brushfe's Recent Forum Activity

  • Oh good! I'm glad you've discovered those quotes at the heart of it.

    I haven't learned to use JSON yet, but there are many here who can help with that. Hopefully someone else can chime in on that!

    But I have run into the quotes problem in other ways before. Dictionary values can be any type, and if non-numeric characters get mixed up with numeric entries, I think Construct treats it like a string (and the numeric value of a string is 0).

    There's a system condition called "Is value type" which could help check that, but the solution seems to be getting those JSON quotes sorted so your value are consistent wherever they are.

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  • It's hard for me to say without seeing the project.

    I beleive Set Key requires the key to exist already, which can sometimes cause problems.

    Does this happen in a fresh project, with just the keyboard and dictionary objects?

    Lastly, it's a longshot, but do you have quotes around the number in the dictionary?

  • I believe you can hold the Control/CTRL key when you press crop, which trims any transparent pixels around the edge

  • Thanks for looking into this!

    You're right - it succeeds if you work backwards from a button being pressed, instead of forwards from a gamepad index:

    But the first approach seems like a bug; construct knows the gamepad's index in the condition, but not in the action?

  • Two PS4 controllers have connected successfully via bluetooth, but there's a strange error showing up in the gamepad object.

    In the event conditions, these gamepads have two separate gamepad indexes. But gamepad.gamepadindex is returning -1 for both.

    Is this an error with my code or gamepads? Thank you for any insight!

  • Try changing "is S down" to "on S pressed" (where you're calling the walk animation).

    Currently you're starting your animation from the beginning every single tick. As long as you're pressing the S key, the "is S down" condition is true every single tick (sixty times a second or more). It looks like it's not playing at all, but it's just restarting so fast that you never get to see beyond frame 0.

  • On some posts—I believe they're all by Scirra members—it's not possible to change your upvote/downvote.

    For example, if you want to change your downvote to an upvote, or accidentally click one over the other, you get the browser message above.

    Is there a reason certain posts can't be adjusted? Or is it a site bug?

  • As an average skill-level user, I'm still struggling to understand the superior roles flowcharts play in game design. It seems like a series of lists that have links to other lists?

    The conversation here makes it sound like a lot of the things you'd expect to do with a flowchart (state machines, AI behaviours) aren't possible. For users down at my level, I'd love to see the Command & Construct approach taken here. Developer videos walking through how to build whatever components of games flowcharts are designed for.

    Now that we can try them without crashes, some feedback if it matters:

    • There's a lot concepts (flowcharts, nodes, controllers, names, outputs, parents, values...), and using them can be confusing (is the controller the same as the flowchart? is the node value field the same as flowchartcontroller.outputvalue?)
    • The language is also a bit much: things like renaming the "FlowchartController" to "Flowchart" (like the Timeline object), and letting me rename each node instead of everything being called "Flowchart node", would help.
    • I wish there was at least a variable check before each data point a node. Assuming you're supposed to make dialogue with this, something like "Hero.HP < Hero.HPMAX" before the option "I need healing." would make that possible.
    • I'm also not sure what "name" means on the node columns. In the questionnaire example, everything under "name" is a "type" (message, link, etc). Is this just a string-based reference to the value, like the index number?
    • I don't find the UI user-friendly, (no grid snap, small node windows, resizing the nodes only stretches the "out" column, no zooming). Hopefully this gets an overhaul before release.
    • It would be great if the C3 stylesheet for nodes matched the stylesheets for timelines. Currently, some existing construct themes break (see picture below).

    Maybe I'm not used to the feature or good enough to grasp it. And none of these points are as important as the comments above from more experienced users. This feature doesn't feel like a beginner tool at all, so if they don't find it useful, there doesn't seem much point in doing it!

  • Our approach with flowcharts is, currently, as a data structure only. This is suitable for things like conversation trees which are typically structured in an ordered way, and game logic stays in the Event Sheet View (or coding). I think this is a good way to bring the benefits of a visual designer for tree-like structures without the downsides of spaghetti-logic.

    If so, it seems there'll be quite a gap between the expectations of this feature and the uses you're building it for (meaning it's setting up a lot of disappointment, looking like it does more than it does).

    If it's just a series data structures connected to each other in a linear fashion, couldn't each flowchart just be one big data table? If the nodes aren't going to have conditions/reactions between them, there's no need for all this big empty space between them. The arrows linking node to node could just be index numbers. And there would be no need for scrolling around, looking for a certain node's tiny title, etc; it's all just one big table (like an array, but with fixed content types in each cell).

  • Well said! It's incredible how many powerful tools have been released this year, and how simple they are to use. Plus all the community-built tools we're seeing now!

    Thank you for taking a moment to remind us all of that, and thanks to the whole Scirra team for such an exciting year!

  • To be honest, with the current set of features, i'm not sure why i would go with the Flowchart instead of the Arrays (or JSON). Because Array would also allow us to store any number of values ("unlimited column numbers", while Flowchart are just more retrictive and require to parse data contained in just a 3 values max - Name/Value/Tag, it means potential huge token list which are not always very pleasant to deal with).

    JSON would even allow us to nest and manipulate any amount of Data/arrays/Dictionaries for each nodes.

    So IMO right now Flowcharts compete with Data Plugins while they could become something new that synergize well with Eventsheets

    100%, this is also the conclusion I've come to. This is such an exciting feature, and it could be a truly great addition to Construct, but I wonder if it's being designed functionality-first instead of use-case-first.

    In the end, Nodes should a) improve workflow of existing methods (make it easier to do what users already can do in Construct); b) make it possible to create new methods with the same ease as Construct (FSM, Dialogue, Quests); or ideally c) both.

    That's probably obvious, but if superior workflow and additional capability can't be achieved with nodes in c3, nodes shouldn't exist in c3. There's been a few additions to construct that felt designed in an engineering bubble, and I really hope that all the amazing users here can guide nodes to a truly useful and powerful addition.

    It's amazing that this conversation is happening and there are so many great ideas being shared. I can't wait to see how it progresses!

  • An email just arrived about a sale something on my favourites list, despite already having purchased it.

    I didn't realize favourites lead to sale notifications; that seems like something for a wishlist. Or maybe favourites = wishlist on this store? I was using favourites to show support for great assets I'd already purchased.

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brushfe

Member since 21 Jul, 2013

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