Make a layer, call it what you like. Put your UI elements in this layer. Then change the scroll percentages to 0%. It will always remain in the same place on screen then.

analog joysticks are as simple as can be, they return the x value and y value for the stick. which you can get the directional angle by using angle(0,0,joystickX,joystickY). the value joyx/joyy returns is simply any decimal number from and including -1 to +1. your getting everything you need and its as intuitive and simple as it can be while still offering complete control.

Mini-thread hijack - You got me wondering, does construct accept the analog input of the XBox 360 left and right triggers too, or are those just seen as on or off?

[quote:2c49paed]Search the forum there's a thread about signing up to have access to edit the wiki.

Yeah I think it's something I've got running that's preventing me from signing up on there. Just haven't had the time to look into it yet, I'll get it fixed though eventually.

[quote:2c49paed]Actually I think this would be better related in terms of what the user is willing to learn. The stages could be anywhere from "Can I make games with this?", to " I'll have the red pill...THANK YOUUUU!".

Yep! Something like that. A way to see at a glance if they're thinking beyond their means or not, which is a known problem (and we've all done it, god knows I have, lol!) where you might have the greatest idea's ever, but it's just beyond your current abilities. Might even help cut down the problem of people jumping into something there's no way they'll ever be able to complete. Or something.

You could do that though MaxMan777. You could create the underlying template yourself, submit it to the devs and I'm sure if it works fine, they'll probably include it with the other templates.

That's the closest you're going to get though, because I don't see there ever being some "American Football" behavior or object. Firstly one isn't required, secondly a lot of people wouldn't want it or use it, thirdly, such a thing will simply spawn a great deal of very specific games. The current behaviors are generally pretty open for use in different ways. But what you're asking for is too specific for a behavior itself (and a whole bunch of behaviors that aren't much use to anyone outside very specific single type of sports game will be annoying).

It sounds like what you're actually looking for is a ready made game that you can mod yourself, rather than make your own game. Can't you mod any of the games out there now, or is EA still making modding difficult for their games?

Also, even with all the rules of football, it doesn't strike me as all that complicated to make in construct right now. And I'm the first who'll jump in on a chance to prove construct can't do something, but this would be easy for it. Someone recently posted a cap they are working on with controls that could be used for some kind of ball passing movement. Player controls could be selected by distance to the ball without any problems. Scrolling is very simple to setup. Really, if I think something is easy in construct then it must be.

As for your choose your own adventure thing. You could make one of those insanely easily with just HTML and a tiny bit of PHP (the php for storing stats, inventory etc). Or make simpler versions using Mediawiki. If you're instead thinking about text adventures like Zork or The Hobbit. Then you're looking at text parsers, which construct can do quite easily too (I've spent time looking into this previously, as personal interest myself) or can be done online, again with PHP which has no trouble at all parsing strings.

I really don't follow this web thing you're after though. Are you instead talking about WYSIWYG? Construct already is. This web thing though, construct isn't a web page builder. It can GET and PUT files onto the net, update and change external files, but that's about it as far as web stuff goes. Though it wouldn't be outside the realms of possibility to make a html editor with construct.

And I'm with Ashley on the random expression thing being incredibly useful. I've come up with all kinds of crazy things in PHP using mt_rand() that you wouldn't think random numbers would be used for.

Ok, so after lots of discussions and seeing lots of different point of views, seeing the types of posts which are made, and taking into account what others have said. It's clear there's a few things which wont change.

• Many new posters will always ask if this or that can be done or can you make a shark backflip and shoot lasers from its eyes while using infrared crayon shaders to make it look like a cat.
• There will be a diverse mix of talent, from the highly experienced in different areas to those with no experience at all.
• Nothing is quite as simple as it first seems.
• The majority of new users will always ask questions first, rather than read FAQ's, do tutorials or research themselves because, they say, "it's quicker".
• You can draw the crayon cat, but the crayon cat can't draw you.

Which got me to thinking, since the wiki is in need of work (and once I find out WHY sourceforge isn't letting me sign up at all, I'll be having a go editing it too). Why couldn't we do some kind of difficulty scale type system? You find it often in other places, particularly those involved in teaching and tutorials.

