I'm getting random crashes in the sprite plugin. Can't quite figure out why, as it's not consistent.

Also, sometimes my explosion-particle systems are not being placed where they should, and I can't figure out why.

Also, the timer that respawns the player (set as a behavior on the background) seems to get mixed with the timer that creates meteorites on each level after you clear one (set to the player sprite), so that if you die once, meteorites keep appearing over and over.

here's the .cap with the game. Requires Spritefont and Heightmap plus. The error was present even before using spritefont... I'm just polishing it =)

http://octavoarte.cl/asteroids.cap

Please, try playing it a few times to get the crash, get killed early to trigger the meteorite bug, fire a lot to get the explosion bug.

Help with any of these issues is greatly appreciated =)

all those objects have different depth maps, which all make up one full screen depth map.

Which is made up of individual, static depth maps...

[quote:15j2r144]Flat drop shadows are ok to a point, but they show up the 2Dness of things, unless they can make use of a depth map (or height map) to shape the shadow in realtime across something behind them. The option to use either would be the best bet, as there's lots of uses for drop shadows and SSAO.

SSAO doesn't change with light direction or occlusion, as it is AMBIENT light (the A in SSAO). The occlusion term would only change if depths change, which you can fake convincingly enough with a soft drop shadow object (in case I fail to produce an effect )

So anyways. Seems I can't convince you that 2D SSAO doesn't make any sense (just as I failed in an old DoF thread).... perhaps an example showing nice shadowing would do

That's a rather nice looking cat, too.

Pretty cool. Sure beats wrestling with Orangator

Lol! I remember orangator! and granulab!

Very cool. About the stacking boxes why not just switch the 'hero' sprite to next layer and make the layer below without overlap layout? Don't know really but I would try it.

hey! that'd work for an xcom-ish game!

Moan.

And yeah, there's no support for standard controllers.... yet!

both 32 (lappy) and 64 (desktop) bit here, so I can make a fair comparison.

64 bit's main benefit seem to be just access to my full 4Gb RAM. 64 bit dll's can't link to 32 bit program (nor can 32bit link to 64) so this bring incopatibilities in software that takes plugins... such as photoshop. Yeah. Don't go 64 bit there.

Games are usually 32 bit... yet logitech insisted to force 64bit install on my wheel's drivers, so I get no force feedback (at least I think that's the reason).... so..... no gain, really, unless you need to handle huge memory loads.

Anyway, enough baloney.

But.... but.... I like baloney!

I also like Spam!

when did all processed meat become so unfashionable? >_<

Hm. I have a tendency to not explain too clearly, so I'll elaborate.

As for depth within a sprite. Your right, a default sprite in a default 2D world has no depth, being two dimensional.

But what's stopping you from having depth? Consider a parallax effect, 10 layers all scrolling at a different speed. It's 2D, it has no depth. But what if the artwork on each of those layers were given a depth. The artwork in the background layers would be further away than those closer. You couldn't see the difference to look at it. But what if you then applied a DoF shader that takes depth maps into account? You've got visible depth.

okay, say you have depth per object. This depth is..... PER OBJECT. So, any light occlusion effects will happen PER OBJECT.... thus doing them PER PIXEL is overkill. Just fake it with another object, as it will essentially be a drop shadow. DoF also doesn't make any sense in 2D. I did post a variable blur shader, that when applied to a whole layer accomplishes what you'd probably call DoF... but it's way simpler and doesn't rely on depth.

[quote:1b9vt8q2]But give him a depth map, where his arm is closer, like an inverted height map. Add an SSAO shader on that, you've got realtime ambient occlusion.

So you have a frame-based animation. This animation has a depth animation, where each frame has a corresponding depth map. This depth map has a SSAO shader. Notice that since SSAO is calculated on the depthmap that only changes with each animation frame, the results will also only change with each animation frame...

Now, consider baked ambient occlusion. You only have animation, no depth... you have REAL AO, since you'd get it from your renderer of choice. No shader. Results also change with each animation frame.

Same effect, half the texture memory, much faster, much simpler.

Thus, SSAO in 2D is pointless.

I only say this because I see a lot of people go and play Crysis or whatever and then come back and excitedly ask for something they saw there to be in Construct.... but VERY FEW 3D effects make sense in 2D.

All that said, I'm still onto that blurred drop shadow effect. I've realised, though, that it's much easier and faster to have a smaller, stretched shadow object that follows the real one... why? well, it allows for some other effects that I'll attempt soon

I'm a girl who actually pats my neighbor's cat.

That only makes it more awesome.

I'm kidding! I'm really kidding

I'd like to point out that Norton really, REALLY sucks. It's a paranoid system hog that won't keep you safe anyways.

It used to be good back in the Win95 days =(

shouldn't it grab the layout AFTER drawing?