(Moderators, please move this post to the correct forum. I just didn't know, where the right place is. Thank you!)

To whom it interests, and just so that those who know me aren't wondering (and it's easier to write it once instead of many pm):

I'm in failing health for quite some time now and I have to change a few things in my life. I hesitated a lot regarding this forum. But now is the right time.

"The way things are going, eventually these forums will fall silent and we'll probably see fit to discontinue Classic completely."

It was this sentence that I needed, because CC was the only reason for me to be active here.

If there is a free software, I'm willing to take all quirks, issues, bugs. And I did for years. From a paid software on the other hand I expect a lot more. In particular I'm not willing to pay for features that may come somewhere in the future.

Now that I need to find a paid alternative to the free game creator Construct Classic, I don't feel C2 is the right successor (at least yet). There are other commercial and free alternatives that offer a more complete feature set and aren't depending so much on just one web technology. I'd be glad if I'll find out that I'm wrong, because both, the developer and the community of Scirra are the best I've ever met. What I found here is one of the highest social intelligence of all web coms - a real treasure!

However, I need to cut down a lot, and with Classic declared dead I can now overcome my almost pathological loyalty. I try to be less active on the forums from now on, in particular the help forum and I give up my commitment for Classic. I repeat, to avoid misunderstandings, Classic being dead is just the hook I needed to let go and concentrate on myself in the endeavor to recover.

I'm currently thinking about making some of my projects open source (but my projects, while not intended for helping others, are a real mess, and I'm probably the only one who understands the interrelations between the events <img src="smileys/smiley36.gif" border="0" align="middle" /> ). If I do so, you'll find posts of that matter in the "Your tutorials & example files"-forum

And please don't wonder: I had to write this down and make it public, because I know myself. Without it, I would soon fall back to my old behavior of investing so much time in helping others instead of myself. I can't afford that anymore.

Thank you for reading <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Bartosh - Actually we do talk about payment on this forum. The discussion got sidetracked, which happens frequently on forums. We're presenting our opinions about CC and C2, I'm not sure what the problem is. Me neither. It was a good and the right decision to split the thread (or am I missing something?)

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You can't judge a tool's capabilities by the content created with that tool. Games take a long time to make, and C2 hasn't been out that long.It is the only way to judge a tool's capabilities. If a tool looks good and feels good but creates bad or limited results (just a general thought, this is not aimed at C2), it shouldn't be judged as a good 'game creator'. Following your logic, Stencyl would be the much better game creator than C2. Better interface, better integration of support (like drag'n'drop whole premade block sequences), better response time, etc. Then have a look at apps made with it...

True, there is functionality missing from C2 that CC has, but it's being added regularly.So you're arguing based on possible features that might be there somewhere in the future? That doesn't fit to your statement 'In fact, ...'

Regardless, even in its current state, I don't recall many games that were made with CC that couldn't be made with C2 (thumb war being the most notable example, but even then if C2 had sprite distortion it might be capable, though it might require a fast machine).

There are also plenty of examples of stuff C2 can do that CC can't - probably more examples at this point, and those examples are probably more relevant to the majority of users (exporting to mobile, mac and linux, for example).The contradiction of the two passages is why I answered. Such a contradiction was also in the passage, that I reacted to at first.

You say "if C2 had sprite distortion it might be capable". But it hasn't. On the other hand you ignore the same option for CC. Because if CC had an exporting plugin, it would also be capable of exporting to mobile, mac and linux. See? It doesn't make sense to compare things that might have been integrated, but aren't.

I'm not sure what you mean by that, but having made a complex game in CC with over 10,000 events, 500 objects and thousands of animation frames, I can state with some authority that my attempt to make something complex with CC didn't work well at all and CC is not reliably up to the challenge of making a large complex game. CC is barely, barely able to manage loot pursuit which is actually a medium to small game, and yet it takes 10 minutes to load the battle event sheet, 7 seconds of waiting for every single edit made to that event sheet, 30 minutes to undo or delete an object, 5 minutes to preview, there are events I can't move or edit without crashing the editor and I have to repeatedly close and restart the program when using the animation editor to keep memory leaks from crashing the program, not to mention all the instability caused by trying to do things like delete family variables or such keeping me from reworking the code.

Conversely, my attempts to make things in C2 have worked much, MUCH smoother. Aside from the features it lacks (sprite distortion, etc) and event execution speed (which is plenty fast for almost everything most people will want to do), C2 can make the vast majority of what CC can, and a lot of what CC can't. It's better in almost every way.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. First, what you are looking for is not the best result for the users of your app, but the most comfortable editor for yourself. There's nothing wrong with such a wish, it's just not the point. The result is what counts, the gamer doesn't care if you could produce a game comfortable or with literal pain - a gamer just wants a good game.

