Toby R's Forum Posts

  • Point 5 is there

  • The software tell you "don't worry about the code, i'll do it for you. You click, I program".

    True - C2 will do the implementations, but let's highlight that you have to plan it/make algorithm anyway and that's the beauty.

    For example, the Function object doesn't work AT ALL like a function in a "classic" language.

    Why? You have a trigger (function name), input parameters, return value. For me it's a classic function. You give the input and fetch the output. You can even do callbacks.

    haha we did the same !

    I'm a 10 years experienced programmer, it took me 2 years to feel i knew the full power of C2

    As I said every new thingy takes time to get familiar with .

  • It's great that so many perspectives come up for this topic. Based on the previous posts (including your writings too) in your opinion do you think that C2 can be a good base for someone who want to learn professional programming? Or it might be better if I ask that way: Do you think that for someone, who learned programming logic with C2 in a formal way, alongside a teacher, is it possible to step to the next level, the professional level, learning only by themselves?

    Short answer - yes. But...

    Again, C2 will teach you a programming thinking, not a programming itself. No matter if you start with C2 or pure coding you have to learn the second thing anyway. I am quite experienced coder but it took me months to get fluent in C2 even though I had years of experience as a coder. Every new technology you jump into takes time to learn no matter how much you know already. Even jumping from one language to another requires you to learn new syntax, conventions, tools etc. Obviously the more you know already the less time it takes to learn new thing since many of them are similar and have one base - the logic (programming thinking). So when you master C2 it will take you months or years to master coding anyway.

    Regarding learning with or without a teacher. If possible then I highly recommend to learn with a teacher. If you have someone experiened next to you who can directly answer any question then you learn 100 times faster and you're not getting bad habbits which newbiews always do. So if one have teacher while learning C2 it will take probably few months to master C2 instead of many months. Then if he continue learning by starting coding and this part is without a teacher then he will struggle - that's a sure thing. It's another "technology". Same base, but new thing anyway.

    Easier comparison would be to ask Would someone who mastered C2 with a teacher be able to learn making games in Unity by himself?. Yes he will be able (nothing is impossible here), but obviously he will have to learn a lot of new things. New editor/interface, C# language, Unity conventions etc.

    I am not sure why do you ask? If you want to start teaching people C2 proffessionally then I vote for it. I wrote my first program in 1992 (something around that) so really long time ago, and there was no such tools like C2, so we had no choice that time. And many people just gave up on the way learning pure coding which is not easy at the beginning at all. But if we had such a great tool back in the '90s I'm sure we all would go for it at start cause it's just way more pleasent for newbie to jump into IT. Anyway teachers are always a good choice. You save a lot of time when you learn with a teacher. Just be a good one!

    And one more thing to mention. By learning programming it is not the most important to learn syntax, conventions, functions etc. Those things you can easily find in the documentations and you will get familiar with them in time. The most important thing in order to be a good programmer is to learn how to write a good code. A good code is basically a code that when your project gets very big, then you still know where is what and when a new programmer join a team he doesn't want to commit a suicide by working with your code.

    So what is it all about:

    • Understanding conventions (global, and particular for currently used technology) and sticking to it
    • Making a DRY (Do not Repeat Yourself) code
    • Making an organized, ecapsulated code (!) as much as possible
    • Making often refactoring instead of "flat" prototype extending
    • Making semantic code instead of writing tons of long comments which will get deprecated with new release anyway
    • etc....

    There are a lot of things which are VERY important in programming but not directly related to a specific technology and YES, you can learn most of them with C2 as well.

  • Throughout the years I've been teaching programming to many people (actually not that many... around 15 I'd say). I also had experience with total newbies who had no idea what is it all about, they just wanted "to make games/websites".

    And many times I saw people struggle to understand even such a basics like the compiler reads the code from top to the bottom or simple for loop was a struggle. It's not because they were stupid people. It's because for absolute newcommers all the programming terms are absolutely abstract.... like "what is this compiler/parser at all?!".

    So as this topic is not "let's compare C2 and pure coding" but "Does Construct 2 teach good programming thinking?", then yes. It surely does. I understand that full topic should be "Does Construct 2 teach newbies good programming thinking?", since advanced users already know how to think in order to code. So for newbies C2 is really a good start especially because everything is visual and they don't have to fry their brains trying to imagine what an object is... etc. You just get it much faster when you see it.

