Art Pipeline

Hi everybody. I just found out about Construct yesterday, and got very excited about it. In less than 3 hours after downloading it I had built a physics based platformer prototype! Really amazing!

I do have some questions and maybe suggestions, though. Here they are:

1-Is there a way to "reference" external graphics, instead of importing them into the project file? Suppose I just did an animated sprite in Photoshop and brought it into the game. Now I want to make a change to the sprite, add more animations, etc, do I have to import the data again? (Unity 3D comes to my mind as an example of good and simple asset management)

2- Is there any example/tutorial about managing multiple animations for a sprite? Of all the parts in Construct, that felt like the only one I couldn't figure out by myself. Is the interface gonna be revamped in a future release?

3- I'd happily pay money for a final release of Construct, specially if that meant more features!!! But I tried donating, and you have to be logged in to SourceForge to do it. Why not PayPal? I don't want to create a sourceforge account just to donate, and PayPal is much more widespread!!

Last but not least, I'd like to add my vote for a MacOS version. I'm running Construct inside a VMWare virtual machine, and while that actually works (with some glitches here and there), it's far from ideal!

Cheers,

Leo.

[quote:3tbtdrh6]Is there a way to "reference" external graphics

Not right now. However, I guess this could be added in the future - all images and animations could conceivably be stored externally, in a project-folder style tree - but I can't see this being implemented before 1.0.

[quote:3tbtdrh6]Is there any example/tutorial about managing multiple animations for a sprite?

Not right now - I agree animations are pretty weak in Construct right now, and it needs revamping at some point before 1.0. You should, however, be able to add, and change between, more than one animation in the current build. I could make an example if it helps.

[quote:3tbtdrh6]...I tried donating, and you have to be logged in to SourceForge to do it.

Well, thanks for trying! I didn't realise you had to have a sourceforge account - but I just checked and you're right. Our paypal for donations is so you could try sending direct to that - and thank you! I'll set up a better way later today.

[quote:3tbtdrh6]MacOS version

One day, after 1.0! Also, out of curiosity, how did you find Construct? I haven't done any publicising yet, so I guess you came across Construct on a search engine?

OK, I've updated the donate option on the main site (scirra.com). Should work now.

[quote:27q7dqly]all images and animations could conceivably be stored externally, in a project-folder style tree - but I can't see this being implemented before 1.0.

Cool, I'll get more familiarized with the software meanwhile anyway. But I do think it's an important addition, specially for collaborative projects. It also enables revisions to be less painful, which can help leading to a better game in the end!

A little thing that maybe could be implemented quicker than actual external referencing would be if the imported image "remembers" its original file path, so at any moment you could hit a "reload" button and update that asset to its latest version on the image file.

[quote:27q7dqly]Also, out of curiosity, how did you find Construct? I haven't done any publicising yet, so I guess you came across Construct on a search engine?

Actually, no. My incessant searches for better authoring tools never revealed Construct.

I found it in a message on the BlitzMax forum. I have been using Blitzmax to build a little 2D engine of my own, and it's a cool language, but the truth is that if you have limited spare time, you'll end up using all of it creating your own tools and reinventing the wheel, and none of it making an actual good game, so I was always trying to find something like MMF but with more powerful options like scripting and physics already built in.

Gamemaker 7 would be my best choice, if it wasn't so slow to test games (takes a few seconds to compile and actually start running the game) and the file size wasn't so big (a couple megs for a "Hello World"...)

Thanks Ash!

Leo.

Hehe, thanks for your donation, helps motivate me a lot too

Sorry to bump this old(ish) thread, but you asked about finding the site... I found it because I was trying to go to the old Tigerworks site for some MMF2 extensions, and got redirected here...

Also yes, a donation is on my list of priorities as well if it means I will get a multiplayer plugin!

Seriously though, this program from what I've seen so far is easily worth as much as, if not more than any of the klickteam stuff... I'll have to put some money in paypal and see how we go.

~Sol