Space Ape's Forum Posts

  • Just thought of a couple things that might help for now, and it's not too hard to do.

    Pick all the instances, sort by position (X/Y), and bring the highest/lowest to the top/bottom as desired.

    Give instances a variable that denotes their "depth" and you can then arrange the Z-order on the fly by comparing the "depth" variable.

    Ashley, that might be a very simple way to implement Z-ordering: a built-in depth variable.

  • Hey InvaderX. The timing system that wretchedshark proposed is a must before trying to do any other season-based systems. I'd suggest figuring out a scale; like every so many minutes in-game equals a day or whatever.

    For season effects, there might be some opengl effects that could be useful for creating lighting; or maybe have some different sprites, like leafless trees for autumn.

    Sounds cool, btw; I've been jotting notes and brainstorming with a buddy over a survival game inspired by Les Stroud. :)

  • Hey bluephaze. If you're into pixel-style graphics (or maybe better if you got some skillz :)), then I'd give TileStudio a look. It has a lot of powerful tools and is specifically designed for tiles, sprites, and maps. It even has onion-skinning, customized tilesets, light sources, etc.

    And it's free. TileStudio: http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/

  • Great news, CROS! Any plans to support an API specific to Construct 2, perhaps via a plugin? An example might be what clay.io has done with the Construct 2 plugin.

  • Hello evilbunnies. I think a simpler system might be use the Dictionary object; you can save key/value combinations and download them in JSON format. That JSON file can then be loaded via the Dictionary object and all the keys/values can be referenced as needed.

    Here's the manual entry for the Dictionary: https://www.scirra.com/manual/140/dictionary

  • Hello Alraune. Are you talking about showing a thumbstick control on the screen, like a heads-up display? If you want something to show up on the screen and stay around as the player moves, check out this tutorial: https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/37/beginners-guide-to-construct-2/page-7/page-7

  • Hello Phill. I'm not sure if you want to just show the score, make a highscore table, or what not. when you say share it, in what format do you mean?

    A screenshot is simple for showing someone; if you want to use it in another game, you might want to consider the Dictionary object, which can export a JSON file, which can be subsequently loaded into another Dictionary object if needed.

  • Hello! I think what you're looking for is a variable. Set a global variable like "spawnrate" to 1; this should indicate the # of enemies that spawn when the event is triggered.

    When the timer is up to spawn an enemy, repeat the event a number of times equal to the "spawnrate" variable. This way, you can modify the "spawnrate" variable on the fly and the system will always reference it when enemies are created.

    So when you want to increase the challenge, have the System>every 60 seconds event increase the "spawnrate" variable by 1.

    To create a global variable, just right click on the event sheet and add a global variable. When you want to modify it, use the System action and you should see a section with the global variables listed (set value, add to, subtract from, etc).

    As a design tip, I find it easier to create a separate event sheet named "variables" or something like that and store your global variables there. The layouts don't need to have the event sheet set to use, since global variables are accessible at any time.

  • Greetings!

    So I haven't been able to find any help on this one, and the stuff on the internet doesn't seem to work when used in Construct 2.

    I have several images that are loaded during the game depending on the user choice via an option system. I can get any image to load via input in a textbox or listbox, which is great, but that's only when I have the images loaded in as project files.

    I'd like to have these images in an external folder, a sub-folder of the game, to allow easy updating without having to update the whole game. I have an easy system setup to load these images by I can't seem to figure out how to format a data URI to fetch images from a sub-folder.

    I don't need any encoding or anything, unless it's mandatory; I'd like a simple format to grab the images.

    Thanks for any help!

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  • Zizi - it is actually working correctly. If you look at layout 2, you'll see a box surrounded with dotted lines--that's the visible area being shown when you go through the transport. It's defaulting to that position because no events are telling it otherwise.

    Also you may want to use the System expression "scroll to object" tied to your Sarah character to keep the focus (use on every tick event). When the game goes to layout 2, there's no events as event sheet 2 needs to contain the same info pertaining to your character. If you look at that layout properties on the left, you'll see it was using "event sheet 2" which is blank.

    I made the basic changes for ya.

    Here's the modified capx so you can check out the concepts: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/125327365/ragameproj.capx

  • Hello charusoft! Z-index doesn't have a specific number tied to it--unless I'm really missing something. The best option here is to use the Z-order expression to bring the object up or down the layer or possibly move the object to a new Layer as needed.

  • Hey Krish. I don't think there's a way to do that, other than maybe writing a custom plugin or something.

    If you're looking to adjust where the sprite/image appears, you could possibly adjust the X/Y position. If you wanted it 100 pixels to the right you could set it's X position +100, for instance. I dunno if that's what you need, but positioning is easy to manipulate in that case. Also, you might be able to use the Pin behavior in conjunction with an invisible sprite and have the object you want to manipulate keep a position relative to your invisible sprite.

  • Hey guys!

    So I did some experimenting and got a video to play. There may be other methods, but this one worked the first time I tried it.

    Add the video file to your project files and also add the browser object to your project. Use the browser object to load the video.

    Browser > Go to URL (or a new window/optional) > type the name of your video file in the quotes. Example: if you added the video, "vid.mp4" then type that exactly in the quotes. The video should play fine with sound and whatnot.

    One way to use this to show videos is to have a hidden layer with a black background that hides the rest of the layout and display the video on top of this; alternately, you could just load it in a different layout.

    Does anyone know a way, using the browser object and URL, to control the size of the video? If we could, we might use this method to display a video on an in-game TV, for example.

    The other issue is the video files are usually very large, so optimizing the format and keeping the video length small is crucial.

    EDIT: this was done with r119 and Chrome. I'm guessing the video will have to be in a format compatible with browsers. I have no idea if there is a "universal" format that all browsers recognize.

  • I've had it happen, too, and found a quick way to fix it. When you edit the game details, add some "padding" onto the width/height parameters. In your case, try 820 width and 500 height.

  • Roracle, I don't intend to make you upset, but you need to re-examine your computer situation. I, too, have built many a "frankensteins" in my day and you need be very careful with component compatability, overlocking, and all those "hacks" that system builders often use.

    Windows is rarely unstable nowadays, so if you're having so many problems that you're really frustrated, then I strongly urge you to consider that the design of your system is unstable. I'd also wonder if your copy/installation of Windows is a legit, licensed version of Windows. If you got it from someone, consider getting a legal copy. Make sure you have all updates installed and do some research about the up-to-date and compatible drivers.

    Whether or not you accept this info doesn't matter, but in my 22 years of PC experience, your issues are always the result of (1) poor hardware compat or drivers (2) corrupt or illegal copy of Windows (3) too many programs, malware, etc running...

    Take care