Creating a Super Metroid clone... couple of ?'s

Hi all,

I'm just getting my feet wet with Construct2, trying to figure out what it does well/what its limitations are. So far I'm really digging what I've seen. To explore a bit, I've started to flesh out a small environment featuring Samus from Super Metroid.

There's still a lot of work to be done with her animations (I'm sure you'll see), but in the meantime, here are a couple of specific questions/issues:

1. Bullets usually hit the walls of the layout and explode, but occasionally they pass through. Why would this happen intermittently?

2. When firing while standing, bullets proceed at the proper pace. However when running, bullets fall behind the character.

3. ScrollTo: This is great, but I'd like to give it boundaries. Meaning, I'd like scrollto to follow the character, until it reaches the "wall boundaries" on either side. If the right side of the frame hits the right side of the wall I'd like it to stop... Same for left hitting left, top hitting top, etc.

See below for the link (hoping I got it right, first time with Dropbox):

dropbox.com/s/uiaotqjcznl179z/Super%20Metroid%20Intro.capx

Thanks in advance for any input.

• Chase

1: I couldn't get the bullets to pass through anywhere, so I don't know what you mean.

2: Your character's max speed is greater than the speed of the bullet, you should either speed up the bullet or slow down the character. You would run past bullets in real life as well, if you were faster than them.

3: Instead of using the ScrollTo behaviour, use the system actions "Scroll to position" and "Scroll to X/Y". To limit the scrolling, all you have to do is compare two values and input "ScrollX" or "ScrollY" to get the current scroll position.

Thanks for the input Nimtrix.

1. Could be because I'm running in FF? Not a major glitch, but something I'd want to tackle if creating a for-purchase game.

2. Yeah I thought about this. My thinking is the speed would be additive, meaning if you're traveling in a car at 50mph, and fire a (really slow) bullet at 50mph, it would have a total speed of 100mph. I wonder if there's a way to say "if running, bullet speed is player.speed + 50"

3. Thanks! I'll give it a shot.

Another thing I've been mulling around is transferring between screens. If you're familiar at all with the game from SNES, you'll remember that Samus travels through "rooms", which update and shift every time she enters a new one. I'm trying to decide if the best way to do this is to have one massive layout, and then maybe shift focus with the ScrollX/Y, or to actually have multiple layouts, each representing its own room.

Nimtrix, what would the syntax be for #3? My first thought was Platform on Moved > System: Scroll to...? There are spots for values there, but I would want it to be relative to the player...

Bump. Still trying to figure this one out.

I got the wall glitch after some more testing. It should be fine if you change the condition to "Is overlapping" instead of "On collision" and make the wall a bit wider.

To add the speed of your character to the bullet speed, just set the speed to "Projectile.Bullet.Speed + Player.Platform.Speed".

For the scrolling, it depends on where you want the limits. But to scroll to your character you just do "Every Tick" and "Set scroll position to (Player.X, Player.Y)".

Thanks for the reply- I'll try the first two out.

As for #3, wouldn't that just center on the player? That would still show outside the bounds of my walls if, for instance, the player was touching the first right-hand wall.   I'd prefer instead that the camera's right boundary stop when it hits the right boundary of the wall, which would temporarily let the user run freely without the camera following. Does that make sense?

If this isn't currently doable, that's fine- again I'm just demoing this to test all of Constructs features- I've really been digging what I've seen so far.

simply awesome...you helped me with a totally newbie confusion..couldnt make my character mirror the bullet img. , thanx a lot and keep up the good work

I've been working on a camera system similar to what you're describing here, and I've finally landed on a solution that works for me.

I made a simplified version as an example Capx. It's a little complex, but I tried to annotate the example so it would at least make some sense. Let me know if it helps, or if you have any questions.

Metroid-ish Camera System -- Example CapX

whiteheat, that's fantastic! I like your solution and the way you explained it as an interactive tutorial. I'm a visual learner, and this really help me understand your approach. Thanks for posting it. Maybe you can upload it to the tutorial section?

I hope that this helps chasethomas as well. Good luck Chase on the clone.

Hey, glad it helped somebody! And you're right, I'll post in in the tutorials section today.

EDIT: Actually, I think something like this would fit better in the "Your Creations" forum.

whiteheat,

you can also do it like that

scrollingStyles.capx

Yann, very nice!

Super Metroid? I'd rather import Metroid Fusion into Construct 2, it had better controls.

I've been working on a camera system similar to what you're describing here, and I've finally landed on a solution that works for me.

I made a simplified version as an example Capx. It's a little complex, but I tried to annotate the example so it would at least make some sense. Let me know if it helps, or if you have any questions.

Metroid-ish Camera System -- Example CapXwhiteheat2012-09-10 19:25:18

Hey, thank you so much, this is brilliant, but Now I am wondering if you know how to do the room transition in metroid where you walk into the door, and then everything goes black except for the door, and then it slides across the screen?