Oh wow. /bookmarked

Try making a game using one of the 'fullscreen in browser' options. Then hit F11. In the top 3 major browsers, you're now playing in hardware-accelerated fullscreen. Fullscreen gaming is perfectly possible in HTML5. The main barrier is people aren't used to it - like you say you assume you need an EXE to play fullscreen, but it's perfectly possible to do it in a browser, you probably have just never hit F11 to play a fullscreen browser game before.

I'm aware that you can go fullscreen in browsers. Chrome seems to do it best, but still causes issues when the mouse hovers near the top of the screen (while testing my breakout clone, a little item scrolls onto the screen informing me that I can leave fullscreen by hitting F11 again... in the process I lose mouse control... and my ball sails right past the paddle... 1 life lost, thanks Chrome.)

Firefox's idea of fullscreen appears to include leaving a menubar at the top of the screen and the windows taskbar down the bottom... unless there's an option for "actual" fullscreen that I haven't found.

To be honest I haven't used Internet Explorer since the late 90's, so I'm not sure how it handles it.

Browsers always have been, and always will be quirky. There'll always be inconsistencies between the browsers, and I'll likely have to accommodate the fact that people will stick to their browser of choice, rather than the one that plays my game better. This is ironic, in that html5 games are supposed to be platform independent, but have become somewhat reliant on the browser they are being played in, merely moving the "platform" variable one step further along. Games will now run on a Mac and PC, as long as those Macs and PCs are running latest generation browsers. This is fine for certain things, but it's a trade off nonetheless.

The recent update that allows fullscreen zooming is pretty awesome, and I implemented it the second I updated, but even with the superior aspect ratio handling compared to CC, it still results in a game that is unreleasable because of issues running it within the browser environment. And my crisp and chunky pixel graphics are unavoidably blurred with the linear scaling that I can't turn off (I'm sure it will be possible to choose nearest neighbour in the future... maybe).

I understand and agree that focusing on html5 (at least for now) is the best choice for a small company with limited resources - putting those resources into the features that are likely to create mass appeal, and the ability to make games that have the least impediments to getting the gaming equivalent of "bums on seats" (I guess it's still bums on seats?)... realistically, browser games made in Construct2 are more likely to be played by the majority of people than the equivalent exe games, and it's quite true that the majority of people who use Construct to make games will only ever make small, short attention span type games. And maybe in the future, the distinction between operating system and web browser will be gone entirely... and everyone will be running a Chrome OS, and all apps will run inside, side by side and on top of the browser environment... even Construct will be a browser based application, and you'll be able to run browsers inside browsers!

Honestly, I don't think that revolution has happened yet, or is likely to happen quite so soon - and even if it would be awesome, I still hope the current generation of games aren't hobbled by being too far ahead of their time.

I'm all in favour of an Exe wrapper (essentially it would be an html5 browser that doesn't do anything except run the game, correct?) as a temporary work-around. As an optional plugin, I don't think your fears that people would be confused about it are anything to worry about assuming the exporter is clearly labelled as "HTML5 Application" or something along those lines. If it can get around some of the 3rd party browser hassles, then I'll beta test the bejesus out of it.

HTML5 is unlikely to ever out-perform a native EXE, so there's still a solid case to make an EXE exporter for performance reasons.

That goes without saying.

Also, thanks for staying in the conversation that I'm sure you're sick to hell of by now.

Love the BRIX font to would be cool if the score and other info was the same. Rojohound made a spritefont example HERE thats if you have all the other characters.

Thanks. I'll look into that - I do intend to use some kind of retro pixel font eventually. The arial font is only placeholder.

I was able to get the ball to disappear off the left edge of the screen at one point and the game didn't register anything.

This sometimes happens to me if the framerate drops below 60fps at the wrong moment. Is yours running smoothly, or are you getting occasionally stutters? Since I started testing on Chrome with hardware acceleration it hasn't happened (which is why I think it's related).

I'm not too sure how to prevent it, but I'll see if there is some extra way to detect that the ball went through a wall it shouldn't have.

I also was able to get the ball's angle at perfectly 45 degrees so it was stuck indefinitely on the x axis.

How long did you wait before you gave up? I've actually added a tiny amount of gravity to the ball, so it should eventually start to fall - you just have to be patient.

I'll fiddle with it to see if I can just detect when the ball is moving exactly horizontal and then speed up the correction process.

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

Hi!

According to my profile, my account is 160 days old... but I've only really started using it recently, so.... um. Hi.

I have a web presence, which is mostly about art and stuff.

By the way, this post totally isn't entirely for the badge thing... not at all. I am the kind of person who will continue playing a video game just for achievements, but that's totally different.

I started using Construct with the intent of making a totally epic platform adventure game... judging by my progress, it will be available by Summer 2035.

Can HTML5 support controllers/gamepads on windows/linux/mac?

I'm guessing the best response to that will be about as reassuring as it was when I discovered the gamepad support in The Binding of Isaac consists of "google JoyToKey".

Ingenious. I've been looking for a good way to do this, this is great as it snaps the player to the edge... all that's missing is a smooth transition from freefall to the snapped location.

