I'd love something like that, so consider this post a "+1" to the idea. This is similar to Clickteam Fusion's "No display surface" feature available in the developer edition.

This request is very simple to explain, but I'll elaborate a bit more. Since Ashley likes use cases for this sort of stuff, here are a few:

• multiplayer. It would be great to reuse game logic in the server, but ignore display for performance reasons (since rendering is usually the bottleneck).
• App development. If construct manages to get into this (I'd love to try it), especially with construct 3's new IDE features, it would be cool to have a canvasless script (frontend or backend, doesn't matter) that could handle logic.
• Workers/widgets. This is akin to "sub-layouts", that is, layouts that run inside one another. This is especially useful for handling UI screens and similar. When that feature arrives (it's desperately needed), people will want to spawn certain layouts as "workers". This is a bit complicated so I'll elaborate more. Think about this: you have a strategy game like risk, and each battle is a mini-game. You could have the option to "auto-resolve battle", and the engine would just run the minigame without a display surface (to save processing and make it go faster, while simultaneously sparing the developer from making a displayless/event-only version of the mini-game) and report back the results.

This is posted on the wrong section.

Moderators please move this to website issues and feedback

Also tagging Tom which is responsible for this sort of issue.

Hopefully this will all be sorted when we have a more extensible IDE

I'd love to integrate something like this directly in the editor.

grossd, I run into this problem a lot, where construct's primitive (flat) data structures aren't adequate to express many many things. Thankfully we have the SDK.

What I usually end up doing is use the SDK to create a plugin or behavior that hides the data structures, as well as any functions required (push, pop, map/reduce, splice).

Those objects are usually not documented, niche and/or too complex for general use, so I don't release them to the public.

Fimbul

[quote:20430o7r]It's a bit broken, crashes often, and sometimes requires several restarts.

Sounds like an old banger. lol

Still worth it

I think the main problem is just: how do you cram all the UI and features of a relatively complex piece of editing software like Construct 2 on to a tiny screen? Would it even be useful even if you could do it, compared to the speed and precision of a mouse and keyboard?

Implementing an interface that allows for coding on mobile is a hard issue, but "layouting" (changing level's order, moving enemies around, editing a tilemap, etc) not so much.

Maybe an argument for construct 3 having the layout editor as a separate program?

I use this tool to simulate latency, jitter and drops: http://www.tmurgent.com/appv/index.php/ ... ation-tool

It's called "TMNetSim". Downloads are at the bottom (you do not need to use the demo on the page!). You set it up as a localhost proxy and tweak the settings until you get your preferred flavor of network-shittyness.

It's a bit broken, crashes often, and sometimes requires several restarts. Still a golden tool for multiplayer gaming, though!

I disliked the movie, and the more I think about it, the more I hate it.

It's a nonsensical movie from start to finish.

**SPOILERS BELOW**

• It starts with a "dustbowl" scenario for earth collapse (which is insane since lack of food is the least likely problem to wipe out the human race, and even if it were, there would be "bubble-cities" before talk of interplanetary travel), so negative points for lack of creativity and huge wasted opportunities.
• Then it moves on to a "society doesn't care about science anymore" plot that is presented as the reason for the earth being as shit as it is. I'm sorry I wasn't aware I was watching idiocracy.
• Then, a badly done "Saturn V launch scene" that they just ripped off from old NASA tapes. They could have CGI'd something way better, or even used
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  . This is ultimately wasted anyways, as later in the movie it is revealed that their ship can "millenium-falcon takeoff" out of 130% gravity planets.
• A ton of wasted time with boring space scenes (could be enhanced by better music, cool interfaces, futuristic-looking docking mechanics). The CGI on those scenes reminds me of the 90's era (i.e. you can almost see the strings). Apollo 13 had not only more, but also better looking, space scenes.
• We are shown ridiculous-looking spacebots that are completely impractical (I admit that they are funny, though), and are clearly made to look like the 2001 obelisk. They are so ridiculous that they move by dragging themselves around, have a CRT-monitor displaying random bits of code, and when they speak you barely know it's the computer talking.
• The rest of the ship isn't much better. Looks like they recycled some old movie props that were lying around discarded:
  • The doors are impractical and we never get to see a full opening sequence (which are a staple in this genre). Even games routinely do better.
  • The cryopods, which could have looked cool, ended up looking like Ziploc bags for people
  • The ship controls are outdated, they look like old military hardware and game-console bits. There is no HUD to speak of.
  • The ship itself looks dumb for a sci-fi flick, appears to be based on lifting-body X-series SSTO craft of the early 90s (see the x-30)
• The black hole scene is cool up until they warp, then we get the worse "tunnel travel" CGI ever (even star wars did better). We would have been better served with winamp visualisations.
• Then the movie starts with the planets, which fly in the face of everything we know about exoplanets, with impossible geological formations that are never explained, such as this shit right here (but there are many other examples). Also a huge wasted opportunity, since we only get to see 3 barren planets in the entire movie, and we have impressive tools at our disposal, such as Terragen 3, that can render beautiful-looking planets on the cheap (seriously that tool is as easy to use as Construct 2).
• Then we get to the "meat" of the plot, which is the same tired hollywoodian "love overcomes all barriers" trope (warning: TVTropes link). I wasn't expecting this bullcrap in a "serious" scifi movie.
• After this, the movie starts rushing to the end blazing fast (probably because Nolan suddenly realized he couldn't make an 8-hour movie and he had already taken up 2 hours), ignoring plot points along the way and becoming a disjointed trainwreck, due to the director/writers desperately trying to introduce new elements but running out of time.

I can go on and on, but I'll stop now.

I seriously don't get how a movie like this can take more than $2mil to produce. This is serious garage quality. An indie studio could have done better, and for much less money.

> What about multiplayer? Will I have to resync the whole state every time the user tabs away?

> If the user tabs away and the game freezes, then they tab back, the peer will get a full-state update from the host within 500ms.

That's the general case, when you're allowing the plugin to do everything for you, right? What if I'm transmitting custom state through messages? Do events still run?

Let's say, for example purposes only, that I'm making a coop platformer. When one player reaches the end, a "next-level-load" trigger is fired for all peers. Let's also say, for example purposes, that a level load takes some non-trivial time. If one peer is tabbed away, it won't receive the trigger, thus delaying the game for everyone. Or everyone will load and start the next level while that peer will be stuck loading once it tabs back.

Did I misunderstand? Because if it were simply throttled to 10fps (or even 2fps), as long as logic continued it wouldn't be a problem, since I can always cram the full level loading operations into a single frame (a pretty slow frame, sure, but it won't matter)

The browser engine effectively pauses the game when you switch tab. You really don't want to work around this. It will unnecessarily drain battery on laptop and mobile devices, and freezing the game allows it to go in to low-power idle states.

You can easily check how much time has passed if switching away. Just check the wallclocktime expression in 'On suspend' and 'On resume' (Browser object triggers). So even if the game has frozen because the user switched away, you can still tell how much time they spent, *and* you get to save battery because the game properly froze.

What about multiplayer? Will I have to resync the whole state every time the user tabs away? Sounds like an enormous pain

I remember seeing somewhere that the FPS would drop to 10 or something, is that no longer the case?