I have no idea what happened here, but the layout editor is simply gone. I switched to a new tab for a few minutes and clicked Run All when I came back to test something, and Construct crashed -- after another try I realized it was because the layout isn't there anymore. There's only the event sheet editor, and seemingly no way to get back.

I've looked through every option I can find and I can't seem to bring it up... This is probably something really simple, so forgive me for being so noobish. On the off-chance it isn't, though... Am I screwed?

I experience from time to time that the tabs below (to switch between the layout and the event sheet) are simply not drawn when opening a project. Opening another layout or creating a new one and then going back to the one I want to work on, solves this. But this is only a visual issue, the layout is still shown in the Layout folder of the project tab, so this might not be what you experienced.

The persist file has no effect on the integrity of the project. It's just an xml-file containing informations for the editor's layout with the cap it belongs to. If it's missing the default editor's layout is used.

I made an engine demo sort of like this where you rotate the screen to move a ball around a maze. It used physics, and changed the gravity direction to always point "down" no matter where the screen was rotated. It worked perfectly.

I'll see if I can find the thing...

Edit:

Well, I couldn't find the original, but it only took a couple of minutes to make it from scratch. It's actually really easy to do:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/529356/gravitymaze.cap

Just move the mouse left/right to tilt the maze. The important thing is that the gravityController sprite always changes it's angle to be the opposite of the layer angle. The gravityController is attached to the ball and force is applied to the ball in the direction of an image point on gravityController. Not too hard at all really, just a couple of events.

Omitting gravity and instead constantly applying force - that's such a simple yet effective solution! A very good example for such types of games, deadeye

But less limits always means more work. If you have programmed or at least scripted before, an advanced RPG might be a doable task (if you are persistent enough to work 3-5 years 8 hours a day on that one project), but without a good foundation I hardly doubt such an RPG will ever come to life. Especially the database management you would need to develop from ground up and a lot of math formulas for various aspects like ranged attacks, enemy ai and the like would be a huge challenge if you are used to click-create your game.

I would love to see an advanced RPG done in Construct! And it is doable. But I don't think one should say: "Go ahead. Construct is your solution." It is more honest to say: "IF you have some experiences with programming and IF you have the time to stick to it and IF you can solve a lot of issues by yourself, then it MIGHT be doable in Construct."

And I really love Construct

If you can find a better solution to the problem of scaling, I'd say go for it; this method works, but only for static frames and it can be temperamental for reasons I can't fathom.

I just found this thread, so this might come too late.

I made a very similar approach, but with another "anchor".

Please ignore the german comments, I made them for my own use.

My idea behind it is to start with a virtual screen, independant from the window or the layout size. In this case that virtual screen was determined to have a size of 1920x1080. The layout may have any size (although it doesn't make much sense to have it being smaller than the virtual screen), e.g. 4000x4000. The window may also have any size, in this event sheet it is 1024x768. The black bars are on an inherited layer with 0% scroll and zoom ratio. All calculations refer to the virtual screen size (width=1920, height=1080) and the display width and height. I then switch to fullscreen in another event sheet.

The example above works with scrolling and I couldn't find any issues yet. But I could only test it on my own pc/monitor, so maybe there are issues.

EDIT: Forgot the important information that the calculations assume an aspect ratio where the width value is higher than the height value. 16:9, 16:10, 4:3 etc works, but for aspect ratios like 4:5, 1:2 etc you need to adapt the calculations to be based on the height instead of the width.

First have a look at this concept on the wiki.

Now you need another information: You can enable/disable any effect through events.

You have two possible ways:

1) Make an options menu where the player may choose different quality settings for the game. When the game runs too slow, the player lowers the quality and the game runs better afterwards. Behind the scenes you apply a low and a high quality effect just as described in the wiki, but instead of automatically switching according to the shader version, you enable and disable the effects according to the quality setting.

2) Constantly check the frame rate. As soon as it falls below a certain threshold, you disable all the high quality effects and enable the low quality ones. As soon as the frame rate is high enough again, you reverse it, disabling the low quality effects and enabling the high quality ones.

But always remember: pixel shader effects are realtime computing algorithms. They compute every pixel of the object or layer they are applied to on every frame. Don't use pixel shader massively, use them rarely and just to stress a certain aspect of your game. That is much more impressive and also the way even the newest hi-end games do it.

Basically it can be done, yes. But the included physics behavior does not take into account the angle of a layout or layer, and I think (but I'm not sure) it's the same with the platform behavior. You would need to create your own movement (e.g. with custom movement), but then it would be no problem.

For more on time delta you might also want to have a look at Verve!, I made it completely time based with comments to every event.

Wouldn't it be much easier to change the volume of the flash movie?

Anyway, if you have a open sound compatible device, then the ossaudiodev module could be of help

http://www.python.org/doc//current/library/ossaudiodev.html#mixer-device-objects

Or you could try to find a wrapper to the windows mixer api, or do one on your own

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/audio-video/WindowsMixerLib.aspx

There are a lot of modules you need to tick when exporting, because they build the basic functionality of Python. The easiest two ways are:

1) Just tick every pyc or pyo, this will work although there is a small overhead of never needed modules embedded in the exe

2) Trial&error, in your example error message, it wants warnings.pyc, so tick it export again and see the next error message to find the next module to embed, and so on, until there is no error message anymore.

Most basic modules almost always needed are

__future__

abc

collections

functools

genericpath

locale

ntpath

os

stringIO

traceback

types

warnings

But this is not a complete list. Many modules depend on each other, so when using one module you might need to include a handful of other modules as well.

The parameters of an effect are one-way only. You can set them, but you can't get them. So the answer to question 2a is: No.

But I don't know the syntax of accessing an effect in Python, and there should be one, because you can set a parameter.

You need to keep track of the parameter's current value by copying the value you set to a pv or global.

Unless someone else shows a way, that is

Is there a source code available?

page 1, post 9 "fluid.rar"

"The effect file 'Blob_test.fx' is required to open this file. Please locate it and put it in your effects directory under your Construct installation."

I have the latest version of Construct.

Just download "fluid.rar" from my third post in this thread. It contains the effect blob_test.fx

Copy it to Construct's effect folder.