wmsgva's Forum Posts

  • Sorry for not responding to requests about the plugin, but our team moved away from Construct 2 in 2016.

    Now using Unity 3D with a mixture of Playmaker, Adventure Creator and custom C# code. C3 wasn't going to solve

    some of the limitations of C2 and the online model wasn't ideal.

    All the best.

  • oosyrag Thanks for the insight regarding sprites remaining in memory between layouts.

    My issue is that I need to create a different number of sprites on different layouts (the layout background and sprite images are specified in an external XML file and the number of sprite objects can change from one layout to another). If I use a sprite on the current layout and create new instances of it which I reposition to x,y coordinates and into which I load different images, these new sprites won't be present on the following layout when I move to it (the only way of having this work is to have the same number of sprites already existent in both layouts).

    Perhaps the only solution is to remain on the same layout, load a new background into an invisible sprite, load all objects for the "next scene" into multiple invisible sprites created on the fly and to then destroy all currently visible sprites and to make the ones currently invisible visible to the player.

    Any thoughts on other ways of doing this?

  • oosyrag could you possibly expand on your reply? I have been trying to find a solution to this issue, but without any success. You

    can see what I tried here:

    Hope you can possibly help.

    Thanks

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  • I have been playing around with the ability to dynamically load sprites from a configuration file onto a layout, the goal being to pre-load a scene before displaying it.

    The loading part when the layout is the current one works fine (see attached code):

    When you click on the first button, an image is loaded into the first frame of the sprite, then clicking the second button creates another instance

    of the sprite, then loads another image to its second frame (and so on for each image is the idea). After the last image is loaded, a flag is set, which

    once the On Image loaded triggers, makes all sprites visible.

    My problem is trying to do this on a layout which is not currently visible. I tried creating a layout 2, having the sprite on this layout (instead of layout 1) and using the same code I would load images, then move to layout 2 and make all sprites visible. As we need to move to another layout, I made the sprite on layout 2 persistent (otherwise all loaded images would be removed) and have both layouts using the same single event sheet.

    For some reason, the On Image loaded event never seems to trigger in this second case (and no errors are shown in the browser's console). Does anyone have an idea why this happens or another idea on how to workaround this issue?

    Perhaps Ashley could provide some insights onto how the load from url / on image URL loaded can/can't work between layouts?

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/ahgx439h6an2bwn/LoadURLcode.png?dl=0

  • Difficult to answer the question at this stage.

    Based on what we've seen to date, I don't feel as if there are any truly impressive new features, mostly improvements upon

    C2 (but great improvements indeed).

    So what would it take to make C3 provide a major leap ahead? I would argue that being able to rapidly prototype in the

    event sheet system, then, when things get very large and/or complex, have the ability to move to scripting, would be major

    plus. Scirra's event system is great to get people started and quite powerful, but tends to become difficult to maintain for

    large projects. I know there has been some news about exporting the event sheets to pseudo-code in C3, but this would

    need to work both ways to add true value.

    Another great improvement would be to make it easier to extend C3. Although C2 can be extended with javascript, many

    people have had issues with minifying code. A more integrated solution in this area would be great (in fact, with a scripting

    ability, you could directly extend C3 with its own language, avoiding having to write external code using another language).

    I would even argue that with the two features above C3 could be a serious competitor to Unity for 2D games. As things stand

    however, I'm a bit worried that C3's main target will remain occasional/beginner programmers and with the subscription model

    many of these may shy away.

    Let's see what happens...

  • Moot

    You're making incorrect statements about what I had said. My point was that it would have been good to release a full list of features and then post weekly detailed posts as Scirra has been doing. Not have people wait week after week to be able to have a general idea of C3's overall features & capabilities. I never said the detailed blog posts were a bad thing.

    You also give the impression I said teasing was a bad thing, which I didn't . I just criticised the way it had been managed. As you mention, "It's not to uncommon to start teasing 6 months out", yet as you also mention, "People in the forum have been begging for clues and information about C3 for over a year". You're basically proving my point, the teasing started too early and then waited too long to start publishing a few insights to get people excited.

    Anyway, things are as they are now and we just have to wait and see what C3 will offer when we get our hands on it.

  • Tom Well, forget about the childish term, I was just venting some frustration.

