Hi all,

I need some help with something. My artist has created a quick concept sketch here:

I think it's great, but I'm having a lot of trouble trying to prototype the shadows here. To be honest I'm not even sure where to begin with it. I think it'd need mask layers for some of these, but not even sure that's possible in C2. The shadow plugin doesn't seem to give you control of shadow length as far as i'm aware.

Sorry I'm a super idiot when it comes to graphics.

Somebody - I love these effects. I'm wondering, for the drop shadow is there a way so that the it gradients into transparent at the edges?

Problem Description

When changing variable value of multiple objects in a scene.

Attach a Capx

I can't re-create this in a new project, so I have uploaded a video of the issue (excuse the music) https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/331 ... .01.02.mp4

Description of Capx

N/A

Steps to Reproduce Bug

• select all of one object from objects pannel
• change variable for all objects
• deselect them

Observed Result

editor crash

Expected Result

no crash

Affected Browsers

• Chrome: (YES/NO)
• FireFox: (YES/NO)
• Internet Explorer: (YES/NO)

Operating System and Service Pack

win 8.1

Construct 2 Version ID

r205

Abandon all hope.

mattb - haha! Forgot about that.

Cheers for the feedback, will be sure to update the devlog once there's some actual gameplay to try

One of the last thing I put in was a stabilizer, if you hold left shift, it increases drag but consumes fuel, it allows you to stop drifting. The AI fly with the stabilizer always on at the moment and they freak out when it's switched off.

Oh also, press F to turn your light off - for stealth. Currently working on 'alert' states so that the AI attack you when you do something they don't like.

Okay thanks for all the help everyone, I've manage to optimize the game down so that I can have about 20 of these AI doing their thing in a scene and it runs at 60 on my crappy laptop.

Here's a simple build of an area: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/331 ... index.html

You can't do much, but on load press ENTER to take control of one of the AI and use WASD / QE to thrust. I don't know what sort of frame rates you will get but hopefully it'll be stable.

Thanks again, there's still much more optimization that can be done, but at least now I can get back to designing gameplay.

purplemonkey Yonder looks superb, great style. Also love the website, can't wait to see more

On Nereus and Orbit (before I moved Orbit to Unity) I would experience exactly the same issue where shrinking the game window would improve frame rate performance. I fixed it on Nereus by limiting the number of objects in my scene. I would randomly generate an asteroid field, and found that if I reduced the number of objects in the level to <1000 performance was rock solid, anything like 1500 to 2000 and it would really start to chug on my laptop BUT weirdly, shrinking the window would bring the frame rate back right up.

Another prototype I worked on had a massive tilemap, I'm talking a layout size of 8960, 5040 with a tilemap covering a lot of it made up of 16x16 tiles. Again, bad performance at full screen, solid 60 when reducing the window size, reducing the internal rendering resolution and all that didn't seem to make any difference.

On my desktop (which is very powerful) I get a solid 60 on the Airscape demo fullscreen. I can't test my integrated chip laptop right now will edit post with results later.

lol for some reason when I shot that screengrab CPU was at 18%, it's not like that most the time haha

mattb thanks for this - I really like your example and suggestions. I think I'm going to persist with my collided style but also use distances as you suggest for some of the objects to avoid. The colliders are working quite nicely atm, "f obstacles are in front of & behind the ship, thrustBackwards always ends up true" - this is true, but my collided shapes look like this:

And when an object is in front of the ship, the ship will also boost left or right - the 'last collided' check makes the direction of sideways thrust mostly work out except if the ship is surrounded, at which point it just shoots the asteroid in front of it

I'm setting up the containers now and reducing as many overlap checks as possible, will get back to you with the results. I'm currently using 20-35% CPU with 12 ships in the scene:

mattb - Nice one, I'll put up another video in a couple days to show the use of these AI, they're quite a fundamental part of the game now.

Amazing thanks for the info everyone I'm working through these suggestions now. Straight off the bat, rf900 limiting every tick to seconds has made quite a big saving.

kingpirux that would be interesting to see, however I want this AI to use the same control / physics as the player, the player can take control of the AI at any point and I want the interactions between the AI and player to be similar.

R0J0hound - yes I am using a lot of overlapping to pick, this is a good idea I'll integrate it and see what happens

thanks!