digitalsoapbox's Forum Posts

    Ok, this may sound a little like a rant, but i am rather upset with the fact that i tried every way imaginable to buy Construct 2 and the website simply won't let me.

    Al right to makes thing's clear I am from Mexico, just letting you know to see if this has something to do with the issue.

    Tried debit card, didn't work, Scirra claimed that Visa cards were compatible but i guess not.

    Credit card, nope...

    So my only hope was to deposit on Paypal.... ok, went through allot of trouble (bank website was crap) waited some days and finally i see the money on the account, Ok let's finally buy Construct 2!

    Wait.. if i pay in dollars it's more expensive..? .....

    ...Well Construct 2 will have to wait.. or let's hope Scirra fixes their payment methods so i can just use my cards!

    Chances are the issue isn't Scirra, but your card issuer. The first time I used a new business card on the Scirra store it was declined because it's processed in the UK, and I'm not in the UK. I got a call from my bank and was able to complete the purchase after verifying I made it.

  • Oh good grief!'

    The average game designer never sells any games and the whole reason most kids get a C2 version is to create a game like their favorite games and you are just crushing their creativity with scare tactics IMO.

    You can claim the lawyer is correct and I can tell you it is a scare tactic and advertising for his services and looks like he has some paid shills on here?

    I have been publishing content for over 10 years and I have many ebooks, songs, and games copyrighted with the US library of congress and occasionally I send out a DMCA notice so I guess I have as much experience as you and while you are certainly entitled to your opinion you are misinformed and spreading fear that will hurt C2 and game designers and crush creativity.

    That is my opinion!

    I don't know this lawyer, have never spoken to this lawyer, and have my own legal counsel related to IP, copyright and trademark laws. If you think someone is a paid shill just because they have more experience with how the law functions in relation to IP, that's on you, and no one else.

    Your opinion is irrelevant. My opinion is irrelevant. What matters is how the law works (again, I'm speaking of US law), and you're wrong on that. The average "game designer" makes money designing games and needs to understand the legalities involved. If you're not selling any games, you're a hobbyist, but you are still affected by the same laws. IP law is also different than copyright law, so confusing the two isn't helpful, and points to a fundamental misunderstanding of how to function within it. Much like thinking NOT being able to use someone else's creativity to piggyback on somehow limits your creativity points to a complete lack of awareness of how the law works or what creativity means. Getting sued would hurt those using C2 or other game development tools much more than having to depend upon your own creative well.

  • > You should check out what's needed to protect yourself legally, and see what the going rate is to have an expert help you with that sort of thing before you start saying stuff like "suppressing independent thought".

    >

    > That's what I think.

    >

    Yes all game designers and authors of any material to be published should be aware of and comply with copyright laws but what this attorney is doing is scare advertising in my opinion and hurts the independent game designers and suppresses creativity.

    Some commercial games allow addons and fan games because it helps promote their games.

    The big issue is with knock off games using ripped sprites and using a well known registered copyright and trademark in the title and you will find black market copies of Nintendo games all over usually produced in foreign countries and they do take that serious.

    I just think the article is way over the top scare advertising and needs additional clarification as to what you can and can not do legally. Parody and using sprites in public domain or unique homemade sprites that RESEMBLE but are not copies of commercial sprites is legal and there are also fair use laws that apply.

    If you want to create a unique plumber character that jumps through unique plumbing and kicks unique turtles and you make it clear it is parody it is extremely unlikely you would face any legal challenge but companies will try to scare you off and if you do receive a DMCA notice take your game down but ask for the exact sprites or assets they claim are being infringed and for the exact game or source of the infringement.

    If they can't give you an exact source it is just a scare tactic. Make some changes and avoid close resemblance to a commercial game.

    This is completely wrong. Here's why.

    1 - IP Holders can go after anyone to the fullest extent of the law, which in the US is heavily in their favor. See: any Nintendo IP fan game that Nintendo notices. If you don't comply, Nintendo WILL prosecute. The attorney is correct.

    2 - If you're an independent game designer and you think not being able to use other's successful IP hurts you or suppresses your creativity, you've already failed. Create something new or get written permission from the IP holders. In the indie world, people are more willing to provide this. The attorney is correct.

