lucid's Forum Posts

  • thanks deadeye.

    > sometimes you need to be able to choose an object out of a pool of many

    > without being able to pick it first

    >

    I don't know what you mean by this. Is there any significant difference between "choose" and "pick" in this context?

    I meant just pick it without it having to trigger an event

    [quote:25orbjsp]Also, you don't need a For Each Object loop to pick by UID, you just compare the UID. For Sprite, there is a specific condition just for that under Misc. For other objects you can do a Pick By Comparison and use obj.UID as an expression.

    cool, I just realized the compare UID thing for sprites, before I came back to the forums. as for the other objects and pick by comparison, I guess something someone said at one point made me feel this would be inefficient in large doses, like it's cycling through each object, and if you had a few hundred things to pick from and you were picking more than one UID every tick, it would eventually start slowing things down. is this true? or is it cycling through every object to check a variable a negligible amount of cpu time that won't really add up? because if that's the case, it will simplify alot of other things on this project.

  • what about the other issue, with the rotation?

  • I think it's been mentioned by others as well as myself,

    but then I learned alot and thought it was no longer necessary

    and then I learned alot more and I realize

    it really would be ridiculously useful

    and allow alot of flexibility with functions and complex object interactions

    sometimes you need to be able to choose an object out of a pool of many

    without being able to pick it first

    or you want to be able to remember a list of certain objects for later picking

    without being able to repick some object that you're going to pair them to

    I don't mean anything complex, just an event

    pick object by UID

    then you put the UID

    and it will pick whatever object and only that object will be picked(unless there are other conditions in the event)

    I understand it's possible to do a for every object and then a UID is equal to temp

    but first, this would require a different event for every object type or family

    and if you want to use this feature alot, it will always be looping through every object over and over

    if it's possible with python, someone please explain where I can start looking and whether this feature is broken, or more generally, exactly how broken python is

    I can't remember what the reason this UID picking idea is usually rejected for, or if it's just usually a request not responded to. is it harder than it seems?

  • Davo can say for sure, but I think he said he'd fixed some of the problems with Python in the next build.

    Just curious about the status of the python stuff in general

    especially any changes planned for the .99 build

    in particular:

    making it so you don't have to have the extra python file with your exe

    whatever it is that makes everyone say "python is broken right now"

    and also the object picking issue

    wondering what the priority and/or progress is on those

  • I'll post it, I didn't mean the crash might be a feature

    I meant the way canvas has private variables that are different from everything else

    I thought that was a feature

  • it would help if you posted a cap file

    there are many ways to do this, and it might be different depending on how everything else works.

    but for starters

    there is a system expression for random

    like if you have 5 weapons, you can have them have a variable weapon held that equals random(4)+1 (a random number between 1 and 5) when they run over the weapon spawner

    and then have each weapon have a number associated with it

    and in the code for firing the weapon, the last step could change weapon held back to zero(which you can set to mean no weapons held)

    as far as random paths for bots, that totally depends on how the game moves. I'm guessing it's top down, but without a cap file, or a more detailed explanation of how the game works, there's not much advice to be given on that, other than to read the other threads where people asked for help with path finding

  • I once saw ashley respond to a post by saying you shouldn't have sprites too much larger than 512 by 512. so I would consider that a reasonable size

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  • first, if you rotate a canvas, and paste an object to it, it pastes it as if it were in the unrotated position when you did it

    example

    is this a bug?

    also, canvas doesn't have normal private variables

    it doesn't force them to be initiated, so you can choose any name at any time, like a hashtable, but it doesn't seem to work anyway. it crashed when I tried it. just making sure this isn't some intentional feature I just don't know how to use before I bug track it

  • it will be much cleaner when it's not like a prototype hack on thing where we're trying out different features, and leaving other ones halfway on. I don't think the tons of pickupable objects will be a problem, you could do the same thing with families and it shouldn't need any extra events as far as the picking up itself is concerned. as far as the spawning multiple physics ball glitch, it should be easy to fix once we've decided on a final method of doing the sticking.

    As far as moving slower, yes, you're probably right, but for it to work, the katamari needs to be able to climb walls and do the superspin for it to work slower without limiting it too much. also, eventually it should have the thing where it bumps into something too big and pieces fall off

    also, figured out while it gets blurrier and blurrier,

    it's because of constructs linear sampling, when it copies the ball and trash at an angle, it's copying extra little semi transparent pixels here and there, that construct puts in to make games look smooth normally, but when added together over and over, gives it that blurry look. it's either antialiasing, or it's like antialiasing. there are two ways to fix it I can think of off hand. one is by using that original stick method from the first example, but only when you pick up a new object, so it's not keeping track of all those objects every frame, when you run over something, it can put them all back in place take a picture, and delete them all again. if that's not fast enough, you can use the stick method to rotate the new object around to where it it's rightside up with the canvas. The second one is far better I would think. I didn't mention this before, but the reason i did the copy back and forth between two canvases is because if you paste to a canvas that's at an angle, it pastes it on the canvas as if it were right side up, so it's stuck to the wrong part of the ball.

