thomasmahler's Forum Posts

  • That's what I was thinking. If every user adds a couple of video tutorials based on real time scenarios, we'd quickly have a pretty awesome documentation.

    Most users will probably want to start out with a simple adventure game, a platformer or whatever and a lot of them would be dealing with the same set of problems (how do I set the character controls? How do I add sound and music? How do I add dialogue? How do I define animation?). If you can watch someone else solving this problem, you'll have a much easier time understanding why shit happens and how things should work.

    The way I see it: Game Creators should be busy with the actual game creation and spend less time solving technical problems. That's why Construct is so wonderfully refreshing

    Deadeye, you're next

  • Alright, I think a thread like this could be _really_ awesome. Basically, the rules are: Explain a feature or something that you've just found out using the wonders of video (and audio, heh!).

    I'll start. I'll quickly go over how to set background music for a layout and a sound effect for a certain event. Here we go:

    My video tutorials will be stored here:

    http://www.thomasmahler.com/files/const ... io2_01.avi (20mb)

    Edit: Youtube Version:

    Subscribe to Construct videos now

    http://www.thomasmahler.com/files/construct/

    And maybe I'll just youtube 'em.

    Also, I'm still a beginner with Construct, so I'll most likely screw up here and there or not use the most efficient solution in some cases, but I hope that doesn't matter - we can discuss better ways of doing things based on the 'screwed up videos' here as well, which could be a cool learning resource. The idea is just to get this sort of dynamic going, since learning through videos is probably the fastest way to learn.

  • I have a wireless xbox360 controller and a PS2 controller hooked up to my workstation

  • 1) Patrolling Behavior - This'd be something very standard you'd use in any 2d platformer for enemies or NPCs.

    It should just set the sprite to go from x, y to x, y over a certain amount of time. It'd also be nice if we'd have a 'wait at x, y' value (so an enemy would go patrolling, stop to look around and go on patrolling again).

    2) Effects:

    a) Animated Film Grain for a certain layer. To give everything an interesting effect. Just a slight film grain layer that'd work on certain layers. So you'd have film grain in the bg and over the sprites, but not over the HUD.

    b) Light Flicker / Glow: Could be added to Lights or generally sprites - random flicker behavior that'd basically set a random value on the opacity of an object which an adjustable frequency, so we could create interesting lighting effects. Also, an added glow effect would be neat. So we could have a light and a glow on top of it, the light would be animated through the flicker and the glow would be animated through a randomizer to make a simple light feel a lot more atmospheric.

  • Ah, got it. I thought 0 - 1 = -1.

    Or are there no negative values in Construct?

  • 13) Dunno if that's possible, but it'd be need for tests:

    Say I have a preview of the current template run. Now I want to play around with the controls to get them just right. What I'm doing right now is that I launch a preview of the game (CTRL + P), check how things work and close the app again. Then I change the values and do another preview.

    Now, wouldn't it be cool if we'd have a debug control that we could set to a key that'd be like a reset + update game? So we could let the preview run on the second monitor, adjust things, just hit a key and the runtime would be updated to the changes that we just made.

  • - On pause pressed

    + Set TimeScale to 1 - TimeScale

    Could you elaborate on that? Not quite sure how I'd set that up.

  • We have plans for this in Construct 2.0.

    Just out of curiosity: How high is the chance that we'll be able to compile for the 360? Microsoft is doing a lot for indie development right now with Xbox Live Arcade and the Community Games (http://creators.xna.com/en-us/XboxLIVECommunityGames) - so it'd certainly be great if Construct could be one of the main development tools for that area aside from XNA.

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  • We're going to try and have a revamped control system - supporting standard controllers - for 0.99. However, as Xbox360 controllers are a separate API they will have to be done via a plugin.

    Awesome, this'll be a great new feature. Is analogue support planned too? It'd be great being able to switch between 'walking' and 'running' animations based on how far we push the sticks. Less than 50% = Set animation to walking, greater than = set animation to running.

    Another cool thing would be to redo the way controls work. It'd be great being able to have a preset for multiple players directly built in, so you'd just have to set the keys and trigger the actions.

  • Oh man, that makes so much sense now

    My thought process was that 'Start of Layout' means that the event starts as soon as the layout starts and then just keeps going.

    Thanks a lot for the constant help, deadeye, you rock!

  • Thanks for this thread, I learned a TON in just 2 days by analyzing your scenes!

  • 12) It'd be cool if we could set the runtime to run at a zoom level that we could set.

    Say, we create a game for 720p (1280x720) and set the runtime zoom level to 50%: The runtime preview would be displayed at 640x360.

  • 6) Pause:

    Dunno if I got that logic right. What I did was:

    On "Pause" pressed - System: Set Time Scale to 0

    That works. Then I want to set the Time back to 1 if I hit "Pause" again. So my thought was:

    On "Pause" pressed, Timer is equal to 0 - System: Set Time Scale to 1

    I guess my thought process is wrong in that case, right?

    2) The 'GoldValueField' - I have a HUD with a Text called 'Gold' - underneath it, I wanted to create a text object (called 'GoldValueField') that displays the Gold value from the 'Gold' global variable that I set. So I created a:

    Start of Layout - goldValueField: Set text to global('Gold')

    Now, it seems to work, since it displays that global variables initial value (0)

    Then I created a 'coin' object and wanted to add '10' to the Gold global variable whenever a coin is collected, so I created this event:

    Player overlaps Coin - System: Add 10 to global variable 'Gold'

    Didn't work. I grab the coin, but the goldValueField doesn't update. It still says '0'

    The curious thing is that the same event works for private variables.

    I have a 'heart' object and created the following event:

    Player overlaps Heart - Player: Set 'Hearts' to 1

    And I have a heart icon in the hud that has 2 animation frames. If the 'Hearts' Private Variable is set to 0, it displays the EmptyHeart Frame. If the 'Hearts' variable is at 1, it displays the full heart.

    This works. It's the same logic behind both events, it works for private variables, but doesn't seem to work for global variables. What am I missing here?

  • Awesome, thanks a lot!

  • 5) Can't seem to find out how to do this:

    I want to have a global variable called 'Gold'. Whenever the player picks up a gold coin, I'll add +1 to this global variable - I can do that. Here's the tricky part:

    I want to display the Gold Global Variable on top of the screen, in the hud - so that the player always knows how much gold he has already collected.

    So how do I tell a text object to simply display the number in the gold variable?