IK doesnt work with physics, the technique i use to solve it (that linkman also uses for his plugin which i dont use) is to position objects based on distances and arm lengths. physics wouldnt make the IK chain react like your making it seem, unless i misunderstood.

if u meant that you had physics balls on strings, which are connected to the IK arms as an end target then that would make sense. you also have to make strings the length of the sum of both arm segments connecting those weight balls to their respective shoulder so that the weights couldnt move too far away from the shoulder and create and impossible situation. the body would of course then have to be connected to the balls via those strings and the shoulders and hips.

at least thats how i would imagine doing it.

100% free, as free as it gets really. you can even sell the stuff you make using it as you would sell anything else. no strings attached.

webcam doesn't mean its hooked up to the web, it just means you can receive data from a "webcam" as in a usb recording camera hooked to your comp.

The best answer is not one resolution

The best answer is all resolutions

Modern games don't have the option to change quality and resolution for nothing now do they?

So make the graphics on highest quality and then downscale

Though positioning of sprites might be tricky but I think construct is able to make this fine adjustments

The only real problem here would be aspect ratio but that doesn't have any workarounds to begin with and only on games that are non scrolling so you could either cut, make backgrounds with different aspect ratio AND perspective or you could even scroll it

10x the work cause your drawing hug graphics, plus a 320x240 game can be eating up 200mb of vram or more.

Get with the times! 1024x768 in my opinion is the current day standard minimum. Depending on the style of game you are making, this resolution may be excessive, but in most cases it's not. In fact, most of the games made by a large number of indie developers are, in my opinion, too low of a resolution. Why reduce something that could look awesome into a garble of barely recognisable pixels... especially this day in age.

it takes a very very long time to make nice graphics for that res, and making hi res graphics clogs up most low end gfx cards. simple graphics can tell a story just as well as hi res ones, except without needing expensive hardware to be run at a decent framerate.

large resolutions always lag on my comp, 640x480 is the best imo since no ones gonna be hindered from playing the game. SD tvs are 640x480 and games look just fine on those.

i have a technique for making motion blur that uses very little power and is simple to implement. the blur is generated using the "broken" subtract 0.0 shader. that shader seems to capture frames and slowly fade them away, so when u move an object under it, it captures all of its movement, and adjusting the opacity of the filter (is effectively adjusts its strength). it works much like the blur in a real camera. the only problem it really has is with extremely fast moving object, since it doesnt take an average of frames, rather it captures frames as they go by. making it sorta like the castlevania blur, but alot smoother and more realistic

the upside is that its an incredibly lightweight effect compared to other full screen blurs in fact it barely even touches the fps no matter what strength u make it, since it simply captures a frames already rendered data, and its simple as pie to implement. broken shaders always have their uses.

this is another one of my little experiments.

its an IK tentacle solver.

it works alright, but its sometimes not very aesthetically pleasing because it can collapse on itself to get a solution (due to the way it works). but as long as you don't push it around to erratically or back onto itself and control its movement well it looks pretty nice. i added a distort map ontop of the nodes as a test, feel free to unhide the sprite named "N" to see what the actual solving mechanism looks like

feel free to use this if u want to, it would look cool as the tongue of some big lizard boss or a worm or something

ill try to get the solving working better, right now its pretty hacked together.

http://files.getdropbox.com/u/1010927/tentacle.cap PS: Its made in 98.9 or wtv so it might not work in the newer versions (especially the mesh distorting)

honestly, im starting to hate the oversaturation of the gaming market with ***** and FPS's which are good and all, but just are just the same old hat stuff. i mean i can understand FPS's with online are fun, but i currently own 3 fps's, and 2 3rd person shooters, and that sickens me. this is the first time, EVER on a console that i own more than 2 shooters. it used to be that i had a console to play games like banjo kazooie, or mario 64 and stuff like that. but now most of the games like that ***** its not nostalgia, i know that much because i just recently started playing NES games, which i used to avoid and are enjoying them much more than and console game. i never owned a NES and i can say i enjoy playing megaman over gears of war, or COD4.

it just seems to me as the years go by, the # of enjoyable games for each system goes down. the market is way too big nowadays. everyones doing the same thing.

Nintendo all went downhill since the wind waker, and since Rare was bought.

i guess all of this is why im into indy games now. they bring any style, from any generation and all of the stuff feels completely brand new, or like the stuff i used to enjoy as a kid.now i wanna start seeing n64 generation esque games being made. theres a strange gap in 3d games being made. everyone feels they all have to be amazing looking and not focus on game play or design. the N64 zelda games did a great job of makin that ugly polygonal world feel real and full of life, now 3d games look real, and feel dead.

wtv thats my rant on games. all i really need is a snes controller i can attach to my comp, and SDTV-PC hookup and i can get all the advantages of a console

<img src="http://files.getdropbox.com/u/1010927/SS%20screenshot.png">

my unfinished entry for the Game Jolt compo.

Davio is working on some stuff for it too

Looks cool. How'd you get that sorta-painterly looking effect in the screenshot/photo of the vending machines?

seems like color reduction

well today i decided to whip up a quick test of some 3d concepts and ideas i wanted to try in 99.3

http://files.getdropbox.com/u/1010927/3d%20shooting.cap

its simply a test of shooting in 3d space, using Z depth as a dimension in place of Y. the collisions with the blue squares are a bit bugged at the moment, but im trying to fix that.

mouse controls your aiming direction, clicking spams a stream of bullets, and shift is to jump, arrows control your characters L/R movement and Z movement.

with 3d box and mesh distortion almost all of that is possible