-Total annihilation (pc)

-Xcom:Ufo defense force (pc)

-Cannon fodder (amiga 64)

-Wonderboy III the dragons Trap (sega master system)

-Halo (x-box)

-legend of mana (ps1)

-odd world (pc)

-megaman legends (ps1)

-minecraft (pc)

-beyond good & evil (ps2)

-escape velocity (mac)

hey thanks R0J0hound exactly what i was looking for. you're awesome.

Aeal5566 I've never worked with inheritance layers before. sound like something worth experimenting with.

hmmmmmm. bit of miss communication I suppose. I understand how to change layouts.

my question is with the layout object. I'm trying to use it to make a rts like build menu.

however the mouse in the layout object is not were the actual mouse is at.

thanks for trying to help though. <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

so i'm trying to make a menu in game using the layout object, which is what it seems like it was made for. but the layout object window gets its mouse position from the mouses position relative to the x/y of that layout object layout. not the actual mouse position. making using the mouse in the layout object worthless unless its exactly lined up with the corner of the screen.

is there any way to get the mouse to work as it appears to be on screen?

thanks for the reply's.

i was kinda thinking thee 4 arrays system originally ,thanks for the search tips 7soul.

but apparently there's a whole host of ways to go about it.

I've seen the Superstructure plugin before but wasn't working on anything it applied to at the time

forgot it existed, guess ill give it a shot. i hate to see all the work i did so fare be for nothing though. oh well apparently that's just how programing goes.

so for something similar to diablo (not the grid storage thing, just the random items) what would be the best storage method for a database? text files or an array?

you have a variety of different objects that have a long list of possible variable changes, new skills more damage, poisoning ext. yet you have relatively simple objects such as potions and scrolls all being stored in(what i amuse to be)just one array.

would it be better to have the objects id number stored in an array and have the actual object effects referenced in a text file witch tell what exactly the said object dose.(if thats possible.)

Or have a huge array with a long y/z length to accommodated all possible actions that gets checked

and populate the inventory array with this info when needed.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20122742/Top%20Down%20RTS.cap

using physics in conjunction with rts movement. Suppose you could just use a custom movement with the rts also.

its a alternate way to prevent overlap. and it has a more organic feel.

-left click to move green

-right click to move tan

no idea about the selection, I never had a problem with it before..

I would just like an object that never gets checked.

Don't get me wrong.A tiling feature/editor wold be nice, but it doesn't even seam possible to make your own from scratch.

keeping an array for units or anything else isn't really necessary, unless i plan on writing my own A* path-finding algorithm using an array(that's not going to happen).

As I said, I could have the terrain be rendered according to the screen position and just keep the tiles at the edge of terrain for path-finding to navigate around. that should keep the tile-objects in the 1000-7000 range.

But it just seems cumbersome and inefficient.

for all the amazing things construct can do with such ease, the difficulty in using tile maps (something thats been a staple in 2d games since the 8-bit era) is ridiculous.

its an RTS. so the world needs to be seamless

a large map in aoe2 was 255x255 tiles

so its not a unrealistic size for a rts.

well its actually 8000 X 6000

large world tile map, 200x 200 tiles each at the size of 40x30.

40,000 objects is just impossible. since there is no proper tile support , I figured creating at array x y, pasting to canvas, then deleting was the only option. didn't factor in my 4 year old computer being to cutting edge. (it probably is for a lot of people).

suppose your right. only way around is to dynamically generate the tiles based on the screen position. Maybe just keep the edges of the terrain persistent for path finding. but what a nightmare....

having 1 large canvas(10000X10000+) has little to no effect on frame rate, but having 2 large canvas drops it to 15 fps.

Why?

And is there anyway to mitigate this?