Yeah thanks for putting this in movie form. Considering that this is the first tutorial most people go for it's nice to have it in such an approachable format.

Thanks for posting cap.

By the way I just noticed a "bug". When you stand here:

you can't shoot the SMG. I think it's because the image point for the Arm sprite is located at the hand instead of at the tip of the gun barrel. So whenever the player's hand is overlapping a terrain piece the bullets are destroyed.

For the spaz out bug: Set the animation angle when the 'a' and 'd' keys are pressed instead of the "overlaps rightside/leftside" conditions.

For the ladder climbing: Maybe when you're standing by the ladder you could press 'f' to get on the ladder instead of 'e'. And if you jump through the air and land on the ladder maybe you could automatically stick to it. I can't remember exactly how ladders worked in HL.

[quote:1w4ibeed]Registered users: Davioware, deadeye, Doppel, Flame, Google [Bot], linkman2004, newt, stainsor, SuperV

Google [Bot] actually registered? How thoughtful of it.

This is a very sweet game. I'm very tempted to make a couple more levels just so I can play it some more.

As far as calculating standard deviation:

+ variance = 0

+ for each:

- variance_x = variance_x + (mean_x - current_object.x)^2

+ std_dev_x = sqrt(variance_x)

That will give you a true standard deviation. But it also requires going through the loop a second time. I think it would be faster to just calculate an approximate standard deviation:

+ Always

-> Set x_sum to 0

-> Set y_sum to 0

-> old_mean_x = mean_x

+ For each swarm_object

-> Add swarm_object.x to x_sum

-> Add swarm_object.y to y_sum

-> variance_x = variance_x + (old_mean_x - current_object.x)^2

+ Always

-> Set mean_x to x_sum / swarm_object.count

-> Set mean_y to y_sum / swarm_object.count

-> std_dev_x = sqrt(variance_x)

(Sorry for mixing syntaxes but I just had time for a quick post.)

If you want a better approximation for the standard deviation maybe adjust old_mean_x by taking into consideration which direction the swarm is traveling and shifting old_mean_x in that direction. (or maybe just shifting it towards the current mouse position) but I think the approximation I showed would be good enough.

Why does everyone have fancy glowing computers? I don't have a camera, but my setup is pretty, uhh, low tech. I have about half a case with bits of computer parts bolted on to it, and a dual monitor setup - not a fancy one - a chunky old CRT on the left, and a very old LCD on the right with the response time of the united nations (if you drag a window around it blurs everywhere). Pictures if I can find a camera/be bothered.

Beautiful mental image. The only thing that would complete it is if you drew it in ASCII art! Please, please!

Welcome, welcome.

Thanks all. Lots of good info.

You must have some condition or loop that causes the character animation to toggle angle back and forth between 0 and 180. Recheck your logic for events that change the angle and maybe you can track down that "spaz out" bug. Hard to diagnose without a .cap file.

curious why youd ask

There are only a small number of reasons why I ask. First because I am very new to event based game programming and I'm not familiar with any option other than Construct. Second because I like Construct and I very much enjoy reading people more experienced than I write about how great Construct is.

Thx

simple yet addictive

Very nice artwork! Okay, you drew those rocks in five minutes? Cause I tried to recreate the piece you made a gif animation out of. I've been sitting here with Photoshop open for like ... uh ... we'll say about 4 and a half minutes. And I just hope people are more inclined to use it as ground rather than excrem ... uh, chocolate. Yeah, it's not supposed to look like chocolate.

<img src="http://img379.imageshack.us/img379/9320/platformgraphicsstainsopw0.png">

(Can you teach me some of your mystical secrets to good art?)

I've also had thoughts about a poker hand ranking system. Each hand would be assigned a numeric value that signifies how powerful it is. Of course the advantage of this system is that you just compare two decimal numbers to see who wins. It would look something like this:

Base Hand Value:

70000 Straight flush

60000 Four of a kind

50000 Full house

40000 Flush

30000 Straight

20000 Three of a kind

10000 Two pair

100 One pair

0 High card

Hand Value Modifier:

* for most hands (high card, pair, three of a kind, straight, four of a kind, straight flush) the modifier would be equal to the highest card in the hand. ex: pair of 9s = 109

* For two pair put the highest pair in the first two digits after the 1 and the low pair in the next two digits. ex: Aces and eights = 11408

* Full house is similar to two pair. ex: Aces full over eights = 51408

Kicker Value:

We also have to rank the kicker in case two people have hands of the same value. (for example if both have a pair of threes.) Put this information in the decimal. Don't forget to use two digits for each card.

ex: the five cards 2 2 3 5 6 rank as 102.060503