stuatk's Forum Posts

  • yeah! I didn't think it was possible but I've found some one older than me!!!! (I'm 44)

    been trying to get Instant stuff working for a couple of days... can get my test game up and running, its working well - apart from scaling up correctly?!?!! (always a head flip)

    BUT - I can't get any of the scoring / leaderboard stuff going yet...

    (but I am secretly a little excited!)

  • You might be able to detect if the game is running on webGL if so it should handle the water.. so you wouldn't have to disable it for all mobile users..

    I've got my stuff working now, just can't seem to get my pixel style low rest viewport to scale up and fill facebook's window... fun!

  • Indeed.

    Although I would have expected it to have fully loaded, but just not have any of the "Facebook Instant Game" API calls available.

    Having scaling viewport fun now.

    Change one setting, export, upload, run in messenger, look for result - repeat. For hours. And. Hours.

  • Found it!

    It fails to load if you haven't added the "Facebook Instant Game" plugin to your project.

    I suppose Messenger must be requesting something at 75% load time and just sits there forever if it gets no response.

    SO - might help someone: If it fails to load in Messenger - check you've added the plugin!

  • After battling with the developer dashboard I managed to get a simple project up loaded.

    When I try and play it on messenger on my iphone 6 it always seems to fail at the same point:

    It starts loading an stops at 74%. Every time.

    Had a similar problem when trying to play Zen Pond. https://www.scirra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=198&t=201962

    Just wondering if anyone else has experienced this with their own testing?

  • Well done for getting it out there!

    I'm pretty sure the water effect will be causing problems on many devices! maybe detect hardware and switch it off on low end graphics...

    It ran really well on my Mac... but failed to load several times on my iphone 6 .. then eventually ran fine, the loading time was huge.

    I'm failing miserably on a test project. Keep getting "failed to upload" messages on the Hosted Assets page when trying to upload my test to the faceBook servers..

    onwards and upwards.

    hmmm.. I got my test project to work. When I try to play it in messenger app on my iphone it keeps failing to load around the same time every time - at about 70-75% of the way through.. same as yours did.

  • ha hahha ha. Oh. That was one of the best, most concise thread I've ever come across.

    made me laugh

  • Despite the tone of the original post that seems to have destabilized the audience, this is a real legitimate problem not to take too lightly dear gentlemen!

    stuatk But, know that: if you are on Windows and now with first C3 desktop beta builds, you can (and indeed could already do it with C2), automate some things via NW.js object and other tricks to avoid you precisely this type of very repetitive tedious constraints.

    That said, you will be quickly limited when it comes to loading complete animations (a rexrainbow C2 plugin allows -in part- to remedy this).

    This method is especially true for one shot sprites, tilemaps, and any other assets up to the data. There are infinite hack possibilities.

    The other good news is that with C3, all these points are likely to improve over time!

    Thanks for the info - and agreeing with the problem.

    I can't use the desktop version - I'm on a mac. I was considering writing a plugin to help with reloading stuff.. would be handy. I think if you're going to try and use C3 professionally you have to do a bit of coding. It does loads of great stuff really well, just a few things missing.

    (my original tone was a bit off because I'd just bought the bleeding thing - again!)

  • "When you import you can just click replace whole animation"

    thanks tunepunk - I didn't see that check box, thats improves things a little

    I agree, Construct does a lot of brilliant stuff, thats why it narks me so much when basic things are sometimes over looked....

  • desktop version you say?

    I have a mac.

    How do you apply for a refund?

  • I had this problem with C2.

    I suggested a fix. https://www.scirra.com/forum/has-anyone-actually-used-this-seriously_t109509?&hilit=stuatk

    It was fixed. A quick button to reload your images.

    Now it seems 10 times WORSE.

    C3 - Please tell me Im wrong!

    The only way to update the images for an animation is to do the following:

    click on your animation (lets say its a 6 frame walk).

    you CANT select multiple frames!?! - so you have to delete each frame one by one.

    right click - import frames from strip.

    Navigate file system to find update image file.

    click load.

    NOW REPEAT FOR ALL YOUR CHARACTERS ANIMATIONS!!!!!! .. maybe 20 times!!!!

    EVERY TIME YOU MAKE A CHANGE?????

    I can't be right. Please tell me.

