TiAm's Forum Posts

  • +1. Thanks for taking an interest in the C2 community! Personally, I've never had any consistent issues with node. I think I've experienced a freeze or two in the past, but I couldn't say for sure.

    The general concensus about the freezing issue is that it happens after export, but not during preview. Also, that reverting to an earlier version of node seems to get rid of the problem (version 0.8.6 I think).

    Here's a thread about it: ?

    Below are the names of some forum members who have reported freezing (posting their names will also alert them to this thread).

    Katala

    BrumanaGames

    arcgen

    Artsym

    EddyDingDongs

    Lunatrap

    Arima

    yumemiru2014

    shinkan

    slanw

    scaffa

    spongehammer

    megatronx

    transient

    LevelUpJordan

    —

  • I would specifically recommend against getting a dual-GPU system. With the state of current drivers from both AMD and nVidia, it can be difficult to get the system to actually use the powerful GPU, and you get stuck using the weak integrated GPU even though there's more powerful hardware in the system.

    I think he is talking about laptops (ie, nvidia optimus issues), not desktops or SLI systems.

  • //Well, for speed I would go like this (for many instances, globals would become instance vars for obvious reasons):

    global ChargeMeter

    global ChargeMeterMax

    global ChargeMeterPercentage

    global BaseBulletSpeed

    global MaxBulletSpeed

    --------

    Every tick set ChargeMeterPercentage to (ChargeMeter/ChargeMeterMax)

    --------

    Set bullet speed to lerp(BaseBulletSpeed, MaxBulletSpeed, ChargeMeterPercentage )

    --------

    //Accuracy would be a similar approach:

    global Accuracy_MaxDeviation //In degrees

    local AngleToTarget

    Set AngleToTarget to angle(EnemyX/Y,Target_ProjectedX/Y) //Assuming you know how to do this

    Set bullet angle to

    lerp (

    (AngleToTarget + ( (Accuracy_MaxDeviation * -1) * ChargeMeterPercentage ),

    (AngleToTarget + ( (Accuracy_MaxDeviation) * ChargeMeterPercentage ),

    random(0.0,1.0)

    )

    //Note: whoops, misread your post. Thought you were talking about enemies firing at the player. Left the above in case that might be helpful. The bullet speed equation would be unchanged; all you need to do to the angle equation would be to change 'Set AngleToTarget to...' the following:

    Set AngleToTarget to angle(PlayerX/Y,MouseX/Y)

    //If you want, you could do a projected mouseX/Y counting in gravity, etc, or maybe you want player to compensate manually? Anyway...

  • Better late than never. Here is a procedural approach using 4 objects (two masks and two ring halves) that can display any kind of pie animation.

    WARNING: this uses two 'force own texture' layers, so it's probably not a good approach for mobile.

    OTHER WARNING: this is very much unfinished. The basic functionality works, but there are a lot of bells and whistles that don't work yet (I got a little overzealous ). If you have a lot of different pies that will be animating a lot of different ways, this might be useful. Otherwise, shinkan's approach should be alot more straightforward and funtional. Make of it what you will.

  • A metroid-vania style game where all the diverse weapons and loot actually did unique things, instead of just being window-dressing. So, this weird weapon can destroy this seemingly invincible monster, this one can clear that rockslide, etc. Probably wouldn't be terribly balanced, but it would be a helluva lot of fun!

    The other one: a CPS2/Neo-Geo style bullet hell shooter with near-pixel level destruction (like cortex command).

  • One idea which comes to mind is to have a 'performance test' built into the game. This is something I'm doing in my current title.

    For example, in my game, if you go under options/graphics, there's an option for high/med/low...and auto. Auto will spawn a couple test sequences, testing logic and gpu performance by measuring the fps avrg.

    Of course, you could make this transparent by running these tests during downtime (intro sequence, title screen, level loading, etc).

    Since you can't directly tell what hardware the game is running on, you have to approximate. Running a logic test -- some sort of arbitrary algorithm, escalate a loop until the fps declines -- and then a graphics test -- spawn sprites and animate them til fps declines -- would give you a measure of the discrepancy between the two. High logic/low gpu could mean iGPU...or it could mean malfunctioning drivers. So, in that case:

    'You have integrated graphics don't you? If not, something is wrong...if you have a laptop and a nVidia GPU, you might want to google "nvidia optimus problems".'

    PC gaming has always been a PITA...just gotta keep working around it...

  • michael JohnnySheffield Irbis — shinkan —

    To be blunt, I don't think most people who buy C2 ever release anything...often not even half-assed test games or re-skinned templates. For some C2 is a game engine. For many it is merely a game. And most of those people won't care about exporters because, in the event that they do finish anything, they'll just upload it to a portal for their friends to play.

    Essentially, I agree that the export situation is dicey. However, I'm trying to be realistic -- and a bit of a devil's advocate -- as well.

