I use BFXR for sounds but I plan on switch to ChipTone when it's done. If you're going to use BFXR, I recommend not using the presets - they sound terrible and way too many retro indie games use them. For music I use FL Studio and various retro console VSTs from woolyss. Trackers will always be the better option for chiptunes but I can't stand using them :T

Aphrodite

Yeah It's pretty overwhelming at first considering all the different ways you can design a metroidvania in C2. I think my approach here (what Ashley himself recommended in our discussions a while back) is the most accessible and will teach people enough to make 'vanias in whatever way suits their game.

Derqs liquidmetal The biggest issue I'm facing is the fact that good/efficient code is not always the most beginner-friendly! I'm trying my hardest to find a good balance between the two. I'm still doing many things as I would in my own games, though.

As for pricing, it's early days still so it's hard to say. It looks like this game kit will have quite a bit more content than any current templates on the store, but of course we need to keep it reasonable!

A while back I made this

to see if a Metroidvania game could be made in C2 without any external editors or 3rd party plugins, and have been getting all kinds of questions and requests for the .capx ever since. Frankly, it's getting to be a bit much!

That said, 7Soul and I have decided to make a "Metroidvania Game Kit" to help Construct 2 developers make metroid-style game engines like this. It will essentially be a small, heavily-commented, open-source metroidvania game to learn from, modify, tear apart, or whatever you want. It will feature...

• A Player character that works similarly to Samus from the Metroid series
• Familiar weapons and abilities
• Room transitions, alignments, and object management.
• A minimap system
• A subscreen system
• Metroid-style HUD
• Various enemies
• Save Data
• Menus
• and more!

It will include lots of sprites, tilemaps, sfx, and music to play around with too, of course.

We hope to have it finished and available on the Scirra store within the next month or so.

In the meantime, feel free to ask any questions, and if there's something you'd like to see in the game kit that isn't listed here we're open to suggestions.

Update #1 Room transitions & alignments, HUD minimap, WIP player character & tilemap.

Place dots on the circle like so:

x = Position + Radius * cos(Angle)

y = Position + Radius * sin(Angle)

Position will be the center of the circle (your player ship)

Radius is the size of the circle

Angle will be the angle between the circle and the missile. To get that, use angle(x1,y1,x2,y2)

When a missile is created, create a dot and give it a variable with the UID of the missile. Then use "pick by unique ID" to pair them. You can probably use a container instead if you want.

The size of the dots can be based on the distance between the dot and the missile using distance() and...er...range conversion, maybe. Using just distance() will make them smaller as the missiles get closer.

Hope that helps.

Oy. What I'm saying is Tiled Backgrounds, 9-Patches, Sprite Fonts, Tilemaps, Particles, etc. should all be able to use multiple images like frames in a Sprite object. This way you can swap images on the fly, create animations, and so on, all using one object.

Instead, we are limited to one image per object, which results in a bunch of pointless extra objects, necessitates a family to control all of them, and prevents us from doing the things mentioned above.

Ashley even considered making some of these objects, like the tiled background, a component of the sprite object instead of its own thing..for these very reasons. So, again, hopefully it's addressed in C3.

All instances, not objects.

All instances of a tilemap object share the same image. It's a frustrating limitation and likely due to difficulties with the editor. Hopefully it's addressed in C3.

Ashley Yeah it is kind of ugly. There ARE people who'd rather have all that warping than letterboxing though...to get the most out of their TV or whatever. I thought it'd be really easy to implement but if not then disregard. shinkan I'll take a look!

On a slightly different note...what about custom letterboxing? Like a 9-patch to fill in the gaps instead. La-Mulana does this and it looks pretty good. Some games, like Odallus, even turn the letterboxing into the HUD for a "fake" 16:9 ratio. Kind of interesting. Maybe for C3? It can probably be done ourselves in C2 but that'd kinda screw up the viewport and conditions like "is on screen".

I would think The Next Penelope is FAR more intensive than Ghost Song and I haven't seen many people complaining about performance on that..

(sorry for double post. forums are screwed right now)

Er..C2 would have no problem doing something like Ghost Song. Ghost Song keeps each room in a separate layout so there aren't very many objects at any given time. There are no physics. He doesn't use tiles because terrain 'stamps' are more versatile and the better option for this type of game.

As for all the particle effects and such, Stencyl has "simple actors" for graphics and fx that have practically no overheard whatsoever. C2 might benefit from something similar, but I'm not sure a bunch of single-frame sprites will be that bad either.

Can we please have the option to stretch the game window without letterboxing nor showing more or less of the layout? Just a plain old screen-fit stretch. For people who'd rather not have letterboxing and don't mind the pixels stretching a bit. "Scale Outer" is very close already, but shows more of the layout.

aliweka Have you checked out the Q3D plugin set? Paired with C3's EDK they might have 3D functionality covered entirely.