there are many ways to do this of course. personally I would probably take what you already have there, and make it an invisible character sprite. Then add 3 sprites, one for each age, and add the animations to that individual sprite, and then always set it's location to the invisible character sprite (when it's the selected age), and make them invisible or visible as needed. Just seems a less messy way to handle the animation sheets. Each age has it's own full set of animations in a separate sprite.

ok, I guess my real question is what does

x^y

do when 0<y<1

I keep trying to google it, but not getting what I'm looking for. I'm used to exponents providing very different answers to multiplication, you know

5*3=15,

5^3=125

That good news, about the performance. Now, how easy is it to access object's instances in your event system. For example(a pretty extreme case actually), I have an object. It collides with something, and I want to either destroy, or lower life on certain objects, but only in that area(say a bounding circle). How easy is it to access only those specific instances of said object that are within the circle, and for (example) weaker enemies, destroy them, and stronger enemies simply lower life?

you could do it with a distance expression, but you said circle, so for this example, I'll use an actual sprite circle:

let's say you put several life lowerable objects in a family called Hurtable

Victim----on collision with Something:

--------------------Move SplashCircleSprite to Position of Something

-----For Each Hurtable

-----------Hurtable is overlapping SplashCircleSprite

--------------------------------Hurtable private variable Energy minus 10

Hurtable private variable Energy equal to or less than 0

-------------------Destroy Hurtable

The 'picking' system automatically (in ways defined by the plugin) picks the objects relevant to the condition. So any actions under a condition, so for example:

On Sprite Collides with OtherSprite

would automatically only act on the particular Sprite(s) and OtherSprite(s) involved in the collision

[quote:2lknlr9u]

Also, say I want to create my own plugin for sounds, using maybe OpenAL, or cAudio. In your XAudio2 plugin, it has 64 channels, but the I would do it would not to have channels. The audio API manages all of that(including mixing) and simply returns pointers to sounds, which you need in order to stop or change position(3d sound) of the currently playing sound. Now if you can't easily return/send actual C pointers to/from the plugin, I could simply create a data structure to hold all the pointers, and return an index. But, can you describe a little how that would work, either pointers or simple integer indices???

you can do any type of c++ you can think of in a plugin, period. plugins are able to communicate with eachother if necessary and pass any type of data through void pointers.

you design the interface for the construct user within the confines of the ActionConditionExpression system.

Basically, you decide a list of possible actions (things they can do, ie. Set Reverb to 10), conditions (things they can check, or have triggered, If Player is within hearing distance of Sprite), and expressions (GetCurrentReverbLevel).

as i said before though, the plugin is just c++, you can include whatever libraries, and do whatever you'd expect to in a c++ program

...

....just reread your question, and I realize I misinterpreted it maybe, so

you mean return these pointers to the Construct user?

yes, indices in a vector, list, etc, would probably be the simplest way to give these to the enduser. The XAudio plugin has AutoPlay features that does something similar already. You can Autoplay sound "blahblah", and if the user still wanted to know what channel it was autoplayed to they can Set Private Variable MyPV to XAudio.LastChannelPlayed.

The beauty of it is how flexible it is, though:

I'm not saying this would or wouldn't be a good/bad idea, but an example of how many different ways you could approach it if you wanted to be weird/creative. for example you 2 plugins, a soundmanager plugin and a sound effect plugin. when a sound was played through Soundmanager, it would create a soundobject, which they could then move around the layout with it's xyz coordinates, even add a behavior to if they wished. It could automatically destroy itself when the sound completed playing. You actually would need SoundManager at all except for caching sounds or whatever prior to playing them if you were doing that.

welcome to the boards, btw

What does this do exactly? Interpolates based on timedelta? The lower the framerate the closer you are to one of points? If the lerp value from 0-1 doesn't change, then how does it ease in/out?

just think of it like lerp(a,b,0.5)

each tick it would go halfway to the destination.

as it got closer it'd be a lower and lower distance.

so it's a nice smooth slow down that looks like a cosine curve

Oops...

Also, a simpler method is also just move Moveable toward Bolla with a negative speed

What they said

I have something to add to what deadeye said though.

Sometimes the gameplay idea might emerge from the story.

Maybe the character is up against overwhelming odds and he can't hack and slash, how does he do it? He avoids enemies, and steals intelligence info from within their base. So you brainstorm on how to translate sneaking and stealing into fun gameplay.

Maybe the story says your character is a flower creature. who needs to be pollinated every 5 minutes. Then you figure out how to space out pollination opportunities to make it challenging and fun.

The point is. From your story, determine what your character must do, and the unique challenges they face, and then figure out which parts of it can be turned into gameplay. Make it a point to imagine your character doing what he or she does in a story or movie context, and not just automatically picture them running andjumping. Then brainstorm how it can be turned into gameplay. That way you're not just shooting in the dark for "an idea"

K let's start with what I do understand.

I know the purpose of timedelta, to help you keep game speed consistent even when the fps changes. and I know that its the amount of time that has passed since last tick

I understand lerp(here.x,there.x,0.5). And why that would give you a nice ease out from one location to another. And I also understand how I can use ^timedelta in my own caps just based off this with no greater understanding

What I don't understand is the math logic behind using timedelta as an exponent

Supposedly this is how ashley did it in some example, and I tested it with unlimited and fixed frames and it seems to keep the speed consistent.

I just really want to understand why, mathematically, this should work. It makes no sense to me at all. If someone understands the math behind using an exponent, and how it creates the correct effect, id appreciate it. And just in case: no, I'm not satisfied just understanding That it works. I want to know Why it works

I'm not at home testing this, just looking at the screeshot, but I notice, your many apps have a ui with lots of text and buttons and sliders always. I understand how this can be done with objects and events, but its a tedious process. Are you using a particular plugin or technique that's cutting out some of the tedium, or are you just more patient than me?

2 is how id do it if dealing with 1000's of tiles

As long as its not too important to keep track of offscreen enemies navigating the terrain or anything

I believe there is a system lauch program command or a file object, and if you put it a website insetad of a application path, or maybe specify in the program shortcut, it will launch the website. I only discovered it once ten thousand years ago, so some expirementation or another user might clarify. After that, it would depend on how you're storing/hosting the ads on the rest of the implementation. Are the images inthe cap file, a directory on your hard drive, or on the web?

Sometimes if a condition is satisfied by multiple objects at once, it will only be triggered once, depending on the type of condition or which object plays which role, ie

On Enemy collides with Bullet

Or

On Bullet Collides with Enemy

I think one of those two will work the way you want it to. Don't know for sure without testing tho.

A surefiire way though, is as a subevent for the condition that kills the enemy do a For Each Object

On Enemy collides with Bullet

----System - For each object : Enemy

-----------------destroy, and increment death count

Hmmm

Hard to say without a cap filethen, which I couldn't do anything with until later today, then maybe someone else couldhelp.

Only other thing I could see was trying the non per pixel collisions on your characters

But really, it should only be a problem with very large images or very large amounts of images