However, irritatingly, alpha doesn't work because Construct doesn't seem to like the way Paint.Net saves alpha. I had to remove the black stuff manually. Ugh, what a pain. Don't use Paint.Net for alpha in PNGs, folks.

Edit: Or GIMP either, apparently. God dammit. How the hell do you get proper alpha right off the bat with these things?

Now, the next main problem to make this viable is Z-Order. In other words, layers. Oh, yeah, and collision, I forgot. You either want some things to collide, or some things to not collide, basically...

... Then again, for collision, you could just have a second tileset for collision stuff. That works well. Z-Order is still a problem, though.

Edit: Also, you want to be able to work with multiple tile sets at once, and by consequence, multiple sprites. So, basically...

Tulamid's Colour Overlay Effect would make day/night systems a LOT easier, but... There's two main things to figure out.

1. The exact colourations and intensities needed for certain stages of the day, such as dawn, sunset and night (the third one is already provided), and how they'd transition over the cycle

2. Light sources "erasing" the effect at night.

Obviously, the erase effect doesn't work well with Light objects, so... I'm kinda clueless on how to get the second working. Yeah.

Current test cap for the night colouring, and a light source.

Though... How the heck do you think you'd go about using this effect over multiple layers? I imagine it would require a canvas, but...

Edit: I'm a complete retard. "Grab layout" does the job perfectly, the REAL problem is erasing the effect using light sources...

Alright, I made a quick tile map, with a tilesheet, the native Tiled file, and an XML file.

Let's see if we can get this working via events and/or Python.

Okay... I might prepare a quick tile map and tile sheet, and send the whole thing over to you so you can try your hand at doing it with events, I probably wouldn't be able to figure it out, myself.

This is pretty much THE reason why I've been clamoring for a Tiled Plugin for a while, now. It would certainly make tile-based level design a LOT easier.

Sonic Construct Worlds Alpha 4!

Additions:

* Additional skins - S3 Sonic, Tails and Knuckles. Super Sonic is also there, but he's not usable at the moment. No additional abilities as of yet.

* A multiplayer prototype is up and running, allowing for theoretically up to 10 players.

Bugs/Problems:

* Unfortunately, the multiplayer prototype has made a nasty problem rear its head - the current method of utilising 'loop layers' is more or less useless with more than one player.

* It's also caused the shields to not destroy themselves when replaced or the user is damaged.

The jumping problem in the Clock Tower just got hotfixed (download the zip again), it's the Player object's variables that's the problem, the general events for jumping and acceleration are now fixed to the player's variables so it's easier to adjust, which I forgot to mention earlier. The variables are pretty much the same between levels, now.

Thanks for the help, mate! I was wondering why it wouldn't randomise the ring spray properly...

Zip file with a collection of sprites used in the SCW so far. Will expand as I add more stuff.

Also, ANOTHER UPDATE. It's a small one, but...

Changelog:

* Changed ring spray to random 'angle of motion' instead of 'angle', so now rings spray all over the place randomly.

* Added changing animation speed for running, so it corresponds to movement speed.

* Tried testing out keeping the player's movement on a moving platform so the player moves along with the platform. Didn't work too well. God damn, gonna need some help on this one.

Same download link as before.

New update to the engine. Not much, but it's something, at least.

Changes:

* Tweaked the "fall off slope" mechanics and implemented rolling momentum... Somewhat. It works, but not very well. Clearly, I'm gonna have to figure out something else, because the Sonic Physics Guide way of slope friction isn't working.

* Implemented five monitors - 10 Ring, Normal Shield, Fire Shield, Magnetic Shield, and Bubble Shield. The shields are also implemented, sans the insta-shield, though they don't do anything special other than damage protection. YET.

It really depends on what type of shooter you're aiming for. Bullet Hell? Shoot upwards, because you need to focus more on dodging bullets than actually firing. Something like Geometry Wars, of course, is more suited to multi-directional fire.

Sounds cool, but I would also advise making an export to image feature in the meantime, so the animations are at least usable even in programs that aren't integrated to it, and people would be a bit more motivated to spread the word and want plugins for their favourite game-making programs.