Well, if that's all you need to accomplish:

Global variable Num

Global variable Cycle

If Cycle = 0

-- If Num < 100

---- Num = Num+1

-- Else

---- Cycle = 1

Then the opposite for Cycle = 1. It's not very fancy but it gets the job done!

It's possible there's more to it than legal issues. You're right, they could have the plugin maker agree in writing... Maybe it's more of a quality assurance thing. Who knows?

Nah, he hasn't built that in yet. The to-do list is so long, chances are it's been on there since 2008 and Ashley still hasn't gotten around to it. <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

As for community features, there's probably legal issues with it. Construct 2 isn't free -- Scirra doesn't want to risk getting sued for taking someone's ideas, even WITH permission. It's a sketchy thing.

Sweet, sweet, thanks! Now I need to figure out how to bake a normal map... I don't have anything fancy like Photoshop -- can I do it with Blender? I'll see what I can find about that.

Edit: Actually I think I'll go with Gimp. It has a clone of the NVIDIA plugin Akira mentioned earlier. Now for some serious trial and error!

A simple tutorial on this would be amazing.

Yeah, I second this. To be honest I have no idea what you other guys are saying. <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

I know it's a pretty huge subject when dealing with 3D, but do I really need to know all that to do what Ashley did in the demo? <img src="smileys/smiley5.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

If you want her to be standing in the same spot as she attacks, you'll need to start messing around with the origin points for each frame. In the Animation panel, there's a button on the left that says "Set origin and image points" Clicking that will show you the origin, which is what the sprite is centered around. If you always want her feet to be in the same spot, for example, make sure the origin is on her feet in every single frame. Then she won't move so much during the animation.

To bring up a pause menu, make a new layer and set the parallax to 0,0. Parallax determines how fast or slow the layer scrolls relative to the others; 100,100 is normal, 150,150 is 1.5 times faster, 50,50 is half as slow, and 0,0 means it won't move at all. Which means no matter where you are in the level, the pause menu will ALWAYS be in the center of the screen.

As for loading new layouts and then trying to go back to the previous one... yeahhh, don't even try. You'd have to manually save the state of the layout before leaving it and then manually reset it once you go back. Pause menus can be inside the regular layout, just invisible; when the player pauses, make the menu visible. No need to switch layouts.

Global var "Biggest"

For Each Object

-- if Object.Size (however you want to calculate that) > Biggest,

---- set Biggest = Object.Size

Voila!

So one of the under-discussed shader effects we have now is bumpmapping. It's a great effect, as shown in the Ghost Shooter demo, I just... have no idea how to utilize it. <img src="smileys/smiley36.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

If anyone's taken a look at the capx for the demo, can you explain exactly what Ashley did to the bumpmapped sprite? It's all blue and pink and whatnot. I just don't get how the whole thing works really, I just know the end result looks good!

That's what I've been figuring, but... will there be a performance difference? I mean, I use a LOT of grass. A stupid amount, really. The level I'm working on isn't even half done and there's 208 grass sprites. I'll eventually put in options to turn off certain effects, probably replacing the individual sprites with static tiled backgrounds, so I guess it's not a huge deal.

But in the same way the particle system is more efficient than you spawning the sprites yourself, is the sine behavior more efficient than manually rotating all the grass (maybe 30-40 on screen at once)?