I try to setup a multiplayer game, where each player has his own UI (health bar etc). Creating said UI when a player joins and positioning is no problem, however, I'm struggling to find a solution on how to identify which health bar belongs to which player.

My first idea was to write the UIDs of each UI element into certain columns of an array, so I could get those UIDs and therefor the correct element if I need it. However, this seems a little bit messy/complicated for me (I started using arrays and understand the basics, I find it just hard to handle them, as I do not have a visual representation like a table) and I wonder if there are better solutions.

My "perfect" solution, which doesn't seem to be possible with C2, would be to group UI elements of a player together. When a player joins and his UI is created, I add every UI element that belongs to him to the group PlayerUI1 for example. If I now want to do something with the healthbar of player 1, I would access it by something like PlayerUI1.Child("Healthbar") or an event like "Pick Child of Group".

As I said, the example solution doesn't seem to be supported by C2. I also thought about using families or containers, but both are not providing the events/actions I need.

Does anybody have an idea on how to solve that problem without using an array? Thanks in advance!

Hey,

just use the "Bound to Layout" behavior for the player. This would be the easiest solution, at least if your playfield is the same size as the layout.

I haven't had a chance to try out the new behavior, but does that mean that it isn't possible to do moving obstacles, as the cells which can't be passed are calculated at startup instead of on demand or every X seconds (tick would probably be too much :)).

Hi Ashley,

I tried the Office 2007 Black skin, but to be honest, it isn't very close to that what I would like to see. Have a look here: ephotozine.com/articles/aeon3-photoshop-cs6-18783/images/cs6-main-screen.jpg

The Office skin for instance does not touch the white background of the property window, nor, and much more important, the event sheets.

Hi there,

I'm playing around with Construct2 since roughly a week and having much fun trying out different ideas I had in my mind for ages - it is really an awesome tool =). One thing that I really would like to see in future versions is the possibility to switch to a dark skin. It is easier on the eyes when you work for several hours, and therefore I use a dark skin in every software that provides that option. Have a look at the new photoshop, at modo or unity pro to get an idea what I'm talking about. I can understand that a dark skin won't fit as the default, as it looks more "intimidating" and less friendly for new and potentially new users, so I wouldn't change that. If it is a serious task to implement that feature, you could also consider making it only for the paid versions of construct. I think it might even be another reason for some people to upgrade. Unfortunately I already have, so there is one less customer you could have convinced to buy for that reason - just kidding ;)

Thanks again for that awesome tool and feel free to tell me your opinion on my suggestion. See you around!

Edit: It seems you already have found a solution :).

Cut the river into 3 parts then, part 1 and 3 being solid like now, part 2 not, which is the part where the bridge is overlapping.

At least that's how I would do it (without having seen your river and bridge images) :).

Maybe there is another option to make the bridge overruling the solid behavior of the river, but unfortunately I don't know it as I just started to use Construct2.

You maybe already have thought about that but why not cut the river in two parts and put the bridge in between?

Thanks for the quick and helpful reply!

Will try out your suggestions and report back later :).

4. Having to put every object into the layout regardless if it is used on startup or not

One additional question that is bugging me. I have some particle effects that I'm using for weapons. Obviously, they are not needed in the layout on startup, but it seems that I have to place one instance of each particle effect anyway, otherwise the game will give me a big error window when I load it. Is there a way to not place these objects in the layout, as it unnecessarily clutters my layout and I have to make sure that they are not doing anything I don't want to and cannot be seen by the player at the start of the game (not that difficult with particle effects but more difficult with enemies for instance).

Hi,

I just started with Construct a few days ago, and I'm already making good progress. Finally I have a tool where I can develop my ideas into a real game in an amount of time I'm comfortable with =). However, I have a few questions:

1. Trigger other events

Is there a way to trigger one event from multiple others without using global variables? Lets say I have an event that reloads a weapon, and I want to trigger it by pressing the R key as well as when I'm trying to shoot but don't have enough ammo. I have split my project into several event sheets to make it more organized. I have one for player controls, where the manually reloading event is triggered, and one for weapons, where the check for ammo event is located as well as the reloading event itself.

The best possible solution for me would be to have an action like "trigger event X" that I can use in multiple locations (and event sheets), but it seems there isn't such a thing? Am I missing something or do I really have to set a global variable, like "DoReload"?

2. Performance on conditions

Coming from more traditional game frameworks like Unity, where I had to do actual programming, I also always try to take performance into account. Putting an event with a condition like PlayerHealth < 0 into a sheet does ring some alarm bells for me, as it seems construct is now checking every tick if this condition is true. Naturally I would only check for this when for instance the event is triggered that reduces the player health, but this gets more and more complicated the larger the project gets (at least without the ability to trigger other events like described in question 1). Should I be concerned about performance in those cases, or does Construct do some magic to reduce the impact those checks have on performance?

I'm still not quite sure how the performance of html 5 games in a browser concerning game logic is, compared to lets say a stand alone Unity game.

3. GUI sprites & text

What is the best way to make GUI sprites and text? I just put them into an own layer named GUI, and give them the anchor behavior. However, when I move around in my top down shooter, those elements stay in place on the screen (perfect), but jitter (not so perfect). I'm using chrome and I think I somewhere have red ("lost" the tab with the website unfortunately) that this seems to be the issue, but I'm wondering if there are any other (better) ways to make the GUI, and/or if there will be a fix for that issue in chrome?

Thanks in advance!