My game is played from a Zelda-like perspective.

So far, it's been easy to handle collision; apart from the visual layer, I have a separate collision layer, not visible to the player, with bright red squares marking off everywhere the player can't go.

However, in my game the player has an 'acrobatics' ability. When pressing the acrobatics button plus the appropriate direction, the player is supposed to be able to cross some (but not all) physical obstacles.

So, for example, instead of being stopped by a fence, he vaults over the fence. Instead of being stopped by the wall of a building, he runs up the wall and lands on the roof of the building.

I'm pretty sure what I need to do is have a new layer that defines 'acrobatics areas' of a given level; areas where pressing a certain key combination (acrobatics key plus appropriate direction) will produce a certain result in terms of player movement and animation. But how do I do this on the player movement side? Is there a way to make the player 'intangible' for passing through the wall and force a specific pattern of movement (run up the wall and land on the roof, vault the fence, etc.) that temporarily overrides the player's normal controls, while still making the player vulnerable to bullets and other projectiles?

Thanks!

Looking into the relative merits of JSON vs XML just now, sounds like you're right! Thanks for the help.

I'm working on a heavily story-driven RPG project; a major part of the game is characters talking with each other, including branching dialogue trees etc., with the game's total text likely being over 30,000 or 40,000 words.

What's the best way to implement this in C2? An XML file with every line of dialogue and option in branching conversation each having a single line, which the game then reads from?

Thanks!

I know that MMF2 users have perfectly recreated the physics engine of sonic the hedgehog in their engine. Presumably people have done similarly for Construct2? Perhaps find one of those and then modify it to your liking.

LOL turns out I can't post URLs yet? But if you google "Construct2 sql" you'll see links along the lines of what I found.

Hold up hold up hold up -- Construct2 can't connect to an SQL database?

...say wha?

Can it connect to a plain old text file on the web? Because it would be *super* janky, but you could have the database queried separately and have the result of that query output into a .TXT file that Construct2 then reads... but wow, I'm a little bit in shock at that.

Edit: Looks doable w/ AJAX...

html5-sql_t60614

scirra.com/tutorials/296/se ... l-database

Good to know!

I have a couple of questions:

1. Support for dedicated servers is a planned feature, correct? So I can start building a game now that I envision running on a dedicated server one day, and then switch it over when the time comes?

2. My game world is separated into screens, much like the old Zelda games. A player on one screen would have no need to synchronize movement, attacks, etc. with a player as long as they're on another screen; this should massively cut down on data being sent back and forth at any given moment. Is this doable, to say "only synchronize player movement if you're within the same area of the game world"? I assume yes?

3. There's no planned PvP, only PvE. Nor is there twitch competition for PvE kills. So if one player's movement looks a little janky to the other, or one player sees themselves killing a mob on their screen but in fact the other player got the kill, that's totally okay.

4. In terms of saving progress -- can't Construct2 connect to a web server via any number of methods already, even prior to online multiplayer support? If all that's required is the Client to say "Hey, here's my unique ID, and here's my save data," and the Server to reply "Sure madame, I'm savin' your data right here, tip o' the hat" and fetch information from a database when asked, that sounds pretty feasible. Especially if I have a high degree of trust in the players and am not obsessed with preventing them from cheating.

5. The main way my players influence each other without being on the same screen together are through accomplishing world-changing events. If one player assassinates the king, another player on the other side of the world may find NPCs start discussing how the king was assassinated. In practical terms, this means global variables. When GlobalEvent.RoyalFamily.King.Assassinated? goes from 0 to 1, that needs to update for all players, but it's not the sort of thing that would be at all bandwidth intensive -- obviously, the players aren't assassinating kings left and right, on a 'fully populated' server (this game is meant to be played with a few dozen people on a server, any more than that and you'd want to make a new server) you'd probably have a Global Event variable being altered every hour or two. Can I write a simple rule that says "all GlobalEvent variables sync between all players whenever they're changed"?

6. Separately from all of the above... I can use Scirra to create solid-feeling Zelda-style combat, right? That's become fairly easy at this point, I hope?

Hi all,

I'd like to test out Construct2 to see if it's workable for the game I have in mind by building a small test project.

The plan is:

-Use a pre-fab kit for Zelda-style movement/combat for the player character (I assume these exist already for Construct2, as it's one of the most requested game types among amateur wannabe game developers like myself)

-Use the online multiplayer features added in in Construct2 R186 a few months back to allow four of these player characters simultaneously, played by four different people over the Internet

-Allow these players to attack simple enemies in an empty room.

My project involves multiplayer Zelda-esque combat, so this would be the bare minimum for a test case.

Does this sound easily doable with Construct2 as it currently stands? Or is the online multiplayer introduced in R186 not easily adaptable to Zelda-style combat?

Thanks for any advice you can offer!

Hmm... it sounds like if MMF2 can do the game as one large, seamless playfield, having the engine entirely pre-built and ready to use would outweigh the advantages of Construct?

I'm sorry, but neither of you replies are really telling me what I need to know.

-How well does C99/C2 handle having a game take place on a single incredibly large, non-linear 'playfield' rather than having it chunked up into levels?

-How well does C99/C2 handle a playfield that isn't easily broken down into squares/rectangles?

-How is making a Sonic-type engine easier in Construct than in MMF2/Game Maker 8.1, if both of those systems already have full-featured, free-to-use Sonic-type engines available for use?

As for coding -- Once I've got most of the worldbuilding work done, I see no problem in hiring coders to finish off the parts I can't handle myself.

How, exactly, do you plan on finding out exactly how much money I make from the games I make with C2?

My end goal, ideally, would be using a digital distribution platform like Steam. How are you planning to get sales data for my game if it's up on Steam?

I want to donate to show support for the project (I've probably given $100 to NetGore, for example, and it's still in alpha), but I'll hold off for now as it appears based on the FAQ there's a possibility you'll just end up turning closed-source when development finishes anyway.

Once closed-source is off the table, I'll happily donate.