Funky!

http://www.fileshack.us/get_file.php?id ... e=hehe.cap

I've never actually played with the minimap before, this is kinda cool.

Try "Set animation frame to 1" before playing your animation, in conjunction with "Trigger once while true" in the condition that changes animations.

I'm 99.5% sure that's the problem.

If you manually reset the frame you insure that it always starts properly, and if you use Trigger Once, you insure that you're not saying "Play animation" over and over again. Both can cause your animations to mess up.

If I remember my Physics correctly, all you need to do is calculate the centre of gravity, and make everything fall towards that. This example shows that, but I don't think it's quite perfect (it doesn't take in to account that objects with a bigger mass have a greater effect on the centre of gravity). It shows the right idea though.

That's pretty close to what I've done on my own, what with the objects all moving towards a single point, though yours is a little more sophisticated by averaging that point.

The effect I'm looking for though is one in which each object exerts a small amount of it's own gravity, and the effect is cumulative in larger clusters. As you can see from the video, when a mass breaks apart, single stray objects and small clusters clump together rather than around a central point. Presumably if left alone they would all collapse into one big mass, but each object clearly has it's own influence.

Next build there'll be a combo box on the Object Bar to select a layer for which the objects below will be shown.

Could I make a quick suggestion to disallow pasting into a locked layer? Every once in a while I'll have a locked layer selected and all of my paste commands drop the objects in anyway, and I don't notice until later which means I have to clean up a bunch of objects.

Same thing with inserting new objects

Or maybe a little popup that has the options "Unlock Layer" (to continue with pasting) and "Cancel Paste/Insert"

I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas on making a bunch of like objects attract each other, as though they all have their own gravity. The only way I can think to do it would be with a nested loop, and it seems terribly inefficient and would take up a lot of processing power.

The effect I'm going for can be seen in here:

Where a bunch of little balls clump together and writhe around in a mass with little pieces that break off and stuff.

I've made a secondary gravity object that the little balls all move towards, but it's not quite the same effect (though kinda cool in it's own way).

And just for the record, no, I don't actually need this for anything, it's just to satisfy my curiosity. So if you feel like helping out would be a waste of time I understand. It's basically just for fun.

Heres what happens if you give the particles a physics movement, then apply springs between the particles, and then render a mesh to where those particles are

http://www.fileshack.us/get_file.php?id ... quares.zip

And thanks everyone for the examples so far! I'll see what I can do. Bone movement....hmmmm....

Hey David, could you upload your meatsquares.cap now that mesh distortion is done? I want to take a look at how your spring-blob is put together.

You could conceivably start your project now and finish with no problem. But in my opinion the chances of everything going right are going to be pretty slim.

Not only might there be problems with compatibility (the most recent physics update broke all previous physics games), but there will most likely be problems with obsolescence.

That is to say, you could be coding things one way for a few versions, then all of a sudden a whole bunch of buggy code that you just hacked together to make things work right can be done with a couple proper new features.

And yes, you could dig into the code and rework everything to conform to the new, proper way, but it would be a major hassle. Especially if the bulk of your game engine is built around an obsolete hack-job. I know this from experience.

My advice is this: Construct is in beta. It's not finished. Don't expect to make a finished project with it right now, you'll just give yourself a headache. Instead, learn everything you possibly can about it and simply plan you game. Tinker with Construct and find out how it works. Report bugs and make feature requests.

In the mean-time, complete everything else that you can for your game. Graphics, sounds, music, whatever. Get that ready to go. Then when Construct gets to 1.0 (or at least closer than it is now) you'll be able to assemble all the pieces of your game relatively quickly.

i disagree, etc.

It's redundant because one object would have the same functions as the other. That's what redundant means.

It's like having a hammer, a knife, and a hammer with a knife attached to it. One of those things has more functionality than it needs. It's just not necessary.

Plus, there are several legitimate uses for a canvas object without having to draw polygons on it.

And there would be several legitimate uses for a polygon object without having to paste the results into a canvas.

So if they have separate functionality, keep them separate. It's more efficient that way. You don't need a knife on your hammer to drive nails.

And it's not that hard to paste something into the canvas anyway. It's one action. You're making it sound as though it would be like pulling teeth to use two objects in conjunction.

i dont get why noobs jump to think that python is needed for something complex, they can barely do event based programming and just assume it would be easier to make a game using an even more difficult method. heck they can barely make a custom plat movement and want to make a super epic RPG, gets me so MAD!

Whoa

I was actually planning to have electric barriers in my game, but I was going to animate sprites. This is a cooler effect than I would have been able to draw by hand. So... nice effect, I think I'll steal it

What is this profiler you're using, Ash?

it's a hell of a lot quicker to have:

canvas object -> paste circle radius r at (x,y)

than to make a circle vector object and set it up loads and then paste it into it, especially if you've got to set up an erase blend on a new layer with that thing that makes erase work ticked.

Sure it would be quicker, but it's still redundant.

If the canvas object has vector and polygon drawing functions, and the vector object has vector and polygon functions, then the vector object would basically be the canvas object without the canvas. So what would be the point?

It's like saying there should be two kinds of Sprite object... a regular sprite that you have to apply effects to by hand, and a sprite that has all the effects built in automatically that you just toggle on and off. Just doesn't make any sense to me.