy and confusing.

    Can someone with experience with these things or a bit more nouse than myself give me a tip perhaps on a more effective way to do this?

    File here if you dare to look

  • Thank you, that helped a lot!

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  • Hi, I'm still trying to wrap my head around arrays, I have a two dimensional array set up which I'm populating with some random numbers and strings. What I want to do is search the array for a word, and then be able to pinpoint both its x,y position to further manipulate the array data around it. The problem is, I can only seem to get it to return the x value with Array.IndexOf and Array.LastIndexOf - there seems to be no way to return the y value as well.

  • go to freesound - it's a great resource and will have many bird/nature sounds.

  • If I recall correctly, if you're using global layers you should make sure that your layers are named consistently across all layouts and that they use the same hierarchy eg if ItemStore layer is layer 3 on Level 1, then it should also be called ItemStore on layout PP and also be on layer 3. If you don't have that layer set up in other layouts with the same name and hierarchy it won't work as intended. Hope that makes sense.

  • With the rotating barrel - I haven't had time to look at it properly, but I think that some of the actions in the different groups are overriding eachother - to see what I mean try turning off the Vertical Sine Cannon group, and then hop in a rotating barrel and you can no longer shoot out of it. You could try to test for a collision before running the events, because then construct will use that collision as a reference to which instance to pick - at the moment I think it just defaults to a random instance because on the R trigger it doesn't specifically reference a barrel instance only an instance variable.

  • Oops, yes calebbennetts is right - I was not thinking that through...

    EDIT: I've updated the file, it now uses bullet behaviour and a trigger sprite - might still be a better way to do it - seems to be working here though - new file

    heyguy what might be happening in yours is the bullet has "set angle" in the properties which will flip the sprite, it was driving me nuts too until I noticed it's on by default.

  • I've done you up a working version that doesn't use the bullet behaviour - no doubt there is still a better way to do this, but it seems to work pretty well. You can download from here

  • Is it spawning on the same layer on both layouts? It's not spawning against an object that has solid property? I know that seems obvious, but it should work straight out of the box I would have thought.

  • Announce trailer of my game Solitaria. It's a homage to atmospheric adventure platformers of the late 80's and 90's - it is very heavily inspired by Super Metroid in both tone and gameplay. It's probably about 1/3 of the way through development at the moment so if it sounds like your cup of tea, feel free to follow development

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  • I always think of the developers when tossing up on buying something from Steam - steam takes a 30% cut + you have the steam DRM to contend with, while pretty non intrusive it's still DRM and may give you trouble once in a while. It's a no brainer I think, I always try to buy from the devs direct. You can always add the shortcut into steam anyway.

  • Having a midi keyboard is great to visualise notes and construct things like chords, generally though unless you're a keyboard player it's not that necessary when writing computer music - useful for sure, but not mandatory by any stretch. I started out writing using my pc keyboard and I often find myself reaching for that instead of the midi - once you learn the mappings it's fine - actually often faster if you're using a tracker just to use the PC keyboard. If you want something to visualise the notes better though, a small midi keyboard is great - you can often get 25 key versions that easily fit on your desktop with your pc keyboard - they're cheaper and good for workflow.

  • Hi, your game sounds really interesing. I love metroidvanias and am making one myself. I think a good way to implement non violent options in games is to reward the player for using that approach. Eg perhaps when an enemy is stunned rather than killed they drop a valuable powerup, but if they are killed they explode and it is instead destroyed. You could also use it for dynamic changes in gameplay, eg if a robot enemy is stunned perhaps an electric field will appear around them, while the robot is incapacitated it can't chase you but now becomes dangerous in a different way as if you walk into it you'll get hurt so depending on what else is going onscreen it becomes a different kind of obstacle. You could set things up like a master switch that pacifies all robots in an area, but to get to it requires a puzzle or a very difficult platforming challenge to get to, so it gives the player a choice to either go in guns blazing, or go off on a difficult tangent for a while to get a more substantial reward. Some quick ideas for non lethal ways to handle enemies:

    stealth/invisibility (maybe with a time limit or other limitation, so that there is a constant challenge pattern)

    Using shadows to hide in for safety

    Freezing enemies (eg the freeze beam in Metroid)

    Taking control of enemies (eg like in Oddworld)

    Playing dead

    Getting them to fight amongst themselves

    You could check out some non metroidvania games where the protagonist is in a dangerous world but can't actually defend themselves for ideas on these kind of gameplay elements. Off the top of my head stuff like Limbo/Inside, Oddworld (the first 2 games) - I can't think of any more at the moment but there will be a bunch....

  • Just downloaded 8 tones and had a quick play, it looks pretty ok - quite basic, but should cover your chiptune needs and get you started. There are a couple of different tracker paradigms, they do share similarities but there could still be quite a learning curve when switching between software once you're used to one. Another suggestion I have for you if you're interested in creating this kind of music on your phone is http://www.warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/ - Sunvox is basically a modular synthesizer built into a tracker - if you keep the settings simple you have everything you need to write chiptunes, but it also has a lot of cutting edge features and you can write very polished modern music with this thing if you need to. The huge advantage of something like Sunvox is that you can start a project on your phone and then polish it up on your PC, or vice versa. It's really handy having a desktop version as well as a mobile version, as while it's fun to write stuff on the go on mobile, it's more tedious and sometimes you just want to jump on to a mouse and keyboard and get stuff done! The guy who wrote Sunvox also has a bunch of other really cool software - could check out his pixitracker as well http://www.warmplace.ru/soft/pixitracker/