Come to think of it, couldn't you also make a sprite of the particle and blur it yourself, and then use that as the particle? As long as you use alpha with it, it should blend well enough without any shaders.

Yeah sorry, not ideal for particles. In order to make up for the lowered samples, have to move the pixel spread.

You would have to make adjustments for single particles and as result, it would look bad on larger objects

Removing link again, don't want to encourage people to use a simple hack

Well, until you get a real solution you can reduce the number of points (samples) in the blur fx file.

The blur isn't as strong but you will gain some FPS.

I've designed my stuff so far to work with both 16:9 and 4:3. The difference in viewing space is pretty minor most of the time, so it hasn't been an issue to let the person choose and reduce stretching.

Everything else seems like you are on a good track.

So the only real thing I would say is each time you are going to use a shader, check to see if there is a way to get the look you want without it first. Example might be to just make an animation of the warp effect, instead of actually using it.

Anyways, good luck to you!

I wish there was an easier way to avoid stretching ... can't make it 4:3 full screen as some monitors will stretch the image. Also can't make it in 16:9 full screen as most 4:3 monitors (that I've tested) will either stretch it or just not be able to display the image.

Yay technology.

You are using shaders a little too liberally. For example, removing the lens layer, I see no noticeable difference to the game what-so-ever and gain an average of 20 fps overall.

You should try and aim for minimal shader use. If you want more people to play your game, it has to run well on even the slowest of systems.

Wouldn't this be better to do after Construct is at 1.0 and bug-free? I realize many of the examples would not change but still, I think this "showcase" is still premature.

But I guess I can see how they could be taken for granted in this age of cutscene-centric games. And things like Final Fantasy with their long-ass summon scenes, or Metal Gear with 90 minute scenes don't really help matters.

Right, but I think anyone who sits down to play a Metal Gear game, expects those long scenes. Same with Final Fantasy.

I think the real problem is that a vast majority of game developers think they need to also be movie directors and can't allow a scene to be short. It's a heck of a lot easier to make a short scene interesting than a long one.

Don't know who is to blame for having such a default title in a game creator, but I am going to go ahead and just say Clickteam since it's the direction Ashley came from.

At least with MMF there was an actual emphasis on creating Applications with that software.

I feel cut-scenes are important, and they should exist even in games that don't really strive to tell a story. Why? Because it helps set the tone, the mood and the style of the game. It gives you a connection to the game beyond simply pressing keys and watching the results. It also helps you identify your game instead of (using the example in this thread) just being another GTA clone. If someone wants to play GTA for the gameplay, they will just go play GTA... which are free now. You have to do more than just add one or two things to the gameplay that differs from the actual GTA.

If a game won't let you skip a cutscene and it bothers you, you are playing the wrong game to begin with as it is one placing an emphasis on story.