UPDATE:

Ok, so thanks to the help all of you provided (again, thanks so very much) I was not only able to fix my animation issues, or at least, I've only directly applied the changes to one character, and then remade the rest practically from scratch, but I noticed what I was doing wrong.

It turns out I was using some pretty "hard" conditions to move characters around.

So, instead of using "On Moved", I kept using "If Platform is Moving", or instead of "On Jump", I used "If Platform is in the air".

These things completely blocked any attempt from me to execute any animation properly...

So, thank you! This was much help!

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Now... could I ask one tiny more thing?

I decided to settle with just MIRRORing the graphic of the only character whom I wanted to have a separate graphic when he's facing left and when he's facing right.

But if any of you has the time, could you explain to me how you would do it? I mean, handling a character WITHOUT the SET MIRROR event so that he has small changes when he's looking at different directions?

I'd really appreciate that, but it's not SUPER essential. It's just that it's killing me that I can't figure it out.

I had managed something really close, but if I make him move to the right, and then move to the left (if I accidentally press the other way fast enough) the character will strafe backwards. And that will mess up the rest of the animations, such as jumping, etc.

Anyway, consider it a sidequest, perhaps. But once again, the main problem has been resolved, you have my thanks!

Thank you all for the answers.

I've read them all, and now I'll go see where I went wrong.

Curious thing is, the way I handled it did work before in another project, only difference is, the direction variable was not used then, and it worked.

I want to explain some of my decisions here. Even though I've been using C2 for a while, I'm still so very new, so please bear with me.

Anyway:

#1 Direction variable.

Maybe I'm overcomplicating things, but the logic behind my decision, was that because the character in this example is using a sword, I want him to keep it in the same hand no matter what direction he's facing.

Thus why I didn't settle for a [Set Mirror] event, but I still need to have a variable to tell me where this character is facing.

I've set this variable whenever I press "Q" and "E" which simulate Left and Right.

Am I wrong to assume that the Player (Platform) Object won't automatically Set Mirror itself when I Simulate Keyboard: LEFT? Because if I am, then I could totally ditch the Direction variable, unless there was another way...?

I think I used to have problems when making a player object jump and stuff without these variables.

#2 Way I'm handling the player character:

My player character consists of an invisible sprite (so it's ... collision box, for a lack of the appropiate word, is a rectangle, 128 wide, 255 high). This is an object called, say... P1.

And I've pinned the character's graphic, approximately same size, but not a solid object, to the P1.

I've had a lot of collision issues in the past, when instead of havng an invisible player object with a pinned character object, I set a player object with its appropiate graphic (and collision boxes), so I wanted to save myself from some problems along the way.

(If you must know, these are some of the problems I remember having, when the player object had its own graphic and collissions).

Having only a full jump whenever I press jump.

If I hold on to the jump button, it keeps jumping once it touches the ground.

Collision glitches causing the character to fall when he's standing or walking, thus messing up the animation)

#3 The use of Wait.

Ok, normally, if animations had worked for me, I would've probably gone with [wait until animation ends], but since I only get 1st frame out of my attack animations, I went with [Wait], to generate a (forced) sense of delay when a character hits. This character is supposed to be on the heavy-hitter side, so I gave him a bit more wait time than the others (but still, they use a [wait] event as well).

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Again, thank you all so much for your replies, I will get on on this, and see how it goes. I'll go back to watch the tutorials again to see where I went wrong.

Hey. I have a question. I'm not sure if I've asked this before... but I am LOSING MY MIND here.

Basically, I'm trying to do something as basic as make a character attack.

I've tried tutorials all over the place, but most tutorials feature a block character and a separate object.

But my character is just one object, and I'm trying to get it to enter an attack animation.

Now, this is what I'm doing:

Basically, I'm doing so that when I press "R", I get my character to attack.

I haven't reached the point where it attacks because I'm already struggling in getting ANY animation I call upon, (that apparently requires a variable? such as direction where the character is facing, or the variable that detects if it's attacking... this is just a wild guess), to run more than just THE FIRST FRAME.

Instances that do not require a variable such as running (although again... direction variable is used, and I have no problem here) jumping, and falling, is perfectly fine.

But animating attacks is a near impossible feat. And again, I've searched tutorials, but they all use pretty basic 1-frame sprites and animations, so it serves no purpose to me.

And I'm not even mentioning the one where a character of mine ran and shoot in Megaman fashion, where I had to replace the "run and shoot" animation over the "run" animation, and it would only load the first frame..

Please... what am I doing wrong? Why is it SO hard to load animations?

tl;dr: When I press attack, character just loads a "sword at ready" frame, and goes back to his neutral animation, and doesn't execute the whole attack animation.

Thanks! I'll keep this in mind.

Deep down I was hoping scaling down wouldn't deform the graphics, but at least now I know better.

...........................

... well, yes... Apparently size was the main issue.

I feel so dumb now.

But I could have sworn I tried exporting the image, not only in my ideal size (67x155), but in pretty much all sort of sizes before and after.

This time, however, I tried handling it as a smart object. I think I'm seeing an improvement.

But I'll take blurry over badly pixelated any day. I'll play around with various image properties until I get the desired result.

