So long as construct NEVER forces a logo or any kind of branding onto anything someone has made with the software, then as per my original vote. I'm more than happy to let everyone know what I used to make it.

Haha nice...so if we make it manditory to include a logo/brand for using our product for free that we have invested hundreds...or maybe thousands of hours into, you wont be happy Sorry I just found that kinda funny, but at the same time I know what you mean. Its like donations where you're forced to pay at least $1 for the product...doesn't feel like much of a donation if its manditory. But dont worry, we dont plan on adding a splash screen or whatever. They are annoying.

seriously there are stupid people out there. someone rated construct 0 out of 5 with the comment 'wheres the source?!' ... I love how the entire project was therefore worth NOTHING because the guy was too much of a moron to know what SVN/CSS were and not even consider that maybe he had overlooked something. Also there are lots of commercial open source projects out there, so free emphasises it... although your right its kinda like putting 'emergency ambulance' ... you'd think 'ambulance' would be enough

win1

<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/939828/construct%20powered.png">

heh

haha 'Expression Stacker' was just a name for it because I imagined people dragging and dropping expression bits and pieces onto each other like a stack...or a pile...

Anyway I dont think it's really something that would be useful. Its good practise to learn how to type expressions. I added syntax highlighting and bracket matching to the expression editor anyways.

Here was a final design I came up with

<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/939828/stack3.PNG">

Basically, a 'block' could be setup so the text was in the middle...so the Multiply looks like a proper multiply...and secondly the parameters dont have text for them (Multiply doesn't need text with A, B) then the stack above is lowered.

The only remaining problem with the stack is if you do something like:

5 + 3*3 + 2 you end up with 3*3 as one stack, and 5 + (3*3) as the stack below, then (5+(3*3))+2 as the stack below that.

I thought it was awesome. Its one of those movies that aims to be something and achieves it nicely. I found it very immersive, and while the ending was predictable its nice to have a happy ending rather than a kind of 'heroic sacrifice' ending once in a while. And as for the action theres heaps...dragon things grabbing a helicopter and throwing it into another helicopter...lots of explosions and stuff...the only part I found annoying was early on in the movie when the main character (in avatar form) was being attacked by the creature and the camera was all shacky and stuff...in 3d its really friggin annoying coz u cant focus fast enough. Also, despite being 3d, a lot of scenes they used focus which meant if you tried to look at the foreground it was blury...but yeah as far as 3d movies go this has probably been the best.

Also people who complain the plot isn't deep enough are the same kinda people who say the plot in Transformers 2 wasn't deep enough...who friggin cares! Everyone complained Transformers 1 was too much about humans and too much 'drama' so they made Transformers 2 more about robots fighting each other (which we all want...its not meant to be a chick flick!) and yet people still complained

<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/939828/powered.png">

I dunno....I kinda like small 'icon' kinda 'powered by' things... I'll do another one later

I'm kinda trying to find something in the middle of those weird visual language diagrams and traditional maths so people dont suddenly get locked into learning one style...but yeah I guess it is just like having one equation where brackets are raised.... meh

Hey guys, I've been pondering over a kind of expression stacker, which might make doing maths a bit easier. I was pondering over the idea in this thread:

So anyway, basically the idea I was was that you had 'blocks' that could snap to other blocks and be dragged around. You could easily insert blocks between blocks and generally it should be pretty easy.

So you could type

distance

Then drag 'distance onto the screen

Then type xy

Drag xy in one of the parameters of distance

Then mouse

Drag mouse into the other parameter

Then type

3 *

And get a block that has a multiply with one parameter '3' already filled in...then drag the 'distance' into the other parameter...

Then type clamp(,0,100) and it would leave the first parameter blank...

Simially you could just type the entire expression, or just type 'clamp', or select 'clamp' from a list....

Anyways, these are some designs I came up with :

<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/939828/stack1.PNG">

And heres just one section by itself with nothing connected to it

<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/939828/stack2.PNG">

I might not even end up programming anything like this, its just a fun idea for a project, and maybe it could be implimented for Construct 1+ or Construct 2, who knows...

So, design wise, what do you think?

