Make a global variable (you've got that down) with an initial value of 3 or 5 or however many you want. You can then reference this number from any layout.

So,

If Player collides with 'kill' --- Subtract 1 from global variable "Lives"

--- Lifetext: Set text to 'lives'

Use the single quotes so it knows you're referencing a global variable. Let me know if that makes sense! Then you can do things like

Is global variable 'lives' Less or equal 0 --- System: Go to layout 'usersucksatthisgame' with transition "None"

or whatever you'd like!

Let me know if that made sense.

Oh, I guess I'll post a few.

<img src="http://www.adamprack.com/blight/screenshots/devlog003d.jpg" border="0" />

<img src="http://www.adamprack.com/blight/screenshots/devlog002d.jpg" border="0" />

<img src="http://www.adamprack.com/blight/screenshots/devlog001d.jpg" border="0" />

(early castle shot)

It looks neat, thought doesn't seem to do anything but have stuff spin slowly. The mouse cursor is laggy/jumpy as heck, though. I'm running 7900GS, 4GB Ram, Pentium D 3.2 Ghz. Nothing spectacular (quite outdated), but it runs a lot of things fine. Oh yeah, Firefox 6, too.

CC still gets my vote and is still what I'm using. I'll be completing Blight with CC-- .exe and the greater features give me no reason to move to C2.

I like how it's going! I went through your site and went through some of the comic. The screenshots you have make more sense after seeing all that. You seem to be getting pretty well into this. I hope to see more soon! Keep it up.

I like the green because I'm used to seeing it. Seriously, it makes the place seem more consistent and stable.

That looks really, really cool, evgy! No clue what really is going on, but it's a lot of pure eye candy.

Here's a new trailer for Blight. I hope you like it! It's all locales from the first world.

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Well, I think I've adjusted those parts to compensate for such big hardware differences. I've also made a new trailer for people to see!

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</font>

Hey, it's looking really neat! I like the environments so far and your art style looks really good!

Okay, so I'm working on the things people've brought up. I've also made the floating enemies have proper responses to the shield, the move now, and have fire particles... that took some time to figure out what I was doing <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

I've also make a hud/gui finally! No numbers at all. In fact, no more lives. For a time, I've had a 3-heart meter like Mario 2 (vertical, I mean). And I finally convinced myself that lives and game over screens are worthless these days. So dying still puts you back to the start of the level segment you're on (again, two segments/layouts per level). I didn't want to take you back to the most recent failed jump or anything--I think that's counter to the point of platformers.

But with no lives, the orbs are worthless, right? No, there just won't be health pickups anymore. The orbs translate into health. You have 3 hits before you die. Every 25 orbs you collect, you recover a hitpoint. If you have full health and you get 25 orbs, you get a short bit of invulnerability.

<img src="http://www.adamprack.com/blight/screenshots/007.jpg" border="0" />

There's the new hud! The level is still in-progress (i'll be shrinking the cage, adding details around like a cot, etc.), but the circles are the new design. The outer circle stays like that, but it glows when you get the invulnerable state. The 2nd circle in starts dim and glows more are you collect orbs. When you get your 25, it returns to dark and changes the 3rd circle in (the smallest one). This is your health meter. It's green for full health, yellow down from that, red, then black and translucent when you die. You start with full health but no orbs when you start the level or die.

Yeah, the memory hit is what I was avoiding. But I'll definitely try it out. It may just be the option to turn it on or off... if someone's computer can't run the blur well, it wouldn't take kindly to the memory hit either. And the effect is nice, but isn't gameplay-necessary.