Ok time to answer all of you

to count tiles:

little example of a vacuum mechanic, probably not really what you are trying to do though:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DFmATBH-gtIYrIbpnbeOIWqNO36mWEAA/view?usp=sharing

fedca

Thanks for the counting tiles!

As for your demo on google, this was actually my previous gameplay for obtaining dust.

I still have this style saved on my project, easily togglable, 100% functional and it does its job.

The motive I decided to try another way is because I wanted to have more freedom on the type of dirtiness coming from the dust. I was hoping I could do that, but if this tiling issue gets harder for me to produce, it's fine - I'll go back to that.

After all, from 72677 tiles to 82 pieces of dust, the difference is noticeable.

Plus, I don't have to make a dictionary for counting the pieces of dust in this way.

... Yeah, maybe this is the most convenient idea... I'll think about it for my project, but in any case, I want to see if there is some way to produce the effect I'm asking for in this topic.

In the meanwhile, thank you so much for reading and answering this topic!

You may get better performance with a canvas instead of tilemap.

Even with a tilemap with 1x1 tiles its slow even just erasing.

dropbox.com/s/0jkp71pl9nvyw08/roomba_tilemap.capx

An alternate idea is to grab a screenshot and use some JavaScript to scan the image for set pixels. It works, but it needs to flicker as I need to hide the other layers for a frame.

dropbox.com/s/il3xbkj19f8n78n/roomba_screenshot.capx

So here's the example using the C3 canvas. It works well for erasing but loops in events are slow, so here it does the scan of the pixels over multiple frames. Seems to work well, but if you resize the game window in any way the canvas will clear. May need some more logic to periodically save the canvas and reload it as needed.

dropbox.com/s/ki35vb1bx2xztuf/roomba_canvas.c3p

If you have the full version of c3 you could also handle the canvas pixel scanning in javaScript as that would be much faster.

R0J0hound

Thank you so much for your demos! I appreciate your help! I admit I have never used the drawing canvas and by judging the difference I believe it's the one working better.

Deleting 1x1 tiles in-game doesn't affect the performance unless you're always counting (just as proved in your first demo). In fact, the whole idea of using this feature would work if it wasn't for the progression bar.

Yeah I own the full version of C3 alright, I'm not the best at javascript but I bet it can do better.

As I mentioned before with fedca, I'll keep in consideration all the help to make a resolution for this feature.

Throwing some ideas out here - instead of counting tiles, generate the dust dynamically and simply keep track of how much was created in the first place.

Or set up a loading screen style transition when running the counting event, if it's only a one-time thing.

oosyrag

Thank you for your ideas! Yes, as I mentioned before, I do have a similar technique in my game, which is currently suspended to try a new, (possibly) better way to collect dust. This feature is similar to the demo provided by fedca.

In the game, I have also tried to add random dust across the map, in different sizes and shapes. Of course, the more you add, the worse it gets with the performance. After 5000 pieces of dust, you see a downgrade. Luckily you don't need to go for 3000 pieces, just the ones you need, which usually go from 80 to max 500 depending on how to use them.

As I said to fedca, I was trying to see if I could make the roomba more of a rubber erasing scratches. While this works in-game, it doesn't go well when it's about data and calculations. Since I'm a sort of a newbie, I'm open to all ideas but at the same time keep acknowledging that some of these can't be made at the moment. So yeah, it's highly probable that I'm going back to the previous technique for getting dust since overall it works well.

72677 for just a small area sounds like an amount that will very likely lead to performance problems, I would suggest changing the game design to allow for larger dust particles.

I have tried different types of dust types.

There is another type of dust that the roomba collects, which uses particles. But the purpose of that type of dust is completely different and is visually speaking different for a motive. Let's call it "special dust" just for reference.

Using the same technique for normal dust isn't ideal and doesn't fit well with a vacuum cleaner. This is why using tilemaps works incredibly well. It's as if the roomba is a rubber on a sheet full of scratches. Unfortunately, the tiles are tiny, and therefore for each counted tile you get big numbers like 72677.

I have tried with bigger tiles and sadly they don't fit well with the rest of the game, aesthetic-wise.

