Hey, anyone know a good tutorial on writing shaders and the general concept? I mean, I know what they do in concept and know the general differences between each version... But I'd like to try my hand at writing some, assuming I can find a good place to start...

That, mainly since there's support in Construct for scaling apps to run under different shader models, but most of the effects are for 2.0 and it would be cool to somehow make a nifty effect for one of the other models...

Unfortuantly, I broke Construct and it broke the cap of the new levels I made for it... (1.5GB WOOT!!!)

But that doesn't matter too much... I needed to have a better system of events anyway... (one sheet for generic movement core, included into all layouts...)

Wow... I forgot that I had a TDC account from a while back... I only ever submitted an all-purpose level editor, and clickteam didn't fix the active picture memory management like I suggested so I ended up scrapping it...

If you want to support Construct, you simply build momentum (awesome games/demos) and show them all off at the 1.0 release party...

Since our community here seems so enthusiastic and active, you guys think its time we start an IRC channel?

Well nobody should expect an unfinished, or really I should say, unstable (since Construct's still below 1.0) product to be better than a completed second version of a commercial product that has since been patched and updated multiple times...

Give it time... There's bugs to work out, features being added with each release. The community gets to submit ideas and if so inclined, make features and plugins for Construct. (Tomorrow, I'll go and get Visual Studio installed on my laptop again... Mainly because I want a scrollbar plugin...)

Construct has the potential to become better than anyone is imagining at this point, and some of us feel already that it's really awesome already... It's kinda like Firefox 1.0 vs Firefox 3.0... I didn't expect much from the 3.0 (Beta) release of Firefox but I was impressed with it's increased speed, feature set, and bug fixes.

Once it stabilizes some, then it would be more reasonable for Construct to start adding some radical new features since it's easier to fix problems when they're caused by the new features, and not from some bug that should have been fixed a long time ago...

I know where you're coming from, but I don't think it's ready yet for something like that just yet...

Nah... I wish... The school does requires everyone to have a laptop (whether they really need it or not I found...) and most of them have at least basic shader 2.0 support based on the school's recommended specs.

But either way, the beauty of Construct is the ability to cater to those with low end hardware to high end hardware...

Yeah, I know, but since it's such a short time this time around, I don't expect us to get too much done, just a very simple game really...

This time around it was going to be more about the pieces that go together to make a good game, and using Construct as an engine to get it down quickly, and see nearly instant results. Even the way the effects system works in Construct lends itself to a mini history of GPU's and such...

Next time around (next two semesters) will feature making more complex games and demos, and there's a good chance Construct will be 1.0 and even more impressive then...

Don't worry, I was planning on making it clear that it's still beta and things may break. And since I'm keeping it simple, recreating anything wouldn't be a problem. (not that I ever ran into any file corruption)

Also, I'm also hoping we'll get some programmers who'll be skilled enough to make plugins and such (which reminds me, I have to get Visual Studio installed again...) or are interested in contributing to an open source project...

I really want to get the word out about Construct more before the major release so that when it does release a 1.0 with a big internet launch party they'll all want to show up...

I probably won't rate it just yet, but I'd just like to let you know that starting Monday, I'll be running hour long game development discussions/seminars for my College's Gaming Club since they all seem to think I know a good amount about it, and they liked my past games (I don't think they're so great anymore but whatever...)...

Anyway, we got a lot of feedback saying that people wanted to learn how to make games as part of our club's events, so I checked what I could work with...

XNA would be great for many of the programmers in the school (it is an Engineering school after all...) but would scare some less inclined to program away, and I was always stressing that programming is only a small part of the whole. Bad art, music, storyline, gameplay will each drag down top notch programming...

That, and I realized, most of us are already swamped with work,and it would be a bit of work getting things running well in XNA. I"m not abandoning it, but I'll save focus on it for until I learn it better... (and the semester's over in a month and a half anyway...)

So, python support in Construct took the best of both worlds and made this an easy choice. I'll be featuring Construct as our dev tool of choice so I can hopefully get the concepts of good game design across, as well as the importance of art, music (refer to my creations thread heh), and most importantly, fun...

Hopefully Construct will find as many fans as I'm hoping. And hopefully, the Digital Media Department will notice and help advertise my events...

Nice work with the latest release

Autobackup will be really useful to me...

Looks really nice...

Runs at a constant 40-42 FPS here (45-48 Fullscreen'd) (according to FRAPS), and no less.

2.0GHz Core 2 Duo

ATI Mobility Radeon X1400

1GB RAM

XP Pro

This could really be a great demo of the features of Construct...

No real suggestions right now, but if I come up with any, I'll let you know...

ooh... That's awesome!

Heh, glad you like it so far... Don't worry, I'm planning some complex puzzles... They're just not ready yet...

Yeah, I'm going to change the music... I really just plugged something random in, since when I made games in the past, I usually let the music define the way the level was designed and the direction of the artwork and such...

All the graphics I made except for the background... I got lazy there... Even then, I have to find an image I can use that has a license I know I can use... (I lost the info on this image somehow... I think it was fine to use...) I was planning on either taking a picture for that, or drawing... We'll see...

Here's a quick sample of a game I'm working on in it.. inspired by my old flash game (yet to be finished...) The point though is to show off the concept, and not so much the game... But since something's playable...

Features the physics engine and 3d box...

Here, play it, have fun for the short, short time it lasts...(I cut out the new stuff I've been working on since that part was complete...)

It uses shaders for some nice effects (removed one that made the grass look fuzzy due to it being extremely slow on 3d objects...) But it will turn off when not available and the goal is to make the game look great regardless...

http://pnmhq.com/ssb/ballgame.rar

Screenshots so far: (Linked because they stretched too much...)

http://pnmhq.com/ssb/screen1.png

http://pnmhq.com/ssb/screen2.png

The main reason for the release was various people were having problems running it, most of them on Vista...

One such error is error to load plugin 7.csx

Anyway, the concept, well, experiment of this game is to have the game gradually build itself up as you play it. As you'll see, you start off with a black screen, gradually more stuff comes in, and as the game advances (this part will be tweaked as well), not only will the visuals advance, the abilities and control over your ball you'll have. At start (from the moment you start the game) you can only move left and right and have to use the environment to help you, but gradually, you'll be able to have more control over your ball, including having a jump and boost feature...

So, comments? Criticism? Cookies?