Hey Ashley would it be possible to add some actions to the Platform movement for "Set Jump Strength," "Set Jump Sustain," and "Set Gravity?" This would make creating things like spring-boards and swimming levels much easier.

Also, I'm seconding this request:

Requesting set x/y speed of the platform movement.

Though really I suppose setting the X speed is all you'd need because you can already use a "Jump" action and falling is automatic. This could make for fully automated things like title-screen demos, cut scenes, or even enemies that use platform movement.

That looks totally boss. It is full-screen only or will you be able to apply it to individual sprites as well?

That stuff looks cool deadeye. The scientist is very 'you', with the glasses.

Heh, are you referring to my avatar? That's actually John Flansburg from They Might Be Giants. Though I do wear glasses.

I'll probably go out and find some learning material on animation when my life settles down and I can really dig into this sort of thing again.

Good luck with that. There are a few good resources on traditional 2d animation on the web. You might also look into some dvd tutorials (like the Gnomon dvds, but I don't think they specifically have any 2d animation stuff) because seeing something in motion and having it explained at the same time is much more effective. They can be a little spendy, but not nearly as spendy as art school.

I'm not an expert either, but I think he looks maybe a little too clip-arty. I think you could fit a bit more personality/charm/distinct qualities into him, maybe by making him look a little worried or giving him a more distinct posture.

Other than that, I really like your basic concept. He's just a little too garden-variety, is all.

I appreciate the feedback, but I really don't know what I would do do spice him up, or even why I would do it. I decided to go low res for a couple reasons:

The first is simplicity. Not only is it easier on me as the game artist, bit it fits in with the character himself. He's just a scientist. He wears a lab coat and khakis. The main focus of the game is going to be the gameplay, so story is secondary. This leads into reason two: he's not a character-driven character, so to speak. His sole purpose is to interact with the game environment, so he doesn't really need to emote or express himself or even stand out in any way. If it were a mascot-driven game then more emphasis would be given to making the character emotive (as in my Squarebear design).

Even so I did try tinkering around with more detail when I was designing him, like a nose, mouth and pocket protector, but it just doesn't look right without bumping the number of colors in the palette way up, which I want to avoid. In fact, in the latest incarnation I've reduced the number of colors even more by taking out the darkest pants color and the shading on the shirt. The point is to make him look as old-school as possible while still looking smooth in the animation.

Speaking of which I did take vinny's suggestion and added a fourth frame to the running animation, and it does look smoother. I'll probably add even more by the time the game is done. I also changed up his jumping frames so he doesn't look so much like a candy-ass leaping around in a field of daisies.

Anyway, I haven't worked on it in about a week. I'm starting to slack again. I got caught up making background and platform tiles when I should really just be finishing up the engine, and switching gears like that interrupted my workflow so it's harder to get back into it. It's a bad habit I need to break.

sprites with a single animation with a single frame to display, which are not moving (aka a static, unchanging sprite) are highly optimised and you should be able to create them in the high tens of thousands before the object count starts impacting performance.

Welp, guess this answers my problem with Tiled Background stuff. I'll just switch everything over to sprites. I guess I'm still kind of stuck on the limitations of MMF and thinking that I'll have similar problems with Construct.

I'm going to go reconstruct at least the dragging system now.

For those who want to know:

Physics -> Set Velocity

X: MouseX - Sprite.X

Y: MouseY - Sprite.Y

Holy... whoa.

It's so simple, and yet so perfect. This works like a dream. You are a friggin genius.

Good luck getting your other stuff sorted out. I hope you can salvage your work.

This should probably go in Help/Tech

Anyway, you could try something like this:

+For Each dot
+enemyDot is within # pixels
-Set dot.closestEnemy to 999999999
-Set dot.chaseMode to "On"
 +For Each enemyDot
  +Distance to dot is Less than dot.closestEnemy
  -Set dot.targetX to enemyDot.X
  -Set dot.targetY to enemyDot.Y 

+dot.chaseMode = "On"
-Move dot towards (dot.targetX, dot.targetY) (or however you do it with rts movement, I don't know, I'm not on my Construct computer right now)
[/code:15jglt7f]

This will insure that the enemy dot with the shortest distance will keep their target coordinates in the first dot's targetX and targetY variables.  Then you just move the dot towards that.

Think it out logically. Begin with small steps. When tackling a complex problem, always begin with the simplest thing first, then once that's done build on top of it with the next step. There are no quick answers to things like this.

1. First, create a sprite.

2. Now you want to make it move. There are several ways you could do this. You could give it Bullet movement, or you could manually update it's x, y coordinates. Have it move in a straight line, and then when it hits a wall, make it turn around and go the other way.

3. Now that it moves back and forth, you want to have it stop at the edge of a ledge. The best way to do this is to make an invisible barrier that it can bounce off of. When it overlaps the barrier, it turns around.

4. Maybe you want to have gravity so it falls off a ledge. Make your sprite move down 1 or 2 pixels every cycle.

This can cause your sprite to get stuck in the ground. Make a loop that moves your sprite 1px up when it's overlapping the ground to push it out.

5. Now you want it to follow the player when it "sees" it. You could do this by making the sprite detect when the player is within a certain distance.

6. Now that it is aware that the player is within a certain distance, shoot an invisible object toward the player. If it hits the player, then the sprite "sees" the player. If it hits the background, the sprite does not see the player.

7. Now if the sprite sees the player, make the sprite turn and face towards the player (similar to making the sprite turn around when it hits a wall).

8. Making the sprite shoot the player is up to how you want the sprite to shoot. Do you want it to shoot at regular intervals? Do you want it to shoot a constant stream of bullets? Maybe you only want to shoot when the player is on the same vertical level as the sprite. Who knows? It's up to you.

There... those are the basics. This doesn't cover things like acceleration and such. Your gravity will be linear instead of "y pixels per second squared," but you can ask for help with more natural gravity once you have basic gravity done.

Edit:

If you ask for help with one of the steps, I want to see a .cap showing that you have completed all the steps leading up to it or you'll get no response from me.

Here's a list of songs you could use:

1. Talking Heads - Once In A Lifetime

2. Devo - Whip It

3. Dead or Alive - You Spin Me Right Round

4. A-Ha - Take On Me

Heh, just kidding

Seriously, what do you mean by a "list" of songs? What specifically are you trying to do?

Megaupload tells me the first file is unavailable. Also, Megaupload sucks. Try http://www.mediafire.com/ , they don't make people wait 45 seconds to download something.

The second file uses PS2.0, so I can't open it.

Um, just one more thing about the music, now that I think about it...

If you're going to go with more technoey sounding music, then the nature theme for the background graphics really doesn't fit. I'd either go with a more industrialish or futurey style of art and ditch the wood textures, or switch to music that's a little more mellow and soothing to fit with the forest imagery.

Edit:

Sorry for the double-post.

I agree with Vrav, it's a pretty neat concept. Some of the obstacles could use some refining, like the dominoes, but I'm sure you'll have all that sorted out when you start getting into making the full game.

I'd like to see some chain-reaction type puzzles in this, where you have to work through complex puzzles like a Rube Goldberg device or something. Something with multiple steps, like you have to a push a box onto a teeter-totter, push another onto the other end, launch the first one to a higher platform to knock over some dominoes which then flips a switch to open a door, or something like that.

I also really dig the opening credits. Very creative. The only thing I really didn't like about the game was the song. Have your friend do a mix with no voice samples...

ATOMIC

ENERGY

EVERYWHERE

DEET DEET DOOT

Ew