    anyway

    gotta go to bed for now

    this is some fun stuff though

  • updated with zoom out feature, and large area to drop down and get alot of stickies to test out zooming out

    http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1013446/katama.cap

    EDIT: there's a glitch where if you get alot of stickies at the same time your ball starts acting weird, if you press space, you can see it's because more than one ball spawned and the invisible balls are hitting eachother. fun stuff

  • I've dabbled in a few languages, and construct is really it's own thing. There were alot of "is this possible with python?" questions I asked when I first got here, but as I got a little more experience I realized there are ways to do most of those things without python(which from what I understand, isn't fully functional at the moment anyway). The best thing is to ask alot of questions about anything you can't figure out, and try to figure out how to do things. there's a certain logic to it after a while, and things that seemed impossible without other language features start to work.

    If you're asking about visual basic and such, you may want to tackle some more advanced ideas, make sure you read all the "hidden features" threads in the tutorials forum,

    and read up in the wiki about:

    system expressions, which can be good for math,

    system actions, which has a lot of useful things you might not know about like "for each object" .

    Also read the wiki for functions, families, groups, and private variables.

    These all multiply the power and the level of complexity you can achieve.

    Also, keep your eyes open. I'm thinking of posting a few advanced concept tutorials in the tutorials section, dealing with concepts like math, and object oriented design as it relates to construct. at least a little while away though, because I'm trying to get a big project off the ground

    but seriously, just keep asking questions every time you get stuck. the community here is helpful and intelligent.

    and welcome to construct

    edit: oh yeah, and what mipey said, once you get a grasp of the construct flow of things, you'd be amazed by how much you can do in a few minutes. that's why you see so many responses to help questions with examples, because it takes no time at all to start a new cap, and try something out. then if it works by itself, you worry about putting it in the larger context

  • May I first say you guys (especially lucid) are my fuggin' superheroes for being so damned helpful! You blow away the Clickteam community : D

    that's just how we roll here at scirra

    never been to clickteam, or used mmf or whatever their thing is

    now, ON TO THE KATAMARI! : O

    I just noticed now, that the katamari video you posted and were talking about was a 2d version. I hadn't watched it

    I think you should aim higher than a better looking version of the 2d one, you should make it like a 2d version of the original, which would be much cooler and interesting looking

    I played around a little with the katamari thing

    unfortunately I don't have alot of time to explain too much

    and it's getting really ugly(the code)

    but I will list the basic changes I made and you can investigate and analyze and ask questions

    the level is larger now

    I made the little guys you pick up not physics objects, they weren't in the original katamari. Also, I made the sticking system based on a canvas. it's cleaner this way, and when you have hundreds of objects it won't be tracking them all at all times, also, when your katamari reaches a whole new zoom level, like the original you will be able to draw the same katamari and trash, and forget about all the objects that are sticking to it. you'll notice there's a strange blurring effect that happens to the canvas over many uses, so the older stuff stuck to you gets blurry. I'm not sure why it's doing this, but there are ways around it, even if we don't figure out why it's doing that.

    also, I made it so the controls change torque, not angular velocity, this means that the ball won't just keep spinning faster even when it should be slowed down by physocs, you're not telling it how fast to roll, you're telling it how hard to roll

    also, I put limits on the speed, so if it's spinning too fast it won't add any more angular force

    then I set it up so the physics ball get's 0.5 pixels larger length and width for every piece stuck on. I still think eventually you should add the ellipse thing, but this at least illustrates the basic concepts. all that weird temp variable setting and destroying the physics and remaking it, is to keep it from colliding with the ground when it gets 0.5 pixels bigger. you can press spacebar now to view the physics ball

    finally, there was a problem with the growing physics ball and collisions, o things would start connecting to further and further invisible points away from the ball or other people stuck to it, so they looked like they were floating in an orbit of the ball. the solution is to make the canvas update it's collision mask with each new guy stuck to it. then you make it so new guys stick only if they intersect the physics ball AND the canvas. this means there's an invisible circle they are allowed to stick to, but only if they are also touching the canvas, which consists of the ball, and the guys stuck to it. they won't be able to stick to eachother in a long chain away from the ball. and they won't stick to random points in space where the invisible physics ball is.

    enjoy: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1013446/katama.cap

    gotta go for now,

  • in the meantime, you can make a sprite of a box, made of dotted lines, and set the width height as the screen dimensions. probably best to make it a small sprite, and expand it to the screen size. make it destroy on start during development, and remove it before exporting to exe.

  • yeah, so after beating it, I do say, the story did get continually more confusing and the ending was a little disappointing..less so because people here said the ending was disappointing

    still overall, amazing game, especially the world 3 puzzles

  • Davo can say for sure, but I think he said he'd fixed some of the problems with Python in the next build.

    Just curious about the status of the python stuff in general

    especially any changes planned for the .99 build

    in particular:

    making it so you don't have to have the extra python file with your exe

    whatever it is that makes everyone say "python is broken right now"

    and also the object picking issue

    wondering what the priority and/or progress is on those