Hi there,

I'm making a circular radar, similar to this - http://www.crestock.com/images/440000-4 ... 234-xs.jpg

Basically, when objects go outside of the circle, they must be hidden, but only in part (so i can't just make them invisible).

The two ways I can see of doing this so far is-

• Make a radar layer, use the mask effect and make a square the size of the screen with a circle cut out in it to allow to see into the radar. This way when objects move out they are hidden by the large mask object.

• Paste the blips into a canvas, then use erase effect on the canvas to delete any pixels outside of the circle.

Which is the more CPU/GFX card efficient way? Is it even possible to use the canvas method? I tried and it doesn't seem you can choose where to paste images in (x,y) and generally feels a little bit limited?

But im mostly keen on keeping CPU usage low, as this game will one day be a bit of a beast and thus i want to keep it fast from the start.

David, firstly you are a ledge. Secondly, that seems to be some impressive FPS. Is this pairer plugin going to be awesome for my ship/turret problem?

Also, any chance of it getting released before the next build?

Big bonus!

It is certainly of help yeah. I'll definately use that - Thanks!

But If its possible to optimize the matching of sprites together at all it would be a big bonus.

Thanks for the example there. I thinks thats essentially what i've already got (I mean, you did suggest some stuff that i changed earlier and now the code is essentially the same as yours. I'll check that when im next doing some coding). It does seem a little slow at 600 ships though don't ya think

Sounds good David! Is this going to be something quite simple to make assuming it goes to plan? Or is it a complicated plugin?

Ok i am getting a little confused now Thanks for all the comments on this though guys.

Can we just consolidate all the info in this thread? I'm a little confused.

What is the fastest way possible of having child objects belong to a parent object and have options to make them stick together In THEORY (When on screen/when ScrollXright > xpos > ScrollxLeft etc.etc.)?

Is this theory possible to do in construct currently, eg. is constructs looping/picking system capable of doing this. If not, should this feature be added? If so, can this just be whipped up and put in the next build, or are we talking a while?

I don't know how construct is written (I don't know c++, i have alot of respect for you guys!), so I'm sort of looking for Ashley/Rich/David's final word on these ideas, as they know exactly how realistic my humble requests are.

Thanks for reading that mini essay!

-Alex

Ashley, you are the man.

As described by a friend of mine "Construct is mean!"

Yeah, or something to do with a parent/child relationship with sprite objects?

Deadeye, will that method save processing time? What i mean is, do you think containers are so much faster that having some invisible objects will still be faster that using the current method? I'd probably only have a maximum of 5 turrets per ship so it could work. Does this mean i have to make different objects for each of those 5 turrets? Or can i multiple instances?

Also, i got rid of a bunch of the For Each conditions and the code is now more efficient with it still working, however its still HELLA slow After creating 40 ships, it drops from 200FPS to 40FPS. (Better than the 30fps i had before).

Can i do better in optimization? Are containers faster? I would have hoped I wouldn't get any FPS drop from this...

Can i still use containers when its uncertain how many turrets are wanting to be created and stuck to the ship at different points?

eg. 1 ship may have 3 turrets, and 4 thrusters

Looks sweet dude!