Thanks!

p.s. -I was working on Linear Sampling, and I tried all of the Fullscreen modes. Looks like size was mostly the problem. ._.

Hi!

I'm having a really tough time understanding why Construct 2 screws up my graphics.

In the screenshot, I've tried importing 3 different versions of the same character sprite.

The character is supposed to look like this: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v286/ ... dntrtq.png

Basically, I want my whole game to look cartoony and not "sprite-y" or pixelated.

But whatever I do, I can't get Construct 2 to detect the smoothness of the graphics. Instead, it turns into a pixelated mess that you see in the screenshot. I tried adding a thick black border to attempt to make it look less obvious... but I'm not happy about it.

I recreated the character in pixel-art style, and I don't think it looks right either.

I've seen examples of games made on C2 that don't use "pixel-art" (or at least it's hard to tell if they are) so I would love to know what they did in order for their graphics to retain their original quality.

Precautions I took:

-Tried both exporting in 72dpi, and 300dpi

-Tried both rounding pixels option on and off.

-Tried every form of scaling down.

-Tried every option of Fullscreen Scaling.

I'm out of ideas... <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_sad.gif" alt=":(" title="Sad">

Thanks guys!

Vallar, I did exactly that, and I finally found out where they were going! I have adjusted them through a bit of trial and error, and they finally appear on screen. Thanks!

spacedoubt: Thank you too, I've been reading that, and that will certainly come in handy for my other project.

I guess I can now say this issue is solved.

Again, thank you very much!

I've bumped into this very VERY annoying error.

I got this shoot em up project, and I've pretty much completed the first level, so naturally I want to show the hud now.

So I added a new layer, put it at the top of the other layers, and set its Parallax to 0,0.

The problem is that the Image objects I add to this layer appear so high above the place where I really put them in, they don't even appear on screen.

I just realised that I ought to manually place the life bar at the top of the layout. But no matter where or how many life bars I add, even if the "Parallax on Editor" shows me where these life bars are, when I run the game they're nowhere to be seen. And I've literally cluttered the whole screen with them to try to manually calculate where exactly the "real" life bar is at.

This thing is giving me a really hard time.. IS there an in-depth tutorial on how to handle Parallax? Because it's annoying me a lot.

Peace!

So I managed to somehow side-step the issue I mentioned in the op.

But now I find myself stuck, as I REALLY need the Parallax to not screw me over by not working.

This time I added a layer named HUD, and put it at the top of the other layers.

When the Parallax is set to 100,100, I can see the health indicators.

Say I give them 99,99: Now the health indicators are several pixels below where I put them in the editor.

By 95,95 the health indicator is on the bottom edge of the screen, and anything below 95,95 makes it disappear off thes screen from below when I run the project.

I have no idea why this happens. If I give the HUD layer a property of 0,0 it should show up and stay there.

I had this exact same problem a while back, but I got around it. There is no easy way of getting around this, I need my HUD layer to be completely static, and following the action.

Please someone tell me what I'm doing wrong, or if it's a bug with the program.

What are you trying to do by changing the parallax of the layer the player is on? Parallax is meant to be used to make scenery that is in front or on the back of the action move faster or slower to simulate perspective.

I'm pretty sure the characters were on the MAIN layer (simply called "0"), while the parallax were assigned to the bottom layer (named Broken Parallax ).

And I keep sending the characters and the bullets to the "0" layer, while on the other hand I keep sending the backgrounds to the very last layer, to remind the program that they're supposed to be separated.

My intentions are to add in a floor later, and the space background is scrolling automatically, with reduced parallax.

The problem is when I did this, the bullets spawned below the player proportionally to how much parallax I reduced.

I keep checking the project, and "0" is still where the characters are standing, while Broken Parallax is where the Parallax should be added/reduced and it ruins the bullet spawning.

Thanks for the correction.

Ok, so just for the heck of it.

I'm uploading the file.

I labeled the Layer that's giving me hell as "Parallax broken". If you edit the Parallax properties, it'll screw up the characters' bullet spawning.

For some reason the layer above it somehow now manages to ignore it, but the bottom layer is still giving me trouble. And I needed at least two parallax layers.

Anyway, if you find anything interesting that may be conflicting with the projectiles (enemies' included) please tell me.

I'll put this project on hold for a while. And thanks!

Dead certain. They're like 3 layers apart.

The layout is designed to scroll vertically, so the character faces up by default.

The problem seems to be that the bullets spawn WAY below the character when there's background with Pharalax involved.

If I remove Pharalax, then the bullets spawn normally. Clearly the issue is the Pharalax option.

EDIT:

Here's something I just tried.

I turned down Pharalax from 100,100 to 99,99, and now the bullets clearly spawn one "tile" below the character.

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I now tried spawning it in another layer just for the heck of it, and the bullets now spawn with a 2 second delay.

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Alright, noticed something. When I go to "Edit Z order", the bullet objects are like in a category of their own, while the rest of the objects appear in an entire different Z order list. Despite both the Bullets and most of the other objects SHARING the same layer.

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Just gave up on having Pharalax on my sidescrolling shooter. Going to manually move the background graphics now.