thomasmahler's Forum Posts

  • I think you're pretty much full of it.

    I know a lot of artists in the industry that never would have had to chance to work on their own game, being their own art directors if it wouldn't have been for Construct. Construct already is an amazing tool for indie development.

    Of course the app isn't perfect. All this stuff, this whole experience of being able to create content without having to invest years of your life learning a complex programming language is still very new and people will have to find out how to properly approach this.

    I think the best way to contribute to Construct is to use the app, create great games, report bugs, give feedback and donate. Once we see great commercial games pop up things will pretty much explode.

  • Awesome, thanks Lucid!

  • I'm trying to figure this out...

    • [CHANGE] Controls are between 0 - 1 to allow for analogue controls

    I don't quite get it - where can I actually set this up? I think David once told me how it works, but it was a bit more complicated and I forgot it.

    Basically, this should probably be implemented in a better way. Like, right now when you're setting up a 'control is down' action, there are 2 options: One for the control, one for the player number. Wouldn't it make sense to just put an 'Analogue Threshold' as a third option up there?

    Practical example would be:

    "Move Right"

    Player 1

    Analogue .5

    = Walk

    "Move Right"

    Player 1

    Analogue 1.0

    = Run

  • Thirded this, if that's a word. Would be super helpful.

  • Well, it's a screenshot.

  • Try Construct 3

    Develop games in your browser. Powerful, performant & highly capable.

    Try Now Construct 3 users don't see these ads

  • <img src="http://www.thomasmahler.com/images/s_02.jpg">

  • Oh, I completely forgot about that feature. It'd be cool if that stuff can be done procedurally in the future (like just selecting the image, subtracting the selection and deleting the pixels), but this will do for now

  • The whole idea would be that Construct would create this procedurally the moment you import the sprite - so that we don't have to paint collision masks for every single tile manually.

    Currently I use a solid block and a sphere for standard collisions, but for custom stuff like hills, slopes, etc. - it can be a pain to do everything twice if an algorithm could take over that job.

    The actual creation of the mask isn't even that bad, but importing everything twice and lining things up, stacking them, hiding them, setting attributes... that can be a lot of work.

  • Yes, Construct interprets it just right.

  • Lol, only 500 bucks for something that complicated. You'd have to practically rewrite Construct.

    It would more likely cost around..

    Way to go posting another useful comment.

    The idea is that everyone donates for a feature that would benefit all of us - The more people donate, the higher the amount of money the person that delivers will get.

  • I think what he means is some sort of interpolation of the sprite.

    Like this:

    <img src="http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/666516/interpolation.png">

    Its fairly easy to do via levels in Photoshop, or Gimp. In fact I already have a script that does it for me.

    What he said.

  • I don't know, whatever works best and smoothly with Constructs behaviors. The current problem is that for high res art that isn't blocky, you'll need to come up with lots and lots of collision tiles that you'll have to paint manually, cause the sprites can be a bit more complicated - which takes up a LOT of time.

    So the idea is that Construct would analyze the sprite shape and generate a simplified version by itself.

    The current per pixel implementation is a bit 'too perfect' - which means that it detects every little variation in the sprite - it there's a 1 pixel dot standing out, the playerSprite with platform behavior will often come to a complete halt when it collides with the pixel. So you have to do it manually and make sure that everything is perfect.

    So the optimal implementation would be like a channel that you could turn on in the sprite editor and then change the collision mesh of a sprite with a couple of sliders - like changing how much it simplifies the shape, offset it so that it looks like the player sprite would slightly stand inside of the sprite, etc. - just a procedural way to create a collision mesh / sprite for our tiles.

  • Hey guys,

    As some of you might know, I've been using Construct for a couple of months now to create a game - things are coming along really nicely, still, there are quite a few things left that I'd love to see in Construct and it seems like the devs are already really busy polishing Construct for 1.0.

    A lot of times here features are being suggested that'd be way sweet to have in Construct, features that'd be ideal for an experienced programmer to design and create in his free time - so that the devs wouldn't have to worry about every single, little detail by themselves. The problem is that there's probably a lack of motivation amongst experienced programmers to do stuff like that in their free time.

    So my idea is... wouldn't it be cool if we could put up donation threads for specific features? Say, you're working on a game and there's this single, awesome idea that you have, you already designed it on paper and it could be really cool to see this in a game - but the devs won't have time to implement that certain feature that'd allow you do implement your idea. So, as an artist, you're sorta screwed when this happens.

    Now, in a case like this, we could put up a donation thread and everyone could join in - everyone would put up a donation, all the money would add up and the programmer that delivers gets the money.

    That way, the community could propose features that should be developed and programmers would have an extra motivation to go out and create something - win / win.

    The amount of money being donated could be set by each and every user, based on how complicated it'd be to implement it - so if you _really_ need a feature to get your game done, you could contribute and hope that a programmer takes care of it.

    We could set up pricing like 10- 20 bucks for simple stuff like pixel shaders or a higher amount of cash for more complex features.

    For example, I'd be willing to donate 500 bucks to the person/group that makes Construct Xbox360/Live compatible. And another 500 bucks for PSN.

    Of course every plugin / feature should remain open source in the end.

    This is definitely a delicate thing to discuss since it could harm the open source mentality of the project, but I'd be all up for paying programmers for the time they spend to implement features or create plugins. It'd serve as a motivational help to developers out there that may have the skillset, but have a hard time finding the motivation to work outside of work

    Anyones cool with that idea?

    PS: I was serious about the Xbox360 compatibility thing. I'd donate 500 bucks for that.

    Been some time since I talked to the devs about that, if anyone would care to help the cause...

  • It'd be really cool to have a feature in Construct where we could take a sprite and let Construct generate its own collision mesh - just like refining selections in Photoshop (CS3 and newer). It'd take the sprite, analyze it and simplify it and then Construct should be able to store each collision mesh as a subobject directly in the sprite.

    It's quite a nuisance and create collision sprites for the more complicated spriteshapes. An internal, procedrual solution would save ram and time.

    Just a thought

  • This'd be cool:

    I wanna be able to make adjustments in a layout and refresh the preview with the press of a hotkey. Right now, you can't preview a layout if a preview is running in the background - so I always have to find the preview, close it, go back to Construct and hit the hotkey for preview.

    It'd be much faster to have a hotkey for refreshing the previewer that is already open.