And second, you indeed confuse complexity with sheer quantity. See, thumb war indeed is a complex game - yet it doesn't have 10000 events, 500 objects or thousands of animation frames. I also remind on Boom, an application I made, which let's you grow trees from seeds. Believe me it is highly complex, but it also hasn't 10000 events, etc.

Another example:

event sheet A

+Always -> Create object...

+Always -> Create object...

+Always -> Create object...

+Always -> Create object...

+Always -> Create object...

+Always -> Create object...

+Always -> Create object...

+Always -> Create object...

event sheet B

For "" from 0 to 7 -> Create object

Now what sheet is more complex? I think you will agree that although A has 8 events and B only 1 event, neither of them is more complex than the other. The first one is just bad programming.

Or an example from the professional world: Bioshock 2's installment size was 6.4 GB, TES V: Skyrim had 3.8 GB. Yet, Skyrim is by far the more complex game in every aspect. (values from XBox360 installs)

Don't judge complexity from sheer quantity. Judge it from subtle things like calculations per tick, realtime interaction, crosslinks, depth of gameplay, etc. Often you will see applications that look and feel so simple to the user, while it amazes us. That was achieved with highly complex code aimed at easy accessibility for the user.

Even if CC didn't have its instability I would still like C2 more. More platforms, better editor, faster preview, actively developed - honestly, I don't understand why people talk like CC is the actual great version of construct when C2 is so much better.Because of its output! The result is what counts. And CC produces rock-solid, fast and amazing executables. My actual project is again a complex one, and you can only dream of doing something like that with C2. (I won't make it public now, but if you're interested, I'll send you a download link via pm). But it is more of an appliation than a game, so I don't count it in here.

- capable of even outrunning CC's rendering speed by a good margin with a recent graphics card.No. It starts with the fact that any WinXP user (which still is more than a third of all installed windows versions) will experience software rendering. But even if we take that out of the comparison... Let's create a simple executable: 4000 sprites (based on 4 different sprites with 1000 copies each) of size 128x128 on a FullHD fullscreen, and, if you want to reduce it to rendering speed, no rotation, no movement, and just a start of layout event to create the sprites. I bet CC will win the rendering speed challenge.

In fact, C2 is capable of making something way more complex than CC can even begin to hope to handle.Fact? I'm disappointed to read such a wrong sentence from you. There is not one app that proves you right. Contrary, there are lots of complex applications made with CC that simply can't be realized with C2. Maybe I have to add the word "yet".

Or you don't mean complex but quantity and not runtime but edittime?

Tips'n'Tricks #4: Urges

Unlike the other tips, this one is more about actual gameplay. Sometimes you may want to give more life to your npc to gain atmosphere. A lot of designers decide to script such behaviour. But it's not very convincing if the same npc type does exactly the same and in the same order than every other npc of the same type (like walking from a to b, looking around, walking back to a, etc.)

With a simple but effective technique you can give a much better impression of life. Let the npc be urge-driven.

The math behind this is simple, which means you can add a lot of urges - and the more the better. You can even get something like

or maybe a simple 'The Sims' - just by setting up enough urges.

An urge is nothing more than a variable that raises over time from 0 to 1. As soon as it reaches 1, all other urges are pending and this one will be executed. It is still a scripted life, but this time you only offer a bunch of premade actions, and the npc decides when and where it executes them.

Below is a very simple example, where 5 npc each knows of 4 urges: Hunger, thirst, curiosity and rest. They all start with a 10-second idle part, but you will soon see, that their actions differ from each other. They start living. Of couse, this would be much more impressive with a dozen of urges and beautiful graphics, but it shows the math behind it and how to setup the events.

Bring life to your games!

urges.cap

no one loves it anymore....That's just because everyone thinks he/she has to jump on the casual game market (instead of using the best tool for their game idea).

I'm still in love with CC, and the more serious applications you can create besides games still are without competition among free game creation tools.

I don't know of any limit besides RAM. But I also use globals only sparely. Most of the data is stored in arrays, hashtables and dedicated sprites (invisible ones, that never appear on screen, only their PVs are used). It is much easier to work with and less vulnerable.

1 million values per map? Be careful then to not convert them from the string to the array in only one tick, like in my example. Setting up such a huge array will take minutes, and if you do it in one tick the app is known to the system as "not responding", which might irritate users. Instead, use a routine that shows the progress while only converting a smaller part of the array, until done.

