wow, that was super helpful, thanks tons!!

no prob

okay, a couple things. the example looks pretty good. do you suggest the actual ball should grow as more and more stuff is picked up, or just that the stuff is getting more and more?

I'd suggest the second one, although you might need to do what they did in katamari, and have smaller versions of each sprite that you load up as it gets bigger to save vram, also maybe something using canvas to paste all your sprites to everytime you get a major zoom , so you're not keeping track of the rotations of hundreds of objects

you lost me on the invisible stuff but it all sounds very good on paper....

imagine that you made the exact same red circle, without physics

and you made a pink circle with physics the exact same size, but set to invisible

every frame you told the red circle to set it's location and angle to the invisible pink circle

so far it behaves the same, but when you pick things up, you figure out a math formula that will change the shape of the invisible pink circle so that it circles the redball and the junk, and you'd have to find other formulas and expressions to position the ball on this new pink one, but the idea would be something like this:

<img src="http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1013446/kata.jpg">

.... also, how will i be able to have the camera zoom out as the ball gets bigger? would there be an easier way to "simulate" this effect? and how will the ball know to only pick up objects that are bigger than it?

really, before you tackle this you should go through all the tutorials and the wiki, there are zoom commands here for layers: http://apps.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/construct/index.php?title=Layer_Properties these might affect physics...not sure

and as for the size of the objects, you say

On collision with PickUpableObjects
System-Compare-If PickUpableObject.x*PickUpableObject.y is less than or equal to [the total size of your ball+junk]
then stick things to it[/code:39ux9du4]
gotta go, gonna be late to work
but seriously, I know construct is superfun and easy, but, play around with all the tutorials, and read the wiki, construct has a lot of awesome stuff to make things easier

have fun

k

first, this is a harder project than you think, mainly because I don't think construct physics are stable and refined enough to take center stage on gameplay, you're going to need to be comfortable with construct to make something like this work, let alone playable and fun

that being said, you asked for some help to get started, I have to get to bed, so I can't go into detail of how it works, but you can examine the cap, and if anyone else is awake they can help you as well

this is to help you get started, some ideas of how some things might work

it's a physics ball, with left and right arrow keys to roll, and spacebar to jump

and when you run over things they stick and roll with your ball

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1013446/katama.cap

some more info:

I originally tried making them stay real physics objects when you picked them up, using stiff hinges, but they didn't turn with the ball

you'll have to find a way to fix it so your ball rolls differently when things are stuck to it,

one idea which will work fairly well considering how easy, is to make the sprite for your ball not have physics on it, and make your ball sprite always update it's position and angle along with an invisible physics ball sprite of the same size. until you pick something up it would look exactly the same as it does in this example

every time the ball hit's an object, use math to change the shape of the invisible physics ball, so it encircles both the sprite of the ball, and all the things attached to it

if you're using ellipse physics, it will still be able to roll, but it can have a wobblyness to it, as it get's stretched more in certain directions

this should be a pretty good starting point

if you're unclear about the idea of using invisible sprites, a different example is in deadeye's platform school tutorials. I won't post a link, because if you haven't already, you should familiarize yourself with all the help resources

good luck, and welcome to construct

if one picks BoxA (member of BoxFam) and pairs it with CircleA

one should be able to say

for each paired BoxFam, pick CircleA

or

for each paired BoxFam, pick CircleFam

or

for each paired BoxA, pick CircleFam

etc

in the following cap

dragging an A or B box over a 1 or 2 will highlight it as picked

after that if you drag a picked 1 or 2 above the red line it should highlight the A or B box

click here for cap

if you go into the event sheet, and switch around which event is toggled

it behaves differently

there is only one difference between the two events:

the original event uses sprite-compare y position

and the second event uses system-compare sprite.y

should I post this to the bug tracker?

