/ game play.

I dont like the 1,2,3 keys to change speed much.

Press shift + the control keys to move faster ?

And CTRL + the control keys for the 3th speed ?

I would add A health bar to the enemy tanks too.

The background tiling ... um .. does not match where it repeats. Post the Graphics file and i will make a perfect Tile for you. If you dont have the programs to do so.

I so like the looks of the HUD. But the info is for me (personal) a little to much.

I think also that you would be better off with grass that looks more *cartoonish*, just like the tank does.

/ events.

So perfectly organized. I Should take an example at that ! I read them line by line tomorrow if i have time.

There are 2 little things i noticed.

You use 2 objects for the Cursors.

I would use 1 object and drop the states in an animation.

You do collision detection between bullet and the turret AND with the tankbase.

I would drop both in Container. This way only one Detection event is needed.

night.

Yes you can do things like ..

Give Player 1000 hit points, so it dies after 1000 times been hit by a bullet.

And give the enemy only 3 hit points.

Give the Player weapons that do more damage then the enemy does.

Give the Player Lives.

Give the player a shield.

And all those little aids invented to smooth a game.

But, you should see those as *fine tuning* the power relation between Player and Enemy.

Thats all they do anyway, increase or decrease the power of the player/ enemy.

They do not tune the *smartness* of an enemy.

The real challenge is to make enemy's that act as they are steered by humans. The next step is to fine tune with speeds, lives, health, hit points, damage control .. and so on.

Is it easy to do ? No. But you can do an effort. Bring AI in the enemy's. Take the game at least 1 step beyond the obvious.

Do we have tools to do this ? Ah yes we do. One tool are the conditions.

If the Player is not shooting at the me, then dont approach the player. Thats a simple condition, and if i remember right, used in Ghost shooter tutorial.

Do we have more tools ? Ah yes we do. Anything that lets the Enemy sense the Players object, in stead of just moving it towards the players object is a tool in this.

A lot of behaviors have things that we can use to construct a strategy.

Like the turret that can track Objects.

The Line Of Sight ....

The RTS movements ...

The Physics ...

I am not an expert in this. At the moment i just want you to shake you awake.

Telling you that moving the Enemy towards the Players object is not gonna do it.

I am not an expert in Construct anywayz.

I have not idea yet what next post in this will be.

And this,

Must be the most smart enemy ever made.

I did not even bother to give Coffee Cup Hero a weapon.

If i did, you probably could manage to shoot the enemy. But i have seen .caps with 50 enemy's as smart as this one.

It is a temptation though,

we know the position of the players object.

Why not let that big scary enemy move towards the players object.

And shoot him/her to elllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

But. Is it a challenge to play ? No sir. There must be ways in between.

...

A prototype of an enemy being boring and way more dumb then the players object could be this.

The enemy is not moving, not interacting, not anticipating, and its no puzzle to reach him.

The enemy is no challenge at all.

Of course this is 1 side of the universe. One extreme side. But i have seen the other side a lot too, and in these forums.

Next post will be a another example.

Notice also how i bridged between the "every" condition executing its sub events and actions instantly, and the need for it to act as a timer.

If you use an "every" ..

the first execution is instantly, ..

the second execution is defined in the every parameters. Ticks or seconds.

...

Did you solve this ? and how ?

To align the animation of the Ghost with the direction its moving.

Just add an action that sets the animation to the variable 'way_to_go'.

And just between the lines, notice that you can move every tree of events, well those that start with a "always" base, on any place in the events sheet.

It should not matter.

AI stands for Artificial intelligence.

Wah! you say ? i dont use that ?

Oh sure you do. Construct is not at the point yet to implement Multiplayer.

So all your games are puzzles or the player fights against enemys that you create.

Every, Any, Each enemy is driven by AI. Simple or complicated. But its AI.

We have a saying, roughtly translated: Pictures say so much more then words.

So Allow me to trow you in a commercial.

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=AYC8fTv2jp4

There are 3 messages that i would like to give by this.

Level 1 message:

KEEP ON WALKING !!!

If you at first do not are succesfull in the creation of your game. Dont give up.

Bring it to the forum is you feel completely stuck.

But keep on walking.

level 2 message:

Do you see how hard it is to take the Android as a machine ?

The player will do the same towards the enemys you create for him/her.

They are not machine in the players eyes, middle in the fire of the battle,

and you should try not to let them act as machines.

level 3 message:

Its easy to make the Enemys smarter then the player.

Its easy to make the Enemys this dumb, that they are beatable in a blink of an eye.

Its not so easy to make make the Enemys in a way that they are beatable, but only after a BAttle.

But rule number one is: the Enemys can NOT be smarter, faster, better then the player.

I think you guys scared Ashley by evoluating the Box in to the Circle.

If you look at the Box. Then you will see its missing some properties. Also its missing some actions and conditions compared to a sprite driven object.

To me it looks like it was meant as another faceless object. And this object was meant to be used as "help object". As a sensor. As a way to mark locations. As .... uhh ... so many things.

I think (well assume) that it got its face (the borders) more by accident.

But now it has a face, everyone refers to it to ask for similar but in a circle form.

I would rather have an object with a surface driven by math. So i can make a 5 sides, a 6 sides, and yes also a 4 sides and a circle by one object by just giving it the number of sides in a property. Also, this can not be the Box object. The Box has, i think a different use, it has to be simple and fast. The object i am asking for should have the same properties, actions and conditions as a sprite driven object.

hope you see what i mean.

Its midnight here, time to go to bed, so i did't read the "read me" yet, nor did i walked to trough the events.

But Dude, i am pretty amazed by the game when its running. This is done VERY nice.

Now look back at the events 8, 9, 10 and 11. Where we sense by overlap conditions.

Lets change those. First browser a second in the system objects conditions.

And notice the "Object overlaps point" condition. This is what we gonna use.

No more setting image points too. But its good that you know how to set those. And how to use those. So do not forget that.

ok .. double click the U overlaps Blue condition to change it.

Click back till you are in step1 of the wizard.

Step1: base object = system object.

Step2: condition = "Object overlaps point"

Step3: parameters : the object = Blue (the family we call the walls with)

now X will be an expression. We will point to the x where we positioned the Sensors in last post.

But Where is the X coordinate of the sensor ? without using the sensor ?

Well, the maze is a 40 by 40 grid. Our octopus is in the middle of that grid. So the distance from a maze edge to the Octopus middle point (its X and Y point) is half the 40. Simply 20.

Lets Add 2 pixels to have a save and never failing Overlap Detection.

So X for the up "sensor" = Octopus.X

and Y is Octopus.Y - 22

there ! The sensor objects are eliminated by this. But you need more imagination to see whats happening, and even more to debug if you run into problems.

But, its certainly faster and more CPU friendly.

so ...

point x gets the value Octopus.X

point y gets the value Octopus.Y -22

click finish.

do the same for R overlaps blue.

Xpoint in the parameters is now Octopus.X + 22

Ypoint = Octopus.Y

For D this will be

Xpoint = Octopus.X

Ypoint = Octopus.Y + 22

For L this will be

Xpoint = Octopus.X - 22

Ypoint = Octopus.Y

Now go to the layout editor.

Delete the objects U, R D and L

they will be deleted from the events sheet too

meaning, you will have a few empty always events.

You can delete those.

And run all.

NEVER DELETE OBJECTS BEFORE YOU CHANGED THE EVENTS !!

(hope daddy smiles after this post)