Ruskul's Forum Posts

  • Thanks everyone for the input so far!

    Ashley True, it would cause edge glitches in some cases, but the artist could keep those to a minimum if they know the limitations. Right now, I use a method I haven't seen discussed on the forum yet. I replace all tiles in a tilemap with a single sprite and set its animation frame to that of the tile ID. The frame in the sprite is the same as the tile map except that it overlaps adjacent tiles by one pixel. because I want to use pixel graphics I enlarge them by a scale of 4 that way linear as opposed to point doesn't mess them up. The result is ultra clean pixel art that I can rotate and scale arbitrarily. It takes a lot of time at the moment, cutting up a tile map, enlarging the border so it has an overlap of 1px plus a 1px transparent border. But I can make some code to do that via .net It is not without its limitations of course. You have to know exactly what tiles can go together or you get some weird seaming still. It, unfortunately, is necessary in my game. I need scaling and rotation of the entire screen. I want to use tilemaps because they are a quick way of making a scene for the game, though, at this point I only use block 0 and another script auto-maps the correct tiles.

    At this point, I am okay with this workaround, but I figured the workaround could be made more efficient if construct helped out with the process. I know it is less efficient, but I figured its no different than a game that doesn't even use a grid (like aquaria). Can I get away with something of that nature and scale?

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    TLDR: Ashley, is it too inefficient to not use the tile map but have a series of objects instead? Or will this be bad on lower end machines. I am targeting pc and so could care less about mobile. I already have to many things I need to make mobile not an option. Also, Thanks for the great work on construct! I have thought along time about the time map and can't think of a solution that is perfect either. It is a very complex problem.

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    Joannesalfa - you can get full screen quite easily with the tile map object like this (this does have some limitations/weaknesses depending on what you want:

    1. Set the project to use crop

    2. at the start of the game check the window size

    3. Depending on how you want the game to scale (inner or outer) and what the minimum playing field is you do some math and arrive at a zoom level or scale factor (0-n) rounded to the nearest whole number (whether you go up or down depends on what you want and how you calculate it)

    4. Set the layout scale to this number and viola.

    The weakness of course is when you end up with a scale of near n.5 - you either have to cut a lot off or add a lot to the game giving a very wide range of potential screen sizes to work with.

  • I'm glad you took the time to make this. I was having a lot of trouble using revolute joints too. I thought it was broken but the image point stuff is true.!

  • Hey everyone,

    My name is Ruskul. I am an artist and programer. I have worked on various game projects and decided I wanted to make my own. I tried out construct 2 and bought the license within a week. I had been mostly using xna and c#, but was sold on construct almost right away. (time to learn xna -> months compared to a few weeks to learn contruct2). I spent 3 days and already had more progress done on my game than I did after several months of programing (not that that time was wasted... it translates very well to construct 2

    cheers

  • Thanks, Arima.

    I will take your advice on the editing the tilemap. It seems to me that the level editor would be quite hard to make, I didn't even know such a thing was possible in construct... How does it affect the files and actually produce changes in the layout you are working on? Any tips on where to begin with something like this? I would really like to make changes in game , as the game I am making is a precision platformer and it gets difficult switching back and forth all the time between running the game and tweaking the level.

    Also, I have a side question: do you know, Is it possible to create a sprite map the same as the tile map and have the tiles indexed on there so that a tilemap could be replaced quite easily with sprites in the other sprite sheet? Would I have to use frames in an animation where the frame corresponds to the tile index?

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  • Ruskul Right on, This is a beautiful set up as far as people not having to code at all and other games have tried block code type interfaces. The problem is that it is way harder to try and comprehend how another individual has interpreted the way code should be layed out rather than see how it physically looks and works together. This is great but it would be much easier to understand if the block titles were a bit more precise in places. For instance the invert action. This is common in graphic editors but trying to see it as an or for is can be a bit of a stretch to most folks and these types of issues run throughout this editor. I still cannot get copy/paste to work properly (honestly I havn't tried again lately) but I will keep at it. Thanks .

    True true. That is a good point.

    When you copy paste, have you noticed that if you click an individual component of an event, it only copies that component when another event is selected and paste is used. If you select the whole event and copy when hiting paste it usually puts it below the event selected.... though I sometimes have to move it after pasting and then move another event when sub events are used.

