sorry for the repost, but it's on second page now, and no one would see this

it's still a little ways off, mostly because I'm busy...it really doesn't take too long to make a plugin

these are the features that will go in, if all works out:

actions:

• choose sprite, there won't be any special setup options, because splitting up tiles, and importing several frames, is very easy with the builtin features in construct, so you import your font sprites into one animation in construct
• Set Animation Range: here you will be able to set up a range of characters to go with a range of frames, so if your font only has 0-9, and a-z, you would call this action once for each range, you choose which animation frames go with which range of characters
  • Frame Start
  • Frame End
  • Character Start
  • Character End
• Set Spacing: this will set how far the next character will be placed from the last, you will be able to set whether the space is from an imagepoint or from the edge of the sprite
  • from imagepoint/from edge - edge is default
  • all / per character - apply spacing to all, or override "all" setting for one character - decides how far the next character will be from it
  • spacing - a number, 0 would be touching, negative positive corresponds to left/right number of pixels offset
• set wrap width - set the width the words wrap in. I will do my best to follow any wrapping conventions I'm aware of, but I don't have the time to research, and I'm not an expert on formatting, but I did read yours arima, and that will be observed
• set display width - this is to be able to put your text into a box and scroll through it, it will make some of the other actions possible, and save the user from having to make a mask everytime they want to do this
• set alignment - left/right/centered
• set justified -
  • on/off
  • method
    • between word spacing - justify the normal way, by spacing words apart
    • per character spacing- justify by spacing each character
    • by character width - justify by setting the width of each character
• attach to object -sets height and width to an object
  • border left
  • border right
  • border top
  • border bottom
• set all/per character width Absolute/ or ratio (to the original character size)
• set all/per character height Absolute/ or ratio (to the original character size)
• set capital/lowercase size - allows you to make capital of lowercase letters, by adjusting the size ratio x/y
• set scroll x/y ( relative/absolute) - offset from phrase position
• set rotation (of entire phrase)
• set position (of entire phrase)
• set circular x/y (on/off) - this makes it so a letter scrolling off the left side, comes back out the right side if you scroll beyond the end of the phrase
• set phrase width - sets the width ratio of the letters, so they all fit into this width

now I will have to be careful with the naming of actions, because you will be able to do this per character meaning "a", so every "a" is set to a certain width or per character, to be used with the following condition:

• For each character in phrase - which could do all of the above functions, but per character in phrase (in order regardless of what letter it is), this will make it possible to do all the crazy stuff you'd want to do with bouncy swirly, zigzaggy text, text wrapped in a circle, it's up to you to come up with the algorithms, using the actions, and the following expressions: (most of the "get" conditions will also have a "get previous" and "get next" but I don't want to write all that out)
• get character x/y
• get character position in phrase
• get character distance from left/right/top/bottom edge (of text display width)

oh yes, and of course actions to put the text to the screen

please let me know if I missed anything.

edit: davio added request for outputting character by character one at a time, and a corresponding "on character typed" condition to add typewriter sounds for instance

also, letting users use your text as an edit box, is a feature I plan to add later, after a stable build (of this plugin)

This might sound a bit weird, but wouldn't the effects like swirls, zigzag, etc be better in a behavior you could attach to any object? I'm thinking the behavior could run off of for each object(ordered) in a family. Then the behavior could have several types of movements built in.

it would be easier to just build them into the plugin, but that would also be limiting, since I would be deciding what things you could or couldn't to do with your text.

but if you give me an example of something you'd like to see text do, I can show you how it's easy to do with very few actions, conditions, and expressions.

ok

it's still a little ways off, mostly because I'm busy...it really doesn't take too long to make a plugin

these are the features that will go in, if all works out:

actions:

• choose sprite, there won't be any special setup options, because splitting up tiles, and importing several frames, is very easy with the builtin features in construct, so you import your font sprites into one animation in construct
• Set Animation Range: here you will be able to set up a range of characters to go with a range of frames, so if your font only has 0-9, and a-z, you would call this action once for each range, you choose which animation frames go with which range of characters
  • Frame Start
  • Frame End
  • Character Start
  • Character End
• Set Spacing: this will set how far the next character will be placed from the last, you will be able to set whether the space is from an imagepoint or from the edge of the sprite
  • from imagepoint/from edge - edge is default
  • all / per character - apply spacing to all, or override "all" setting for one character - setting for one character, decides how far the next character will be from it
  • spacing - a number, 0 would be touching, negative positive corresponds to left/right number of pixels offset
• set wrap width - set the width the words wrap in. I will do my best to follow any wrapping conventions I'm aware of, but I don't have the time to research, and I'm not an expert on formatting, but I did read yours arima, and that will be observed
• set display width - this is to be able to put your text into a box and scroll through it, it will make some of the other actions possible, and save the user from having to make a mask everytime they want to do this
• set alignment - left/right/centered
• set justified -
  • on/off
  • method
    • between word spacing - justify the normal way, by spacing words apart
    • per character spacing- justify by spacing each character
    • by character width - justify by setting the width of each character
• attach to object -sets height and width to an object
  • border left
  • border right
  • border top
  • border bottom
• set all/per character width Absolute/ or ratio (to the original character size)
• set all/per character height Absolute/ or ratio (to the original character size)
• set capital/lowercase size - allows you to make capital of lowercase letters, by adjusting the size ratio x/y
• set scroll x/y ( relative/absolute) - offset from phrase position
• set rotation (of entire phrase)
• set position (of entire phrase)
• set circular x/y (on/off) - this makes it so a letter scrolling off the left side, comes back out the right side if you scroll beyond the end of the phrase
• set phrase width - sets the width ratio of the letters, so they all fit into this width

now I will have to be careful with the naming of actions, because you will be able to do this per character meaning "a", so every "a" is set to a certain width or per character, to be used with the following condition:

• For each character in phrase - which could do all of the above functions, but per character in phrase (in order regardless of what letter it is), this will make it possible to do all the crazy stuff you'd want to do with bouncy swirly, zigzaggy text, text wrapped in a circle, it's up to you to come up with the algorithms, using the actions, and the following conditions: (most of the "get" conditions will also have a "get previous" and "get next" but I don't want to write all that out)
• get character x/y
• get character position in phrase
• get character distance from left/right/top/bottom edge (of text display width)

oh yes, and of course actions to put the text to the screen

please let me know if I missed anything.

edit: davio added request for outputting character by character one at a time, and a corresponding "on character typed" condition to add typewriter sounds for instance

also, letting users use your text as an edit box, is a feature I plan to add later, after a stable build (of this plugin)

yes please

it's an awesome idea

and we need it

If you hear hooves, assume it's horses, not zebras

nice metaphor ashley

anyway

if you want to know if it's sound effects

why not save your cap,

then remove all the sound objects

or sound events

and then test your cap?

how do you set the defaults for combo params in the acetable?, if possible

That paragraph sounds more like a bug report (not all groups enable/disable) than a feature request. Is it on the tracker?

i think what he means ashley, is that he wants it to work that way. so he can make subgroups on the fly.

if thats what you mean, manontherun. there's a plugin im going to be making, currently in the planning phase that allows you to make arrays of objects. i havent posted a description yet, but it should allow dynamic group creation and destruction. unfortunately, i cant give you an eta, becuase im going to make the bitmapped text object first.

but anyway..if thats what you meant, keep an eye out for the object array plugin

thanks ashley

you've been a great help as usual

Picking. I've been looking through some picking operations, and wow...there's alot going on there. I get some of it, but in the interest of distilling, as a simple example

let's say I have

*CRunObject Hello; //already pointing to a single instance of an object

what command(s) would pick this object and allow it to continue down to the next subevent or actions?

what if I had *CRunObject Hello, and *CRunObject Goodbye, how can I make both of those picked

do you have to explicitly tell it to suppress elses, to run subevents, and run actions every time? or does it depend on the complexity of the particular picking operation?

[quote:38telz0w]

Oh XBOX360 pad and standard pads are now seen as the same? thank god! I have no idea why it wasn't like that from the very start. In fact as a programmer it bugged the hell out of me.

no...they aren't the same

and it is very lame they aren't...directx was invented to unify hardware, and make it so you don't have to program the same thing twice. This is two times in the past few years microsoft has intentionally broken their own paradigm. DirectX9 can do certain DX10 functions, and XP can probably run DX10, and DirectInput is capable of managing a 360 controller. They could have easily made Xinput compliant with old controllers, but that isn't going to make people buy 360 controllers, and bringing dx10 to xp won't make people buy vista

Standard PC joystick support too plz?

Thanks guys. My mistake, though, I didn't mean I'd be adding the 360 support itself. I can't take credit for that, that was David. The 360 controller support is going to be built into construct as a new behavior in the next build. What I will be adding is the ability to change, save, and load your 360 controller key configs at runtime.

> How difficult would it be to get/set the button presses for other kinds of game pads?

>

In chat, David mentioned that completing the XInput plugin meant a DirectInput plugin should also possible. And indeed, Xinput is supposed to be like a new Directinput, so I would think it wouldn't be too much more trouble to add DirectInput. (Xinput=360 controller, DirectInput=Everything Else) I think it only makes sense to add it, , then construct's controller capabilities will be very well rounded. Hopefully, we're all on the same page . And of course, if a DirectInput plugin is released, I will upgrade this plugin accordingly.

but I've never heard of it being common place for a game to use any other controller.

it's good that microsoft made it possible for large developers to begin developing games for PC meant to be played with a controller. It's unfortunate that they chose to sell more controllers, instead of choosing to open up the market as much as possible. HOwever, Street Fighter IV will be released for PC. and though they are usually very weak ports, alot of 360 games come to PC with controller capabilities. They've expanded the market for GamePad based games to anyone who owns a good PC and an XBox360.

Being that there are people out there who own other gamepads. (just check out how many PC gamepads they have for sale at any place that sells games, including wal-mart), it would be quite alienating to want to play a game that includes gamepad support, but only if you're using an xbox360 controller. you can also count the PS3 audience who isn't on 64 bit vista as pc pad owning gamers, but only with directinput drivers.

aside from that,a large market for Pre360 gamepads is people who use emulators to play retro games. There are alot of retro style games being made with construct. It would be nice for the guy who bought a directx usb adaptor for his Sega Genesis pad to join in the fun

Construct definitely can be used to make commercial quality games. That's a feature you'd expect from a polished title. know what I mean?

For all the things that Construct does very well, the lack of gamepad support is where it steps on it's own laces and hits the deck.

Thankfully there are signs that it's being adressed.

Lucid got the ball rolling in this thread...

I'm only making the button settings aspect of things, sponge, meaning being able to change your button settings in game, and being able to save and load button configurations. I meant I was adding support for changing and saving button configs for an xbox360 plugin David made to be released with the next build. but thanks for the shoutout