    Regarding the way the launch was marketed/communicated, here are some issues I would raise:

    • Announcing C3, a long way before its launch, but without communicating at all on any progress for over a year (teasing is good, but requires milestone reminders)
    • Creating a C3-specific website, but not adding any updates about the direction you wanted to take with the new platform onto it over time
    • Not using the C3 website to announce the upcoming beta and publish the information you've been writing on this website's blog
    • Not conducting any user-surveys to help guide the new platform's development. I know you have a mine of feedback on this

    website, but I think it may have been interesting to let people prioritise some of the new features (Game Guru do this very

    well for their users on their client login-based website). This would furthermore have created a send of ownership (Google "co-creation")

    • Announcing pricing first. Although I have no issue with the pricing (I pay for Adobe's Creative Suite and Xojo's subscription, both

    similar to your new plan), announcing this first was bound to be problematic, as price is nothing without the value people expect in

    return. How were people to evaluate if the price was right or excessive before knowing the main features of C3? The only result was

    lots of negative posts (not exactly what you want for a successful launch)

    • Not releasing a full-fledged list of C3 features. I enjoy reading the blog posts about the details of the new features, but in order to

    make a choice (this is valid both for people new to the market selecting a first game platform and for existing C2 clients deciding if they

    want to move to C3 or not), a comprehensive list of features is really needed

    That's about it. For some of the elements, it's too late, but you can still work on improving some aspects.

  • Tom Pleased to read that we will soon have a full list of C3 features.

    Being from a marketing & communication background, I just don't find the way communication has been managed around the product launch very professional. I suppose you can't be good at everything and you guys do a great job developing software. Perhaps next time it would be a good idea to work with a marcom specialist (please don't tell me you have an in-house communications specialist or I would really question the person's professionalism)

  • Ashley Although I understand it takes time for you to provide the detailed blog posts about C3's new features, it would

    be nice for people involved in the field for professional reasons to have a full list of the platform's features, instead of

    receiving them slowly week by week.

    You can always continue publishing fully-detailed weekly blog entries, but the current "discovery process" is tiresome

    and I would even say a bit childish. If Scirra think they're still "teasing", it's not the case, it's now just annoying. Furthermore,

    your way of communicating has resulted in many people posting frustrated & frustrating comments about

    your pricing model and other issues.

    As someone with a very large time investment in C2 (wrote a serious game engine using it), but needing a more powerful

    platform for the next stage in my projects, I need to be able to evaluate my options now, not in 3 month's time. I could

    then make an informed judgment about the full list of features, the cost and alternative platforms (as far as pricing is

    concerned, your model is similar to that of Adobe and others - not an issue if C3 delivers true improvements).

    An alternative would be a forum channel to post very specific & short (1 phrase) questions about topics not yet covered

    in your blog posts. For example: My current work on C2 has become so large that it's more or less a "must have"

    for me in C3 to be able to use scripting on top of the event sheets (e.g. have the ability to script code and C3 to

    convert it to event sheets, as I noticed you have already planned the reverse process of converting the sheets to pseudo-code).

    Thank you for any insights/feedback you may provide regarding the above topics.

  • arturosanz It would probably not be very difficult (just use a loop with the parameter and progressively increase/reduce the volume). No time at the moment to try this, but as the code is open, anyone can have a go at it.

    Although I have no issue with the pricing of C3 if the platform is good (I think most people should wait to have the full feature list before complaining or not), I do have an idea that may be interesting.

    Ashley Why not adopt a model similar to that used by Xojo? See here: https://xojo.com/store/index.php

    You can develop for free on their platform, but when you want to export the final version, you need a license. They also have several levels of pricing depending on the export targets. This would allow people "playing around" with C3 to do so free of charge and anyone wanting to distribute their game would pay a fee according to the platforms they want to use.

  • wertt22 Nothing had changed and the file is still on the Dropbox, so not sure why you're having a problem. Can you try again, possibly from another computer?

  • Ashley Why remove these Browser plugin conditions when some browsers are still using AppCache and before you've been able to replace them with another similar functionality for Service Worker? Any such updates which can potentially create issues for existing apps, without the ability to replace code to solve the issue, are not really good practice.

    Can we expect something in the next stable release to solve for this?

  • Even if the updates are made properly on the first post of their plugin (not always the case), it's still tedious to check through the forum if you use several plugins.

  • Is there any way to know what is the latest version of each plugin and if it is outdated (due to new features in C2)?

    I know Rex created an app for his plugins, but it would be great if this part of the forum was changed in such a way to not have to

    read through many posts to ensure one is using the latest version of a plugin for all other creations.