A Bunch Of Questions & Thanks!

Hello!

First off I wan to thank you Ashley for making Construct! I am sad I did not find it sooner as I have been using Game Maker for the past 4 months...bleh...Anyway I am a HUGE fan of your work and must say Construct is the best Gamemaker out there for creating 2D games. Not even the commercial guys are as good as this. I prefer this to the Torque 2D game engine!!! and thats about $100$ So Again thank you it means alot as I love my open source software, I even run a freeware site I love it so much. In fact that leads me to a question...I host Construct on my site, is that ok? It's under the GPL so I thought it would be ok. It's in an un-modified archive and a link to your site. I even said that it's my favorite one. My site has not launched yet so theres time to remove it if it's a prob, but I hope it's not. Unfortunately I do have some questions for you and your forums...

You see I usually work with Game Maker for 2D games but really hate it. I make RPGs like the ones that where on the SNES, from birds eye view. But it takes so long in game maker with it's crappy layout. Also it's graphics are horrid. I like all the features you have implemented into construct, thats why i'm going to use it from now on, plus the frequent updates are nice. Anyway...

I also use 3D Game Studio A7-Commercial for making my 3D Games. Now I know constuct has no where near that kind of power but here is what i'm doing...

I like to make my games in birds eye view, SNES style before I make them in 3D. This gives me time to get to know my characters, game world, story line, and much much more. It's a very helpfull process and your software will get me there. But I have some questions about construct first, how to stuff. (I have read and made your "Ghost shooter" game)

1: How do you make it so that when a player reaches part of the screen in the game another part shows? Say if i'm walking up and then half way through the screen want the player to see then next section of land or building how do i tell construct to do that?

2: How do I do that above question in construct when building my level? What I mean is would I make the room really really big? Or do I biuld it in sections? Or are both option available?

3: Related to the above questions kinda the same actually but phrased differently, How do you build a vast world in construct? The kinda game i'm really going for is "Golden Sun" (GBA) but better.

4: related to 3, how do I make it so that my player can enter houses and take stuff or interact with object like opening doors?

5: Can construct only support sprites? or can it load 3D models as well like game maker? If not thats something to look into i guess. I know I do more 3D modeling than sprite making, it's actually easyer for me than the sprites lol.

6: How do I load a moving texture in construct such as water? I have some AVI videos of water looping, would they work? They are not recorded water they are textures made into a slide show.

7: Continued from 6, can construct load gif images, "videos" I could try to make/find a water texture in gif. IF not how do I apply a moving water texture or any moving texture for that matter?

8: How do I add triggers to construct? Like say when a player hits a certain spot on the level or beats a certain boss/monster it would go to a movie. Can construct even load movies and integrate them into games? like cute scenes, intros, outros?

9: Can you make a player have certain sounds? Like say when he/she is walking on grass it would be very quit, then in water very loud. How do I tell construct to do this? Can I?

I believe thats it! sorry for all the Qs but I want to make games. I thank you all in advance for your patience and responses. I'll be looking forward to hearing from you all!!!

Seeya!!!

[quote:2nx8x08z]I host Construct on my site, is that ok? It's under the GPL so I thought it would be ok.

Yes, technically that is allowed, but I would ask you simply link to the download page for two reasons - firstly, if we release updates, that page will be changed so you're always directing users to the latest release. Secondly, if everyone downloads via the sourceforge download, we can track download counts accurately and get usage stats and so on. If a lot of people end up hosting it themselves we'd lose that. Plus, it saves you bandwidth

[quote:2nx8x08z]How do you make it so that when a player reaches part of the screen in the game another part shows?

I'm not sure what you mean by this. There might be something in the uploads forum.

[quote:2nx8x08z]Related to the above questions kinda the same actually but phrased differently, How do you build a vast world in construct?

Left click an empty space in the layout, and in the properties bar, you can set the width and height of the layout to anything you want.

[quote:2nx8x08z]how do I make it so that my player can enter houses and take stuff or interact with object like opening doors?

This is a very general question. Under Sprite, you can test for collisions with objects. I guess you'd start off testing if the object has collided with the object to interact with.

[quote:2nx8x08z]Can construct only support sprites? or can it load 3D models as well like game maker?

Not right now - but it's vaguely planned for the future. There's a 3D box object that proves 3D can be done, but it can't load meshes - we need a few more changes to the engine and I want to finish all the 2D stuff first too!

[quote:2nx8x08z]How do I load a moving texture in construct such as water? I have some AVI videos of water looping, would they work?

Bleh, I wouldn't use an AVI... I'd use a pixel shader. Try putting the water in to a sprite and adding the Warp effect, or something like that. Construct can't import GIFs just yet - it can do a series of BMP files though.

[quote:2nx8x08z]How do I add triggers to construct? Like say when a player hits a certain spot on the level or beats a certain boss/monster it would go to a movie. Can construct even load movies and integrate them into games? like cute scenes, intros, outros?

I'd do it by just having some invisible sprites round the level. When you collide with the sprite, destroy it and do whatever you want to do on the trigger. There's an AVI object which should be good for cutscenes though.