For example, and this is just a very basic example, to try get the idea across. Five stages of difficulty, from very easy, to very complicated. Maybe using nice pretty visual images or something. Each level of complexity would cover certain kinds of experience/knowledge and be explained in a linked page.

Then have a big list of examples of what construct is capable of, using real world examples (referencing particular games, showing example downloads and so on), and give a little info on how easy or difficult that kind of game or technique would be to do, as well as link to tutorials if available. It could cover anything, including various applications (since construct can do those too and unless the devs are going to remove that feature, there should be some support there as well).

A side effect of this might also be to give people, including you old and weary pro's idea's for things you're working on. Or give stepping off points for further idea's, that might be taken into all kinds of directions.

The point of this would be a nice simple way to give new users asking if they can do this or that, the answers they're looking for. From that point they can compare that to their current level of experience/knowledge, and it's up to them then if they think they're capable of it. Because otherwise someone could come here, ask if this or this is possible, be told yes, and maybe get an example, but be completely stumped because it's over their head, cue a collection of posts asking how to do this and that every step of the way, frustrating other users and causing animosity, even though neither side did anything wrong.

I dunno, I just think it could be useful, and could be expanded into something better and more useful in time. I also think it could be fun. I've mentioned before how newt and deadeyes example caps tend to be a lot of fun to play with. Could even partner it with those 1 hour challenges that the forum looks like it used to have, and being based on the wiki, everyone could be involved, including newer users who themselves are still learning (who I think could give a unique perspective on just how easy or difficult things can be).

I'm sure the idea will be poopoo'd, but throwing it out there anyways before going back to Fallout 3 to piss a few more hours away instead of doing any actual work until next year.

P.S. Sorry for the wall of text.

I have to disagree. I don't think a person needs to use a programming language to program. An if/then statement is the same basic concept in a language as in construct. I can't program in any sort of programming language at all, and yet after learning construct, not only can I talk game programming with professional game programmers, they can and have suggested things to me, without having used construct - and their suggestions work. I can understand what they're talking about most of the time because construct uses so many of the same functions. While construct simplifies the process enormously, it's still essentially the same thing, using a lot of the same concepts.

Understanding someone and being able to do it yourself are two different things though. I, like a lot of people, can understand most spoken languages to a point. I'll recognize words, phrases, take the situation in context and most of the time understand the general gist of what's being said. But if you asked me to speak German etc. I'd just look at you with a blank stare and be unable to. Does that make me a linguist? No. Same applies to programming, I understand it enough to know how it works, can follow it (to a point), make small changes and know the limitations etc. But I couldn't sit down and program. I certainly wouldn't call myself a programmer.

[quote:3govchlr]With the exception of online/gamepad use, I don't think I've found any 2d games that couldn't be made in construct (there are obviously a lot of 2d games I haven't played, though). The only games that I've found that you couldn't remake in their entirety are ones that rely on the speed of code (which is obviously faster than interpreting events), but even those games could be made with a few thousand less spaceships in them, for example.

Even if there are games out there that you couldn't make in construct, it can still be said that construct can make any TYPE of 2D game.

Well I admit I probably didn't word it so well when I wrote that originally, my bad. The point I was trying to get across as was explained better using deadeye's crayon cat. Is people don't really care IF something is possible, it's can THEY do it. That's what I believe is the question they really want, the question we all really want. They hear construct and others are easy to use, and that's what they look for, a tool to make life easier and more their level of experience. But that leads to another problem. How the heck will anyone else know if something is possible for another person or not? Hence the butting of heads.

actually opening up a tutorial .cap on first run sounds like a very good idea to me.

though perhaps a new one should be made? Dunno.

Same, plus newts suggestion for the are you human questions (I've seen that done on some other forum once, and at the very least it will make you search for the answer if you don't know it).

I think a forced tutorial WILL annoy some people, but will be better for all in the long run. Plus, don't most games actually force a tutorial on you the first time around, with few allowing it to be skipped. So I suppose really it's not that bad of a thing, and it would be there to help people, and who knows, even the pro's might learn the odd thing or two from it?

