I've read that performance can be noticeably improved by disabling Collisions on all sprites that don't use them. My game doesn't have any "on collision with" checks, but it does have a whole lot of overlapping checks. Do those checks require collisions to work, or can I go ahead and disable absolutely all collisions?

My games runs at 60fps on my PC normally, 30fps in debug mode (making that mode confusingly pointless for usual performance measurement?), 25fps on my Galaxy S6, and 2fps on my third gen iPad. I'm aiming for 60fps on modern phones, and 20-30fps on my old iPad.

Bonus Question: I'm resizing images where I can. If I have a sprite and image sized at 1024x256, resize the image to 512x128, but keep the sprite sized at 1024x256 (so slightly blurred image quality) would that improve performance because the image is now much smaller, or make no difference to performance since the sprite is the same size as it was before?

If you use a bunch of different objects with the solid attribute, I guess you could add all of them to a family and set the bullet's condition to trigger when it overlaps anything from that family.

I've always used one object only for collisions though, invisible during gameplay, layered on top of sprites that are all passable. So I can customize collision detection. Pixel-perfect collisions can often be frustrating for the player.

Thanks, you've been awesome

Transparency works perfectly, and I've just scripted it in a way that z-order won't be an issue. That took quite a while, but it's now a performance-friendly real-time reflection solution (using Paster by the way).

So! Pasting objects works perfectly for both of them! Thanks for that, R0J0 ^_^

Before I pursue this rather than try to solve the issue of layer pasting instead, will I run into Z order and/or transparency issues with pasted objects? I'm looking for a real-time reflection solution because it's a city-building game, so the layout changes and evolves constantly. There are also large objects on top of all the buildings that can be created that are at 100% transparency when the player is zoomed in and building, and 0% transparency when zoomed out.

So if I can create an event that loops to paste every object on that layer into a canvas/paster, will it also retain the Z order and transparency?

Many thanks for all your help so far. I really appreciate it

Thanks for the reply

I can't get it working though, which is weird, because your original method in the thread I linked worked perfectly, just very intensive.

It might be the origin part that's giving me issues? Is that the same thing as a hotspot? Because the origin option (when I double click the canvas object) is greyed out and won't let me edit it. I can edit the hotspot from the attribute panel on the left, but trying various different positions doesn't help. I've tried adding a "fill canvas with colour" event too, just to check it's appearing in the right place, and that works fine. Just no reflections.

I also tried using the Paster plugin you created, but I can only see a "paste object" option, and no "paste layer" option like the canvas has.

There's a fantastic example of using the Canvas plugin to create real time reflections in this thread: https://www.scirra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=147&t=71912&hilit=reflection

It's also insanely expensive (performance-wise) in my game, so I was wondering if it's possible to just use one canvas object? Like a single big plane, mirroring the environment above it, without all the fancy water wobbling that the above solution has. I'll try and use a blur filter and some particle effects to create the illusion of water afterwards.

Is that possible? I'm rubbish with numbers. I can replicate the effect above in my own game by recreating all the events, but individually I have absolutely no idea what those events are doing. So I also have no idea what tweaking them will do, or how to achieve a reflection on a single big plane instead of 20 of them. I hereby humbly request the aid of someone who doesn't involuntarily shudder at the sight of numbers and algebra

ALWAYS work in power of two sizes. So 64x64, 128x128, 256x256, 512x512, 1024x1024 etc. I have no idea why. I'm just an artist. I just know that's the way it has to be

I created this at 512x256 (doesn't have to be a square, just make sure each axis is a power of two) and then resized it down to 256x128 for in-game use. I always work larger than I need to and scale down afterwards. Just in case I need a larger image than I thought, and because I find it difficult to create art at really small sizes.

Posted a gif below to show you an example of what I'm hoping can be accomplished.

I know how to create the directional wind, where the angle of the sine is the same for each clump of grass. That's easy enough What I'd like to be able to do is calculate what the angle of each grass sprite should be for a radial burst of wind, based on where the burst of wind originates from relevant to the position of each grass sprite. So rather than all moving, say, 10 degrees to the right, some will move 10 degrees to the left, some 5 degrees one way, some 2 degrees, etc. Would that be possible?

Haha, buried in page four of the thread

That's exactly what I mean - next time one of these competitions is put together, definitely make the rules more transparent! Keep them on the first post, under the "rules" section, and don't keep changing them as you go along and then also neglect to update the main topic with the changes

We've now got a situation where some people have had over two months to work on their submissions, while others have abided by the deadline from the original rules and deliberately held back on improving their game for fear of being disqualified.

All I can see in the rules/instructions from both the C2 topic (this thread) and Newgrounds topic (here) are that the deadline is June 15th. That's why I'm confused about so many people continuing to work on and improve their submissions, even a full two weeks after the deadline Wish I'd known this was allowed, but I don't see it mentioned anywhere in the rules sections on either site.

I'm noticing a few odd votes on my game too, with strange justifications. It might just be the community though, I've not been there before now.

I think future competitions could do with some much more concrete guidelines. Not just to better explain that votes from other users account for nothing, but also how "updates" work. I've just read back through this thread and seen people are continuing to work on their submissions after the deadline, not just with bug fixes but full-on content updates and mechanic tweaks. Doesn't that defeat the point of working to a deadline? What about those of us who worked to that deadline and then stopped - now we're learning that we could have continued adding content that we had to cut last minute, and further polish our entries?

At the end of the day, I entered for the experience and to push myself out of my comfort zone (fantasy-based settings). But for future competitions, we definitely need to set some more rigid rules, because I'm now completely confused about the point of a deadline

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