    Now if the newbie make a step further or not depends on him. If he is a pure hobbyst then probably he would never go and learn any programming language because C2 is fun and usually enough for hobbysts to make games. But if you have mastered C2 and decided to put IT on your proffessional career trip, then you must learn what is below, because sooner or later there will be a task to do which pure C2 won't handle with default plugins and you will have to make your own.

  • I believe that either you haven't put the credits fo some CC-BY-3.0 licensed assets. Or someone intentionally reported you for some reason.

    Also Google automatically checks sounds and gfx against some copyright databases. It's clearly seen on YouTube.

    Here you have a list and some rules explanation of how to use them http://tobyr.wtfgamesgroup.com/free-ass ... and-rules/

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  • Working now on Local Notifications module.

    What will module include:

    • sending local notifications once with delay
    • sending local notifications once set on particular date
    • scheduling frequent local notifications (repeated weekly etc.)
    • opening application after clicking on notification without reaction (for instance "Hey we miss you! Come to game!" - then game opens and nothing special happens)
    • reacting on arrived notification (for instance "Hey! We just gave you 1000 gold coins! Come check it out!" - and then 1000 coins is added to the account)
    • canceling notifications

    If there is anything else useful you think should be implemented, let me know.

    Cheers

  • Am i late on this?

  • I must say that's the best rev share invitation I have seen so far .

  • If it has to be a real time, then WebRTC (you need socet server) or WebSockets (you need to build server in JAVA for instance). If not then it can be done even by AJAX. Then one app updates some database/file with TODO information and second app frequently checks if there are any news in the database.

  • Thanks harrio

    Just a small update.

    There is a common issue with C2 apps that they lag (freez) for 1 to several seconds on start of the game/layout switch. That was the main reason why I wrote a tutorial some time ago How to smoothly switch between layouts. It is especially painful when we have a lot of things under On start of layout condition, and even more problematic for mobile apps because we usually initialize IAP and ADs on start of the game.

    The most painful lag I've experienced is when you use Appodeal Ads. Appodeal initialization does a lot of things in the background. Last several days I was in contact with Appodeal support trying to resolve this issue, but it turns out that it's not particulary their issue but it's just the nature of C2/Cordova apps and heavy Appodeal's initialization just adds fuel to the fire.

    I want to get rid of this issue in MoModth. So the update is that MoModth will have one more module called Stabilizer. I'm not gonna go in details now, but just did some testings and the result is very nice. There is no lag at all with enabled Stabilizer because the rendering and initializations are "moved" to game loading part.

    So to wrap up:

    - apps without Stabilizer: 1 to several seconds of lag at start of the game, but a bit shorter loading time

    - apps with Stabilizer: a bit longer loading time (from less than 1 sec up to several seconds - depends on the CPU), but no game lag experience

    Still have to do some more tests, so again release date will be moved a bit, but apps will run much smoother so it's worth it

  • Yes I have 60fps without as well.

    Here you have available Chromium options http://peter.sh/experiments/chromium-co ... -switches/ which you can use in intelxdk.crosswalk.additions.xml.

    There are some regarding GPU rasterization. But I'm not an expert in this. Just try some of them.

    xmnboy do you know why such a weird thing happens in his case?

  • Thanks Guys

    Screens above are already deprecated. I redesign it almost everyday now to make it as much encapsulated and semanthic as possible so the usage would be comfortable for small and big projects.

    Right now that's the structure, but it's surely not the final one. There are still things that I'm not satisfied with.

    Also I want to prepare AirConsole and few other modules before the release.

    There is a lot of testing with this thingy!

  • Just recompilled my game to test with --show-fps-counter, but I don't see any boost. It behaves normally, 60FPS most of the time and sometimes drops to 45 when there is really a lot of things going on.

  • May I ask someone who is experienced in using Local Notifications to give some hints how to make them work?

    I try with cranberrygame Cordova Local Notification plugin but can't make it work. Is there a particular Intel XDK plugin I need to use? I've tried with the official Cordova Local Notification plugin but no effect.

    Also If you know how to do it with CocoonIO and if it works on iOS as well. Any hints are much appreciated.

    Cheers

    PS. I sent an email to Cranberry several days ago, but no reply yet.

  • It's just not possible that something which consumes CPU (and fps counted consumes CPU) gives you a performance boost .