At this point, I'm going to either find another way to make normal dust or just decide to see if there is another way to not calculate all the tiles (I don't know how, but we'll see).

store tiles as x-y positions in a dictionary, use key.count as progression bar

Yes, I'll let you know if it works!

Hello! I explain shortly: I'm making a game where you're a vacuum cleaner.

At this moment, I've used a particle that spawns sprites (1x1 cubes) that can be collected on the map. To make the particle standstill, I set the particle time scale to 0 once it spawned enough sprites.

The problem is that it takes time (1-2 secs max, depending on the number of sprites) each time I restart the layout, probably because the game has to render the particle every time.

I was wondering if it's possible to pre-render the particle action.

Also, if you have better ideas for how the "dust" particle works, please let me know!

Thank you so much.

Oh my gosh. I think I did it...!

By reading a second time what calminthenight said, I noticed I made a mistake.

The two conditions must align in the same event, and not in two.

On Start Layout
Global.MusicPlaying = Music.mp3 > Set Global.MusicPlaying to Music.mp3
				> Play Global.MusicPlaying looping from Music at db (tag "music")

Hello! It's my first attempt to use a dictionary for collecting some data.

I would like to count every time the player manually restarts (like pressing a button) or dies from the game in that specific layout, for each layout in the game. Ex:

Room1

Restarts: 5

death: 2

Room2

Restarts: 3

death: 1

and so on. So in a sense, it's an array.

Since it's been a while I made even the simplest database ever, I was wondering if it's possible to use the dictionary for this purpose. Once the game is ended, it will release a downloadable .json file with the written data.

This is all I have to say that doesn't make the question more confused.

Here below some of my experiments:

Before posting this topic, I tried following my instinct and worked it out with trial-and-error. The project partially works: In each layout, the game creates a new dictionary with the name of the room on it, plus all the details like I mentioned before. There are two problems, however: If you go to the next layout, the first dictionary may take the name of the next layout. Furthermore, the data from the first dictionary continue to get collected even after passing through another layout.

When I extract the text file, the data from the layouts I played are redundant.

What do you think I should do next?

Thank you!

Hi, I'd like to express in an event to mute all the music with any tags except one, how can I do this? I wouldn't want to name all of them, they're too many.

Thank you very much!

Hi everyone.

I am making a pixel game (Aspect ratio 3:5).

Usually I'd use "Letterbox Integer Scale" since it makes the artstyle consistent on any screens.

But I've noticed that "Scale outer" is what I'm looking for, because What I want is that, if the window is bigger than the viewport, the player can see the rest of the game.

The issue is that if I expand both width and height, the game zooms in.

This doesn't happen if I only expand width or height.

I just don't want that the screen zooms; I want that it expands what the player can see.

Is it possible? Thank you for reading.

(Let me know if you didn't get what I mean.)

Don’t use the behaviors. You can make the motion with events simple enough.

Give the object you want to move two instance variables:

Speed and ang. That’ll be your speed and angleOfMotion.

Then the motion can be done with one event.

Every tick

— sprite: move self.speed*dt pixels at angle self.ang

Then for the bounce it should be as simple as adding 180 to ang and moving out of the wall. Here’s what it should look like. The while and second overlap condition are in a sub event if that’s not clear.

It moves out a pixel at a time but you can do a smaller step if needed.

Sprite: overlaps wall

— sprite: add 180 to ang

——while

——sprite: overlaps wall

——— sprite: move 1 pixel at angle self.ang.

-cheers

Hi there! Sorry for the long wait. I've implemented your idea, changed some variables, and ultimately polished and reorganized what I've done so far.

Initially I thought that was a bad idea, instead it turned out that it's exactly what I wanted! Thank you so much for your help.

As for now I'm doing great, eventually I'll let you know if I still have some issues.

Hi, I'm back because I have a question.

In the end, my character can swipe thanks to the bullet behavior.

But sometimes, when I hit the corner of an object, even if it's square shaped, the character bounce diagonally. My question is if it's possible to use the bullet system but they can bounce only on 4 precise angles (I guess 0, 90, 180, and 270). Thank you!