    3 - "Some" commercial games, maybe. But they allow it. And it's their decision to allow it or not, and no one else's. The attorney is correct.

    4 - Nintendo would sue the pants off of the creator of any parody game based on Mario, legal or not. Unless you're Nintendo-sized, you cannot afford to fight them. Once again, the attorney is correct.

    5 - IP holders are not required to provide the exact source of where you used content from their games. That is not part of the requirement of such a lawsuit. Even if you used not a single sprite from one of their games and drew every single sprite yourself, if you used content similar enough to be mistaken as content from one of their games, they can sue you, and because they have more money than you, you cannot afford to fight them. The attorney is correct. Noticing a theme here yet?

    6 - If you need more clarification, contact an attorney familiar with IP/copyright/trademark law. Expecting all of the information for free to be handed to you by someone who's entire career it is to understand and ensure compliance with related law matters is unrealistic. As he states, most attorneys will provide a free consultation, but once you need to dig deeper into that information, expect to open your checkbook. Otherwise it's like expecting a free meal at a restaurant because you're curious what a hamburger tastes like.

    Posts like this are dangerous because it makes people inexperienced in matters related to IP/copyright/trademark law think they can get away with more than they can. Listen to the lawyer. If you think he's just advertising his services with his post, you probably can't afford him, in which case make doubly sure you know what you're doing when it comes to content ownership laws in your respective country.

    By way of an example, my game Sombrero includes characters from a few other games. To make sure this is entirely legal, a written agreement (written by a lawyer, but not this lawyer) was supplied to each and every IP holder, discussing what my rights are in relation to using their IP - the characters are legally permitted to be included in Sombrero, which is its own separate IP, registered with the US trademark office - as well as establishing that they still retain full ownership of the IP and are granting a limited license to use the likeness of their character in-game. If the game content is monetized outside of the game itself (t-shirts, posters, etc.) and that additional content includes usage of their IP, they retain final approval of the look/feel of their IP, which keeps everyone happy, and keeps everything legal. It's really not that hard to do, but it does involve at least a limited understanding of how the law actually works (in the US, where I'm based. This may vary by country).

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  • This would be extremely useful. Shame it was supported in C1 but isn't in C2.

  • Anyone have a fix for this? I'm trying to use the hexagonalpixelate effect and it is change when scrolling.

    The shaders still haven't been updated. More than 2 years later.

    digitalsoapbox i never said that it's, i just said that i rather have native support. And let's be honest, something coming from Ashley which is the Scirra founder, is way closer to be considered native than a third party plugin, even if this third party plugin works well.

    Photon? Like in Unity? That's really cool, i'll do some research about it. Thanks!

    I think you're missing what I'm saying - it wouldn't be "native" either way, regardless of who makes it, because it's just a port of someone else's work. Currently, one of those ports works. The other does not. If by "native" you mean "free," that's a different issue, and I don't know about you but I'd rather have a plugin that's well-supported, even if it costs money, because the entire point of including Steam support is, to me, to make money on Steam. I think there's a saying about that, and if we look at any other game engine software, plugins which add major features cost money - whether that's Unreal, Unity, C2, Gamemaker, etc.

    Anonnymitet and digitalsoapbox you guys are right, i should be a little more thankfull for having the Steam4C2 plugin, tecnically it works just fine and have an awesome consumer support. But i'll always rather have native features, for some obvious reasons.

    digitalsoapbox Sombrero is awesome too! I've been following your YouTube channel for a while, because one of my dreams is to learn the to use the multiplayer plugin haha.

    It's not native support either way...the Greenworks plugin is based upon 3rd-party code, same as Steam4C2. The main difference is Steam4C2 has significantly more features, and actually works.

    I use Photon for Sombrero's online play - it's not limited to specific platforms like the multiplayer implementation in the native C2 plugin.

