[quote:1n1e3pdp]How do you keep the data across layouts? global variables? Like if you were to go to a character screen, where do you store the player's attributes and how do you access them? In a combat layout you probably need access to that same data. How do you transfer it without using a global table or array?

The game it self is split into several areas, that differ so much from each other that only very few objects needs to be present at all layouts. For instant the global map where you move your party around in a big group and travel around the "world" is also the place where caravans, city trading and global events takes place. The dungeon area is a dungeon crawler and it will pause the global events, then the tactical combat is whenever the player encounter something and where fighting and everything like casting magic etc. takes place. So I really only need to keep characters and there skills, quests and the items they are carrying global and they are just done by making the objects global.

Some of the things are created for certain things, for instant in the tactical map the characters that the player moves around are just dummy characters that are linked to the actually characters and all stats modifications like weapon bonuses, buffs etc are gotten the same way as items are linked to a character through a "Owner.UID" and when the fight is over they are just destroyed.

The same with enemy items which are created along with the enemies unit. So even though it might seem like a lot of objects there are rarely a lot active at the same time.

[quote:1n1e3pdp]I guess I hadn't thought of C2 not supporting a plugin.. that would be bad.. that CSV plugin makes life REALLY easy, since using arrays is a little cumbersome in C2. Or rather, not very descriptive.

I don't know if its a big problem or not, but I just want to be save. But not a huge fan of arrays my self. However there are some very nice features with them that I like, such as "Array contains" which makes checking stuff really easy. But it seems pretty good from your example so will check it out.

[quote:3p6iwc3c]5,409 events? that seems incredible.. I've been working on a game over a year and I am up to 487 events... wow, you're a champ!

Im not sure, I do spend a lot of time on it and have used C2 for quite a long time now, so I don't struggle to much with most things when I make them, so I can make things rather fast I guess But it also depends on the type of events im working on, a lot of the time I just hook new code up to old code, as I use functions for pretty much everything. but checked the counter just before this post and the last 2 days I have added 229 events working on my new consumable system so the players and enemies are able to eat or get affected by effects from herbs, magic and anything that would cause some sort of buff or debuff, so this required a lot of new events.

[quote:3p6iwc3c]I used to love games like Pool of Radiance on the C64 and it totally reminds me of that.. good times!

Are you using the CSV plugin from rexrainbow? it's a great thing to use for lookup tables and databases..seems like you need a TON of that...

Yeah agree really had a lot of fun with them as well, think its weird that none of the bigger companies have made some of these types of games, but maybe because of the diablo wave .

Anyway, im not using any plugins, not because I don't like them, but because C2 is updated so often and if the plugins doesn't work with the updates and I have hooked some of the game up to it then I risk having to recreate huge parts or having to wait for the plugin to be updated etc. So its more about having full control and also part of the learning process.

But I like placeholder objects, so for instant I store most things in actual sprite objects which are then hooked to an owner object.

So for instant a Character object, can have several item objects bound to it. And when I need to for instant calculate the weight of items that a character is carrying I can just do.

"Pick Item.owner_UID = Character.UID"

And that way calculate the weight.

Dungeons are exported and imported when needed, so when the player goes into a new dungeon it will check to see if they have already visited the dungeon before and if that's the case I import it otherwise it will generate a new one. So I don't really have to keep track of this data, as moving around them ofc are calculated after the dungeon are generated, so whether its imported or generated doesn't really matter.

Some data like skills, quest description generator, Names for the name generator are stored in dictionaries. And are expanded by simply adding to these and if done correctly the code should "hopefully" be able to just use the data, without me having to add new code.

Then I use some arrays for my tactical map which keep track of movement cost, but these are generated each turn as they differ from unit to unit. And I use some arrays for each unit to keep track of buffs and debuffs. Which is organised with an "Effect_ID" which is hardcoded, so I can apply an effect to whatever unit I want by just passing this to a function.

For instant if an enemy eat some herbs that cause it to go into rage, I just call a function with function.call(Enemy.UID, "h18") and then it will make sure that the enemy is afflicted by this effect. And it should allow me as far as I can see, to make it possible to hook it up to both magic effects, potions, disease etc. that are crafted or might have several effects, by simply call this function several times with the correct "Effect_ID" but guess time will tell if that will work

Not sure if this is to advanced if you have only used C2 for the tutorials. But this is how I do it in my own tutorial, maybe it can give you some ideas of how to do it. Otherwise let me know and ill try to explain it.

https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/999/random-dungeon-generator-node-based#h2a16

There is a demo in the top that you can try so you can see how it works and whether its actually something like that you are looking for.

Just scroll down to topic called "Player control" (Step 12).

C2 is not perfect it does have some areas where I think it would be nice if it was better, Handling lots of units seems to make it suffer a bit. Pathfinding is not working that well, some UI improvements would help a lot, even though in general it is quite good I think. The annoying problem with newly created objects and so on.

But when that is said C2 is a fast tool for making games, offers a lot of feature and is constantly expanding. When I got it there was nothing like multiplayer support, light and shadows functionality which have just been added, and even though its needs some updating I think, it shows that they do a lot to expand it.

For me its more about choosing the right tool for the right job. If you are a programmer with lots of experience in using Unity and you want to make 3D games then you would probably not go to C2.

But if you are not very experienced in programming or doesn't care to much for 3D or the time needed to program a 3D game, then C2 is a great tool. But that doesn't mean that C2 is only good for prototyping, which I think it is and is a great quality in it self. But you can make good games in it and personally some of the best games ever made in my opinion have neither multiplayer support or fancy light and shadows, but they have gameplay that are far superior to most of the new 3d games that hit the market, which suffers from just having great graphic, but very poor gameplay.

