strike911's Forum Posts

  • I am so glad my last two demos were at 720P resolution.

    Will start capping videos pronto!

  • scirra.com/forum/viewtopic.php

    There's the submission thread for everyone.

    Cool.

    Can anyone recommend an open source or free alternative to Fraps. I had vidcapped a two games I made, but they have that awful "Fraps" watermark on each vid.

    There was one called CamStudio (or something similar to that) but it acted wonky when I tried recording 720P video a few months ago. That said, since it doesn't need audio maybe the recording would look better.

    Anyone?

  • I'd love to help however I can, this sounds like a great idea.

  • Wow, looks promising . Looking forward to seeing more of this.

    I like how they're just fighting by the side of the road, too. Must be quite a strange sight for the people driving by

    lol, hey, there are crazier things in a few choice fighting games. lol.

    Honestly, I had the background static with nothing there, but the background needed some kind of movement because it was just kind of meh with nothing there.

  • Turn-based sword fighting RPG prototype I'm working on.

    The turns aren't implemented yet. The video shows a combo exchange state that a player can enter in the middle of a fight. These states won't go nearly as long as they do in the video. Final version will also include movement, actual turns and cooldown times for various actions.

    Again, this video doesn't show the turn based elements (I'm still working on them!!), but the video shows an instance where both players can attack in combinations based on how well they're fighting, and it accounts for on-the-fly defensive and offensive states, allowing the player to dynamically attack, perceive the attack, enter a defensive state, and defend.

    If two player attack at once, I'd like to have a sword clash button mashing event, but I'll work on that later.

    The prototype is really a demonstration of simulating perception (via bullet time/slow motion). If a player is fighting well then they have better reaction times to defend themselves. If the player if fighting poorly they'll have less reaction time to defend. Reaction time is simulated by using a slow motion effect. When the player does better time is very slow and lets them react accordingly. If the player is doing poorly time is at normal pace, and if they're playing very poorly time appears to speed up for them.

    Edit: With better animations, movement, jumping, and all that jazz I think I could get a game fight scene that resembles the bullet time aesthetics of the movie "300." What excites me is that the slow motion effect isn't just an effect, but it actually is a key part of the design, which is controlled dynamically by how well the player is doing. Admittedly, the prototype is riddled with problems that I don't like (for instance, due to my limitations of knowing what I'm doing, time isn't as slow as I'd like it to go, animations are shoddy, there's no movement implemented yet, and I really need some kind of cooldown object that can control just how many times a player can attack before it fatigues them thus affecting their reaction-time/perception) but hey, it's a start.

  • This is what works for me...

    I am not an expert at all and there are zillions of people better at making music than me... but I've made music for professional environments, for a few small time games that are currently in development, in games I've used for competitions during my extended stay at the university, and for a hobby (I'm an OverClocked Remixer) and let me be completely honest... my piano/keyboard knowledge is basic AT BEST, and I don't use a midi controller for any of my music endeavors. I exclusively use my PC and a mouse for music, and I just use a sequencer (FL Studio combined with good VSTs and Soundfonts), though I cater to a more electronic style. I'm not an expert by any means, but I just wanted to chime in and say that it certainly is do-able not to have a Midi controller to make decent music.

    If you want a real sound get realistic samples. If you want chiptunes, then get an oscillator. Midi controllers are great, but you don't really need one. A knowledge of chords is more important, imo, which you'll develop naturally after messing around and copying your favorite song. You'll start seeing patterns and learning to hear the right thing. Studying in a formal setting never hurts either.

    With the synthesizers and VSTs that are available now you can make music without any gear and just a computer and get a professional sound out of it. Live instruments are great, don't get me wrong, they have a real sound that you cannot reproduce, that said, if you're aiming for midi controller and want to make music that way, you could go with FL Studio and handful of soundfonts and VSTs.

    But yeah, just wanted to chime in as a gaming sequencer. While you won't get a live instrument quality like you might with a midi controller for a select few instruments... like piano and guitar, which is important... but for strings ... might as well sequence them anyway. After a little studying and messing around with chords you can pin down most anything after a few weeks.... and then you can get an almost authentic sound from sequencing.

    http://www.strike911.net/Music/STRIKE91 ... ce%20I.mp3

    If you want to make an 8-bit sound or anything in between, you can get that heavily time based sound too...

    http://www.jasonkoohi.com/lol_jason_likes_nes.mp3

    That kind of stuff you would most likely have to tweak after inputting your midi data anyway...

