> Why don't you just use the rotation behavior on a sprite? That's all your doing isn't it, rotating it one direction or the other?

>

Not exactly, because that would make it rotate at the center, so it would have both ends moving at the same time. I need both ends of the stick to be in control.

Imagine playing this with a Playstation controller. You have two analog sticks. One analog stick controls the left end of the stick, and the other controls the right. If I move the left stick in a direction, the left end of the stick goes that direction, but the other end of the stick has to stay still.

It's not like - / | \ - kind of movement. It's more like _\|/_. If that helps at all.

Maybe another visual example. Look at this game

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He's controlling two boats with a line in between, the only difference between that and the thing I need is the line between needs to be the same length at all times. So the two 'boats' are at the same distance away from eachother all the time. (cool game btw)

If you want a physical example, take a staff or something and hold both ends. And just move it with one hand at a time. Move your left hand up, but your right hand still. And then the other way around. I don't know a better way to explain it than that.

Well I can't help with how to do it, only that I'm pretty sure it's possible using events. Say for example you use the xbox controller object. That gives access to all the buttons/directions. So then if you were to use events to control what moves what and where, rather than properties, it'll solve the problem with controlling things independently.

Then I think it's simply a case of setting up an event which checks the distance between the two ends of the pole and preventing them from moving further apart or getting closer together. Which should be doable. As for changing the pivot point, erm.. maybe some event that if X moves, then play pivot on Y's position, and viceversa, could that work? Hmm, it's difficult to explain isn't it? lol. I DO know what you're after, I just can't word it right.

Ah, that would make sense. Resizing go!

What I'm looking to do is this.

Player moves in a grid around a play field, but the HUD moves with him so he always appears to be in the center... UNLESS he reaches the bounding at the edge of the field, in which case the view no longer centers on him, so he can move to explore the areas in corners of the field. I'll try to toss a .cap together to see if I can show you what I mean.

Hmm, if I'm right in thinking what you're trying to do, it does that automatically. Have you made sure unbound scrolling in the layer properties is switched OFF. Because in that case, I'm 99.9% sure that the player will be centered in the screen until you reach the edge of the playing area, at which point the view will stop at the edge, while the player can continue up to the boundaries.

Feature Request:

avi/mpeg player object with no visible controls, which can run behind other objects, sprites, layers etc.

Example:

*

This is an example of what I'm talking about. Currently the included avi object overlays everything else, and has it's controls at the bottom. But in the above example, the animation is playing behind the ship, with no visible video controls. The method I used for this example is explained below, and as you'll see, it's not a usable solution.

Uses:

* Playing cutscenes in a more professional way, without having controls visible on screen

* Complex background animation which is either impossible, too resource intensive or too time consuming to create directly within construct, could be played back from a video file instead.

It would work pretty much just like the current avi object, but with the added option of not displaying the controls. And the ability to play behind any number of layers and/or objects.

Why have it?:

The current avi object is great, and does exactly what it says on the tin. But these two improvements would make it even more useful for the game side of things.

This can currently be done with a regular sprite that has all the frames added. However due to the nature of construct's compiling to a single file, and the number of sprite frames which would be used in this way. The resulting executable would grow well above a few gig in size for a small game using a different animated background done like this.

By using an mpeg or similar, it would:

Allow people to download the animated background videos as an option (without them a default simple background could be visible in the game instead if the player couldn't find the required file).

Avoids huge executable files by keeping a large chunk of the game as separate files. So if the exe needs updating to fix a bug, a player wouldn't have to re-download 20gigs+ of a single file.

It could also be possible to give basic interactivity to the video, for example if the player is moving forward, the video plays forward, if they move backwards, it plays backwards. Very basic I know, but this basic control might be useful in some types of games (like shoot-em-ups) where the player might have control of moving forward and backward in a level, so rather than the background continuing to move on its own, it stops as it should when the player stops. Setup right, this could give a pre-rendered parallax effect, using far higher quality effects than would be possible with sprites and tiles alone, without it causing any extra strain on the system. And being a video file, it would still be 2D.

Does this make sense? I mean, I think it could be a good addition. Anyone else agree?

Could you not just build a simple scene in a regular 3D package, render it out, put it together as a video file, and then play it using the avi object in your background layer?

Ok, tried doing that. Unfortunately the avi object overlays everything else, and also includes a control, so it's no use for something like this.

