Hello,

I decided to start with a tiny project as a first game in C2. To actually finish it.

And learn to manage all features of making a game together..

So SA, is a retro low rez styled game, about kid of olympic games.

It's inspired by very early PC / amstrad games with smashing buttons and some triggers gameplay.

Basically you'll have some character choice, some kind of discipline and practices you can try.

Highscores (i hope online ones, if i can achieve this, would be awesome)

And thats quite all.

here's a first picture of title screen.

Game is in 240 X 135.

Will add some screen filters.

Yes character is cuted , but it'll apear only when camera is up hight in the title screen.

I'll try to post progress and stuff as i advance in gameplay (maybe some gifs)

And heres another version : http://www.filedropper.com/performancetestnobehaviors

This one doesn't use any behaviors, but custom triggered movements.

And this leads to A HUGE performance boost on my comp !! oO.

Starts to drop after 700 spawns, and most of the slow performance is visible when tons of objects are On screen.

So it confirms two things :

1 - behaviors uses memory. (maybe mostly due to collision, I don't know, plateformer was the one used in the two first examples.)

maybe due to many parameters that are used all the time, even if not needed (acceleration gravity etc)

2 - custom collisions uses less less memory than behaviors. (i made another test, getting ridd of all behaviors)

3 - on screen drawing slows down a lot more than offscreen. So deleting objects outside view maybe not that useful.

Do you think making events with custom movements for enemies and such would give a performance boost ? instead of using behaviors / simulate controls ?

EDIT : seems to be much due to behavior. Collisions if set by custom event (overlapping at offset) uses much less memory.

Seems better to avoid using behaviors for many objects.

Hai everyone !

I wanted to test the performances of C2 on my desktop computer , so i tried to make a benchmark that works pretty nicely.

Here are the files if you wanna test and post your results :

Big layout (10K by 4K) : http://www.filedropper.com/performancetest

One screen layout (FHD) : http://www.filedropper.com/performancetestonescreen

You can messup with settings / object settings / layer settings etc... to test things.

And here is what i learnt from this (on my own Comp, wich is a 3 Yrs Old good PC (GTX570 quad core 16gb ram)) :

1 - On scirra's advices about performance, at least on desktop GPU computers :

Opacity settings / layers / objects effects / project resolution / hight / low quality fullscreen scaling / point interpolation /linear etc...

Full HD project / low rez resolution etc.

all this changes basically "nothing" ... seriously, my FPS in any cases will drop starting on 300 count of objects and freeze around 500 + .

(wich means 300 plateform behavior on animated sprite, and 2 explosions animations on each one. around 1000 objects animated / effects.)

2 - Object count (of course) and animations DOES a good difference. (getting ridd of animations accelarates quite a lot)

3 - Offscreen rendering even without deleting objects is Faster than on screen. (on the ONE SCREEN project, framerate drops starting at 100 spawns)

So bigger layouts with lot of objects offscreen will run faster than tiny ones with same amount inside the view.

What do you think ?

Post your PC Specs and results , would be interesting to see on other hardwares.

Basically, C2 limitations on desktop games seems to be a "core" problem. (depending of what you target, its already pretty powerful.)

Does scirra has an idea of how to raise up this object / animated stuff performances for C3 ?

Anyway, awesome Software, glad to use it

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I see... thank you for clarifying this.

I'll try that too !

EDIT : yes that works ! simplier than function. But i learnt to use two things today, thank you both !

No, but this picture is the corrected code by phimaka, R0j0hound.

before i had a "for loop" that should repeat 12 times to destroy each sprite on the full line. (cf my Capx upper)

Basically it was the exact same code, except it was nested directly in the "if count = 12" condition. And C2 wouldn't seems to run it.

Calling the function should be the "same" here, but it works

Thank you so much !!

But it's kind of sad C2 doesn't handle this kind of nested conditions/loops all together.

Anyway, i'll dig in functions usage

http://www.filedropper.com/tetris_1

This one is cleaner. had troubles with sprite size and collision masks. Now fixed.

It seems to count the lines properly (2) but it only erases the last sprite of each..

http://www.filedropper.com/tetris

I link you the capX

It's a very simple "scanner" that should destroy only full lines of sprites when met.

Maybe i didn't get how for loops works ?

So, i created two for loops (and a third to destroy the line when full) nested one in another.