    Things that are difficult to reproduce though in my experience are acoustic guitars and electric guitars, though the VSTs they have out now, like GuitarRig, combined with something like FLStudio's Slayer plugin give you an almost real sounding electric guitar. Really cool stuff they have coming out now. AGain, nothing beats the real thing if you're going for that; the emotions from a real musician playing an instrument is just far more emotional... but for me, its been ideal to be a jack of all trades and I could only do that by knowing how to sequence (or I could become a one man band but I'm just not that talented).

    Midi controllers are great for a lot of people, but not vital. What matters is whether or not you are able to make music more effectively (and efficiently) with a midi controller... which you'll know. IF you can get your note data into the computer easily one way then go for it.

    So yeah, if you feel the Midi controller is more ideal for you then I say go for it, but in the end you're going to need software experience anyway to tweak the sound and use the right instruments anyway. And a knowledge of sequencing will have to come with that.

    Also... if you ever need a generic musician, wink wink nudge nudge. lol.

    (I apologize for the shameless plugs) but one more:

    video game remixes, originals, and more...

    http://www.strike911.net

  • >

    >

    > Make sure to watch it in HD. Same game I was working on a month ago or so, just more stuff now. Things have really progressed.

    >

    > Upgraded weapons system with ammo, cooler background now, sfx, music, charged missile system, and some VERY rudimentary enemy AI (right now) that flies at you, shoots, and flies away (either to the background or foreground) after a given amount of time passes. Also the HUD is a little better, and it has some cool SpriteFont effects, for instance typed out gun information whenever you switch weapons,next to the ammo numbers. I don't think anyone will actually read that stuff, but it looks cool on the HUD.

    >

    > One thing that isn't in the video is the cool zooming effects. They're still there I just turned them off for the stuff in the middle of the game for some reason while I was recording the video. >_< lol.

    >

    That is looking really, really nice. I agree with the comment on the video about some minor alteration to show which enemies are actually attackable, though. And what will be in place of the ? blocks?

    Thanks a lot.

    Yeah, I'm planning on having the enemies that are on the same plane as the player being a little brighter so they'll stick out a little more.

    The "?" 3D boxes are placeholders for battleships that will be cruising around the background. Not sure if I'm up to snuff for 3D, but they'll more likely be 2D like everything else.

    I actually had experimented with a few battleships exploding and breaking in half in the background. So, it's looking okay. I've been saving this one particular particle object with a custom texture for large objects exploding in the background. Since I've got the layers set up just right, I can toss some floating object into the background that is much closer to the player, and it really adds a nice sense of depth... so something will be floating in the middle of everything... maybe two massive ships battling it out, closer to the player's action...

    The purpose for having such a busy background isn't only to just be there though, I want it to be a visual indicator of the player's success. I plan on having a handful of simple mission goals per level that pop up sporadically throughout the level. The important thing is that you don't necessarily have to succeed in these missions, you can fail and keep playing, but the overall picture of the conflict will change based on your successes.

    So like one simple mission right at the start will be "Defend the Fleet" ... and you accomplish this by not allowing X number of enemies to escape your bullets. If enough happen to get away, then the enemy will accomplish something... like ... say, a battleship blows up in the background. You have failed in one of your objectives, but that's okay, the war isn't lost, you can try to make it up in some other missions... in fact, you shouldn't expect to succeed in all of your missions. The awesome thing is that some upgraded weapons will be more ideal to accomplish particular missions. Like that sniper rifle is terrible to use in defense objective, its slow and clunky, but holding on to one might be a good idea if you want to take out a special or strong enemy, whose defeat could be a mission in itself. Just because you lose a battle doesn't mean the war is lost (or in this case the level).

    At the end of each stage, you'll be able to tell whether this conflict was a victory or defeat based on how many missions you succeeded in, again, it's not like you'll get a game over if you're defeated in all of your missions, but the player's story will change. And its just simple events controlling it all. If mission 1 = successful then destroy battleship1 in the background... things like that. It's actually really simple and effective at making it appear like what you're doing is affecting the world outside, when really the sidescrolling shooter genre is typically a very controlled environment. I'm even thinking about assigning a numerical value to each mission to give value to its importance. Killing a powerful enemy might go further than accomplishing some simple objective. Anyway, I'm very excited about the possibilities for the player to create their own conflict... and though its not really custom tailored war going on, it should at least kind of feel like the player has some power in the game.

