Ashley's Forum Posts

  • Link to beta 1

    Nothing new in this build, except tweaked the configuration so it should load fine for all users now (it wasn't a Vista specific issue, it was me being dumb )

    Let me know if it works!

  • Yeah, why not use real sprites and check for real collisions? Why even use an array for collision detection in the first place?

  • Nice!

    I made a tweaked version, try it out.

  • Surely you don't want to fake slowing down the more objects you have? That's one of the reasons to use TimeDelta in the first place... I'm sure the original question was about slow-motion effects or something!

  • Good idea... I'll see what I can do!

  • For one, the custom mask is already very frustrating to use, not the least of the reasons being that I can't edit it afterwards

    Agree. David said in his original implementation that he would expand on it in the near future to properly be able to select and move around points; it is very limited at the moment, but decidedly better than not having a custom collision mask at all. It's definitely unfinished though.

    [quote:rpt6xbib]if an object happens to have a quarter circle in it or something along those lines, what do I do about that?

    Approximate it with a series of straight lines. Seriously, as far as I know, all commercial games also do this. A true curve is a rare thing to come by in computing simulation - as Arima said, they're faked. The physics interactions of a surface approximated by straight lines should be comparable to if it were a true surface. The more lines you use the more accurate it will be, but the more CPU it will use.

    Also, Box2D physics (the engine behind the Physics behavior) doesn't support curves anyway. So we're stuck there!

  • 32bit Windows still recognises 4gb of RAm, it just won't use it for Windows... though it does use it as a ram drive for other programs that are built to support extra memory

    No, you really can't use the last 500mb/1gb of RAM in a 32 bit system - the actual memory addresses are assigned to VRAM, other system devices, etc. so any physical RAM you install beyond this point will go completely unused.

  • It's a common problem. BROO is right, use ELSE to fix it. The reason your current application doesn't work is because events and triggers run in top to bottom order. The first trigger sets the animation frame to 1. The second trigger tests if it's on animation frame 1 (which it is, it just got changed to it) and as a result changes it straight back to 2. ELSE ensures only one action happens per trigger, which fixes it.

  • The custom mask has to be user defined because while it is possible to automatically generate a pixel-perfect mask, it would be incredibly wasteful on the CPU. If you just click the approximate shape by a custom mask, it is much faster than an automatic mask, and probably closer to what you want as well. As for straight lines only - that's just the way it is - straight lines are fast to process. As for different animation frames - that's true, there's currently no way to do that. But it's tricky - if you switch to a different animation frame with a different mask, which results in the object being stuck halfway through something else, what do you expect to happen?

  • > For music I would recommend MP3

    >

    Actually I'd recommend OGG or WMA; MP3 has licensing restrictions and is poorer quality than the other newer formats. Licensing won't affect free games, but why have it hanging over your head if free alternatives exist and you might want to go commercial one day?

    Also, am I right in saying that so far, XAudio2 works on XP but not Vista?

  • Try Construct 3

    Develop games in your browser. Powerful, performant & highly capable.

    Try Now Construct 3 users don't see these ads

  • Another reason to use timedelta: anything using timedelta can also use timescaling as arcticus said. For example, a pause system can be a very difficult thing to program traditionally. With timescaling, just set the timescale to 0. The game universe stops - your events and framerate carry on as normal...

  • Try reinstalling Construct and allow the DirectX updater to complete. Does that fix it?

  • Yes, put the .csx files in to the Plugins subdirectory and Plugins\Runtime subdirectory of Construct's install, as per the ZIP file.

  • As you might know, Directsound is deprecated due to poor Vista support, and XAudio2 is being developed to replace it in Construct.

    This is the first beta. Effects and positional sounds are missing, but should be added soon. XAudio2 works fairly similarly to Directsound, but was designed to be simpler and even easier to use. Here's a quick overview of its features:

    • Support for PCM/ADPCM/XWMA wave files, runtime-decompressed to keep a small memory footprint. Directsound previously only supported PCM WAVs. Encoders for ADPCM and xWMA to follow.
    • Support for OGG files. These aren't runtime decompressed though, so they use the same memory as equivalent WAVs.
    • 'Play music' actions support MP3 and WMA (anything windows media player can play). Same as Directsound had.
    • Better caching (cache entire directory on startup, free large items from cache automatically...) Previously, Directsound cached files the first time they were loaded, which sometimes caused pauses the first time a sound was played.
    • Volume metering (get level of output)
    • Few other extras like audio statistics and customisable number of channels. Minor changes like everything now measured in decibels, which is more sensible than the 0-100 scale Directsound used.

    I'd be interested mainly to see if this works on everyone's systems, especially Vista! I'm not sure what its dependencies are, so let me know if you can get anything to play or not. Before reporting a bug, try also running it as Debug. XAudio2 reports errors to the debugger.

    Also you could make a backup of any games using Directsound and replace all actions with XAudio2 equivalents and see if everything works like before. Note that in my own testing, I found XAudio2 and Directsound don't seem to work well together in the same application, and crashes Directsound. I've no idea why they won't play nice together, but bear this in mind if you're replacing Directsound with XAudio2 (you'll need to delete Directsound from the application when you're done). Yet another reason to throw out Directsound

    Anyway, let me know how things work out.

  • I really can't say. It sounds like something unique in your setup is preventing Construct from running, because it works for everyone else. All I can think of to do is try redownloading it (in case the file was corrupt), try other older builds (see if theyre the same), or to as a last resort download the source and run it through the debugger to see what really is happening. That's a lot to ask of a non-programmer though...