I was trying to recreate the bug from a larger cap where it had more serious effects

it also began with

for every A, pick B

and then after the system-compare, it would pick some unpaired objects that belonged to another pair

you can try putting the laser on it's own layer

and applying a layer effect to that layer

ok, here's a simple cap

example

I think you will be pleasantly surprised by how short it is

it sounds more complicated than it is

please examine it, and let me know what parts, if any you need help with

to test, drag and drop the ship and the two control points

click here to download

make a segment of laser, like if you could cut a small square out of the raiden laser going straight upward

create a distort map for it, 1 across, however many segments you want down (try 10)

create 2 different sprites to use as a bezier control point and an endpoint (we'll call them sprite1, and sprite2)

make a bezier curve using the quadratic function (qarp)and the locations of the 2 sprites and the an imagepoint on the nose of your ship

if you need help understanding what you're doing a little better, read some of this wikipedia article, especially the little moving diagrams near the end

but for practical purposes what you will do

is set each segment of your distort map in this way

h=half the width of your laser

for 0 to NumberOfSegmentsOfDistortMap

set displacement (real) column(0)row(loopindex)

x to qarp(ship.imagepointx(nose)-h, sprite1.x-h, sprite2.x-h,1-loopindex/NumberofRowsindistortmap)

y to qarp(ship.imagepointy(nose)+h, sprite1.y+h, sprite2.y+h, sprite2.x-h,1-loopindex/NumberofRowsindistortmap)

set displacement (real) column(1)row(loopindex)

x to qarp(ship.imagepointx(nose)-h, sprite1.x-h, sprite2.x-h, sprite2.x-h,1-loopindex/NumberofRowsindistortmap)

y to qarp(ship.imagepointy(nose)+h, sprite1.y+h, sprite2.y+h, sprite2.x-h,1-loopindex/NumberofRowsindistortmap)

this will bend your sprite along a curve beginning at the nose of your ship

and ending at sprite2, and the curve will be guided by sprite1

always

set sprite1.x = ship.x, and sprite1.y = to ship.y + a number that makes the ray look cool

sprite 1 will be guiding the laser, so if you want it to lean toward y, subtly the way it does in raiden this is a good way to start

set sprite2.y = 0 (top of the screen), and sprite2.x to ship.x + a number that changes when you're moving to the right or left, you can decide exactly how you want this to look

you can also add small random values to either control point for a wobbly effect

use an instant bullet aimed at sprite2 to check for hits

once you hit an enemy ship, set sprite2's position to the position of the ship

and make sprite1 move drastically to the right or left as your ship does

if you need more details on any of the steps I can help you, but I can't post a cap just now

if you get this far, you may notice something a little different about the bending of the ribbon

because we're using parallel lines, the fix is simple, and takes only a minute, but might be confusing in the middle of this

I think this would be useful as well

one example was that random star map generator

I could have only tracked a few stars at a time

and still been able to make a huge level where you would see the stars you passed if you went back to look for them

I like it rilem

but I think you should have only that one section under the first one

and a huge download button as aritz said

then when you click that it should bring up the download latest stable and all that

and I also agree with quazi

we have to get some cooler graphicalness that shows what construct does, without being too specialized towards one particular game

I tried this before but can't get it to work... what am I doing wrong?

I have no idea why it was doing that, unless you were trying the animation method first...it really makes no sense to me

anyway, start from scratch and it should work, I think that was some random nonsense,

also, if you use the "mouse is over" with "system-else" instead of always

it makes more sense, and it's probably more efficient then the other way

like this

click me

you can make all the mouseovers work with one event, but then you need use the object pairer and families, if you have questions on how to do that, let me know

if you have alot of mouseovers you want to do, broos method will be much cleaner as rich said

it just seemed kinda complicated if you're just getting into construct

which I assumed you were, since I haven't seen your avatar around

welcome!

thanks

this is good stuff

especially the private variables stuff

I've got to try out some random things and see how they work

wait

there's an easier way

make a mouse and keyboard object

then two events

system - always
     offsprite.set visible: visible
     onsprite.set visible: invisible

mouse/keyboard - mouse over object - offsprite
     offsprite.set visible: invisible
     onsprite.set visible: visible
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