    Construct does soooooo many thing so well and intuitively... then one of THE most FUNDAMENTAL things is totally disregarded ?????

    I upgraded yesterday because I was loving it, I didn't check these simple things because I assumed they must be in place considering how nice it is (was) to use.... heart broken

    So. Make sure your animations are 100% finished first time you import them, because updating them will make you want to weep.

    dare I ask how updating other things work? - sounds for instance? Dare I look.

    Tell me I missed something simple - please!

  • ok! Ashley has responded to the re-importing sounds and sprites problem in another thread... so hopefully soon we will all be saving a load of time and pain...

    Its very impressive that Ashley is so active in the forums and listens to our problems... credit to him.

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  • Ashley - Thank you for the quick response.

    Yes - those 2 points are what I believe we need, it would be excellent if there was an option to either "reload from source" on just the current selected animation or for all the animations for the sprite. Reloading all the animations is what people would probably need most of the time, and if the system can't find a file bring up a file requester so the user can either cancel the whole operation or go find the file again...

    And maybe just right clicking on a wav and having a re-import option... or bring up the file requester if the files are missing...

    I hope these ideas can be implemented without too much pain, and again, thanks for responding.

  • Thanks to everyone for their input -

    zendorf - brilliant ideas all around, it's great to have intelligent input from a developer who comes from a different background. I'm sure Scirra is considering some of the options you've mentioned - well I hope they are... I too have tried all the alternatives (gamesalad, stencyl etc) and despite constructs problems - I think it's by far the nicest to use, and is a brilliant fast creative way to work - it has immense potential.

    maybe a short term fix for lack of external asset referencing: save some data along with the sprite that contains the path and file name pointing to the original file imported. Then have a "reload from source" button, if the asset has been moved report the missing path to the user and allow them to edit it if they want. I remember the 3dsMax used this method if it couldn't find your textures.. (same for sounds) just an idea.

  • Thanks for joining in but kind of proves my point that you can't possibly have gone through a whole project with an artist working beside you... or he would tell you pretty quickly why it's so tedious and time wasting trying to update animations.

    I've worked in the industry for 25 years, from adventure games on the Amiga, Tomb Raider 1 and 2, pc, xbox, ios titles... I used to design our in house tools with the lead programmer on Tomb Raider.. the only reason I'm saying this is just to give you some perspective on how well I know how these things should work..

    Once the animations are stored in separate folders the artist has no choice but to perform an export from his art package for every single one of these folders... so if your character has 12 animations - 12 separate exports, 12 times double clicking on folders 12 times selecting yes - overwrite files... 12 times changing the frame range (say the jump anim is frame 6 to 12 ) then back again..... 12 times ... every time you tweak your sprite - you get the idea.

    where if all the files were in one folder, all the animations for the character were named hero01.png, hero02.png...//...hero32.png you can export the entire animation in one command, the entire range of frames for all the animations! Then construct just knows that the run animation is from hero12.png to hero20.png for example.

    Then pop back to construct (in your reply you say just overwrite the files, but then, officially are you not suppose to go and find the sprite and choose "reload from disk"?) and refresh your sprite. Job done.

    I've tried using sprite sheets, that's worse. There is no way of just updating the sheet the sprite refers to, because it too stores them as individual frames in individual folders, if I could just overwrite a single sprite sheet image I would. The only way you can update a sprite that uses a sheet is to reload the sheet for each animation and redefine the range for each animation.... very painful.

    You say just overwrite sound files... yes but what about generating the .ogg and m4a files? So I have to generate them myself then overwrite them manually. That would work. But the manual says nothing about updating your sounds... because really there is no way, just a bodge, overwrite and generate the other formats yourself. Maybe should mention that in the manual. Which by the way I think is excellent, well written and well laid out - I mean that.

    Construct is so nice and a joy to use in places... I just feel that it has not been tested thoroughly, it seems as though using a community for testing and improving is the way tool developers (and game developers) do it these days. But I'm not paid to test and debug it am I? Why should I take up my time testing and debugging something that I've bought? Wasn't that suppose to of been done already? - I understand there has to be a little flexibility with this... but it shouldn't be relied on as the main way of testing.

    And the other oversights and problems? - I've got to get on with some work, I've spend enough time on this already...