    I already bought Steam4C2, but it's not compatible with the latest version of nw.js and Steam SDK. It actually uses v0.18.5, but v0.18.7, v0.19.0 and v0.19.2 are already out, and there's no support for those versions. You also need to use Steam dlls from SDK 138 instead of SDK 139, which doesn't sound that cool. I'm not saying that the plugin is bad in anyway, it seems to work really well for some people, but i alway rather have native features.

    BTW, i saw your game on the store, it's awesome! Would love if you could check out mine too.

    http://store.steampowered.com/app/516480/

    Sorry if i said something wrong, it's not my main language.

    The 1.39 SDK update didn't come out that long ago, and doesn't bring any new gameplay-related features, so that's kind of irrelevant in terms of support. While it would be nice to have support for EVERY version of nwjs, that's somewhat unrealistic considering how often they're released and what's involved in supporting them due to C2's SDK requiring separate builds of the plugin for each version of nwjs that needs maintenance. Things take time. The Steam4C2 plugin is already head & shoulders above any other Steam-related support - as in, it actually works, across many versions of nwjs - and hopefully it'll get updated soon.

    Also, the existing Steam4C2 version for nwjs 19.x will work in 19.2, even though it's not listed as working in that version.

  • > I'll add to this and say high resolution platformers are definitely an issue in C2 and I haven't seen any real movement to look into why HD performance isn't all that great.

    >

    This is a classic case of blaming GPU performance on Construct 2. If a game runs OK in SD, but is slow in HD, that's 100% down to the performance of the GPU hardware. A native engine would perform identically, because it's the same hardware. I have looked in to this in the past, and it usually comes down to crappy integrated Intel GPUs. There isn't much any game developer anywhere can do about that...

    I didn't say Intel GPUs - I've had performance issues on a number of mid and high-range nVidia GPUs when running C2 games at 1080p or higher. While the "Intel GPUs are crappy" theory may have worked in the past - when they were very, very crappy indeed - more modern Intel GPUs tend to perform much better (including those in their new Skull Canyon NUCs), so I'm not sure that holds water any more. Even then, other games, both 2D and 3D, made in other engines, perform significantly better on Intel embedded GPUs than games made in C2. Whether that's due to usage of WebGL or not is debatable (I say probably not), but saying other games don't perform any better on the same hardware - call them "native" if you like, but that's somewhat irrelevant to overall rendering performance not affected by the overall CPU usage of the codebase - is provably untrue with absolutely no effort required to do so past picking out another 2D game made in something other than C2 on Steam and launching it.

    There's probably an argument to be made about whether they're "true" 2D engines or 3D engines that allow 2D games, but at a certain point that just becomes a distraction, and for developers & end users, performance is performance. The technicalities only matter to those to shrugging off such concerns. Frankly, the suggestion that it must all be the GPU's fault is as ludicrous as the idea that rendering performance shouldn't, doesn't need to, or can't be improved.

    >

    > I'm not aware of any performance issues relating to platform movements - collision cells should ensure that's fast. I'd be happy to review a .capx if someone made something demonstrating a performance problem.

    >

    Low res platformers are easier to get a steady, higher frame rate in than high res platformers. Fill rate isn't awesome in most C2 games if there's a lot going on, on multiple (say, 7 to 10) layers. Add a few shaders - even if just the included shaders, so that issues can't be blamed once again on 3rd parties - and performance is shot, exponentially decreasing as resolution increases. While this is an expected consequence of higher resolutions, the degree to which it happens in C2, on mid and high-end GPUs, cannot be overstated.

    Based on comparisons to other game engines, performance is much lower in C2. This cannot be blamed solely on the GPU, and based on the performance of other software which uses WebGL, it would be hard to blame WebGL for the performance issues either.

    As I said earlier in this thread, C2's event system is pretty nifty, and I think overall performance of it v more traditional programming is good with room to get better. On the rendering performance front, Construct is behind the curve. That's just the way it is. Whether that's to be blamed on WebGL, C2's implementation of it, Chromium, NW.js or anything else I'll leave to others, since placement of blame doesn't change the end experience - the part that matters most when making a product to sell.

    Fingers crossed there are continued improvements to Construct, in 2 or 3. But some of this passing the buck is a pretty dismissive response to issues repeated time and time again. Sometimes the users of a product DO know what they're talking about when it comes to more technical concerns, which may be something to keep in mind.