    And then combine that with a few different background changes (or perspective shifts) per level, a few more different enemies, and a boss at the end of each level and it'll be great. Let's see if I'll even be able to 'event' all that up though, lol.

    I'm getting all excited just talking about it.

    Completely nerding out. My apologies. lol.

  • Make sure to watch it in HD. Same game I was working on a month ago or so, just more stuff now. Things have really progressed.

    Upgraded weapons system with ammo, cooler background now, sfx, music, charged missile system, and some VERY rudimentary enemy AI (right now) that flies at you, shoots, and flies away (either to the background or foreground) after a given amount of time passes. Also the HUD is a little better, and it has some cool SpriteFont effects, for instance typed out gun information whenever you switch weapons,next to the ammo numbers. I don't think anyone will actually read that stuff, but it looks cool on the HUD.

    One thing that isn't in the video is the cool zooming effects. They're still there I just turned them off for the stuff in the middle of the game for some reason while I was recording the video. >_< lol.

  • Love the plug in. One problem for me...

    when I have a camera created, I cannot "Set Layer Angles." I can set the "Display angle" but not individual Layer angles. This plugin prevents it from occurring in Construct.

    I didn't know what was going on for about 3 days now. haha.

    Amazing Plugin btw.

  • well, thanks for the confirmation. At least, I'm not the only one.

    I'm pretty sure it worked in previous builds of Construct. . . .

    ... hmm.... well, damn.

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  • i'm having difficulty rotating layers. I see the "set layer angle" option but the layers refuse to rotate. I have the specific angle I want in there correctly, but it won't rotate. The "Set display angle" works perfectly and will rotate exactly as I input, but i cannot for the life of me get "set layer angle" to work... it just ignores the command entirely.

    I have unbounded scrolling already checked. I scoured the forums and couldn't find any info.

    What am I doing wrong?

  • Thanks so much guys. This thread was very very useful. I got the effect I wanted by using some of the techniques you guys mentioned. At first I thought I could just up and copy most of the events from DeadEye's cap. My laziness didn't pay off so well, it didn't work so smoothly, but it served as an excellent outline for how the basic set up should be. After about an hour or so of tweaking, everything is running perfectly!

    Now i can have multiple heat seeking missiles chaotically flying towards different enemies on screen, all with crazy light trails everywhere and it actually looks exactly how I wanted it to!

    thanks guys.

  • Okay, I've hit a road block... let me tell you what I'm trying to get. I have a missile object that flies towards enemies. It flies very fast (I've limited the bullet setting for speed for 2000, so yeah, that's the max speed). I want a bright trail to stay temporarily in the path that the missile flew. You know that kind of effect right?

    I tried having an event Always set a particle object to the missile's (X,Y). I set up the particles object to just create a particle at no speed, no movement or anything, with no variation. More or less it was set just to spit out a uniform block at its emitting spot... which would theoretically make a line by the end. So I tried that but the missile was going so fast that the particles wouldn't emit fast enough to make a consistent line, even when I pumped up the particle rate to insane levels. There were a few skips and gaps in the line. It was --ALMOST-- what I was looking for, but the line drawn didn't have that solid, clean look that I was looking for. There were a few spaces and gaps in the line and the particle object in general seemed, well, more like particles than an actual curvy line (how about that, uk yuk!). It's not exactly the effect I'm looking for.

    I'm willing to use particles if I can't figure out a different method... but ... *whines*

    Is this possible to get this effect? Again, I'm looking for something that essentially that would draw a thin trail behind the missile that would disappear after a second or two, and I've tried a couple different things but couldn't get it to work right.

    Something tells me that a particle object is the way to go, but I can't seem to get it to emit properly if it is.

    Help me, oh gurus of Construct.

  • hehe, this is the angriest I've ever seen this forum. Chill everyone.

  • Thanks everyone.

    That initial camera zoom looked a little silly until I made the background's zoom ratio -20%, so you get that real depth of field , zoom out while moving forward kind of deal.

    You know I honestly haven't thought about the movement power ups. I'll have to think it over. Could be interesting.

    I can't wait to get some kind of an alpha online one day soon.