signaljacker's Forum Posts

    Actually what annoys me most, more than the subscription model is the condescending PR bullshit - trying to spin bad things to look positive. It totally doesn't suit you guys. Just be upfront, if you're going to an obnoxious business model fine, but let's not pretend it's good and exciting for your users.

  • There's an idea knocking about in pro audio circles of "Rent to own" whereby you pay a monthly fee which can be cancelled at any time, but once you've payed off the price of the product you own it. I actually think this is an appealing system because this kind of software isn't cheap, usually starting at a few hundred $ a pop. This way though the devs get a steady stream of income coming in for ongoing development costs and users can slowly pay off a piece of professional software to eventually own. Its kind of meeting developers and users in the middle and I think its far less obnoxious than pure subscription models. Its something to think about anyway, as subscription models are universally maligned by users.

    I would much rather pay once. You'll probably lose my patronage and many others now, sorry Scirra. If you're going to charge subscription rates you'd better be hiring a bunch more coders, and actually listening to your customers, because from the synopsis of C3 so far it just seems like a bunch of stuff no one really asked for (I understand that sometimes this is necessary to innovate, but my point stands). Subscription model works well for a massive company such as Adobe as its an established industry standard, professionals worldwide rely on their software/services and pretty much no one else can touch them, but in the world of game creation software Scirra is just a blip on the radar - the majority of users are amateurs and won't want to pay for a subscription service. Sorry to sound so negative, I wish you guys the best but a subscription model is a kick in the teeth.

  • It's hard to tell without looking at your file. I load my global layers on a separate layout first, with all the files that you need for them already on that layer. Then I just switch visibility/functionality off as needed in the game. It might not be suitable for your purposes though I'm not sure. I would say the individual objects are disappearing when changing layouts because they themselves are not global.

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  • If you want to design your own logo, which might be a bit of a learning curve but a good way to develop skills I can give you a few tips.. Good logos need to be:

    1. Scalable - they should be created in such a way that they can scale up and down and remain clear (because of this professional logos are often done with vector graphics)

    2. They should translate well to black and white - in instances where the logo can't be reproduced in full colour it should be able to retain its character and clarity in mono

    3. Don't go overboard with too many colours, fonts, effects etc - look at all the biggest logos they're simple and clear, but memorable

    Most pro logos are done in vector graphics software such as Adobe Illustrator - but there are free alternatives. Give Inkscape a try if you want to have a go making on yourself. It's not an easy process but it's a valuable skillset to have.

  • If you don't want to use physics you can also use the bullet behaviour if you tweak the settings enough you can get some nice bouncy drops. I tend to spawn 4 or 5 things, randomize the angles slightly and randomize the scale and speeds a bit. The settings I'm using are speed: 500, acceleration: -500 gravity: 1000, bounce of solids: yes, set angle: yes - and it seems to work ok for what I need. Don't know on what the cpu footprint is compared to using physics but it gives a similar result.

  • Hi, I've been recently looking into how Spelunky generates its levels and wanted to try something similar in construct. The reference I'm looking at is on this page which basically details how the rooms and solution path are generated. While it seems fairly easy to understand, I'm having a bit of trouble finding a good way to make the solution path. I'm not following it exactly, but using it as a sort of guide.

    I'm using a 4x4 array and generating numbers which then generate tiles that correspond to those numbers.

    I start by choosing a random number betwen 0 and 3 for my starting room on the top row and set it's value in the array to "start" just so I have a reference (I'm not worrying too much about room types working together at the moment just want to understand the solution path)

    I have a global variable called "picker" I choose (0,1,2) and set picker to one of these numbers - 0 will be left, 1 down and 2 right

    I then look for "start" in the array using a For each XY element loop and then depending on what number the variable picker is adjust by either adding or subtracting to the array.CurX or CurY and placing another key word - this time "path" - this will be my second room.

    This seems to work ok, but I can see it will get more and more complicated with each iteration as I will need to keep track of a bunch of different things like whether or not the last placed room has moved on the y axis of the array or remained on the same line etc

    I've tried placing a third room "path2" and already things seem to be falling apart. There must be a better way to go about this, but I don't seem to be logical enough to work it out.

    I've linked my work in progress below, it's messy, buggy and probably more confusing than the ramblings above. I think though that I'm probably going about this the wrong way and while it might eventually get me there it won't be efficient and it's already becoming unwieldy and confusing.

    Can someone with experience with these things or a bit more nouse than myself give me a tip perhaps on a more effective way to do this?

    File here if you dare to look

  • Thank you, that helped a lot!

  • Hi, I'm still trying to wrap my head around arrays, I have a two dimensional array set up which I'm populating with some random numbers and strings. What I want to do is search the array for a word, and then be able to pinpoint both its x,y position to further manipulate the array data around it. The problem is, I can only seem to get it to return the x value with Array.IndexOf and Array.LastIndexOf - there seems to be no way to return the y value as well.

  • go to freesound - it's a great resource and will have many bird/nature sounds.

  • If I recall correctly, if you're using global layers you should make sure that your layers are named consistently across all layouts and that they use the same hierarchy eg if ItemStore layer is layer 3 on Level 1, then it should also be called ItemStore on layout PP and also be on layer 3. If you don't have that layer set up in other layouts with the same name and hierarchy it won't work as intended. Hope that makes sense.

  • With the rotating barrel - I haven't had time to look at it properly, but I think that some of the actions in the different groups are overriding eachother - to see what I mean try turning off the Vertical Sine Cannon group, and then hop in a rotating barrel and you can no longer shoot out of it. You could try to test for a collision before running the events, because then construct will use that collision as a reference to which instance to pick - at the moment I think it just defaults to a random instance because on the R trigger it doesn't specifically reference a barrel instance only an instance variable.

  • Oops, yes calebbennetts is right - I was not thinking that through...

    EDIT: I've updated the file, it now uses bullet behaviour and a trigger sprite - might still be a better way to do it - seems to be working here though - new file

    heyguy what might be happening in yours is the bullet has "set angle" in the properties which will flip the sprite, it was driving me nuts too until I noticed it's on by default.

  • I've done you up a working version that doesn't use the bullet behaviour - no doubt there is still a better way to do this, but it seems to work pretty well. You can download from here

  • Is it spawning on the same layer on both layouts? It's not spawning against an object that has solid property? I know that seems obvious, but it should work straight out of the box I would have thought.