Been a long while since I updated about my game publicly. I've been getting loads of help from Tulamide though. That guy is an absolute genius. I would love some feedback on this red deer animation though:

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

I know it plays too fast - Photoshop doesn't seem flexible enough for this. But it's basically two animations put into one GIF: A running/charging animation, and an attacking/rearing animation. I also have a third animation completed of the stag grazing and looking up when the player is nearby (the player is a wolf).

Now... thing is... I'm getting really stretched for time. I honestly wanted a demo complete by now, and I'm still a ways off. These animations are all first attempts, whereas my wolf's running animation took me five attempts to get to a quality I was happy enough with (and I still want to tinker more with that one - you can see it in this thread: scirra.com/forum/wolf-animation_topic48201.html

So although there's definitely some errors with these animations (asides from the playback speed) do you think it's of passable quality? If there's anything that stands out as really problematic then I will certainly need to address it.

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

Zotged, I love you man! Setting the sprite as global and creating a new instance of it on another layout let me add the behaviour <img src="smileys/smiley20.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

And thanks for the warning. I'll have to play around with it on friend's and family member's computers/laptops to check the fps hit. It isn't opacity though, just angle (with the hotspot at the base of the grass sprite, so it leans left and right slightly).

I just encountered this message too. I handplaced a <img src="smileys/smiley35.gif" border="0"> ton of grass sprites for a meadow area, then tried to select them all (through the sprite list on the left of the screen). It took about a second for all the sprites to show a blue box around them, and then that message appeared: "A required resource was unavailable." No matter how many times I clicked the confirmation box, it wouldn't go away. Had to ctrl+alt+del to close Construct.

Luckily I had saved before trying to select them all, so I don't need to do it all again! But I want to select them all so that I can add a sine behaviour to them, making them sway. If I can't select them all, then I may well have to delete them all and start again anyway...

Anyone know if this is an issue that can be solved? I'd rather save myself half an hour of repetitive work if I can <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Haha, thanks! I updated my reply with a guess, but as I expected, I was completely wrong <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Thanks Pecek, much appreciated <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Ahhhh, okay thanks! I have that event set up three times, for three different sections of my level (to keep clouds spread out, and stop a freak occurrence of them all spawning next to each other). So at the moment I have the three X positions as:

1,3000

3500,6500

7000,10000

So if the first one should just be random(3000), how would I calculate the others? The mathematic side of my brain leaves a lot to be desired, so I'm struggling to understand how to adapt your example of random(100)-50 <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

EDIT: Does the -50 part mark the starting point, and the (100) mean how to much to go up to from there? So would my second event be random(3000)6500? I may be completely wrong here.

I'm trying to spawn clouds on my background at a random X location, where they will then fade in and out over 30 seconds before spawning again. The clouds always spawn in the exact same X position though. Here's what I have for the event:

Every 30000 milliseconds

System: Create object Cloud on layer "Clouds" at (random(1,3000), 790)

Have I misunderstood how the random expression works? I thought that random(1,3000) would make the cloud spawn somewhere between 1 and 2999 on the X axis.

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

Would I be able to apply a Warp effect to a box then?

Say, place a box over the water, and have a Warp effect affect everything inside the box, on that layer only. I don't want it to warp the player as well when he's in the water though.

I've got water in my game on its own layer, and am using the Warp effect on that layer to give an illusion of movement and turbulence. Looks great when you stand still, but as the camera moves, so too does the Warp effect. It seems linked to the camera, and that gives the illusion of faster turbulence in the water when the camera moves.

The water speeds up when you move, and slows back down when you remain stationary.

Is there a way to make the layer effects independent from the camera? Or perhaps a better way of warping things in a specific area?

It looks like (in Ghouls 'n Ghosts) the trunk is actually a separate texture to the canopy. So the trunk doesn't have the distort effect, and the distort effect starts at the very bottom of the canopy texture.

Make sure your hotspot is in the right place too. If the sine effect is spinning your tree, maybe your hotspot is in the middle of the tree texture. Place it at the bottom of the trunk (or bottom of the canopy, if you split the trunk and canopy into two different textures) and you should get much better results.

Hand animating does look a heck of a lot better, but it also affects VRAM usage a lot too. I created a 20 frame animation for five different trees, put them into a .CAP, and created a dynamic wind effect to animate them. Looked great! But what would have been 5 different textures using warp/sine/distort effects, became 100 different textures with this hand animated technique. Not cool.

Okay, think I'm done! I can't shake the feeling that the water looks a bit like jelly though... maybe if I can find a way to randomise the Warp height on the water levels, but I'm not sure if that's possible. Sine could work, but layers don't have behaviours do they? Only effects?

The foam plasma effect is a placeholder - I already have some ideas for how to make it swirl out at angles. But the water itself works well enough I think. I've layered it to match my platformer's perspective, and dunked my puppy in the water so you can see how I want it to work in-game.

Clicking on the water still works, and for each layer individually. I'll be getting rid of that and making it a ripple-on-collision effect for when the wolf is in the water. But for anyone else from the future looking for water ideas, this is what I got out of Rojo's awesome implementation.

Thanks for all the help getting me here <img src="smileys/smiley12.gif" border="0" align="middle">

.CAP Dropbox download

Awesome, thanks!

Yeah, that's the issue with creating Construct games on a gaming PC. I run at 60fps no matter what I do <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Thanks for the optimization tip <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Okay, time for a bonus question <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle">

I've tweaked with the settings, found out how to extend the water, alter the wave height and strength, but I'm now trying to trigger the ripple effect in a different way. Rojo's version is triggered by a mouse click, but I'd like to trigger it on collision.

I've added a waterfall (and slapped some shaders over everything for extra pretties) and have created a box object for collisions. The box is at the base of the waterfall, and I'd like the ripple effects to start being produced at the box's X location once the box is on screen.

What I can't work out is how to create a ripple effect once every second (or half second, or 2 seconds etc). I know the 'trigger once while true' condition allows me to create a single ripple once, but is there a way to tell the engine to trigger the ripple effect once every second?

Updated .CAP here.