[quote:17s5gilo]Your slices idea was more or less what I meant with my less attractive solution. But I don?t understand why it would be that slow. It would only need to retrive the value when an object is moving, and let?s say there would be 20-30 objects moving at most which need to have their height checked, would that really make such a punch in performance? I could probably get away with checking a units height every 3rd or 4th frame or so, and, if using the slices-method, all it would do is a simple collision check "is unit touching height object x". If using the check-color-value I guess it would be similar, no?

actually, checking color is a whole very different process, color values require gpu/cpu transfers for the texture data, which is the absolute WORST thing you can have for a real time application. collision checks are highly optimised and dont have this bottleneck.

[quote:17s5gilo]Or is collision checking in general slow? I haven?t really read that much about constructs performance, but to my understanding it is quite fast, no?

as i said collision checks arent slow, but GPU/cpu transfers with value checking is very much so.

[quote:17s5gilo]And about smooth variations, no. I was thinking that if I have a layout of maybe at most 4096x4096, then I would stretch a 512x512 grayscale map over it. Making slices would complicate that idea, as I would have to stretch several objects, and make sure they all match up when stretched. Also, say I would make 16 slices, that would mean 512x512x16, not an attractive solution when I think about it.

no youd only need to run a loop to spaw the 16 or wtv number of sprites, they could all be the same sprite type, all you need to do is spawn 16, and change the animation frame to wtv loopindex they were spawned on, and store that loopindex in a private variable. just make sure the animation speed is set to 0.

i have no idea why you think 512 by 512 by 16 isnt an attractive solution. a huge sprite that has to be transfrered to vram, into the gpu, to the cpu, the cpu has to check a value out of a 512x512 array of pixels, 30 plus times, every 15th of a second if you do it every 4 frames is?

Ok, now lets see that work with the bitmap font plugin. If you could get the pencil to actually look like it's tracing the letters, you might have one hell of a name input screen.

if only i could get the quadratic bezier splines of true type fonts, then that would be a cake walk

Besides, the above example wouldn't work! I believe it is cout

That is why Construct is awesome, you have everything at a mouse's reach, no worries about syntax unless you're into expressions.

even in expressions, syntax isnt very complicated, you dont need semicolons and slashes and dont need to know weird words like cout and isostream. you only need to make sure brackets are closed and remember to put +- ect between terms.

retrieving values like that from a texture would be way to slow, since allot of gpu-cpu transfers would have to be done. you need to find a better method, like making you collision maps out of top down "slices" (sorta like what voxels are if you know what that is) for each height level up to 16 levels or something and use those for line of sight ect., this is if its ABSOLUTELY necessary to have a heightmap like this.

you could also make a loader create an array of values based on height maps and retrieve those at runtime, but even that would probably be slow, and its alot more complicated than my method.

think of alternatives to heightmaps. do you absolutely need to know smooth variations for your game to work. is the load it puts on the system worth using it? i dont know exactly what youre trying to do, but im guessing heightmaps isnt the way to go in a construct based approach.

very cool

doesn't account for object ordering tho, stacked objects dont appear in reversed order as you would expect when "looking" into the other portal.

its a known bug, the devs havent gotten around to fixing it yet, if you really need it, try using 3d mesh distortion as a substitute, or use 98.9

try posting in the help forum, this isn't the place for threads like this

[quote:22ebae1w]The overall user interface is weird.

youre not used to it is all, seeing new things makes people think things are strange, but it makes alot of sense once you understand.

[quote:22ebae1w]The lack of real scripting is a problem for me. I often use Construct for prototyping but in the end I end up making it work in flash/python/gm/c++

you need to grasp the event system with better comprehension, the small amounts of actions for somethings doesnt mean anything. i get by perfectly using mostly expressions, loops, system expressions and pvs. if you can grasp all of those languages, you shouldn't have any trouble with event logic, which is 100x simpler. if youre excuse is that events are underpowered, thats a stupid reason. ive been able to make 3d engines, complicated IK solving systems, detailed editors and alot of other stuff using only events. this is coming from someone with 0 coding experience and who hasn't even learned trig yet at school.

take some time to get used to construct. dip your toe into lil things before diving in.

dropbox seems to be down, as you can see alot of stuff hosted on it is down, even pictures ect.

This is a small simulation made by mostly by me, Davioware just made the sound and a few other tiny things. It's simulation about being at school. features my new 3d engine.

<img src="http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1010927/school.png">

Download: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1010927/Atschool.zip

megaman 6, the easiest of the NES megamans.

http://nintendo8.com/game/504/mega_man_6/

try getting past flame man with only the mega buster...

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1010927/BOmb.cap

first real 3d model built in construct

posted a cap for the curious