I did try just a regular sprite with all the frames and played that in the background to demonstrate how it could look

*

but doing it that way, you're going to end up with an insanely large exe file, which is a shame, cause I'm guessing this is exactly what you're wanting, and would otherwise have worked perfectly.

What would be great would be an addition to the avi object to stop it overlaying everything, and the option to remove it's controls. Allowing it to be placed in any layer, so it can be used for cases like this where a complex animated background is required.

I shall download this before it is consumed by the mediafire.

Okay. That is pretty clever. I don't think there's a need to do a shader for that, it works perfectly.

Although if you can think of a reason for making one (like some kind of flexibility), I could do it.

Hm. Zelda 3. So cool. Now just layer a fog gradient on top <3

Glad you like it

I suppose a proper pixel shader to do this could maybe have options for how distorted the effect is and using the same method this does where any value above black in the gradient/image used is effected by it. Then rather than having to stretch and line it up across the layout (which can become a little problematic as you can't scroll too far off to the side of the layout right now) that could be done by values in the effect.

I suppose then too, that would allow the effect to be controlled via events? Which is bound to be useful to somebody. I suppose one idea would be a shoot-em-up, where you get a power-up to go faster, using it does the usual increase in movement speed and scrolling, but also could increase this effect a little, kinda like some sort of warp factor 8 hehe.

I suppose another use for it, with controllable values.. Lets use the Zelda example, with the slightly off top down graphical approach. Now what if your 2D world had more than one level, say you could go up some steps to a level a little higher up. You could have the effect change the amount of distortion at the same time, say.. the higher up your character is supposed to be, the less it's distorted. It wouldn't actually add anything to gameplay, but as a little visual effect it could be kinda cool.

I should be slapped for saying I suppose too many times.

Cool, It's an easy mode 7ish effect.

Thanks, I thought so too Course, someone who has experience making pixel shaders could I would think, create one that does this sort of thing, but properly. Though it's usefulness diminishes at more extreme angles.

This would work great as-is laid over a verticle shmup or racing game.

Nice effect

Oooh yeah! That could look really cool

Thanks

P.S. I've no idea how this would work out using something like the 3D Box. As I'm not one of those who want to turn construct into a 3D engine. But I suppose it could work ok.

I don't know if this is of any use to anybody. If it's already been mentioned then sorry! The effect is pretty subtle, but it might have its uses in some cases.

Download link

http://www.box.net/shared/svu919182h

[edited by: deadeye]

What it does

Gives the screen a kind of perspective appearance. You can fiddle around with it to increase the amount and by stretching and moving the gradient you can almost get a kind of isometric like look (but your artwork will have to be made with that in mind, and it wont be true iso, more a kind of weird semi perspective sort.. or something heh). Naturally it wont work for everything, and your artwork might have to be drawn with it in mind to make better use of it. But it should work in most cases as an added touch. Because it sits in its own layer and doesn't effect your game map, you shouldn't have to worry about it effecting the actual game layout. It's just a regular stock effect and doesn't use anything that isn't already in the program out of the box. Course you could always change the gradient entirely, to cause all kinds of strangeness too.

You can't push it too far or things get really distorted, and no, it doesn't turn construct into a 3D engine either

Could work well with games like Zelda or Chaos Engine. Or put behind game layers, yet in front of background scrolling animation to give a curious style to regular parallax effects.

So err yeah, hope someone finds it useful

Nice work! If this trick works consistently, I could think of a lot of times I might want to use it.

I just wanted to add that it didn't blur for me, it looked just how it should, with nice crisp clean edges. I have an nVidia card if that's of any help (if the kind of card makes a difference to the blur/no blur thing people are getting).

Also it says it doesn't work well with captions turned on. I of course felt the need to try that, and it still worked fine for me. Maybe something the devs did in an update, fixed it?

Yeah, I'm pretty familiar with how RMXP works. I should use tilesets, but my team has err chosen to have Breath of Fire 4 as our tilesets, which we only get by print screening game plays . It will be a bother to redo everything in that map though, So i guess I'll just remove the large objects of the towns and replace it with a new one which will be smaller objects.

About the travelling thing, my rpg will most likely be like Harvest Moon where the whole game only focuses on 1 town. So probably 3 to 4 maps in 1 layout shouldnt be bad, but if it would, then we'll do what you said.

