Other than exiting and restarting Construct 2, is there a way to force the list of effects to reload?

The only reason I ask is that it would be a bit easier to test incremental changes to effect code if I could avoid regularly restarting Construct.

On the plus side, what I've noticed so far is that in some cases I can see changes to effect code when running the compiled version of a project, which is nice, but it's a limited workaround, as it doesn't really help if the change was something like a new parameter.

At the moment, if I create a new effect, I save my project, close Construct 2, restart it, and reopen the project, to see the new effect show up in the effects list.

Similarly, if I make a change to an existing effect, the change will show up when I compile and run the project, but it won't show up in Construct 2's layout editor, even if I remove and reapply the effect.

Anyway, I hope I don't sound like I'm complaining or anything. I just want to make sure I'm not missing something, or overlooking a better workaround.

Wow, awesome. Thanks. :D

A few more questions just occurred to me, actually.

5: If you place an effect on a sprite, can you sample parts of a foreground sprite that are off-screen?

Just checking because I played around with a blur, and it looks like it ignores pixels that are outside the visible screen area. More specifically it looks like sample coords that refer to off-screen locations are clamped to the closest equivalent on-screen location.

6: Can the origin of the vTex coords ever be outside the visible screen area?

i.e. If a foreground sprite's top-left corner moves off-screen, does the origin of the vTex coords move off screen with it, or are the vTex coords squeezed to fit inside the edges of the visible screen area?

In Construct Classic, I vaguely recall the HLSL coords acting a little different as a sprite started moving off-screen.

7: Is there any place I should look to find out more about the details of the Construct 2's GLSL related stuff, or is the forum the best place to ask about this kind of thing?

Thanks again. :)

Hi all :)

I just started looking into making some GLSL shaders, and I have a few questions about the coordinate system.

1: What are the units for the vTex coordinate values? (e.g. pixels, sprite lengths, etc)

2: What is the origin for the vTex coordinates? (e.g. corner of layout, corner of sprite, etc)

3: Does the background need some kind of special coordinate conversion to ensure that it is sampled correctly? I ask because the "dodge" effect has the following line:

[quote:sdoz8br7]lowp vec4 back = texture2D( samplerBack , mix( destStart , destEnd , vTex ) );

It looks like "mix()" might be a lerp style function. It makes me wonder if vTex values run from 0 to 1 across a sprite, and so they are being used to lerp between the screen cords of the relevant patch of background, or something.

4: What are the "destStart" and "destEnd" variables, and what are their units and origin?

Just curious, thanks. :)

Thanks. :D

I just recently created a post for an effect suite I'm working on for Construct Classic. I set up the download to use Dropbox, as I wasn't sure if it was okay for a poster to link to their own website. So I wanted to ask first.

Is it alright for a poster to link to their own site?

(e.g. In my case link to a page containing documentation for the effect suite I'm releasing.)

Does it make a difference if the site can accept donations, via donation button or something?

(My site doesn't have any donation system at the moment, but I'm still in the process of assembling the site, and I hope to include something like that eventually.)

I know I've seen a few other posters link to their sites, but I just wanted to make sure those weren't special cases or something.

Sorry if this is an odd question. I try to err on the side of caution where forum etiquette is concerned. :)

Thanks everyone. :D

Definitely let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. I'm all ears.

Also, there are descriptions of all the effect parameters available as well. I just added a new "Effect Instructions" section to my top post describing where you can find these descriptions.

(I'm also including that new section below for convenience.)

<font color=blue>Effect Instructions:</font>

I'll be releasing more detailed instructions in the future, but for now, each effect has some built-in documentation which should help out.

Effect Descriptions:

When adding a new effect from the effect list, the description of the selected effect can be seen in a gray box at the bottom of the effect list window. If a description doesn't quite fit in the box, then you can always stretch the window wider to read all of it.

Effect Parameter Descriptions:

When you add an effect to an object, and edit the effect parameters in the Property panel, clicking on one of the parameters to edit it's value causes a gray box at the very bottom of the Property panel to show a description of that parameter. I've tried to make the parameter descriptions pretty helpful. They will often explain what the parameter does, what to expect from specific example values, and the valid range (e.g. 0.0 to 1.0) and type (integer or decimal) of values.

For parameters that are integer menus, (e.g. 0 = off, and 1 = on.), the parameter descriptions will list the available menu options, and their effects.

e.g.

[0] = Normal blend.   [1] = Add blend.   [2] = Multiply blend.

Okay, here is the alpha release of the effect suite I'm working on.

Feedback is very much welcome, as are any questions.

I'll be releasing effect demos, in both .cap and .exe form, for the other effects soon.

<font color="blue">Download:</font>

Fisholith Effects - alpha 1 - 111111.zip

(The "111111" is the date.)