  • > in the form of a side-scrolling 2D platformer

    >

    2D platformers seems to be the weakest point of C2, especially if making a game where the enemies are also using platforming behaviors and if there are many (eg: 5+) enemies alive at a time/on screen. Eats up the JavaScript performance and leads to missing collisions on average or lesser machines (which feels like a large portion of audiences who purchase 2D games on the desktop/Steam).

    Also, screen capture software still tends to wreak total havoc in the games, causing further missed collisions and engine issues you won't easily avoid, so social spread of the game might be negatively impacted.

    But as a side project? I agree with glerikud that it should work alright on desktop aside from the above (Windows specifically, never had much luck with Mac/Linux for our game).

    I'll add to this and say high resolution platformers are definitely an issue in C2 and I haven't seen any real movement to look into why HD performance isn't all that great. Based on my experience, the issues come down to slowness due to C2's rendering capabilities more than the speed of any event/action execution (as in, other engines using WebGL don't have the same rendering performance issues). Pixel art platformers that run at lower resolutions perform much better. Maybe (hopefully?) these rendering improvements will come in C3. At the very least, fixing shaders so they run based on the layer/layout instead of screen coordinates and adding in addition shader feature support is long overdue. See: https://www.scirra.com/forum/webgl-effects-change-while-scrolling_t115751.

    Construct's event system is super solid and allows some pretty advanced programming-type stuff. In that sense, Construct being based on javascript/html5 tech has worked out well. But it's graphical capabilities are kind of sub-par. And of course there's also the issue of platform support, and regardless of how much someone may enjoy using C2's event system, lacking support for the platforms a game may do well on is a real concern.

  • > digitalsoapbox

    > I've only tried a handful of the bundled effects with paster, but I was only aware of effects pasting wrong, not causing an error.

    >

    > I guess it can be marked as a limitation, as I've been avoiding working on any plugins lately.

    >

    R0J0hound & digitalsoapbox can't you just apply an effect to the layer it's on?

    ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ???? ???? ???? ???? ??

    HAPPY NEW YEARS !!!

    ?? ???? ???? ???? ???? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ??

    Not if we want to avoid the either 1 or 3 light limitation of the available Normal Map shaders.

  • Quick Update:

    Over the holiday break I've been spending some time getting the lighting working with some pixel art from an old project; looking at grey boxes is boring and with some art to use, I can spend more time getting things to blend properly and see what kind of features are really needed. This is still an early test, and all the lights are the same color, but it's a step closer towards having a workable lighting/shadow system that could actually be used in a game efficiently.

    To start, here's what the scene looks like with no lighting. The pixel art isn't very detailed, and is mostly made of flat colors.

    Here's how the lighting overlays onto each layer that's affected. There's 4 Paster objects on 4 layers. The light shapes/shadows get pasted into the Paster objects on each layer after different effects have been applied, to produce varying levels of blur/blending for each layer to help separate the lighting effects. The purple color is what the Paster objects are filled with before pasting the shapes/shadows in, and acts as the "shadow" color for the layer. By changing this RGBA value, each layer with a Paster object can have its own color for this value. The layers with the Paster objects are also set to render to their own texture ("Force own texture" in the Layer properties panel), and the Paster objects are set to the Source Atop blend mode - which confines their effect to only they layer that they're on.

    And when it all blends together, with the Paster objects set to Multiply on most of the layers, and Additive on the overall "bloom" layer.

  • R0J0hound Have you tried Paster w/ any of the normal mapping shaders? I keep getting an error when trying to paste a Sprite using any of the available normal map shaders I've found, including the default Bump Map shader. I have only 1 shader on a sprite, none on the Paster object, so I would think that falls under the current limitations of Paster?

    I also tried Normal Map Extended ()

    and this normal mapping shader:

    But no luck.

  • I had a feeling I would need to use an array. Just checking if there were alternatives and that first option seemed a little messy. Though honestly arrays offer a picking trickery all their own.

    Got it working more or less. Thank you!

    Very cool! I'd be interested in hearing more on how you created this.