I was thinking a "Layer filter" or "Smartlayer" might be useful.

Basically a toggle or tickbox that would hide or grey out any code that isn't relevant to your currently selected layer.

Eg. If the background layer is selected, only code for content on the background layer and variables that that code uses are shown.

(Using multiple event sheets is getting more and more confusing)

I keep getting that balloons disabled message too but I don't feel comfortable tinkering with the reg files. I've no idea what else they might effect on my computer. It was working just fine without showing that box until one of my last Construct 2 updates.

blot_alpha_demo.exe was removed and blocked by my virus scanner saying it was "High Risk".

Anyone else having any issues?

Ah cool, Thankyou for that. That's even more flexible than I thought then.

<img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

I had to move some layers around in a project to make room for another layer underneath and found that this messed up most of my code which referenced layers.

The code referenced my HUD on layer 3 but I had to move the HUD to layer 4, but all the code was still referencing level 3.

I've noticed how if you change the name of a variable it will automatically change the name everywhere else (which is fantastic) and I was thinking it would be a really useful to make it track which layer it is referencing in the same way

If you're just starting a game you should be thinking in terms of what would make a fun game mechanic. Once you have something working just using squares you can dress it up with any graphics you like. It's a spaceship dodging aliens or a canoe dodging rocks or a motorcycle dodging cars or a airplane dodging balloons or a battleship dodging floating mines. Same game but "dressed up" in different graphics. What you're describing here is the makeup you put on afterwards. If you start with an idea as inspiration that's fine but you don't have to have one to begin with.

Have you considered making this for an app store? It's quite fun.

The graphics might need some polish, although my biggest concern would be the Lucasart legal department. There's a big difference between someone making an Indy-like game and actually calling it Indiana Jones.

If it's going to stay as a fan game there's probably nothing to worry about.

Even something really tougnue-in-cheek like Indiana Raider and the Tomb of Doom, or just make up a whole different character.

It just seems a shame to have all that work and not put it on an appstore

Ah, haven't had a *deep* look but I think you're telling the shot to go from the tip of the mouse cursor instead of the center of the cross-hair?

When moving the mouse around fast and clicking I started shooting things before the cross-hair gets there. Is it meant to move slower than the mouse? It has a nice sniper feel to it's movement so I was assuming that is the case.

Lol, keep the name appropriate to the actual theme ;P

Yeah, the switching between keyboard and mouse thing feels really odd to play, nice work on the graphics though, that's quite a bit of content so far. I would concentrate on fleshing the actual game out before you continue with the graphics though. This is in development so you can just use the simplest box sketches you can make as place holders for the art until you have the game play finished. If you ever saw the Mass Effect development videos, they had commander Shepard running around a world made out of nothing but white boxes until they were happy with the design.

It will be annoying if you have to redo a whole rendered background because you realize the game would be better if you wanted change the room layout. Just put screens with squares for doors and objects and NPCs, all with text labels on them showing who they are and what state they are showing (NPC_Maria_happy, Light_switch03_off)

After you play it through like that you may realize that some areas are just annoying, confusing, too close or far apart, or just redundant and get in the way. Especially in that nice flat style of adventure game rooms can be disorientating. There are three methods I can remember that games use to stop confusion.

• Make the rooms wrap around 360 degrees, I'm sure you can find some code to let you do that somewhere. That way you can come into a room facing away from the door you entered from.
• If you've come through a door have a large back arrow at the bottom of the screen clearly showing that you are backing out through the door you came through. Your layout needs to be a tree like structure if you use this.
• If your view is basically "walking into the room and turning around" so that you can see the door you came through in the background, make all the doors visually distinctive if there more than one. "I came in through the white door, its the one next to the thick metal door and across from the glass elevator.

Also, try and actually map an area out on paper if you can. People get a feel for the layout of a building and if the doors are too close, or a corridor is too short, players will get disorientated.

You only ever get a real feel for this once it's in a playable form, and especially once you get someone who has never played it before to try it.

You HAVE to get it tested with the awful graphics in; and do NOT say anything at all while they are playing. The game has to explain everything it needs to.

Then you do the graphics, now that you know which characters you're keeping and which rooms

Lastly you leave the graphics until last because you have to allow yourself to throw pieces of the game away if they don't fit in with the pace of the game well enough. (Eg. Needing to solve a complicated puzzle during a chase scene)

This can save you a LOT of time and heartache in the long run.

When they made Portal 2, they actually created three times as many game mechanics than they ended up using because it didn't let the game flow as they wanted it to. They threw away 2/3 of the mechanics!

Any time you use scaling or rotation vectors always look far better than bitmaps, plus you can let it scale to suit any mobile device's resolution so you don't get the images coming up smaller on higher res screens, or having to put multiple copies of the images in at different sizes. Still it allows your games to scale to any size the user wants without any problems.

Inkscape is a v nice free SVG drawing program if you haven't seen that yet.