So according to the wiki, you put an object in another objects container, and each becomes a container for the other (very futuramaish). Then it goes on to say that any instance of one, will include the other, and anything done to one will effect the other. So using it's example of a tank and a turret. Everytime a tank instance is spawned, you'd get the turret in the right place.

But it doesn't, you just get the part that's spawned, not both like it says you should. It suggests looking at the RTS example, but that's broken and wont run in the current version.

So what am I doing wrong. Or are containers broken right now? Because they're certainly not doing what the wiki says they should be doing, in fact they don't appear to do anything. Bug?

The RTS example file is broken in this version and wont run (no idea if it worked in older ones, didn't look at it until this version was downloaded and installed).

Interesting theory.

I may have to resort to something like that if I can't find the CSX file for the experimental online plugin. I have the CAP but no CSX.

I'm wondering how fast this method could be? Also... it may run in to issues if there are a lot of users online... trying to figure out what messages are supposed to be used for whose character on what IP address etc...

I'm tearing my hair out just thinking about it D:

~Sol

It wouldn't work for anything that needed to be quick (shoot-em-ups requiring perfect timing probably wouldn't handle well with it), but adventure types could be ok, little mini-mmo's and the like. Though I suppose it depends how fast construct could parse the IRC log file for updating character movement.

You'd not have to worry about IP's. Parsing the output from IRC would get you the time, their name and then whatever info was in their message. Something like (super simple example). Since you can't have duplicate names on any one IRC server, it would cover the job of IP addresses, and of course something like nickserv could be used to protect your characters name.

05:49:32:Frank:024:189:897324:hey guys whats up:

Using : as a separator, you'd get

hour,

minute,

second,

username,

X coords,

Y coords,

set of numbers which would set how the player looks (if there's a choice of appearance) and could show extra's like item carried or something too,

message written, if any.

As for the problem of slowdown with lots of users. I thought at the time of using different IRC channels for different locations. It was easy enough I recall to change channels via scripts (this was all tested in mIRC at the time). So as you move around different locations in your game, your disembodied internet soul does the same in IRC. You could even limit channels to a max number of users, this would give a message if the channel was full, which construct could look for and inform the user in the game that the place is full too.

Private messages in IRC could work fine for private chatting among players in the game, and perhaps also trading of items too, and some kind of 1 on 1 dueling.

Unfortunately it was all worked out as a graphical chat thing done on the cheap. So there was nothing worked out to handle NPC's or proper fighting. But thinking about that now, the simplest way would be IRC bots, as they would update everyone at the same time, just like the players would. Keeping themselves in synch with everyone in the area.

Storing player data - inventory, progress etc. Could be handled by another bot, just like many of them do for those generally annoying IRC gamebots that keep players scores. The only problem is something like this would generally not be very secure, and likely very easy to cheat on, unless the player output used in IRC was encrypted somehow. But that would be cracked eventually too.

-

Another method, which would be much slower and really only of use for turn based games, would be using the Get and Post tools, and uploading movement and changes to a website. That would work as-is for a two player turn based game. Or using PHP and a cron job, it could be made to handle more players as well as fancier extra's.

What if you tied it to parts of IRC? Was an idea I had way long ago, before modern methods had been invented, and everything was a lot more complicated and annoying. Basically special rooms could be used as the backend of an online area, but rather than people chatting in there, their messages contained coordinates and other useful info. That's all sent to logs as you know, and those are also timestamped. Each message sent by someone could include a brief message also, which could allow for basic chatting inside the game.

So couldn't it simply use what amounts to nothing more than text files, to control the positions of various sprites?

As for sending it to IRC. A simple script could be used to just send the contents of a text file, or something along those lines. Construct can read and write to external files. It's granted, a very basic way of doing it. But it would work for the more simple games, and the more basic RPG kind, or even just visual chatroom applications.

I just don't understand what it was that was causing Drule's game to stretch... I couldn't even get mine to stretch even though I was trying to.

I can't say for sure but I got the impression he was trying to make it fill the whole screen no matter what resolution is used, but without extending the playing area to compensate. I personally wouldn't mind black bars at either side (or a tiled background, or even the name written down the sides in a fancy text), they wouldn't even be that wide really, and besides doing the thing I mentioned in an earlier post. You could use that extra space for the old Arcade machine look, when some of them had fancy overlays around and sometimes over parts of the screen to make them look nicer back when the graphics weren't that hot. I think Space Invaders did that for sure. Crazy thing is, it worked great too lol.

> So, you post 6 threads, won't do any of the challenges yourself, just expect others to do them and respond like a jackass whether it was deserved or not.

>

> Did I miss anything?

