TiAm's Forum Posts

  • I saw this awhile back. I was impressed with the demo; it ran pretty acceptably even on my ancient netbook, and the art looked really good. I wish you luck with your indiegogo campaign. That being said, a bit of constructive criticism.

    1. You should have a few pictures up. Your video is good, and video takes priority, but some screenshots would really liven up the page.

    2. Your goal is, honestly, a little high. It really shouldn't be, but the industry is what it is, and there have been many games on kickstarter/indiegogo that had to struggle to raise even a few thousand, much less 15k. Most of those which raised more were by people with established track records and fan bases, or who came from the industry and thus have contacts in media, with other developers, etc. to promote their project.

    3. You might want to reconsider your title. It kind of ludicrous at this point in time, but the F-word (even obfuscated) is still somewhat stigmatized and might cause you some problems reaching a younger set. Especially considering that the context sounds a little suggestive. I know it's a zombie game, and your zombies explode into gorebags, but frankly, with your art style, it's really not M-rated stuff, so I wouldn't discount that market. One idea:

    Grandma vs Zombies: A play on Plants vs Zombies. Simple and to-the-point, sounds 'familiar', but also a little different, humorous, and intriguing.

    Badass Grandma: If you want to capitalize on the 'badass grandma' aspect, and downplay the zombies (there are a lot of zombie games...)

    4. You might want to refine your copy for your campaign. For one thing, the english is a little rough around the edges. I don't mean offense here, but it is what it is. Also, some of your language and proposed features are described in a vague way that implies you don't quite know where the game is going. This might not be the case, but you definitely don't want to undermine the confidence of potential contributors by coming off that way. Promise less, deliver more is the best approach.

    5. I do not know if this is possible with indiegogo, but if you could embed a demo of your game on your indiegogo page, you should. Most games on kickstarter/indiegogo are basically just pictures and videos and a lot of jaw-wagging. Having a demo right there would make your game stand out, and make your project look more serious. The demo I played a couple weeks ago looked very slick, and made a good impression. You should hit people with that right off, if you can.

    6. You should target mobile. Period. Your game would control fine on mobile, and the performance seems quite good even on my weak netbook, so you should be able to scoot by. There are some definite headaches/limitations with mobile games for C2, and there will probably be a lot of devices you won't be able to support, but you should still go for it. Desktop is a much harder market, as the competition is more fierce, and there's less cash to go around. Of course, there's no reason not to support desktop too...but mobile should probably be your priority, if possible.

    Wish you well with your project, hope you find some of that helpful.

    Cheers, T

  • [quote:2pwht6i7]Perhaps whats needed is some sort of program that teaches how to do events properly

    This is a great idea...as long as you could turn it off if you wanted.

    It seems like the core concept of construct is to have an easier learning curve, and a more streamlined workflow. Having some built in context sensitive feedback would be a great way to teach new users good practices.

    And, it would be great for more seasoned user working on larger games, where it's easy to miss something redundant among hundreds or even thousands of events.

    AND, since C2 is making a point of targeting schools and educational institutions as well, this would help take some of the load off of teachers by empowering students to solve simpler problems by themselves.

    Basically, it would help everyone.

    Maybe start with some simple 'gothcha's', like

    'Hey, you know you tested the same two objects for collision in this other event, right?'

    'You have the same loop over here, redundant loops can really slow things down'

    'You are filtering your instances before testing for collisions; this forces brute force collisions and will result in worse performance in most cases.'

    I could see how this could be annoying if done wrong, but generally striking a balance between ease-of-use and depth-of-control seems to be a strong point for Ashley.

    P.S.

    What would REALLY make this feature awesome is if you could generate a project-wide report with potential glitches, errors, and warnings.

    Maybe Ashley can add it to his todo list. Which reminds me: how many file cabinets does that thing take up now?

  • This is just...beautiful. The ships, the title screen, the great use of parallax...how the hell did you do those pillars?