So if you have no interest in games like that then why not just use a tool like C2.

This is from another page about Binding of Isaac which could easily be made in C2:

[quote:1v6112ra]The Binding of Isaac co-creator Edmund McMillen recently revealed that the game has sold more than two million copies during a recent YouTube interview.

Speaking with Northernlion, McMillen said that the game continues to build momentum.

"In the first year we sold a million copies, and now we're already up to two million," McMillen said. "It's nuts ... It would be awesome [for the remake] to come out before the end of the year."

If you could make a game like that and sell that well, why should you care or why should it matter whether other people call the tool you are using only good for prototyping or not.

You can increase the height of the background so it as big as you want your map to be. Then you add a check to your sprite that if its Sprite.Y < Windowheight / 2 for instant, then you move everything down Y by a certain amount otherwise your sprite will jump out of the screen.

So if Sprite.Y < WindowHeight / 2 (Which would mean if the sprite move above the middle of the screen)

Set Sprite.Y = Sprite.Y + <Some value>

Set background.Y = Background.Y + <Same value as above>

It would probably be easiest to just add all the objects that needs to scroll to a family. And just use that instead.

[quote:396w6kt9]Could you make a gampley video

Unfortunately its still a bit to early I think to make a gameplay video as the game is still in a very simple state compared to where I would like it to be. Meaning that graphics are lacking, there are no sounds and features are still missing. I have mainly focused on coding the game so a lot of things are working and contain 5409 events at the moment. But think it would be sad to make a gameplay movie in its current state as it wouldn't capture the game as a whole yet. When I have added more enemies, implemented some of the skills, ability to cast magic, updated the UI and added more cities and shops to them I will do it.

However you are very accurate that it feels like a Dark queen of krynn game and is exactly what inspired me to make it.

But I have just taken it a step further so its also a political or strategy game. Where as in the original games you just had a group of heroes going around solving quests etc. Where in my you will also rule your own kingdom, with everything that it will involve, like making sure there are food and other products for your people, setting there wages, punish criminals and even sentence them to death, trading with other empires. And as you have to rule your own kingdom, you are at the same time under the rule of a supreme ruler, which will have there own ideas of how things should be, that you have to follow as well, and your king which is one of your characters can actually also be sentence to death if you don't please this supreme ruler. However you are not the only kingdom under this ruler which have to live by this, so you can help the other kingdoms in overthrowing the current leader and hopefully things to come will be easier, as the game uses real age a ruler might govern the lands for a very long time, and if you are not on good terms with them it will be a rough time while they are sitting on the thrown.

So besides just being like Dark queen of krynn I think adding a part like this will make the game feel more epic in scale and give the player lots of different ways of how to play out the game.

[quote:w7kdq5ua]Hey guys!

So I see that Construct can do like a lot of things pretty easily, however when I play top games in Arcade section and scroll through, one simple question is crossing my mind - "why are they so boring and so casual?" Is it really possible to make great games that(for example) can sell in mobile markets? Or it's just like there are just so few users who can make high-quality products and make it to the end? Is it because construct 2 is still pretty young child?

For expample - there are hyper drifter or hotline mayami made on gamemaker.

P.s. I really didn't wanna insult someone with my opinion about arcade section, sorry if I did.

I don't think the arcade fairly show the potential of C2 and I agree there are a lot of games that seems to be put together fairly quickly. which is fine as I think a lot of people want to test them there for varies reasons.

However I don't think a lot of the big projects that some people are working on are on the arcade most likely because they are not at a state where they are finished, but also people might not prefer to add them there, but want to make separate websites for them. You can find some of them in the "Work in progress section" on the forum, several of them are on kickstarter as well.

Furthermore you have to take into account that even though C2 allow you to make things fast, making big games take a very long time and my guess is that most people work alone on them.

But personally I see no problems in making games like Pirates, Civilization, Warlords, Colonization and lots of other games, which are some of the most popular games titles of all times. It just take a long time

[quote:1zwe6n77]but i have a question?? why do they look so generic and ugly??

I agree with you, not so much that they are ugly as i like the progressbar. But more as Sethmaster also indicated that they are not all that useful, mostly because theres a very small chance that it will fit your graphical style of the game.

Would be nice if the slider bar object required you to make two sprites that was link to it, and would make up the graphical part of the object. But not sure if that's easy.

I just tried it

Seems to work fine, a bit hard to see some of the objects you have to avoid as they have same color as the background. Also think it would have been nice if there was something difference about it compared to the other games like it. But maybe its not that easy in these type of games. But it seemed to work fine and even though i only manage to travel 5000m I think

Didn't try it that much, but initially it seems quite interesting with a lot of potential, nice graphics and sounds. I don't know if it because its for mobile phones, but the gaming area was quite small making it a bit difficult to see exactly whats going on. Also you should make it so you can just hold down the shoot button, that was what made me stop testing it as it brought back memories of Diablo 1 and the manic mouse clicking

Finally reached the point where the game is in a full circle making it possible to play through all major parts of the game. Travelling around the world map, entering cities and dungeons and doing encounters. Besides this the following features have been added as well:

Feature added:

• Health bars have been added to characters and enemy units.
• Characters can now perform basic range attacks.
• Levelling up and experience bar have been added so character can now earn experience from killing enemies and rise in levels and use character points to increase stats or buy skills.
• First steps of the loot system have been made, which will allow the player to loot any equipment worn by fallen enemies.
• Weight functionality so characters cant pick up items that will make them go over there max carrying limit.
• Stats calculation which will allow and calculate bonuses/penalties from weapon and armors and will eventually be hook up to buffs and debuffs from magic effects, consumables, poisons, diseases and potions.

You can apply the scrollTo behaviour and it will follow your sprite.