BTW, how do I do the shading part in our map? The one at every side, where it would fade to black. Can construct do that?

A very quick and simple example

*

and that's not even done properly using proper tiles or anything, but it works, it's a big map (big enough for most things I would imagine), and it's only 1.6mb. The shadows are all on another layer, above where the players would be, so it creates a believable shadow over them. While the tree tops are on the highest layer, so you can walk under them. There are also invisible collision boxes at the center of each tree, so you can't walk where the trunks are... Ok those aren't everywhere, I forgot to copy/paste them onto other tree's when I increased the map size even greater, my bad. But yeah, you should get the general idea. I should also point out that I'm not even remotely near constructs max layout size limit with this map either. Just think, if you did as others suggest, and use tiles. You could theoretically make a game world many times bigger than you're making right now, and it probably still wouldn't hit 27mb in file size.

Now, if I wanted to. I could make that map feel four or five times larger using various tricks, without increasing the layout size.

1) Large maps don't mean you should be able to go from point A to point B directly, make them travel certain routes. Morrowind was a good example, that game is surprisingly small, yet when playing it without flying cheats or spells, it feels large because you have to follow certain directions to get to places, pass around mountains and so on. Yet one town is just a few minutes from another if you went to it directly. Just about every game ever made has used this trick, made the most of every inch. So include obstacles, some impassable hills between one area and another, forcing the player to go around, which might lead them into new adventures at the same time.

2) Slow down the movement of the characters, that will instantly make a map feel larger. Start adding vehicles, mounts, ships, and the world gets smaller.

3) Make all characters smaller. Imagine instead of that red X, it was an 8x8px Lemming and everything was done to it's scale. The map would be on a par with the size of London Imagine an Ant. To the Ant, your house is the size of your town, your town is the size of a small continent to the Ant. Scale makes a big difference.

4) Lots of distractions. If there's plenty to do for a player as they travel along, they can become distracted doing something else, thus making their journey from one point to another, take longer. It also helps avoid the thing becoming boring (how often can you wander through World of Warcraft without becoming bored) and remember, your game will be single player, so nobody else to turn up out of the blue with things to do. But don't stick in enemies every few steps, cause fighting allll the time is boring as well.

And how do you expect to use BoF4 graphics, anyway? BoF4 is in 3D... it doesn't use tiles. It's rather ridiculous to expect that you can just screenshot a 3D game and cut out the pieces you need. You're not saving yourself any time by doing that, because it won't work and you'll eventually have to start over from scratch and do it the proper way.

Plus, it's stealing.

Thank you for your ideas and interest. However viruses are too tiny for a game that pretends to be realistic, bacterias would be hard to see too. Protozoan and metazoan parasites are bigger and more diverse, they have more definite path through the body before they start multiplicating, they also have different development phases.

Some scary images:

-Protozoons

-Metazoons

Duodenale and Duodenale's revenge

<img src="http://www.nematode.net/IMAGES/duodenale.jpg">

That's a game character just begging to be made!

http://www.zzap64.co.uk/zzap3/para_birth01.html

A diary of the creation of the C64 game 'Paradroid'.

Since most on here are working alone in bedrooms like the good old days, as opposed to large groups like those mod teams rushing to work on whatever the latest 3D game engine happens to be at the time before giving up and going onto the next one. I thought some of you might find this interesting (mainly the older ones in a nostalgic way), but also for the younger ones, who might not even have been born at the time when this particular game was made.

Personally I found the similarities to the problems, issues, flashes of genius and frustration from back then and these days, pretty amusing. We might have it soo much easier now, but still have practically the same issues.

Some of it is pretty amusing, a lot of it will probably have you nodding or rolling your eyes in painful understanding.

> I was thinking about something related to the trip of a parasite through the body, but with a realistic look.

>

How about a game where you start off by choosing which virus you want to play as, and then fight through the bodies' immune system to infect the human?

CONGRATULATIONS...

You have have given your host body;

AIDS!

Errr... or maybe not.

Got my vote. In this day and age of not even being able to sing Bah Bah Blacksheep to your newborn without being called a racist. I think a politically incorrect game like that would be perfect! No problem finding idea's for sequels either, Swine Flu, flesh eating bacteria etc.

I'd play it.

the OP, looks great!