Yeah that's the plan, and ensuring my particles all use the same texture. I'll see if I can find out if plasma effects are intensive too. I could always manually create and animate a foam texture for my waterfalls instead of relying on plasma.

Okay, thanks for getting back to me on that. I've just read a thorough article on optimization techniques for Construct, and I'm pretty sure my game is GPU limited. I use a LOT of particle and shader effects (especially blur effects), so I have plenty of ideas for improving frame rate there.

I'm also going to half some of my textures again. Tulamide already convinced me to half ALL of them once. I genuinely had some 4096x4096 background textures at first... I hate the Stag as well. I'm convinced it's bland and ugly. It was my first attempt though, whereas my wolf took five attempts to get to where he is now. The stag textures are quite large (up to 512) and there are far too many frames in his animations. I should be able to improve on him a lot when I redo him. I'm looking forward to optimising now <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Thanks guys <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

MrMiller - which resolution are you playing at? I'm not sure why you are falling through the screen... there are plenty of visual errors but that shouldn't be one of them. You weren't playing a resolution higher than your screen's native resolution were you?

The death is instant, but that will be changed with both an animation and a fade to black <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" /> There are also 7 checkpoints through the level which should be working correctly, but they were added very recently so I wouldn't be surprised if something about them is broken.

Regarding WASD movement - I have been planning to add 360 controller support, but I'll also add the option for arrow key movement too. I want to get space bar working as an alternate jump button in both keyboard modes too.

Zyblade - Thanks! Tulamide created the music for this game. He wouldn't believe me when I told him it was a good piece, so I'm glad you mentioned it <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

I'm probably going to have to spend a lot of time optimising the game, cutting down texture sizes, reducing animation lengths, slimming down event sheets etc. Glad to hear it runs okay for you though.

Getting hit does empty the whole energy bar, and I've considered altering that to 50%. But using an ability only consumes 20% energy, and I've tried making motes plentiful (except on the high path) to encourage players to spend it often. The Water ability (left arrow) acts as a shield, taking damage in place of your energy. The danger in reducing damage to only 50% energy is that it depreciates the value of the Water ability. But I will definitely take this into account so thanks for the feedback!

Thanks Crowtongue! Glad to hear the first impressions are good <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Something I should mention: fire probably feels underpowered right now. It deals two points of damage instead of a standard jump attack which deals one. Spiders have one health point and stags have three, so there's no immediate feel of fire being all that powerful or useful. I'm planning on adding a third enemy (likely a boar) with two health points so that fire can one-shot an enemy that a regular attack can't. I'm also thinking of placing some more large thorn obstacles that fire will be able to destroy (different to regular thorns you can jump over). Fire will be upgradable in the final game, allowing the attack to deal three points of damage.

<img src="http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc212/darkstorne/Mountains1280.png" border="0">

Hello everyone!

I'm about to go on holiday for a week, and it's distressing me that I won't be able to continue working on my game during that time. So I figured I would do the next best thing - upload it in its current state for fellow Construct creators to play, so that I'm at least getting feedback while I'm away from my desktop. I'll still be able to access the internet and post here, so I should be very active in discussing the game with you <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle">

Now, ideally I would like to wait a bit longer before uploading it, because there are still a lot of visual bugs and glitches I'm trying to iron out, and I've literally only just begun work on the UI. But time is an issue, and it's still very playable, so we'll see how it goes!

The Game

This is a platformer, where you play as a wolf who has inherited elemental powers. The world around him is falling apart. Animals are driven to madness. Humans have mysteriously vanished. When darkness falls, unnatural creatures descend with it. Only the oracle may be able to help. With these new-found powers, you are the only one who might succeed in reaching her up on her mountain-top.

You have the powers of Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth. Each has a different effect on the world and creatures around you, and they are yours to play with as you wish. Collecting Motes (the equivalent of Mario's coins, or Sonic's rings) powers you with energy which can in turn be spent on these powers. So instead of finding power-ups scattered around the level, your elements are the power-ups, and you may use them whenever and however you like. Motes are plentiful to encourage usage and experimentation of the elements.

There are essentially three different routes to take through a level. A low path, mid path, and high path. Each has its benefits, and you will likely find yourself switching between all three. But my hope is that players will each develop their own preference based on their playstyle, with a preferred element as well.

I want the game to be easy to play - with an appealing art style and fun gameplay. I also want it to be challenging to master, with a point based score system. So instead of rushing through a level as fast as you can, it's about how high a score you can achieve. Faster runs will provide a larger time bonus, but you will also receive bonus points for not dying; taking no damage; for each enemy killed; for each mote collected; a small bonus for only using three of the four elements; a medium bonus for only using two elements; a large bonus for only using one element; etc. The score system isn't in place yet, but this is the direction I'm heading in for the game.

Player choice is important. One player might be able to achieve a high score by sticking to the top route and focusing on Wind abilities for fast movement. But another might achieve a higher score by taking the low route and using Fire to kill enemies along his path.

The level playable is a daytime forest level.

The Controls

WASD movement. With W being jump, and S and W together allowing you to drop through platforms to lower levels.

Arrow Keys for elemental abilities.

Up Arrow - Wind - Dash forward

Right Arrow - Fire - Flaming Jaws deal heavy damage to enemies

Down Arrow - Earth - Root smaller enemies to the spot, and rip environmental obstacles asunder

Left Arrow - Water - Shield yourself with spikes of ice, preventing damage

In the final game, there will be two abilities for each element. Above (and in this playable demo) are the basic instant-cast abilities. Secondary abilities will be sustained, so holding down the Wind key for example will double your movement speed, draining energy for as long as you hold the key down. All of these abilities can be improved and leveled up.