[quote:2nx8x08z]Can you make a player have certain sounds? Like say when he/she is walking on grass it would be very quit, then in water very loud. How do I tell construct to do this? Can I?

Insert the Directsound object. Then you can do something like:

+ Player overlaps grass

+ Every 500 ms

-> Directsound: autoplay "grassstep.wav"

and have other events for different floor materials.

Ashley,

Thank you for the fast reply. I now have a great understanding of what to do. I will get started on my game, now in fact. Ohh, wait...I seem to have phrased my first question oddly, let me try again.

When you are playing a RPG from a birds eye view usually you don't see the whole level at once. You just see the player and say 10 feet around him/her in all directions. So what i want to do is make it so that when you walk say 1 foot to the left more of the left shows on the screen, you know so your not confined to that 10 ft spacing. If you have ever played Breath of fire or even the game I mentioned Golden sun this would make more sence. I hope I was a little more clear this time lol, I can go a little crazy with my owrding sometimes. Thanks again.

P.S. Is there an option in constuct to make it have an intro before the game? Like to show credits and stuff like that? Like a "Powered by construct" logo then go to the main menu. Ohh and theres another one for ya, Can you make a main menu like "new game" or "continue" Or a "erase data" option and so forth? That would be perfect. If not it's ok but I would love to implemnt that into my game. Thanks again and I hope all is well! Bye!!!!

When you are playing a RPG from a birds eye view usually you don't see the whole level at once. You just see the player and say 10 feet around him/her in all directions. So what i want to do is make it so that when you walk say 1 foot to the left more of the left shows on the screen, you know so your not confined to that 10 ft spacing.

Sounds like you want scrolling - select your player, tick 'Center view on me' under Attributes in the properties bar, and make sure the layout is bigger than the window so there is somewhere to scroll to. Click an empty space in the layout to get layout properties.

[quote:2yugvrok]Is there an option in constuct to make it have an intro before the game? Like to show credits and stuff like that? Like a "Powered by construct" logo then go to the main menu.

Yeah, this is all trivial. You can have different layouts, which are like different screens or levels, and have your intro on one, the menu on the second, and the game on the third. Use the Project Bar!

Thanks again!

I belive all my questions at time of writing are answered. You are amazing! I'll get right to work!

im not trying to sound mean in any way, im just being critical

as i think i heard you said, you make 3d games, if u can do that u can easily learn construct

forget everything game maker taught you, its wrong. construct is very different from what ive heard about game maker. you dont load pre made engines into construct and its not difficult to make your own, anythings possible.

what i suggest is learn construct before you go about making anything, you dont seem to understand much about it atm. you can basically do ANYTHING you can think of to get your character moving, starting from scratch. learn how collisions and positions, values, effects, angles and the event editor work, its very critical. tranfering from mmf2 to Cstrct is easy, game makers a diff story. play around with things and learn it, dont set yourself any ambitious goals until youve thourougly though t everything out. thats my advice, read around the forum, download some .cap files, open them up and examine how they work, thats the key to your growth and sucsess

I don't think you sounded mean lol. Your just trying to through out a suggestion, that's what a game development forum is about. So no offense taken

And yeah I do make 3D games but trust me it is so different. The main things I use are Reality Factory and 3D Game Studio A7. They have a very different interface and it is actually a lot harder in my opinion, but I'm not trying to step on anyone's shoes here. Construct is very intuitive and easy to get used to yes, I'm already getting the hang of it. I have made the ghost shooter game and must say I had a smashing time doing so and look forward to making my own games. Like I said though this is more of a "get to know my game" project. Where I don't really know what my 3D RPG is going to be like yet so I'm going to make it in 2D first so I can tweak it and get to know what I want to do first. I played around with construct a little and it was very easy to lay down the textures I wanted, scale them, and place sprites over them. And yes Game maker is horrid. Thats $20 I'll never see again lmao. I even bought their book :O

So I wish I would have found construct sooner but at least I have it now. Also I knew most of those things that I asked from the Ghost shooter tutorial, but wanted to get more advice on how to go about doing it in the direction I wanted. Thats all. I'm pretty sure I know how to basic stuff in construct (now anyways) So I think i'm all set as of now. thanks for your advice and I look forward to see you peeps around. ( Yes I said peeps....what about it?!)

one thing i really hate about making 3d games, is you cant be a one man band, its just too time consuming, 2d games allow a game maker to lay down what they want get it too work, and wont take 20 yrs to look finished (texturing is a pain in the arse)

also i dont know if some1s said this yet, but triggers are events! events are real powerful but most ppl forget that there order matters, and that causes problems. dont think of construct as a box, you can make any game you want and aren't limited by the program, even when you get into complex things you'll realise their easily adapted with a bit of thought (although this isnt good for my school work because now i think of everything as events )

and avi would suck for a ingame objects, it looses quality and looks washed out. reneder your looping textures as a set of BMPs or PNGs, theyll look nicer that way (if they are based off a 3d model, if its a vid you got off the internet dont use it at all).