    The gameplay looks really slick too, what an intriguing mixture.

    BTW, maybe it's just me...but Penelope brings to mind another firey haired, futuristic heroine with an eyepatch.

    Nah, I'm probably just being a dummkopf...

  • Snatcher:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snatcher

    I remember playing thru this whole game one rainy day, curled in bed with rain spattering and the wood stove crackling away.

    It was...magical.

    ...which is a strange word to use to describe a violent, stylish, edge of your seat blade-runner-esque visual novel/shooting gallery. <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_rolleyes.gif" alt=":roll:" title="Rolling Eyes">

    Metal gear is definitely a more original, polished, and ambitious work...but honestly, Snatcher did way more for me than gear ever did, though I'm not entirely sure why. <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_confused.gif" alt=":?" title="Confused">

    Highly recommended, albeit hard to find... <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_cool.gif" alt="8-)" title="Cool">

  • Probably. Keep in mind, if you have a really old project -- say, prior to r155 with the introduction of collision cells -- you may actually get a slower result if your collision events aren't top level (ie, if you are trying to narrow down affected objects thru other means).

  • Your art looks great, pro but not generic. Looks like it would suit mobile perfectly.

    Curious though: why brown blood?

  • That dragonfly-winged-hovership-thingy is brilliant!

  • Never played it, though I've seen it somewhere before. Looks very imaginative.

    GOG is really amazing...came across this on there, been meaning to play it for ages, but haven't got around to it yet.

    http://www.gog.com/game/i_have_no_mouth ... ust_scream

  • New order looks good, much more straightforward.

  • Well, if an object is invisible (not 0 opacity, has to be properly invisible) it doesn't make draw calls. Also, if you turn collisions off -- and you have to do that, they default to 'on' -- that lowers your overhead.

    Even if you aren't testing for collisions with a particular object, just having collisions on can eat up a significant amount of overhead.

  • Arima

    Thanks for the capx example. It's an approach I never thought of, and may come in handy in the future.

    However, in my case collision cell opts were working fine; I was simply attempting to gain an additional advantage by only testing cols ever 3-4 ticks.

    I was hoping to break the tests up by only testing 1/3 of the objects per tick, thus cutting the cpu load to third/quarter without cramming all the col testing on a single, intermittent tick (ie, every 0.1 seconds or the like).

    However, it seems that, at this point in time, there's no real way to do that and retain the advantage of collision cells. Perhaps it's not even possible.

    As I said before, I've moved past this for my game, but it would be nice to see this ability in the future.

  • DUTOIT

    Thanks. Works great, and simpler to read. For anyone else reading this: if you download the capx posted above (format_number2.capx) and don't want decimals, change the first action from:

    Set Text to "." & zeropad((foo*100)%100,2)[/code:2m7jhbul]
    
    to
    
    [code:2m7jhbul]Set Text to ""[/code:2m7jhbul]
    
    Cheers,T
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  • Ah, yes, that's perfect! Well, except for the decimals...but I can probably get rid of them.

    Much simpler than what I was trying...plus, it works.

    Thanks DUTOIT

  • Er, no, maybe I should have been clearer: I'm trying to insert commas dynamically. Like, if the score is 12000, I have an event which takes that, turns it into '12,000' and sets the spritefont to that (121004 becomes 121,004 etc).

    Thanks anyway though.

  • I'm using a spritefont for a score readout. I just want to insert commas in the score, like 12,000,000, or 1,000, etc.

    Anyway, I found this example (not for C2):

    http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=586659

    Problem is...well, all the spritefont object has is 'append text', but what I want to do is, er (googling...) prepend, because otherwise I don't know where to put the first comma.

    Or...maybe I'm confused... <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_confused.gif" alt=":?" title="Confused">

    ...nah...

    ...any ideas? <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_mrgreen.gif" alt=":mrgreen:" title="Mr. Green">