>

Calm down. There's no need for that.

> Wow, searching the forum, what an inspired and well thought out suggestion, why didn't I think of that?! *rolls eyes* If you'd READ what I wrote you'd see that's where I got idea's for these, genius.

>

Or that. Let's leave the bickering out of it, okay guys?

K, sorry

hehe, this is the angriest I've ever seen this forum. Chill everyone.

Haha oh great, now I feel terrible, lol

To be fair, the last time I attempted this was a long time ago on a much older version of Construct, and I was expecting to have to do the same sort of stuff now. Guess not, though.

Well it works so yay. Now, about that making a widescreen game work on 4:3.......

Lol, so after all the problems, blood, sweat and tears, that's it? That's the solution? Awesome haha.

So, you post 6 threads, won't do any of the challenges yourself, just expect others to do them and respond like a jackass whether it was deserved or not.

Did I miss anything?

Besides the point? I mean honestly, all he's done is moan. If he didn't like these ideas, he could have, oh I don't know, ignored them? Now I'm sorry I couldn't make any of the challenges about distort maps, but I had to go with what the majority would have wanted, and few people seem to pay attention to him going on about distort maps. But that doesn't give him a right to talk down to me as if I didn't search first, which I already said I had. Why should I sit in silence? He was out of line and deliberately being rude. If he's got a problem with that he can PM me about it, not send a friend to fight his battles.

Again search the forums. If you had you might have guessed that something like this was best left to a plugin.

Wow, searching the forum, what an inspired and well thought out suggestion, why didn't I think of that?! *rolls eyes* If you'd READ what I wrote you'd see that's where I got idea's for these, genius.

have black bg make a layer with all your graphics pure white, then you have to set up another one ontop with a bunch of white squares on it which you tile for the entire screen area. you give those squares an effect that grabs the draw are behind them (additive plus, magnify, opacity plus) set there properties to 0%, then add tint plus to those squares, and adjust the tint of the squares to stain the white gfx below them

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1010927/attrbclash.cap

example thrown toghether, to actually have objects be certain colour and stain the bg like in that "ruins" one would mean you need to adjust the colour of squares which the objects to be colored overlap

EDIT: heres one with said effect http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1010927/attrclash.cap theres no ordering yet but that would be easy to do with an ordered loop and a family

Hehe those look pretty cool! I might give that a go, thanks!

i think a pixel shader could be written for it, but setting a "colour" for objects might be hard to implement, your gfx's would need to have their colour incoded in them somehow.

I think to do it with a pixel shader, it would do something like first cut down the colors to just a few of them, then, for each block, find the most used color in each block at a specific time and use that. Or something along those lines. I dunno, I linked to a pixel shader further up that can do it, but it doesn't work in construct. I looked at tutorials on how to write them and none of them made any sense and seemed to miss out whole chunks, they all tell you how to write the start bit, the end bit, but forget to go into useful detail on the actual important bits. I had a go at that FX thingy of Nvidia's and got nowhere either. Oh well, never mind.

>

> > Nobody ever said doing isometric was easy?

> >

> > Also... why are there six of these threads at once? Isn't that overkill? You could have had these run, you know... one at a time

> >

>

> Cause I got excited with the 6th one, besides, never could wait.

>

Aside from the YC now being taken over by these threads I'm concerned that you won't get as many people participating in these as if you had waited to post them one at a time. Now people are going to pick and choose one or two instead of giving them all a shot.

Also, in all honesty some of your challenges (like this one) are really not "easy." Nobody has taken on isometric and won because isometric is hard to do. Yes, I can confidently say that Construct is capable of it, but the math involved is more than most are willing to struggle with.

And you're asking people to make AI for things like beat-em-ups and stuff for a 2d brawler or a full-blown roguelike with battles and everything. Those aren't "easy," they're practically full games. The mouse challenge was good because it was a nice little logic puzzle that you could get concise answers to.

Ok, well, delete them then. Only did them as a bit of fun for people but if they're going to cause trouble, get rid of them, I could only delete two of them so you'll have to get the others.

[quote:45m2vyzf]Also, when are we going to see your examples of how these challenges are done? It seems only fair that the challenger show what he's capable of

I'm an artist Jim, not a programmer, lol. I can't do them, wouldn't claim that I could either. If I'd picked things I could do, then it wouldn't be much of a challenge for anyone (and people would complain about that then too lol). Would be great if I could do them cause it looks like fun and I'd get to show off. But alas it's not PHP and that's the only programming language of any kind that I know.

So yeah, get rid of them, though keep #6 cause I like the theory of how that would work, and since I like the top down games, the solutions for that one would be useful to me too.