Only just getting around to responding now, busy evenings.

Rory: I really like the idea of having the "difficult thing" and then planning around that. I think part of my problem is getting overwhelmed of where to start. Is the exit to close? To far away? Is the level to small? Too large? Are there too many traps? And so on and so on. I like the idea of saying "Ok this level will have lasers that will fire in a certain pattern and you need to jump through them" and then build out from there. Get the core aspect of it working and then add to it. I think that will help a lot.

DravenX: Seems quite a few of you all start with pen and paper first. I have a pile of printer paper in front of me right now so I'll start sketching and see where it goes!

kayin: I really like the "try and vary these shapes because that maximizes the effects of spatial memory in the player" note. I think I've found myself constantly battling with this as I tend to pick out boxy repetitive patterns. I'll check out VVVVVV and...wait...you did "I Wanna Be the Guy"?! Nice! Ha, I was already using your game as reference <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Awesome feedback guys, I really appreciate it.

So I'm getting pretty close to finishing the 'engine' for my game. All the systems are 99% done, ignoring any actual art or sound effects...

So I've started building out some levels and damn, it's hard. Turns out level design is an entirely separate skill-set that is really hard to fake. So I'm very curious how others here build out there levels.

Do you scribble out a level on pen and paper first? If so, does that not make it hard play-testing what the player might do?

Do you go into the layout editor and throw a bunch of things randomly onto the map, then try and build a level around it?

Do you think of certain challenges you want the player to have, and then carefully plan a level around that?

What about building out the first few levels that slowly introduce the character to the game? Do you leave these for last or do you start on these first?

I'd love to hear some of the processes you all go through.

I agree, it's a little annoying. It would be nice if this was supported and/or layout inheritance was bought over from Construct Classic.

One way around this that I tend to use (which does require a little bit of fussing about) is:

1) Backup your project.

2) Browse to the project on your computer. There will be a folder called "Layouts".

3) Find the layout you want to duplicate. There will be a .xml and a .uistate.xml file, for example Level1.xml and Level1.uistate.xml

4) Copy and paste these two files, then rename them to the new layout. For example, rename the copies Level2.xml and Level2.uistate.xml.

5) Open Level2.xml and change the following line to the new level name:

"<name>Level1</name>"

6) One last step - Browse to the .caproj file in the root directory and open it with notepad. Scroll to the tag:

        <layout-folder expanded="1">

            <layout>Level1.xml</layout>

            </layout-folder>

              ?

7) In here create a new line for your new level:

            <layout-folder expanded="1">

            <layout>Level1.xml</layout>

          <layout>Level2.xml</layout>

            </layout-folder>

8) Restart C2 and it should display the new layout fully duplicated.

It might seem like a lot of steps, but it only takes a few seconds once you have done it a few times.

Hope this helps!

Really cool.

Is this a relatively new thing some engines do, or is this one of those tricks that goes back to the early days of video games (given the extreme number of platformers back in the day)?

I should probably start reading up on sin/cos/tan in video games. I found this thread from the contruct classic forums if anyone is interested.

Ah I see. It's interesting that engines differ on how to handle this - One would think that the maths is the maths and everyone would follow it the same. Very interesting.

Thanks newt!

First off, I'm not much of a game developer so this question is probably in the realm of "How do I facebook my google books".

I noticed that if I have a bullet fire at an angle of 90 degrees, instead of the bullet going straight up it actually goes straight down. 0 still goes right and 180 still goes left, but 135 goes to the bottom left instead of the top left. It seems the angle of degrees has been flipped upside down.

Is there a reason for this? Is it something specific to video games? <img src="smileys/smiley9.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

This quick little workaround by dafoundah might be worth a try. I've not attempted it myself, but in theory it makes sense.

Any suggestion for these situation?

So what I did to get around the error was I made a small change to the runtime.js. On line 161 I changed:

inst.instance_vars = save_obj["inst_vars"].slice();

to

while(inst.instance_vars.length > save_obj["inst_vars"].length)

   save_obj["inst_vars"].push(0)

inst.instance_vars = save_obj["inst_vars"].slice();

It means if you have any instance variables set through the IDE (that spritebank does not know about) they will be reset to 0, but it at least lets you load the spritebank so you can resave the json.

I guess this doesn't solve the problem posed by you if you are updating instance variables through the IDE. That I'm not sure of, I think I need to learn more about how plugins work <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

What is happening is that you are calling a pick on the object before C2 has hit a top level event. Where as before R110 the function would have run inside the scope of the object creation and been considered a sub-event, a bug fix (as I just found out myself) in R110 means the functions need to repick the object they are working with.

<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5426011/fixed/Creation_picking.GIF" border="0">

(from a post by r0j0hound)

Where as previously this would have been running like another action in line 2, it's now more or less running as a new event like it was on line 5.

To get around this you have to hit a top level event first. In this case you do something like:

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/39I50.png" border="0">

Thanks Kyatric.

I read the release notes but I think I misunderstood that to mean it was picking objects outside the scope of the calling function (seeing as how I thought the bug it fixed was how it was actually supposed to work). No worries, I'll pass the UID in and repick the object.

Thanks mate.

I was using the function plugin from rex until upgrading to R111 from R108.2, after which I noticed a few bugs appearing. As an experiment I switched over to the official function plugin but noticed the same behaviour.

The issue seems to be that if I select a sprite and then, in that context, perform an action on it, the code inside the function loses context. Previously this was working fine, but now breaks in both the plugin by rex and the official plugin.

For example, in this code the score only registers as 50 (the first box in the layout), despite there being a second box I am clicking on with a score of 100.

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/HNJ5P.png" border="0">

Sample Capx

What I'm curious about is, should I indeed have the scope of the calling event? Or is the function separate from the context of where it is called? Is this something that changed post R108.2?

Cheers!

Arg I know what it is - The crawled quick-link by Google is pointing to page 183. Try searching for 'construct 2 forum' and seeing what link appears for the 'Construct 2 general' board. All the other links point to the first page.