This is something I'd been trying to get to work, so this is very helpful. What would you need to do to let the player control rotation? I'm thinking of using this method for a targeting cursor that rotates around the main character when the player aims.

This issue was making me tear my hair out, so at least now that I've found this thread I know it's not something I've done wrong. I too starred the bug report, here's hoping someone at Google puts this at the top of their to-do list!

Don't get me wrong, Platform School has helped me in countless ways. It was just that I read a whole thread that basically boiled down to "Don't do things that way anymore, it'll screw everything up". Since I was already having all kinds of problems, it was frustrating to think that following the FAQ-recommended tutorial was what had caused the issues. That said, I have no way of knowing if the author of that other thread knew what he was talking about.

And at any rate, Platform School solved a lot more of my Construct problems than it ever caused. Without it, I'd still be stuck trying to figure out how to make platforms work, so thanks

Hey, thanks for all your assistance, it's really appreciated. Here's the Cap. Some of the issues I mentioned (like the "landing from a jump" animation) aren't present here, because I got frustrated with my attempts not working, and just deleted those events. Still, you'll see the animations I'm talking about.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19118923/SuitMan.cap

Oh, and I was following Platform School when I created the groundwork of my game, and therefore I have the player controlling a red box, with the actual character's animations a separate object set to overlap the red box. I now see from searching the forums that this can cause issues of its own? Could this be the root of any of my problems?

And it probably goes without saying, but having one of your most thorough, helpful tutorials teach people to do things the wrong way isn't great. Is there any chance Platform School will be updated at any point?

I'm a Construct noob, trying desperately to piece together my first game ever, a fairly simple platformer. I keep running into issues and problems every step of the way, and was trying not to post too many simple problems on this forum for fear of looking like an idiot. Well, that time has passed -- I'm totally stuck, and if I don't get some outside assistance I'm afraid my project is going to die entirely. I've gone through the forum archives, I've followed every tutorial, and still can't seem to get anything to work quite right. So I'm collecting all my questions and issues in this thread, and if there's anybody out there who can help me that'd be awesome.

1. I can't seem to get my transitional animations to work right. Basic animations, like running and jumping, are working fine. But I'm trying to do things like a small "screech to a halt" animation (ala Super Mario World) when the player changes running direction while going top speed.

My idea was to create an event that checked to see if the player's X velocity was positive or negative, and triggered when they pressed the button to run in the opposite direction. But I couldn't figure out how to check velocity, and some searching in the forums leads me to believe that you can only check velocity on an object with the Physics behavior. Is this correct? Can I add the Physics behavior to an object that already has the Platform behavior without it messing things up? Or is there an easier way to do this that's eluding me?

2. Even if I solved the Velocity issue, I still can't figure out how to make animations act properly. My main character has a 2-frame jump animation, and it's supposed to play the 2 frames and then hold on frame 2 until the character's state changes to "falling". But it acts weird -- sometimes it plays the 2 frames very quickly (which is what it's supposed to do) and other times it holds on frame 1 as long as you hold down the jump button.

3. I tried making an idle animation by having the basic "standing still" pose be the first frame, which lasts 3 seconds, and then having the idle animation play after that. It worked fine, except for the fact that it would start the animation at random intervals, like you'd land from a jump and it would start halfway through the idle animation. How do I get it to start with the 3-second frame 1 every time?

I created events that set a variable to "1" whenever a non-idle animation played, and then an event that ran whenever Idle animation played. If that variable was 1, it would set frame # to 1 and set the variable back to 0. It seemed like that should do the trick but it doesn't make anything act any differently.

Is there an easier way to achieve this? I thought the Wait command might be the key, but couldn't figure out how to get it to work.

4. I wanted a "landing" animation to play whenever the player landed a jump, where the character crouched for a frame or two before standing back up. How do you get something like this to work? My event that was supposed to trigger that animation on contact between the player and the ground didn't do anything.

Thanks to anybody who took the time to read and/or reply to this. I don't know how to post a .cap, or I would. If somebody can tell me how to do it I'll gladly post mine. Any and all help anyone could offer would be much appreciated.

The game I'm working on is a platformer, in which you hold the Jump button to crouch and release it to jump. I've got the jump itself working fine, the problem is that while Jump is being held the player continues to "run" as long as the player holds the left or right movement button, effectively letting players slide in a crouch position all over the level. The only solution I could find was to set Horizontal Movement Speed to 0, but that's no good either, then they just stop instantly when they hold Jump. I need them to slide while crouching, I just want the game to make them slow to a stop, rather than still be able to move as much as they want. Anybody able to help?

Okay, thanks a lot everybody. I'm an utter beginner and, until this thread, honestly had no idea what alpha channels were, but this definitely is the solution I needed.

Glad to see there's a board on the net where people actually help newbies! What a concept!

I'm running into a problem when I import images as sprite animation frames. I use an art program called Pencil (http://www.pencil-animation.org/) for drawing my sprites, which automatically applies an anti-alias effect. When I imported them into Construct I set "pure white" as the transparency, and selected/deleted all dead space around my sprite, but where it's anti-aliased there is a thin, jaggy "almost white" border going 97% of the way around my sprite.

So my question is, is there an easier way to solve this problem other than going back to the original art files and going around the edges pixel by pixel, deleting the "almost white" border? I tried going back into Pencil and filling the space around the sprite with a vivid blue, which DID get rid of the almost white border, but then when I imported back to Construct I couldn't figure out how to set that *exact* shade of blue as the color mask.

I guess I could always go into the Pencil options and turn off anti-alias, but that would require re-drawing all the sprites I've done so far, not to mention, they look a whole lot better with the anti-alias. Any help anyone could offer would be greatly appreciated.

Hey, I appreciate it. I'm excited by the possibility Construct offers, but daunted by lots of things I don't understand. Thanks for helping me out!

Hello to all, I'm an utter newbie at Construct and game creation in general. I've gone through the beginner tutorials, Ghost Shooter, Platform School, etc, and I'm learning a lot, but some simple things still elude me.

Most pressing, can anybody tell me how to simply install downloaded plugins? I'm trying to go through the SkullKoBan tutorial but it keeps crashing, I think because I don't have the SpriteFont plugin installed.

Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.