Ashley's Forum Posts

  • I'm not sure if it's relevant today, but the Directsound SDK warns against using a lot of frequency changes for performance reasons, which is part of the reason why you have to explicitly enable frequency changes on a channel. Just mentioning it so you're aware of that, but since Vista is moving to an entirely software-based audio model, perhaps it's not a significant issue - need to find out more about that...

  • Exported game EXEs in Construct require d3dx_30.dll to run - distributed in an updated version of DirectX 9 since about 2006. If you don't have it (ie. you have DirectX 8 or DirectX 9 pre-2006), I've written a messagebox to pop up saying:

    A required DirectX component, 'd3dx_30.dll', was not found. Please install
the latest version of DirectX 9 in order to run this application.

Click 'OK' to visit the Microsoft to install the latest updates for DirectX 9.

Click 'Cancel' to terminate the application.[/code:2ydjt4xb]

And as it says, if you click OK you're taken to a Microsoft page where you can download DirectX 9 - then the game works.  I've been poking around some forums to see how Construct apps are generally being received and people who get this error generally seem to say something like "It's broken!  Missing some DirectX DLL file or something."

I get the feeling people are just seeing a messagebox that mentions a DLL file and assuming it's not going to work.  My theory with error messages is to try to provide enough information for the user to solve the problem themselves, and annoyingly people seem to skim the text and not try again.

Has anyone found this problem?  What do you think is the best way to get people to realise they just have to update DirectX to run the game?  I feel like I need a little animation of a guy waving saying "Hey!  Pay attention!  You need to upgrade DirectX!" or something, but there's probably a less extreme solution, heh

  • Yeah, I think it works more like changing the playback frequency of the file (the rate at which samples are mixed with the primary buffer), which as a side effect changes pitch. Perhaps this isn't the best way of doing it - setting frequency to 30KHz for example could either increase the pitch (for a 22.050KHz wave) or decrease the pitch (for a 44.1KHz wave). I think your idea would be a more elegant way of doing it, ie. instead of 'set (playback) frequency' action have an 'alter pitch' action which works as a percentage of the original sample rate. So 'Alter pitch' to 50% would always halve the playback frequency, always reducing pitch by an octave for any wave. I think I'll do something along those lines for the next patch.

  • I suppose you're talking about the skidding on the turns, which can be reproduced with the Skid Recover Rate in the Construct behavior. Lower means more skidding. It's not particularly realistic though so better to keep it subtle.

  • [quote:30ncl4r9]Hey Ashley, would it be worth your time to add pitch variation to Directsound?

    Set Frequency changes the pitch, as does enabling Doppler effects.

  • Nice tyre treads, but it sure can shoot fast for a tank

  • I thought the only use for atan2 was in calculating angles... it's used in the code behind the angle(x1,y1,x2,y2) expression, is it necessary to have a separate atan2 expression?

  • Multiple units all move in the same direction! Maybe you should try out the RTS basics template

  • Yeah, there's a trigger for a bullet leaving range in the next build.

  • I haven't overclocked my 8800GT, have you? As powerful as it is, it sure does overheat easily...

  • Yes, Construct is still going to be free at 1.0.

  • Yeah, there's saving built in to the system object... you'd have to reverse engineer each plugin too, so it's hard work, and made even more difficult if you encrypt the file!

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  • That doesn't render the same, and as rich said it's difficult to make it appear anti-aliased (which is supported built-in by some cards). Plus you have extra legwork trying to set up the pivot point and angle to get it to line up with a start position and end position. Lines draw faster... and I guess you could draw a whole list of lines... it'd be handy even if it can be already done anyway.

  • Those planets look niiiice.

  • Sounds like we need a 'line' plugin. For now, though, you can use a Canvas object and draw lines to it, but since it uses an entire surface for drawing on, it's not ideal for all uses - but should suffice for a graph or something like that.