This shouldn't be read as a rant against html5 or me screaming for an exe exporter. I'm actually very pleased with c2, and am willing to fall back to cc if need be...

But of all the features that may or may not be implemented in the near or distant future, I'd have to say an exe exporter is far and away the most appealing to me.

Even for free games, even for casual games. Yes, browsers are convenient and good for many types of games - but I cannot get around the fact that I find them simply annoying. They get in the way of the game. Maybe other people like playing games in tiny windows while they browse facebook, but not me. The first thing I do when I find a good browser based game, is look for a way to download it and play it in fullscreen.

(this is usually doable in flash, but not quite as easy in html5 yet)

Don't get me wrong, I like casual games - and sometimes it can be preferable to play them in a window - but even then I'd prefer an exe to a firefox tab. As a player I don't like losing mouse focus just because I've hovered over the edge of a window, and as a developer, I don't like leaving so many variables up to the whims of the web browser. Essentially, the only browser I would be happy presenting my game in is one that is effectively invisible. No tabs, no pop ups, no non-game related menus, no address bar, no browser branding. Also, having to jump backward in terms of shaders and effects is quite frustrating.

But I'm not able to create my own browser... I mean, I'm using Construct to make the game - what does that tell you about my programming skills?

...but all that said. If an exe exporter never comes for C2. I'll use Construct Classic for any serious projects... just waiting for someone to add less atrocious aspect ratio handling.

Keep up the great work, no matter what my personal preferences are, the construct environment is hands down the best beginner game development software I've tried... hence the early adopter license.

1. Yep, I've noticed the cursor problem. I'm not sure, but would AbsoluteX make any difference? I guess I'll have to live with an annoying arrow on screen most of the time.

2. At the moment the collision polygon is angled on the sides of the paddle, but the result is perhaps a bit too subtle.

3. Unicorn dust is being sent by Owl Courier, it should arrive within a cycle depending on which dimension you're in.

• Thanks for the tips!

Current build: play BRiK 0.0.7b - Now with locally cached high score (just one), and a crosshair :(

<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46479820/brick/007a-screen1.png" border="0">

BRiK (working title) is a pixelly breakout/arkanoid clone that I'm hoping will be the first complete C2 project for me. I started this a week or two ago, but got distracted by the space contest, and yesterday I started building a minesweeper clone for some reason.

Anyway. BRiK is intended to be fast paced and full of blips and boops, and combos and multipliers and powerups, and eventually the graphics will actually look good (colourful at least) and the sounds will be more appropriate.

Features so far include:

A paddle.

A ball.

Some bricks (3 levels)

Combo bonuses and score multipliers.

Two kinds of MULTIBALL: Regular, and ULTRA (I dunno, you think of a name.)

Levels are randomly selected

Bonus life every time you get a x9 combo (which isn't difficult).

So essentially, it's the very basic game up and running. I have a lot of things I want to do to it... first on the list is a server based high score list (if anyone has any advice on how to go about this I would be grateful.)

Anyone that wants to take the time to point out bugs, problems or design flaws will be rewarded with millions of dollars worth of invisible unicorn dust, and a thumbs up.

-cheers

Paul

Regarding lives, I think the easiest way would be to assign a global variable ("lives" or "health") to your player object, and upon collision with an enemy, subtract 1 from that variable.

Then once "lives" reaches zero you can kill your player in any manner of ways.

An instance variable would also work, but would be more appropriate if you have multiple players, or would like to assign a certain amount of health to each enemy.

Jumping on a monster would be much easier with "overlapping at offset", but I don't think it's been implemented in C2 yet. I'd try comparing X and Y co-ordinates of the player in relation to the enemy to test if the player is on top of the enemy while colliding.

There's an example of another way to do it here.

edit: Here's how I would do it. link

On a lark I started a Minesweeper clone today as my first attempt at using arrays for something, and have got the very basic stuff working pretty well, but there are a couple of things I'd be grateful for some assistance with.

Here is the capx, and game

1. I would like to be able to sweep away adjoining cells once an empty cell is clicked. I attempted this with a pretty hacky solution involving spitting out invisible "sweeper" sprites that would overlap other cells to instigate a sort of chain reaction... and this seems to work at first, but then it slows down to a crawl and then the browser locks up.

I would have tried to test for things overlapping at certain offsets, but this doesn't seem to be implemented in C2 yet. Am I stuck until this is updated, or is there another way?

2. I've been a little inconsistent with how I am detecting things such as whether there is a bomb under a particular cell, or on an adjoining cell, or if that cell has been clicked... so during my experimentation I created a whole lot of instance variables that are probably redundant. I'd be interested to hear if there are more efficient ways of doing this as well.

I would prefer to be able to do everything from within the context of the array if possible, rather than relying on the sprites, but I'm not familiar with what you can and can't do with an array yet.

3. Any other comments or suggestions on the way I've gone about this whole thing would also be appreciated. I still haven't even thought about implementing things like marker flags, a timer, scoring system or even detecting once you've completed the level... baby steps I guess.

It's also not out of the realm of possibility to make your own behaviour and plug it in. Javascript and all, right?

edit: sh*t, my signature is borked. Ignore it.