I'm in a bit of a pickle here...

I'm confused, and I'm unsure of what to do. I've been experimenting in C2 for about a week, and I've made some good progress in developing a suitable engine for a game I plan on making eventually.

However...

It's a platformer. It doesn't use the built in platformer behavior, it's all coded by me. I feel like it gives me more freedom. Using the platformer behavior feels very restricting, since you can't control every single possible aspect of the object. It's got slope detectors so you can take advantage of slopes, similar to Sonic the Hedgehog. (Just not to the same degree. No 360 loops, just accelerating on slopes and whatnot) When I start my game, it lags for about 2 seconds, then it's buttery smooth. Go onto a slope, it lags for about a second. Then it's lag free for the rest of the session. Runs perfectly smooth.

Problem with that is, all of the collisions seem to affect performance. Here's a picture of the way the collision works:

There are 3 groups with similar setups to this: 2 for the slope sensors, and 1 for the actual player object. (there's going to be more of these later on for bullets) This definitely affects performance, as it gets pretty smooth when I remove those 3 groups. Another thing that I know affects performance is the fact that I have to build levels with sprites (using the collision polygons) and not tiled backgrounds. I can't build with tiled backgrounds simply because they don't support collision polygons, so I can't do slopes...

So yea, obviously, the more sprites you have, the more performance issues you will have. It doesn't take many sprites to cause slowdown. I'm not sure if it makes a difference, but I have all of the tiled objects under one object with different animations for each tile. Each instance just has a unique starting animation to get the desired tile.

Obviously, in the end, that isn't going to work out. I'm unsure of what to do... Do I use the platform behavior? Do I use a different software? I just don't know, I have many questions. I'm pretty confused, and kind of frustrated.

Yes! Pretty much just like that. Thanks so much!

Here is a .capx for you to look at

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4ziudooq3lxv6 ... .capx?dl=0

So, what I'm going for is something similar to Cave Story or Pokemon. I'm thinking more towards Cave Story. You hold down the button to speed up the text until the text is fully displayed, then you press the button again to advance.

I've tried several things, but this one seems the most logical. However, it does not work:

Every time text is generated, set a value to the number of characters in that string. Have some pseudo code:

*Length is less than Max Characters

*Spacebar is held

-Set Text Speed to 0.05

*Length is less than Max Characters

*Spacebar is NOT held

-Set Text Speed to 0.02

*Length is equal to Max Characters

*Spacebar is pressed

-Add 1 to sequence

Basically, I'm trying to find some sort of limiter, so that when every character has been displayed, something else can happen.

Do you understand what I'm trying to say? If not, I'll try to explain what I mean in greater detail.

Any ideas? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!