Red Motes are hidden throughout each level, and each Red Mote grants you one point to spend on leveling up an elemental skill at the end of a level. There are three Red Motes to find in each level, and one earned for reaching a high enough score at the end of a run - so four total in each level. The score system isn't in place yet, but the three hidden Red Motes are in place for you to find.

TL;DR / Summary

Play the game and let me know what you think! I'd love to hear any and all feedback, comments and criticism. There are three different resolutions, and a different download for each (I suck at programming, but I'm getting there <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle">). Choose from the options below.

I would also love to know what framerates you guys are seeing. I see 60fps constantly at 1920x1080, but then I have a powerful computer. I'm worried some areas of the game are too intensive. So please let me know in as much as detail as you can how it runs, and what your basic PC specs are if you know them, ie:

Min: 60fps

Average: 60fps

Max: 60fps

CPU: i7 —

GPU: 2GB GTX560 Ti

RAM: 16GB DDR3 1600mhz

There are plenty of issues with the game, many of which I know about, but please don't hold back! The spiral energy bar has very recently been added and is based on Newt's example in this thread which he kindly gave me permission to use: http://www.scirra.com/forum/custom-health-bar_topic47438.html I'm really struggling to get it to work as well as his does, which is a shame because it fits so well thematically. I might have to switch to a basic straight line energy bar. There are plenty of other little bugs and glitches, but please let me know what you think, and I'll put the feedback into motion when I return <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle">

Many thanks for your time, and bravo if you read the entire essay! Thanks to anyone kind enough to spare the time to test this out <img src="smileys/smiley12.gif" border="0" align="middle">

1280x720 windowed

1680x1050 fullscreen

1920x1080 fullscreen

IMPORTANT: You will need the Python26.dll file included in your Construct installation directory to play this game. If you can't locate it, you can also download a copy of mine here. Make sure it is in the same location as the .exe, for example: both on your desktop, or both in the same folder.

If anyone wants to go above and beyond the call with helping me test my game and wants to check out the events, PM me and I'll send you the .CAP. be warned though, I'm an artist, not a programmer. The events may be nicely arranged in their own little groups, but there are a lot of them and they are probably horrendously optimized. Full disclaimer: I take no responsibility if your eyes bleed.

HUGE thanks to Tulamide! He has been incredibly supportive, and helped me with a lot of the programming. The angle detection is pretty much entirely his work. Without him I would still be painting ridiculously large 2048x2048 textures, slapping hundreds of them into the game, and wondering why Construct crashes whenever I click "Run Layout". Thanks man <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle">

I love you guys. Rojo nailed it: "you can easily fix it by removing the elses and putting the inverted conditions of events 221 and 222 into event 223."

Thanks for all the replies, and thanks for the explanation behind the Else command Tulamide <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

So I have this little critter:

<img src="http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc212/darkstorne/1.png" border="0" />

And I have this event list for his movement/attacks:

<img src="http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc212/darkstorne/SpiderEvents.png" border="0" />

Which works fine when there's just one spider in the game. But as soon as I insert a second one, they just mimic each other. So when one is attacking, the other is attacking too even if he isn't in range. Slapping a "For each Spider" command in front of the events doesn't help <img src="smileys/smiley6.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Is this a bad way to create events for enemies? Am I supposed to create a different sprite set and event list for each one, naming them Spider1, Spider2, Spider3 etc? That could work, but the VRAM overhead would be pretty huge, especially for my Stag enemies which have a lot of animation frames.

Thanks for reading <img src="smileys/smiley12.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Spoke too soon. I can't seem to make much sense of it.

The values I change the Y Speed of the Warp Effect to seem to ignore common sense, and have rules unto themselves. Check out this quick .CAP I put together to show the issue:

dl.dropbox.com/u/31971596/WTF.cap

The wave starts out with a Y Speed of 5.

Left Arrow sets it to -50

Right arrow to +50

Up Arrow to 100

Down Arrow to 1

A sets it to 60 (so you'd expect it to be slightly faster or slower than 50)

S sets it to 40 (again, slightly slower or faster than 50)

W should set the value to 5 again.

The results however... are bizarre. It's like each value has its own speed, completely irrelevant to the speeds of similar values. So while 50 is a moderate speed, 40 and 60 are batsh*t insane. And setting it to 5 using the W key is a completely different speed to the default 5.

Maybe I'm missing something? Either I'm using it wrong, or the action isn't working as intended.

Thank you! <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

I was ready to give up on the pretty warping water <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Is this possible yet? I found a thread about it from 2009 where the devs said it was being considered: scirra.com/forum/manipulating-layer-effects_topic36611.html

I'm trying to manipulate a warp layer effect for water in my game, so that the warp speed looks consistent whether you are standing still or moving in either direction. Using the canvas object leads to some very odd visual artifacts <img src="smileys/smiley5.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

I'm using a slow moving plasma effect to create waterfalls, but they only start 'flowing' when they are on-screen. Is there any way to tell the plasma to start doing its thing even when it's off-screen?

As it stands, you have to wait a few seconds before the waterfall is fully flowing as the plasma slowly works it's way down. Speeding it up isn't an option, since making it fast enough to almost instantly be in full flow completely breaks the illusion of flowing water.

Yep, good catch! I'll see how much of that I can hide with hotspot placement when I move it in-game. It's stupid things like this that I don't notice when I've spent hours staring at it :P