The first one is scanning vertically, while the second one inside scans horizontally. And this seems to work well

as the "witness" appears everywhere to confirm. But the "count" variable seems to mess up in the process.. :

It should be reset to 0 each new line, and count 1 each time it meets a sprite.

And if the line is full , should reverse back to destroy all this line.

Then continue scanning.

In other classical code its pretty easy.

But in C2 it seems i cannot get it to work right.

Can someone have the kindness to look at it ?

Lost here..

Ok, here how i solved the thing...

I created an instance variable called "block" to store wich one is 1/2/3/4 th block.

And used a local 0 value variable that i reset each time a piece is created.

After creating the piece, i used a "on create" event that add 1 to the local variable.

And set the "block" instance variable to this local var.

And now i have the number of each block created, and can use them separatly !

"on created" events runs each time a sprite of the same type/object is created, this is what i needed to store their ID /number

thanks a lot to this guide here : https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/361/un ... moke-trail

Hope this could help other newscomers, this issue seems to have been asked many times.

But haven't found the answer i needed till now.

Hello.

I'm making a tetris game. And each time in a while , i got a spwaner creating "active" blocks to make pieces.

But i need to keep track of each of the 4 blocks created while they are active (not lay on ground or inactive pieces) with unique IDs ...?

How can i do that ?

I know a bit how to use the pick by UID, or use the Sprite(UID).X .Y things etc... to act on them.

But how do i store their IDs when the piece is created ?

like i want to know exactly the UID of block created first, the second one, third, and last one. (all pieces got 4 blocks)

Sorry if it' a noobish question. Searched the manual and forums, haven't found exactly.

In other words : how can i store the UID of a created instance in a variable ? where's this option ?

Hey Prominent !

Thanks a lot for your input.

For me personally, I've learnt that I should build only what my hands can hold. [...], and that inexperience will lead me to certain failure unless I can gain the necessary experience. [...]

I don't know about this. Thats true that seing too far can lead to failure if you can't do it. But sometimes, needs creates the knowledge...

So i think its still okay to plan things you don't know "yet" exactly how to , but you think you can handle them with some thinking, documentation

and learning. No ?

I also think that focusing on the essential parts are more important in the beginning- things that hold the game together, or run deep throughout the game, like a dialog system or inventory system, menu system, save/load system, etc. Those sort of things should be created in the beginning rather than later because much of the game will rely on those.

THAT ! Is exactly the topic that i'm wondering the most about actually.

Of course core systems are important to work on early and i agree on this, but for example i'm making a kind of plateformer / Beat em all roguelike game.

And i don't know if it's a good idea that i work too much on some systems before making the "real" game, IE the begining, first levels etc..

Planing things on paper is good. But reality of how your game design choices mix up all together is another thing. Sometimes it just doesn't work.

And making some features like " hanging on borders" "double jumps" etc maybe not suit the final gameplay.

I don't know where to go. Honestly.

And its quite the same about "graphics" and "level design / gameplay" relationship..

Hello everyone !

As i made quite many tiny prototypes on different engines. And discovered recently the power and awesome possibilities

of C2... I start to struggle on the other parts of making a game.

As i start entering seriously in first real project, i wonder how i (and anyone) could possibly enhance the game designing and making process

by good behaviors and priorities.

So , i open this topic after searching in the forums, to discuss with anyone who wants about this.

Because as programming, making graphics and such are things that becomes more ad more accessible to peoples who want to make games,

designing à good game, and not losing time in the "making" is still something that needs experience, and feedback.

For instance, everyone maybe have heard about the "feature creep" trap when making your game.. And i feel i often fall to it.

• What is Your method, way of doing it ? Past learnings about the process and such ?
• When to make Final graphics ? before , while, or after prototyping the "system" of the game ?
• Do you create mockups for everything to see the "render of the game" then make tilesets out of it, or start with the invert then check mockup rendering ?
• Do you guys prefer adding features (like double jump, etc) before starting the real level design ?

or maybe do you just go making the game "playthrought" order (like i need this feature at this moment of the game, add it) to avoid making too complex

systems that maybe will not fit level design or gameplay later on ?

how to work efficiently , without loosing too much time making unused / or remade things in the end.

Can also talk about game design in itself, how to check difficulty balance, "fun" factor etc when you got the head on the road..

Thank you a lot for reading and i hope, answering / discuss about this.