  • Good to hear, glhf on the project

  • Hey Ashley,

    I was curious if this would be possible:

    Include one more setting in the tilemap to allow a sprite block larger than the tilemaps grid (this could be user defined) Essentially the tile map would then grab whatever tile it needed plus an additional however many pixels of overlap. Or rather than automatically doing it it could be manually set do draw larger sprites than fit in the grid. The overlap would rid seams and allow pixel rounding off, linear sampling, and arbitrary rotation/scaling.

    All that is need is to be able to draw a sprite that is larger than the grid using user defined parameters. Currently I have a project demonstrating this using events to replace each tile in a tile map with a similar sprite. The problem is with this method is you end up with a tilemap that has to be replaced by a bazillion individual sprites all needing names and events to cause them to replace the tilemap.... this gets messy quick!

    I was looking at the code for the tilemap and thought I would ask before I got to invested in it.

  • Kyatric - To clarify. I have seen level editors (even followed a tutorial on making one with indielib and C++) that apply sprites in similar fashion to how, photshop applies a paintbrush texture. Thus, this is why I called it level painting. You select a sprite, set the desired spacing, rotation setting, whether the object should be rotated to correspond to the direction of the brush stroke, etc. It's much the same as a tile editor except that it doesn't follow a grid. Ultimately, using the an absolute spacing setting and rotation only on 90 degrees one can turn this "painter" editor into a normal tile map if one desired. Does this make sense?

    Arima - Did you end up making your own level editor? I have heard of doing this ( Konjak said he made a custom editor in his blog) and was curious how involved it is. I have been hesitant thus so far because I don't know JS. I have worked with c++,C#,VB but I am trying to stay focused on spending my time in "useful" things. As it is I am prone to distraction and learning a new language wouldn't speed up the development time which has already been lengthy)

    All and all, I might try taking the tile map plugin and"fixing" it to my needs... but I was really hoping to avoid that. On an entirely separate note.... If I were to replace a tile map with a bunch of sprites (I would do this via events at start up)... would that be less efficient than the tile map is?

  • on a side note.... only use dt if you have your physics set to frame-rate independent mode (also found in the global settings of a physics object)

  • Are you using physics behavior?

    1st off, you need to create a family (you can call it physics objects or whatever). Add any objects that will be affected by gravity. Add physics behavior to the family and set it up for however you want the defaults to be. In my projects I have a group that is called initialization I have it at the top of my event list and at the end of the group I have a turn group off action. Everything in this group will run only once and then never again unless reactivated. In this I select a physics object and set the global physics setting gravity to 0.

    Then, somewhere in your event list you need an action that applies the force of gravity to your objects at whatever angle you need gravity to be at that moment. It looks like this:

    every tick -> family.physicsObjects apply force (objects mass * desired speed*dt) at angle (This would be the angle of gravity (down is 90)).

    This is the way I do it and it works nicely.

  • you need to use scroll

    1 way would be to set an object that will be your cameras center point and use system.scroll to object. Then set that camera object wherever you need the camera to move.

    another way would simply be to scroll to position x,y and specify the point you want the camera to move to

  • you can always rotate the layout 90 degrees as an option

  • Hey all,

    Does anyone know of a way to paint levels (non tile based level editors for non retro graphics). Think of games like braid and aquaria where you select an object and click and drag to produce a series of objects in the line you drag your mouse. Maybe I just don't understand construct but I find actually designing levels to be a bit cumbersome. Using tile maps is all well and good if you plan to stick to the rigid requirements for displaying them right.

    I would be happy for a tile map that could display properly with arbitrary scales and rotations... as it is, it can't. I have invested alot of work in my game using contruct 2 (after porting from xna / C#) and i feel in order to get what I want I may have to switch to unity. it also seems that SCIRRA has no plans for improving the tile map.

    Don't get me wrong, contruct2 is a great tool with great support... But unless somebody knows some hack arounds that won't take hours of tedium I may have to switch...

    Any input?

  • Hey everyone,

    So it goes like this: I create a physics object that the player controls via force and torque. I have another physics object (we will call it 2). I create a revolute joint on 2 connecting it to 1. As I roll object 1 around, object 2 progressively becomes more misaligned to where it was originally jointed. In the end 2 is hanging off in space some distance from object 1 not even close to where I attached it. Any ideas whats going on?

    Thanks