Ashley's Forum Posts

  • Here's something I thought of recently: right now in C2, like with 0.x, you can store any type in any instance variable. By type I mean boolean, number or string. So you can assign "hello" to a number instance variable.

    As a result the editor can't assume that instance variables have any particular type, in case you change it at runtime. For example, Sprite: Set X to Sprite.MyStringInstanceVariable has to be accepted, in case you set that instance variable to a number at another time.

    What I think would be a good idea is to strong-type instance variables. This means you can't assign a string to a number instance variable - if it is initially set to a number, it always stores a number, and can never store a string. Likewise string instance variables will always store a string, and never a number (although they can store numbers as character strings).

    This slightly reduces their flexibility, but improves the editor checking - now the editor can reject setting X to Sprite.MyStringInstanceVariable, which was probably a mistake anyway.

    Does anyone use the weak-typing (storing strings in number variables etc.)? I think any time you need to do that an easy workaround is just to add another instance variable. It makes sense to me. Is there general agreement?

  • This should now be fixed in the next build, thanks for the report. If you need the fix urgently I can send you some updated files - the problem was in the 'go to layout' action, so if you remove that it should work OK.

  • In a way that is what Construct 2 plans to do

    Absolutely, categorically not. We are not planning to ask for royalties on profits. If paying anything at all for software counts as sharing profits, then all existing software falls under that definition!

  • If we add any form of scripting it's far enough down the road that it's not even on my mind right now. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, it's a very late stage feature.

    newt: the plugin SDK for any C++ exporters will of course work with non-MS compilers. There's no reason for it not to. It's just yet another thing we messed up in 0.x.

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  • How much is it? I can't seem to find a price online (don't have Unity installed).

  • Javascript is actually probably the fastest scripting language out there, because it's had the might of Google working to optimise it with the V8 engine and Crankshaft. It literally compiles it to machine code. I've read Google engineers quoting it as comparable to unoptimised C code (as in, maybe two or three times slower than optimised C, rather than ten times slower or worse).

    Python is only interpreted as far as I'm aware, and Lua appears to have a JIT, but I can't see it being so much faster than Google's V8 to be worth switching to. Besides, the plan is for the EXE runtime to all be written in optimised C++ - to make Javascript plugins work in an EXE runtime one of the things we'd have to do is write a full virtual browser emulating the presence of the DOM, window, cookies, URLs, canvas, contexts, Javascript library functions, and so on. That's kind of a ridiculous thing to do for a C++ runtime, especially when C++ extensions would be faster and more compatible anyway.

    So yes, it's a shame that extension developers will probably have to rewrite extensions for other exporters, but that's the way it has to be done.

  • Sounds like a bug - generally, assertion failures are bugs. I'll take a look later.

  • Oh good point, it's third party, missed that. Edited the OP

  • I haven't actually tried it out either, there's a few screenshots in the documentation though. Was just pointing it out really.

  • Only C2 is portable, 0.x isn't portable... by "It should already be portable" I meant "Construct 2 is already portable"!

  • Do you mean editing the project files directly rather than through the image editor?

    Edit: maybe it would be handy to clarify what the problem was and how you solved it, for the benefit of other users?

  • Edit: this is actually a 3rd party addon!

    'Playmaker' just got released for Unity, a way of visually scripting an application. Have a look:

    http://u3d.as/content/hutong-games-llc/playmaker/1Az

    It appears to be a fairly simple flowchart - I don't think it does anything like instance picking, and I'm always skeptical of tools that try to let you code in 2D, placing stuff in a large area (doesn't it get messy?). So I wouldn't call it a competitor just yet, but it's still interesting.

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  • I've always thought if people regularly code their own movements instead of using behaviours (e.g. a custom platform movement instead of platform behaviour) then the behaviours should be improved so that everyone uses them. They're not meant to be a toy for newbies, they're actually meant to provide functionality in a useful and accessible way. They should also be customisable enough that you can implement custom functionality to make your game unique and interesting, be that springs or reversing gravity or whatever.

    If you have any ideas on how behaviours can be improved towards this - especially in C2 - do tell us your ideas! I was under the impression most people use the behaviours, even for full games - if that's not the case, I'd be interested to learn why.

  • Does C2 need as much power or more as C1 to run?

    You should find C2 is faster and uses less memory than 0.x.

    [quote:4ckldxkd]will C2 be portable

    It should already be portable. Try copying it to a thumb drive and taking it to another computer. You should be able to launch it directly from the thumb drive, without even copying it over.