signaljacker's Forum Posts

  • The phone/tablet thing is actually one of the few things that has got me excited again about Construct 3. No one will be developing a whole game on one. But for troubleshooting/bugs or testing quick ideas on the go it will be absolutely fantastic. I love the idea of being able to work out problems and squash bugs in my lunchbreak or boring downtime when I'm out somewhere, it will allow for better quality dev time when I'm actually sat at my computer. If you have a phone with a stylus there are some good animation programs out there too so you'll actually be able to do pretty good gamedev on the go. None of Scirra's competitors offer anything like that, so it is actually innovative. Whether it's useful or not to the majority of users is another thing altogether though.

    I think that is the risk they run, the community has been formed over the years since CClassic, if now half the community is leaving (due to this remarkable change), it will not return in the short term because they will already be with another engine and do not want to buy a new one (C3) in the event that the subscription is deleted.

    If I go to another engine and learn it and have paid for it, I probably would not go back to C3 even if Scirra changed the model to single payment.

    I understand that they want to be novelty but I guess this is one of the risks.

    I think it would be much more than half the community that leaves. This vote alone shows that, but I would wager in the wider community it would be more like 70-90% Hobbyist game designers are absolutely the wrong audience for subscriptions and won't bite. Especially with other viable options about like clickteam fusion which aren't too difficult to jump ship to as the Construct paradigm was based off them. But maybe Scirra have done the math and having 10% of the current user base on a sub will be enough to sustain them? At any rate it's an incredibly risky move.

    Fundamentally it's not whether or not the price is reasonable. It is for what it is. But it's encouraging and perpetuating a business model that at the end of the day is harmful (in the long term) to content creation and users. A huge concern with rental models such as the one proposed is that the content you create will no longer be accessible to edit if the host company goes bust. Who knows if Scirra will even be around in 5 or 10 years (I do hope they are), but if they fold and take with them all those cloud services (as I understand it, so correct me if I'm wrong) we may never be able to edit our projects again. People who follow trends and try to make a quick buck by churning out games won't care, but for some of us we're pouring our hearts and souls into these projects, and trying to make not just games but art so it is VERY important on a personal level to be able to revisit this stuff, even if the technology it was built on has long since been superseded. The rental model seems geared toward fast development cycles intended to only follow trends and make a quick buck. I need something more permanent, and unfortunately if C3 can't accommodate for that it won't have any future with me.

  • I too would much rather a rent to own model, even if it makes C3 more expensive initially.

    > I remember their team expanding a couple of months back, but wasn't it just like social media/PR people or something? Didn't seem to make any difference to the actual product and seemed like dead weight and a waste of resources. There are heaps of developers making a good living without subscription models, if Scirra wants to go that route it's up to them, but the argument that software developers need to use subscription models to be profitable simply isn't true.

    >

    We've got a much bigger team now, (compared to when it was just me and Ash in our mums house all those years ago). We have an MD who takes a lot of administrative burden off me so I can work more on web development stuff and is helping grow the business, Laura doing social media and engaging with the community (we felt we needed to increase communication with the user base), Diego and Iain who are both full time developers working on Construct 3 with Ashley, and we currently have Paulo in house doing lots of graphical work, and Julien of course always being a huge help in the forum and with support emails No one is a dead weight, everyone is working very hard for Scirra and doing great work. A lot of it is behind the scenes, at least for a little longer.

    That's great, and glad to hear it. I do hope you guys continue to grow. Love your product, just like many on here not happy about getting trapped into a subscription model.

    I remember their team expanding a couple of months back, but wasn't it just like social media/PR people or something? Didn't seem to make any difference to the actual product and seemed like dead weight and a waste of resources. There are heaps of developers making a good living without subscription models, if Scirra wants to go that route it's up to them, but the argument that software developers need to use subscription models to be profitable simply isn't true.

    Actually what annoys me most, more than the subscription model is the condescending PR ******** - trying to spin bad things to look positive. It totally doesn't suit you guys. Just be upfront, if you're going to an obnoxious business model fine, but let's not pretend it's good and exciting for your users.

  • There's an idea knocking about in pro audio circles of "Rent to own" whereby you pay a monthly fee which can be cancelled at any time, but once you've payed off the price of the product you own it. I actually think this is an appealing system because this kind of software isn't cheap, usually starting at a few hundred $ a pop. This way though the devs get a steady stream of income coming in for ongoing development costs and users can slowly pay off a piece of professional software to eventually own. Its kind of meeting developers and users in the middle and I think its far less obnoxious than pure subscription models. Its something to think about anyway, as subscription models are universally maligned by users.

    I would much rather pay once. You'll probably lose my patronage and many others now, sorry Scirra. If you're going to charge subscription rates you'd better be hiring a bunch more coders, and actually listening to your customers, because from the synopsis of C3 so far it just seems like a bunch of stuff no one really asked for (I understand that sometimes this is necessary to innovate, but my point stands). Subscription model works well for a massive company such as Adobe as its an established industry standard, professionals worldwide rely on their software/services and pretty much no one else can touch them, but in the world of game creation software Scirra is just a blip on the radar - the majority of users are amateurs and won't want to pay for a subscription service. Sorry to sound so negative, I wish you guys the best but a subscription model is a kick in the teeth.

  • It's hard to tell without looking at your file. I load my global layers on a separate layout first, with all the files that you need for them already on that layer. Then I just switch visibility/functionality off as needed in the game. It might not be suitable for your purposes though I'm not sure. I would say the individual objects are disappearing when changing layouts because they themselves are not global.

  • If you want to design your own logo, which might be a bit of a learning curve but a good way to develop skills I can give you a few tips.. Good logos need to be:

    1. Scalable - they should be created in such a way that they can scale up and down and remain clear (because of this professional logos are often done with vector graphics)

    2. They should translate well to black and white - in instances where the logo can't be reproduced in full colour it should be able to retain its character and clarity in mono

    3. Don't go overboard with too many colours, fonts, effects etc - look at all the biggest logos they're simple and clear, but memorable

    Most pro logos are done in vector graphics software such as Adobe Illustrator - but there are free alternatives. Give Inkscape a try if you want to have a go making on yourself. It's not an easy process but it's a valuable skillset to have.

  • 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.

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  • 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!

  • 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.