    Ashley can't possibly build and maintain exporters from scratch.

    The only realistic alternative is to maintain customized forks of the extant exporters, and take a more direct approach to correcting bugs; either by fixing them himself or paying someone else to do it.

    If extra capital is needed, there is crowdfunding, a new license variant, subscription models, etc. Ultimately though, I don't think Ashley wants to do this. All we can do is try to convince him to reconsider, and work together as a community to solve what we can, as best we can. Or leave. There's that too. I'm not anywhere near that state of mind yet, but I understand those who are and sympathize with their frustrations.

    The reason I choose C2 was not because it could export to a bunch of platforms. Not because it was 'code free' (which, really, it isn't). The reason I threw in with this platform was because, IMHO, it has the best community out there: active, helpful, knowledgeable, polite, and extremely noob tolerant .

    My biggest concern? Those people going away, because they are as much the lifeblood of C2 as the engine itself.

    I've seen far too many giants of the community expressing a certain hopelessness that C2 is destined to be a learning and prototyping tool as opposed to a serious development platform. Their concerns may not represent the majority, but their absence would be devastating.

    Ashley, you've built something incredible, but the problem with doing something incredible is that people's expectations rise accordingly. Addressing these issues may be a lot of work -- and involve a bit of backtracking -- but it won't be as difficult as manning the 'How Do I?' forum by your lonesome.

  • I just got my game running using the linking libraries trick...though it's definitely a bit buggy on the penguin side. It's really a bummer that node-webkit is setup this way on linux. To be clear, the fault does lie with node, not with C2. Certainly not as bad as the mega-lag issue some users are experiencing on osx.

    FYI: there is a post on node's github that list a few workarounds for this issue. Eisenhans linked to it in this post:

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  • FYI, for the short term, anyone having this problem should sign up on github and register a comment on this thread:

    https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/issues/2176

    I did (even though I'm not exporting to mac ATM).

    It's also possible to offer a 'bounty' (ie., a cash award) for the problem being corrected on Github. So, if it's a dire issue, there's that option.

    If Ashley is going to bounce it over to the node webkit devs with issues like this, C2 users need to register on Github and let their voice be heard.

  • michael

    I think it ultimately comes down to what possible for one man to do.

    Creating in house wrappers for desktop and mobile would require an immense amount of work. It might be possible for Ashley to do it -- especially if he decided to fork some of the extant export options into C2 specific versions -- but it would mean all other new features grinding to a halt.

    He's said as much before, and it's true.

    Let's face it: shiny new features might not be as important to hardcore users as stability, better UI/workflow, and better export options...but Scirra's target markets (those who want to make a good looking game with minimal programming) are much more likely to care about shaders and shadows.

    Scirra is a small business operating off a 'pay once-own forever' model, supplemented by academic licenses (potentially lucrative, but who knows how that's going).

    They HAVE to pull in new customers. Every day, every week, every month.

    Creating and maintaining in-house wrappers equals a dearth of shiny new features. Which equals less new customers.

    No customers equals no money. No money equals game over.

    The various options have been gone over time and again, but it all boils down to hiring some additional programming help. That's not a cheap proposition. Maybe Scirra is doing well enough now to swing it. Maybe they aren't.

    One funding option would be to crowdfund the development of the dedicated exporters. I think this is an option that should be seriously considered. I understand that this goes against the 'pay-once' model in some ways, but ultimately I think there are a substantial number of people using C2 who would be willing to pitch in...especially those who are actually making part of their living off it.

    Any way you slice it though, it means bringing in external help...or maybe Ashley could hire rexrainbow to work on some shiny new plugins for a few months while he slaves away at taming the beast of the buggy webkit.

  • shinkan

    Thanks for the post. I'll be on my desktop a little later, and I'll give it a spin. I'd forgot about the paster plugin!

  • Ashley

    This would be great.

    Also, if we could click anywhere on an event sheet and get 'Collapse/Expand Groups' and 'Collapse/Expand Events'. Right now, with groups, you have to right click on a group to collapse all groups. I think it would be faster to have it in the general right click menu.

  • Ashley

    Would it be possible to add an option to export with different versions of node-webkit? So that, if a newer version breaks functionality, we can use an older one? Maybe it could be a dedicated export option: Node-Webkit Custom, with a description warning 'Scirra cannot guarantee functionality on older versions of node-webkit.'.

  • spongehammer:

    Thanks for the capx. Your approach looks great, but makes way too many objects for my game. I came up with another solution, which I'll post when I get it done, but mine is a trade off too: I need two 'force own texture' layers to accomplish the necessary masking. It's enough to make my iGPU hurt.

    Once I post the capx, maybe someone else can figure out how to do it on one layer; masking makes my head hurt.

    In the end, I think I'm going to go with a hybrid approach: spawning 4-8 segments and animating them the old fashioned way: multiple frames.