<font color="blue">Effect Demos (compiled):</font>

Download - Bias Gain demo app

(more to come)

<font color="blue">Installation:</font>

Unzip the ".fx" files and place them in the following folder, (depending on your OS).

XP: C:\Program Files\Scirra\Construct Classic\Effects

Vista & 7 x64: C:\Program Files (x86)\Scirra\Construct Classic\Effects

<font color="blue">Effect naming:</font>

"!fi -"

For the alpha releases, all effect names start with "!fi -". This is because when I work on them, it's much easier to have them sort to the top, and stay in a group. I hope this isn't too inconvenient for anyone for the time being.

"RGB"

Effects with names ending in RGB give individual control over the Red, Green, and Blue channels.

<font color="blue">Effect Instructions:</font>

I'll be releasing more detailed instructions in the future, but for now, each effect has some built-in documentation which should help out.

Effect Descriptions:

When adding a new effect from the effect list, the description of the selected effect can be seen in a gray box at the bottom of the effect list window. If a description doesn't quite fit in the box, then you can always stretch the window wider to read all of it.

Effect Parameter Descriptions:

When you add an effect to an object, and edit the effect parameters in the Property panel, clicking on one of the parameters to edit it's value causes a gray box at the very bottom of the Property panel to show a description of that parameter. I've tried to make the parameter descriptions pretty helpful. They will often explain what the parameter does, what to expect from specific example values, and the valid range (e.g. 0.0 to 1.0) and type (integer or decimal) of values.

For parameters that are integer menus, (e.g. 0 = off, and 1 = on.), the parameter descriptions will list the available menu options, and their effects.

e.g.

[0] = Normal blend.   [1] = Add blend.   [2] = Multiply blend.

<font color="blue">Effect List:</font>

Additive Bidirectional RGB

Additive Bidirectional

Bias Gain

Bias RGB

Bias

Bit Crusher RGB

Channel Invert

Channel Reassignment

Channel Select RGBA for BG

Channel Select RGBA

Channel Wrench

Compose RGBA Tiles Stretch

Compose RGBA Tiles

Dither Map Bit Crusher RGB

Dither Map Gen 8x8

Dither Map Posterize RGB

Elevation Gradient Chromatic

Elevation Gradient

Gain

Global Variable Texture Viewer

Grayscale to Opacity Gamma Aware

Grayscale to Opacity

Pixel Noise

Posterize RGB f3

Posterize RGB

RGB2HLS

Scan Line Tool

Solarize RGB

Solarize

Threshold RGB

Threshold Soft Color

Threshold Soft

Threshold

Use Background via Alpha Mask

Use Background via Bounding Box Mask

I would definitely be interested in helping to add to Construct. :)

Thanks Angelo.

I'm nearing completion of the first release. I was hoping to have the alpha out last Thursday, but I had to put working on it on hold for a few days. I'm hoping to have it available by this Friday, or sooner if I'm able.

Thanks again guys. :)

Let me know if you have any requests by the way, with respect to effects or demos. I don't know If I'll have time to implement them in the first release, but any feedback helps.

<font color="purple">EDIT:

Still hoping to get it released this Friday (technically today). I've gotten quite a bit more done, so with any luck I'll have it ready shortly.</font>

<font color="blue">EDIT 2:

Alpha version 1.0 is now available :)

</font>

Thanks Noga.

I'm hoping to get the alpha release done sometime within the next week. Ideally in the next few days. Anyway, I appreciate the feedback. It always helps to know there's interest out there. :)

Hi everyone,

I'm planning on building and releasing a suite of Construct Effects (Shaders) over the next little while.

I still have a fair bit of work to go, but with luck I'll be releasing an alpha version of the set shortly. At this point, I mainly need to finish off a few more Effects, and then fill in the documentation for the parameters and such.

Presently I have a little over 20, Effects, ranging from tone manipulations like soft threshold, bias, and gain, to more special case effects like a fairly flexible scan line generator.

Once the first version is released, if anyone is interested in testing out the effects in that alpha version and giving me feedback on things I might need to fix and the like, any such help would be much appreciated. :)

Anyway, I'm hoping to release the first alpha-ish version of the actual .fx files in the next few days. I also want to put together some interactive visual demos of the Effects, but I'll probably start doing most of that after the first alpha release.

I did build a demo for the "Bias Gain" Effect, just to kind of rough out the style I'll probably use for the other demos. You can get a copy of the compiled demo from the link below, to get an idea of the kind of stuff I'm working towards. If you have time, let me know what you think. :)

Download - Bias Gain demo app

(I'm interested in making the demo apps resizable eventually, but the prototype at the link above has a fixed size of 1024x768.)

Thanks guys. I worked out a system that handles a simplified case of what I'm going for. It will link instances of a single object together in chains or bunches (trees).

Download example cap here.

I'm still interested in getting it to work for an arbitrary number of collisions on a single tick.

(...also, I just got a dropbox account.)