[quote:3govchlr]About hating on newbies no, just hating on people that don't even attempt to learn before asking stuff (me, at least. Software is free, there's wiki, there's forum, there's tutorials... and yet people skip all those? grumble)

That just seems to be the way it is these days, the majority won't read documentation and will instead ask on forums, because it's less work than researching the answer yourself. Happens with everything, everywhere, and I don't see it changing.

[quote:3govchlr]

About WALL OF TEXT: tl;dr

Bah lol

I don't use it because:

A) People say it's broken with construct, or doesn't work properly with it, and there seems to be very few using it fully.

B) I've never been a fan, from way way back when I was very anti-anything involving code, it always seemed to me like comparing BASIC to C++, and Python didn't seem powerful enough in the long run to warrant the effort required to learn it (like the effort required to learn how to drive a manual car in the UK, when you fully intend to move to the US and only ever drive an automatic heh). Even though since teaching myself PHP (born from a case of "if I want it done properly, do it my damn self, lol"), I've heard it's surprisingly similar to that and Perl. But it does (to me) still seem to have some kind of stigma attached to it.

C) I've yet to find a reason to use it. But if it could do something I needed to do, which events couldn't. I'd use it... and bombard the forum with "but can it shoot lasers and make spells?" posts

But seriously though, given a choice I'd rather use events over python, or any kind of language for that matter. A case of path of least resistance (python would require I learned how to use it from scratch). Though if I saw real world examples of what python could do, that events couldn't (or made more complex), I might be more open to it.

Yay, works fine now, thanks Ashley!

Physics didn't build properly so won't work atm, will upload a fixed build asap.

No worries, no rush. Just glad it wasn't something I did wrong.

> Very true, but it's never as black and white as that. To use your crayon cat analogy. Yes, you can draw a cat with these crayons. But can they?

>

Yes, they can. If it's a shitty looking cat that's their own fault. Just because you can hold a crayon doesn't mean you can hang with Rembrandt. You gotta get some learnin in you first.

lol! Sorry, that just gave me the funniest mental image of Rembrandt "hangin" with his homies on some Amsterdam street corner.

I submit that on the very first start the Ghost Shooter tut should be loaded.

You could also add a link to the cap that would open up a html version of the tut, along with bla, bla, please take the tut first, and if you have any questions please refer to the faq, and forum.

That's a really good idea.

Could make it so you can't get rid of it until you take a test asking basic questions.. Ok my idea isn't so good and would never happen, but wouldn't we all secretly like it, lol.

Got this error upon loading after installing it. Tried a few times. Physics.csx is missing, and behaves the same even if a previous version of the file is there or not. The installer DOES create the files both in plugins and runtime (files dated 19/12/2009), but doesn't seem to see them.

Error loading f:\Scirra\Construct\Plugins\Physics.csx (14001) - this plugin may not be available![/code:3v0cp2f5]

> So it might piss people off to hear "oh oh can you make spells n s**t with it?" but if you think about it, it's a completely normal question

>

> ...

>

> Seriously, there is a very real problem with newbie hate and elitism on these forums and it's unwarranted and happening a lot.

>

There's no anger and no hate here, dude. Except maybe over being accused of anger and hate. I fail to see where my response was either angry or hateful.

I said what I said because I really don't understand the reasoning behind those kinds of questions. They don't seem like "normal questions" to me at all.

Technical questions like "can you export to XBOX" aren't what are confusing me. It's a legit question. Sure, you can find the answer on your own pretty easily, but whatever. Simple questions like "can you play sounds" are pretty easy to find answers to as well, but that still doesn't phase me.

It's when you ask stuff like "can you make a game where a guy backflips and chops off someone's ear" that I think maybe you should think about it for a minute before you ask, is all. It's not a technical question about the program's capabilities... it's a design question. It really is like asking "can you draw a cat with these crayons." The answer is pretty obviously yes, you can.

Very true, but it's never as black and white as that. To use your crayon cat analogy. Yes, you can draw a cat with these crayons. But can they?

BTW I vote for Constructs new logo to be a crayon cat, I think it would be perfect and awesome and Gamemaker wont copy that one