At some point in the last few months, I noticed that my computer was running my game at a lower amount of frames per second. I was adding things here and there so I just assumed it was the extra work load. Where I used to get 60 fps, I was now getting 40. Not a huge deal. It was still playable, just not as smooth.

Then today I tried a quick demo on the forum and saw that it was also 40fps. I thought that was a weird coincidence so I loaded up a very early version of my game that had next to nothing in it and that I knew ran well and it was also at 40fps.

I took my current build to another computer and tested it there. It ran at 60 to 75 fps depending on the size of my window.

Does anyone know why I might be getting the locked 40fps on my computer? Thanks for your help.

Ben

http://www.needyourdisease.com

rojohound Thanks for the reply. I knew about the export of PNG-8s. I was just curious about the use of them at runtime. I'm just starting to sweat about my memory usage. I'd love to know what the average memory usage the C2 user has. I've definitely had to get smarter about my asset creation.

Not sure if Ashley or someone else in the forum could shed some light on this for me, but I was wondering if it were at all possible to just use the sprites as PNG-8's instead of converting them to PNG-32's? My game is pretty animation intensive and I've noticed that 116 megs of memory is used just for the player character while the download size for the entire game is only 6 megs.

Not sure if its possible or could be a feature in Construct 3. Any explanation is appreciated.

Ben

Looks great, —

I've finally got my test Spriter NPC working so they can be held and animate with the Player animations. Working on alternate versions of the player animations for when they are holding Civilians.

-Ben

http://www.needyourdisease.com

http://www.twitter.com/needyourdisease

http://www.facebook.com/needyourdisease

I've been away long enough. Time for a quick update. Since I was last on the forum, I've become much more comfortable with the Spriter object and have completely embraced using it for all NPC's. I've also started creating new versions of the player animations for when you are holding a Civilian. The Spriter object then overlaps the player to give the illusion of holding. I'm also animating cycles for the NPC's to react to the angle the player is flying.

Hopefully the animations won't take too long. I really wish I would have done them at the same time as the normal ones, but I was just too eager. More to come.

Also, my animation list is getting a little crazy.

-Ben

http://www.needyourdisease.com

http://www.twitter.com/needyourdisease

http://www.facebook.com/needyourdisease

Now that I have a little Spriter experience, I was wanting to redo the animation where they are being held by the player. This led me to reevaluate my current run cycle. First, the torso was a little stiff so I definitely needed to add some twisting in. Second, for the civilian art to lay correctly on top of the player art, they need to be slightly towards camera. Very tricky. So I went into my original run animation file in Toon Boom Animate Pro and started changing things up. I need to correct (and possibly redraw) the cape and I should be done. Then I can make the version for holding a civilian. Fingers crossed.

Be sure to "like" my Facebook page for more consistent updates: https://www.facebook.com/needyourdisease

Thanks!

-Ben

Waiting on Apple approving the new content update to Jack...

I really like the subtle stretch on that jump animation. That's some solid animation fundamentals you don't often see in pixel art. Game looks cool.

-Ben

Back with a quick update. Things are still moving along nicely as I've taken a break from the hero to start working on "those that he shall save". Namesly, the Civilians/NPC's. I had recently started playing closer attention to the some of the blog posts and realized that all of my well compressed PNG's were being converted to 32-bit. This was causing huge leaps in the amount of memory I was using compared to my download size.

So where I was played with the idea of a using skeletal animation for my NPC's, it has now become a necessity. Lucky for me, I'm loving Brashmonkey's Spriter and thing it will do just the trick.

I've mapped out some the the character "states" that i want and plan to build those animations in Spriter. You can head over to my Facebook page and see plenty of my tests in video form here: https://www.facebook.com/needyourdisease

I'm hoping to have more soon as I'm planning on tackling Spriter's character packs and getting those randomized. See you then.

-Ben

Beautiful looking game. I'm really loving the art style. Expect a PM from my shortly.

lucid Just wanted to say that I followed your directions for using Spriter for NPC's and it worked perfect. FPS never dipped below 59. Amazing! Thanks for the help.

First off, congratulations on reaching Steam and the launch of 1.0. I'm finally digging into Spriter and its amazing.

I apologize if these were answered already (I swear I looked), but I have a couple of questions:

I'm using Spriter for my enemies and NPC's and I'm running into trouble with the origin point. I've added the platform behavior to the Spriter Object, but its lifting my artwork too high. Can I adjust the origin point on the Spriter Object somehow?

Also, I've dabbled with spawning a box and using that for the behaviors (like you would with a player character), but Construct 2 won't let me create a container and put a Spriter object inside. I guess it doesn't like putting a container in a container.

If there isn't a way to move that origin point, what do you think is the best way to use Spriter Objects as Enemies?

Thanks for your help.

-Ben

Implementing some speed trails to show the...um....speediness?