Sethmaster, so does the method you describe result in a different SCML file/Spriter object for each enemy type in C2?

Or do I end up with one SCML file and somehow point to a different atlas spritesheet in C2 to change the enemy type?

Would appreciate some guidance on how to implement if it's the latter.

lucid, a few questions. Apologies if these have been covered before:

1. First time starting a layout, spriter objects intitialise fine and I can set character maps using the "on initialised" trigger, but when restarting layouts or moving to another layout the trigger doesn't fire. So not sure how to set character maps when moving to another layout.

2. Does the new directdraw mode significantly reduce CPU usage? My CPU usage is very high. Each enemy has 40+ animations of 10 frames each and there are upto 10 enemies on screen at once. Enemy variations are managed via character maps so there is only one SCML object.

3. If the individual sprites are no longer separate objects in directdraw mode how would I go about setting frame specific hit boxes? I would like to avoid having to set hit boxes outside of spriter (i.e. in C2) for specific animation frames.

Thanks,

lucid, not sure if this is right place to post, but is there any way using Spriter to replicate the following action:

Wait PlayerSprite.AnimationFrameCount/PlayerSprite.AnimationSpeed

I can't use the on animation finished trigger as the wait takes place inside a for loop between a series of actions

Ashley please comment on this. This is a very basic feature which should have been in place long ago. It's hugely frustrating not being able to see my entire layout in design mode. I can barely see 20% of it at the moment.

Tokinsom, with good design it's very possible to make large layouts that run at 60 FPS on PC. I can't comment on mobile games. I'm sure there are many other non-coders out there like me who are trying to develop ambitious 2D games on PC using Construct2 - and this is one of those easily fixable annoyances that needs to be addressed before development on Construct 2 comes to a halt.

So I would put the block sprite into 2 different families and test for overlap between families? Would I then need to create family instance variables and compare these? Appreciate if you could modify my CAPX to illustrate.

What's the simplest way to compare instance variables for 2 or more instances of the same object?

In the CAPX below, I want to destroy overlapping blocks only when they are of the same color but at the moment all overlapping blocks are destroyed regardless of color. I have seen some forum posts mention using local variables but I could use a simple example to illustrate this.

sendspace.com/file/ur8wzd

I was hoping to avoid creating separate events for each player's controller actions as there will be a large number of inputs (button combinations etc..). Is there any way I can dynamically support 1 to 4 players without having to create separate events for each controller?

See my event sheet below. I'm trying to support 2 or more players (using gamepads).

[attachment=0:3cevwxj5][/attachment:3cevwxj5]

Have uploaded an updated CAPX fie for anyone using r192.

s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=00649642362768732583

I am trying to create a local multiplayer game in which 2 players can provide input via keyboard/gamepads

The game will eventually be fairly complex and the players will interact with various other sprites and can take a number of different states. The players will be made up of several sprites (using a container). To keep things organised I would like to change the player state based on keyboard input and then have the state changes call functions which trigger actions. These actions may impact certain sprites the players are made up of as well as the sprites the players are interacting with.

In the simple CAPX below the layout with one player works fine, but the layout with two players is resulting in one player state overriding the other. Any suggestions appreciated.

s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=69883725359287767242

Ashley, those are the image file sizes, the C2 size for the player animation frames would be 262kb per frame (256px * 256 px * 4). There are approximately 1000 player/enemy animation frames in total which works out to 260Mb if I'm not mistaken.

If I add in 300 frames for environment objects per layout, say an average size of 512x512 (some larger, most smaller) that adds up to 300Mb, so rounding up I would expect minimum image memory usage of 600Mb (not including space required for tiled backgrounds which are also used).

The "ImageMemoryUsage" parameter in C2 varies between 600Mb and 1Gb which seems about right, with I assume the other 1.7Gb (of the 2.7Gb total) being taken up by the code/nodewebkit processes. There is a lot of room for improvement in the code, but I'd be surprised if I could claw back another 1Gb. I can't run the game in a browser any more (too big I assume) so I'm not able to use the layout debugger to troubleshoot.

I don't think there's much I can do to reduce image memory usage unless I reduce sprite sizes and/or reduce the number of frames.

Example frames for the player and environment in links below. Edit; Don't have the rep to post links yet.

TiAm, the game is PC only, so I'm aiming for around 2Gb total memory usage, I estimate half of this will be taken up by image memory, but given I have yet to add audio, I will probably struggle to stay within 2Gb.

saiyadjin, the frames have transparent edges on the spritesheet but these are trimmed in Construct2. I can rearrange the sprites on the sheets so that so they are (2^n -2), but they will still be very large. Minimal sound in my project so the issues are all image related.

Aphrodite, the 2.7GB is the "memory use" value in the bottom right of C2. There is a dump layout but it only contains 10% of all sprites. When looking at the memory usage of the nodewebkit executable in task manager it gets close to 2.7GB. Nodewebkit spawns two processes each taking up 1.3GB when the game gets busy. Not sure why this is (using r192).

Examples of my large spritesheets include cars and furniture (e.g. the same items in different colour schemes). So the large spritesheets are composed of mostly static frames. However, I also have spritesheets for enemy heads (which are pinned to the same body to give enemy variety). Will the whole spritesheet/all frames of animation be loaded into memory for each instance of the sprite?

Ashley, just to clarify, there are no static frames that are larger than 1024x1024 (max size per frame 200kb), and all frame-by-frame animations are between 2 and 20 frames (max size per frame 50kb). I have looked into Spriter but it can't replicate the look of the complex animations I have hand drawn.

So my question is, if the sizes of my individual frames are unchanged, is there any reduction in memory usage if I chop up my large spritesheets into smaller sprite sheets and spread the static frames across multiple animations (in one C2 sprite or multiple C2 sprites)?

Ashley, yes there are a large number of animations and in some cases, frames per animation. I'm following the techniques described in your article with one exception, and I think this may be my problem. I have around 20 sprite sheets that are larger than 2048x2048 but these contain many frames of animation, (so no single images anywhere near this size). There are some animations with 50+ frames (with each frame being less than 50kb).

I assumed Construct2 would physically chop up these spritesheets when loading them in as sprite strips in the image editor. If this is not the case, would it help if I broke these large sprite sheets down into smaller sprite sheets? Or do I just have too many frames in my animations?