John Cutter's Recent Forum Activity

  • Most of my Construct 3 projects have been small, one screen affairs, but I'm looking to make a larger project for Steam.

    I always put all of my menus and other UI graphics in my main layout. It gets so messy! But ChatGPT just suggested using different layouts for these and putting them on global layers that I can just turn on and off.

    Does anyone (everyone?) already do this? Any gotchas or issues with this approach? Sure feels cleaner...

  • I'm working on an editor for a card game. I can drag a selection rectangle and move/copy multiple sprites, but the z order gets messed up. Not sure why this is happening, but I thought I could fix the problem by saving the initial z order (and updating this as needed) and then setting the z order again.

    Unfortunately, there's no way to "SET" the z order for a sprite, only the elevation -- which I know is a different thing.

    So how do I fix this? (Thanks!)

  • Thank you, Everade. I'm totally clueless about stuff like that. I'll do some research!

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  • After doing some more testing my problem is a little different than I first thought. To avoid confusion I decided to rewrite my question.

    For about a year my game has used an internal .json file for daily puzzle data. Unfortunately, every time I add new content I have to completely re-publish my game, so I thought it would be easier to make the .json file external.

    I removed the internal file and set up a spot on my website for the new file. When I run the game it downloads the .json file and runs. (Without the .json file the game wouldn't work at all.) But it's not downloading the correct file somehow.

    I look at the file that is on my website, and then I print out the AJAX.LastData text and they don't match at all! (They may have matched the first time I uploaded the .json file, but I have been deleting the old files and uploading new ones. It's not downloading the new ones!)

    Anyone know why this might be happening?

    SOLVED: I turned to ChatGPT this morning and explained my problem. As suspected, it suggested a caching issue and provided several solutions. The first thing I tried didn't work (adding some APACHE code to my .httaccess file to prevent the .json file from being cached). But it also proposed that I add a unique query string to my download URL, which DID work:

    "https://worddad.com/download/output.json?v=" & current_date

    I probably need to change "current_date" to a timestamp. I think that variable is just the day, in text format. But this change fixed my problem!!

  • Thanks for the reply!

    I actually need the physics because I've decided I want my car to slide down the icy hill, hitting other cars, trees, etc. I'll need the physics for that.

    Perhaps I could turn physics off for the trip up the hill, and then turn it on for the slide down? (If that's not possible, then maybe I could use one car to drive up the hill, and at the top I'll switch it out with a physics version of the car, and let it pinball down.)

    Would that work?

  • I'm working on a simple (for fun) physics game that I'm hoping I can knock out in a week or so. Unfortunately, I'm struggling a little with the physics. Could someone maybe give me some tips to get me started?

    What I need:

    I plan to have a vertical scrolling topdown screen. It will look like a road and I have some ideas to help me *suggest* that there is a flat part, and then a fairly steep ICY hill. The goal of the game is to drive as high up the hill as you can.

    UP ARROW = accelerate

    LEFT ARROW = turn left

    RIGHT ARROW = turn right

    As the car moves up the hill I'd like for it to get harder and harder to control, turning slightly right and left as the tires slip on the ice.

    Eventually, the car should stop, due to gravity. (And I might even have it slide back down the hill.)

    HOW?

    To simulate the hill should I increase the world gravity every 0.0x seconds? Or should I use one of the other physics properties?

    For the car I'm currently applying a vertical force (270 degrees??) to "drive" the car forward. I may randomly introduce rotational force that players will need to counteract with the controls.

    Am I approaching this the right way?

  • I'll take a look at this. Thank you for taking the time!!

  • The more I think about this the more I'm worried that it won't be doable... Would love to get some feedback!

    Here's what I am planning:

    1. My app will run online

    2. Users can upload any size .png or .tiff image

    3. The image will scale to fit whatever screen they are using

    4. Users can type in a message and move it around the image

    5. Users can then re-save their image, WITH the text in the appropriate place

    I seem to recall there being a way in Construct 3 to capture an image from the screen. But, what if the user uploaded an image that was significantly larger than their screen? Wouldn't the capture reduce the quality of the image? (Since the image had to be scaled down.)

  • Word Dad (worddad.com) is a free daily word game where you drag Scrabble tiles to form words. Solve the puzzle and earn a dad joke!

    Players can form ANY words and I thought it would be fun to provide definitions for the words they create. (Including funny definitions!) My game dictionary has 14,586 words, so I got some help from chatGPT!

    Here are a few sample definitions:

    those (pron.): distant objects you can't quite recall the name of

    old (adj.): what your kids call you every time you forget something

    oiled (adj.): the state of your hair after you've used too much product

    lanes (n.): where you're always stuck behind someone slower

    pouch (n.): a kangaroo's version of cargo pants

    push (v): how your cat confirms gravity using the items on your shelf

  • I recently released a daily word game (worddad.com) but I'm having some strange bugs related to the Load/Save feature. It then occurred to me that I'm very confused about how this feature actually *works*.

    - During the game I do a Save every time players move a letter tile

    - I also do a separate save of the current date

    - At the start of the game I compare the current date to the saved date. If they are the same then I do a Load. (If a Load exists.)

    When the game loads is it loading *everything*, including the game's code? I feel like I can make a change to the game's code but I don't see it because I'm using a Load from before I made the change. But I'm pretty sure that I've had the exact opposite happen, too. I make a change, launch the game which Loads a version from earlier in the day. But the code change shows up.

    Confused.

    So what exactly is getting Saved?

  • I'm going to post a quick reply for closure.

    I filed a bug report on this issue: github.com/Scirra/Construct-bugs/issues/7296

    Ashley closed it with this comment: "The underlying Clipboard API works in Chrome, but a known issue is currently preventing it from working in the Android WebView. I would guess when viewing in the Facebook app it is using the Android WebView instead of the real Chrome browser so is running in to that bug. I'm afraid there's nothing we can do until Google fix the issue."

    So the problem only seems to happen when someone accesses my game from the Facebook link. There are two player workarounds:

    1. Type the URL for the game directly into the browser

    2. After clicking the link, one can click the "..." at the top right corner of the Facebook browser and select "open in external browser". Then the clipboard will work.

  • Darn, I just got another person saying that the game won't load due to Malwarebytes. Not sure if this is something that I can report like a bug or not. Does anyone know?