Well, nevermind all that... Apparently, the problem is that... there was no video card. And I'm not using that computer anymore.

Now I have a DIFFERENT problem, which still makes no sense. This computer DOES have a video card, and it successfully did the DirectX tests. The Direct Draw, Direct3D, and all the tests were successful. So I opened up Construct, and of course, it can create a new game. But after throwing on a sprite, a tiled background, I threw an effect onto the layer, and I got this error:

"Construct encountered an error in the display engine. Please report this problem to the application developer.

Failed to create Direct3D 9 device. (0x8876017c)"

Like I said, unlike the other computer, THIS one has a video card, so it can actually create a game. That's one step. But now, a new problem, and one that makes no sense... Why is it having problems with Direct3D when I try using ANY effects? When all the Direct tests were successful? That just doesn't make sense!

When I start up Construct and try to create a new game, I get this error message:

"There is not enough video memory to open this frame editor. Please close some other editors and try again."

First thing when I click "New Direct-X Game". No idea what that's about. And secondly, when I try to open one of the old .exe files I created before, I get THIS message:

"Construct encountered an error in the display engine:

Failed to initilise Direct3D 9!"

And from using the DirectX installer I have, it INSISTS there's nothing more to be updated. I'm not sure what I should be Googling to download. Just as confused about that one.

Does anyone know exactly what's wrong, or how I can fix these problems?

I actually tried an experiment of "states", seeing some other games use that for characters and enemies before. It didn't seem to make any difference. I also used a "If Defeated animation is NOT playing" condition for "Stick Enemy to Collision Box XY", but that didn't work either. The sprite still seemed to stick to the nearest collision box.

So far, I'm having a problem giving them a consistant "explosion" before dying. I thought that generally, most enemies would have the same "death explosion", but a few enmies would have unique ones, like if they were a bird, some feathers would be scattered in the explosion. For a slime, little droplets.

I'm trying this with a test enemy, but I think I must be doing enemies completely wrong. With two of this test enemy, there are numerous problems trying to get some consistancy. I notice that the first instance of this enemy I kill, they just disappear. No death as intended. When I kill the second, there IS a death animation.

I think this is because I've made two of the same collision box, two of the same enemy to paste them to. This is what I think is causing the problem: There's an "Always" condition, telling the enemy to stick to the collision box's XY position. When the first enemy dies, instead of playing the death animation, it goes to the next available collision box, hence the instant disappearing.

Is there a better way to handle enemies so I can give them their own death animation, or should I create a seperate object for the death animation? And just have the enemy spawn that when health reaches 0? I'm assuming it might be best to create a seperate object for death animation, huh?

Um, the link doesn't work...

I gathered. ^^;; I'm gonna stop using them now, except when I find a conveinent fix with them, like that "doorway" thing I mentioned for player objects. I had originally assumed I would need to use global variables to keep track of player position when going through doors, or teleporters to other layouts, but perhaps a single global object for the player is enough.

AH! ::brain processing:: AGH >_< Back when I discovered that I was getting two pieces of music from the AudioX object... I thought that was some special property of the AudioX object. It wasn't! It was because it was global! I had an AudioX object on each layout, so of course, two tracks of music were playing!

The main benefit to global objects would be something like the Mouse and Keyboard object, or AudioX! Just put those on the first layout of your game, and you're done! AGH! Of course!

And like I said, for stages that use more than one layout, using a global player object could be useful too. But other than that, most everything doesn't need to be a global object! I gotta turn that off for... EVERYTHING! Except MouseKeyboard and AudioX. And delete MouseKeyboard and AudioX on every other layout except the first one. AHH!

That could work, but it'd be more of a hassle to do something like

+ System: Start of layout

-> System: Create object on layer at (X, Y)

for each and every object I want in the level, wouldn't it?

And since you seem to have tested it, if you do something like

Start Layout A

Create global objects on Layout A that are stored on Layout C

Go to Layout B

The global objects that were created on Layout A wouldn't still remain when you go to Layout B, would they? I'd assume they'd behave just the same as normal global objects, even if pulled from another layout.

[quote:3rc4hyz8]and then create/destroy them on screen whenever they are needed?

Are you suggesting I delete them upon leaving the layout? Whether you were or not, that was an idea that just popped into my head that I was gonna try.

In that case, having a seperate layout storing the global objects wouldn't be needed, would it? Just destroy all global objects on the event that tells the application to go to a new layout, right?

[quote:3rc4hyz8]I believe that is intentional.

But, wait, why would it be intentional? What benefit could that have? Right now, in my testing, I have a stage with all these global objects, which are items for the player to pick up. There's also an overworld map to select different stages. When I go to the overworld map, all the global objects from the previous layout show up on the overworld map, all in the exact same spots as they were on the previous layout.

After messing around with this a bit, I wonder why I should mark some objects as being global at all. At first, I assumed it would be easier to bring objects to other layouts, but you still have to copy and paste them into other-- And now the message board is glitching up.

You still have to copy and paste global objects into other layouts... Which makes me wonder why I should bother with marking them as "Global" in the first place. The only thing that really changes is that you can access those in other layout event sheets more easily. I guess the best reason would be to allow for levels that have doorways into other rooms. Have a player access a door, appear in another room, no need to copy and paste the player object where they would end up.

I gotta stop editing this message now, because the glitchery is driving me insane.

I'm not sure if this has been discussed yet, but I'm betting it has. I notice if you change layouts, if the previous layout had global objects on it, then those will appear in the second layout. Is there some way to fix this, or is it another glitch?

Other game creators look upon it in envy.

Some conformist cultures have banned it for inspiring too much imagination.

Mothers have tried to keep their daughters away from it.

The ClickTeam used it to create Multimedia Fusion.

Alien lifeforms have identified it as intelligent life.

It is The Most Interesting Game Creator In The World

<img src="http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j42/Dreamer_Kisai/Construct.jpg">

Stay thirsty, my friends.

It could be that, or it could be something else. I'm using someone else's laptop, but we have the exact same kind. For some reason, things are running more smoothly on his, and I wondered if it had something to do with the new versions of Construct. But maybe I had MY laptop on power-saving or something. When I set his down to power-saving, I kinda got the same laggy effects in my game as I did on my laptop. It could've just been that, as well. ^_^;

First, it seems like custom-made families are still pretty glitchy. As in, they still don't work with the newer versions. I had made my own families for use and they worked just fine in the previous versions, but the newer versions still seem to be glitched up on that. (It's similar to when if you rename ANY of the default controls, they no longer work as properly when they did before.) I'm guessing I should try to find an alternative to creating new families?

Also, I had put in CustomControls for my game, but never quite got around to implementing it. Is it mostly obsolete now, what with InputSystem? It seems InputSystem can do pretty much the same as CustomControls and even more, what with general PC controller support. Should I just get rid of CustomControls and just use InputSystem?

So I guess when it comes down to single background objects, like, say, a cloud, or a sun, it doesn't really matter which one you choose between tiled BG or sprite?

Also, did something happen in the latest version of Construct? It seems to be way more powerful and faster in terms of performance than before. I'm not talking about Construct itself of course, but the games you make. Before there was a definite jump in lag when pausing my game, and under certain conditions in the pause menu, even more lag, but now I'm not seeing anything like that at all. The game's moving faster than ever. Did something happen with the last update to enhance performance?