Also...by just looking at the picture, do you think it would read logically as:

clamp( 3 * distance( mousexy, xy), 0, 100)

Or does it just look like a big confusing pile of blocks?

Actually I'm now kinda becoming fond of a 'maths jigsaw puzzle' idea...so an equation like:

clamp( distance( .x, .y, mousex, mousey ), 0, 100)

can become

<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/939828/another%20idea.PNG">

Which at first appearance looks just like the equation...but with a live preview thing and being able to drag parts around and stuff it might work out nicely.. and the space allows for text distribing what the connector does (eg min, max) ....again just brainstorming the idea ... of course in a sketch form like that it looks shit but if I made a nice design it'd probably be another story

This thread should probably be locked and continued in another thread because its going off topic. But for now I'm going to leave it open.

Firstly, when it comes to 'cookie cutter code' -that is what behaviours are meant for. For example, if you want to make a platform game, you dont need to worry about all the maths that makes the player move left and right, push out of obstacles, run up slopes etc...all you do is add the platform movement and you've already got something. You can then expand on the behavior by adding more events to if...if you feel that the player should be able to jump off a wall you can do stuff like:

If player has wall to the left

+ player pressed jump button

- Jump.

Behaviours, if they are designed right, are very good at providing a simple way of looking at maths.

btw did you have a look at my example before? I used the custom movement behavior and I think thats a lot easier to work with if you're not into maths.

Okay so lets take this original 'mouse leading' problem, and try to word it in english:

"Make the character swim towards the mouse"

Okay...too ambiguous...lets refine it a bit more

"When I hold down the left mouse button, accelerate towards the mouse"

But how can the program possibly know how fast you want to accelerate? You need to start using a number... like 200 pixels per second per second... ultimately you can just start guessing at numbers

Now this was something I didn't use in the example...but lets say you wanted to tweak the acceleration so the further away the mouse is, the stronger the acceleration....

Firstly, your right, there should be some kind of 'spring' action in custom movement, but i missed it out...but you can still achieve it with maths:

distance(.x, .y, mousex, mousey) will give you the pixel distance from the object to the mouse

So you test acceleration with that...maybe its too small...to make it stronger you multiply it by perhaps 5....you tweak with the numbers until you get something you like.

Then you run into another problem. If you hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse away you can move really really fast! Perhaps you decide you want to limit acceleration so it cant go below 0, and it cant go above 400...

you end up with

clamp( distance(.x, .y, mousex, mousey), 0, 400)

For most people who are cool with maths, thats perfectly fine... without constructs 'clamp' and 'distance' function the maths would be a lot messier, eg:

sqrt ( (.x - mousex) ^ 2 + (.y - mousey) ^ 2 ) just to get the distance!

But over the last few hours I have been pondering over a better 'visual' style of maths...something thats a bit like those visual programming language flow chart thingys but made only for evaluating expressions...because really i feel expressions are the only area in construct that aren't very innovative.... heres ones brain storm:

<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/939828/idea29.PNG">

Basically that could be displayed a lot nicer but to explain the concept...

Functions with parameters (eg: Distance between) are represented as blocks with things to connect to them

Constant numbers like 100 and 0 you can link up to stuff. However, note they are marked as 'acceleration'.

Rather than having distance(mousex, mousey, .x, .y) that is easier to think of as 'distance between two points'. In C++ doing maths is a lot easier when you make classes like 'point2d' because then you can just easily add 2 points together etc.

Stuff like 'multiply by 3' is a thing you can drag along the line...so you can multiply by 3 then add 2 etc.

Now here is the innovative idea:

Numbers can be positions, speeds, acceleration, colour, size...

For expressions like 'distance between mouse and myposition' we can have a 'visual display' thing that will show you how quickly an object will accelerate....like an animation of a car driving against a scrolling background...so you could click the 'distance between' and see what the acceleration is like...then click the x3 and see what its like when its 3 times the amount...or click the '100' and just see what an acceleration of 100 is like... or click the entire expression to see what an acceleration of the evalulated amount is like.

Anyway its just a brainstorm, very unlikely anything like that in the near future but maths is something that scares a lot of people away and crunching numbers isn't really something 'arty' people like to do...