Of course.

If you use the "on collision" trigger, both objects that are colliding are picked. So if you use that trigger with a family, only that member of the family is picked. Instead of bullet('damage') you'd use family('damage'), that's it.

AH! I had read on the Wiki that hashtables could only store strings, but I had stored numbers in them before so I just assumed that this was old news. I think I had determined that with input from a textbox, which must default to being a string even if it is a number? hope to not confuse more than helping, but you are talking about storing. And the value to store can be of any type. It is just the key that has to be a string.

-> Insert key "1" with value 2

the key "1" is created with the value number 2, accessible as HashTable("1")

-> Insert key "1" with value "2"

the key "1" is created with the value string 2, accessible as HashTable("1")

-> Insert key 1 with value 2

no key is created, because 1 is a number, not a string.

And a textbox indeed only knows strings, but CC is helpful enough ro autoconvert for you.

-> Set Text to str(1)

-> Set Text to "1"

-> Set Text to 1

all three examples lead to the same result: A textbox with the text/value "1" (string)

As for your point about why I care I'm not too sure if it's rhetoric or not so I'll answer:

This isn't a game, it's a map editor! So I expect myself and whoever else uses it to move files around. As I make maps they pile up pretty fast. If I were to split the file out of wanting to take the easier route I would end up having to make 3 files each per map (not including the optional tileset save file)... so it just starts to get kinda messy.

And I could use folders, but I think it is just easier if I want to share a map with someone to just send one map file.

The second thing is that while I'm mostly making this for me (maybe a couple of friends, and I plan to share it on the forum) I'd rather not have to code for an exception if one of the files is missing. Just easier, once I hit the bug squashing phase I'm going to have my hands pretty full anyways.I see. Apart from the possibility of compressing such folders in an archive before sharing it, I think you have an argument with the exception code. The one-file-route should be easier to maintain.

If you are heading for one final file containing the map structure with all its levels and the like, you may want to develop a naming convention for the keys. Something like

"countL" (number of levels)

"01_tiles" (the tileset of level 01)

"01_countM" (number of maps of level 01)

"01_01" (map 01 of level 01)

could easily be retrieved again. And instead of storing one key per array value, I would convert the array to a string and store the array in one key. In the example above the key "01_01" would contain a string with all the array data of map 01 of level 01. I made an example cap showing how this can be achieved: array2hashtable.rar

You make a great point about spending more time helping people too. I find when I look (and I do whenever I'm on here) I don't have anything to contribute to questions about physics, or controller issues, or AI. This will change when I'm done this map editor and actually focusing on making games, but in the meantime I am constantly amazed at the frequency that you and Jayjay and R0j0hound help people.

If I haven't said it before, thank you so much. hope I didn't offend you, because my words weren't addressed at you but at the people that didn't help although they could have. I was just a bit disappointed coming back here after two month just to see, that so many questions are unanswered for weeks. There are so many talented developer out there, and even those who got help themselves don't contribute. It's not the way a community works: If most of the people are only leeching then the system breaks. And that would be very sad...

Please don't think that I meant you, it was just the first thread that I answered in <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle">

What exactly do you mean? An invisible sprite, that represents the focus of the camera? If so, then just add a sprite, set it to invisible and use the system object's "Scroll to" actions to always scroll to the sprite's position.

Another way would be to use Magicam, a plugin made by linkman2004

Not really. You could post an example cap here and we could then see, if the problem remains (which would mean, it is independent from your pc) or not.

Been away for quite a while, and it seems that the CC help section has more people needing help, than people willing to spend a few seconds to help...

To help with your specific example:

For Each Element -> HashTable: Insert key Array.CurrentX with value Array.CurrentValue

This won't work because the key of a hashtable entry has to be a string. Construct doesn't autoconvert to a string here (I guess it simply was forgotten). So by simply adding str() it will work:

+For Each Element

-> HashTable: Insert key str(Array.CurrentX) with value Array.CurrentValue

But why making it so complicated? Who cares if the savegame consists of one file or a folder with several files? The gamer won't! In fact, if you have a look at today's games, they often have a complex tree-structure, with a folder named after the game slot or profile name or whatever and lots of files and sub-folders, containing other files and sub-folders. And why not? It doesn't make a difference in the gameplay-experience <img src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

I'm sorry to say so, but you are wrong indeed <img src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

random(i) will return a number greater or equal 0 and lower than i

random(f) will return a number greater than 0 and lower than f

(i = int, f = float)

random(6) returns 0-5

random(6.0) returns 0.x-5.x