Vertical Space Shooter

Hello from Greece ! I' m creating a 2d space shooter using Construct! I really enjoy some features of construct but it's really annoying when it crashes every 20 minutes on my Laptop with the Intel Extreme graphics card I would like some help on the project...

1) First and most important : How could I set up different waves of enemies ? Maybe create a VERY large Layout, place them in position, scroll the layout and wait to move until they are visible?

2) For the scrolling effect, I plan to use some Star sprites which will be warped from bottom to top at several speeds. I 've tried it and it's functional... Do you think of a better solution ?

3) When I try to stop the player's sprite from moving outside the screen, the ship sticks for a while and it's really annoying for the player I use an event which checks if the Sprite's X (or Y) is less or equal to a max or min value and then if it's true I set the sprite's X (or Y) to that value. The ship can't move past that point, but when players wants to go away there is a slight delay.

Please check out the game in it's early stages : http://www.mediafire.com/?gj3iiyg0mbw

Comments and help appreciated !!! If you want I can upload the .cap file

uhh, do you really want comments on a in a .exe packed thing ?

Just how am i supposed to do that ?

You 're right mate ... Here's the cap :

http://www.mediafire.com/?gwmneljmgrt

Ty for sharing the .cap.

Always nice to see how people make there games,

and without the .cap i would have never found the Bomb to fire.

If you use sounds, then u have to share the sounds together with the .cap

Sounds are, unlike the sprites, not contained in the .cap.

I have not much to comment about the Events. They are pretty straight forward.

Besides that i wonder why you destroy the 2nd boss gun 3 times.

Everything is presented by the right conditions. Line after line.

Although i miss some organizing.

Its a very nice example for how to use particles, they are done very nice.

But about playing the game, or lets say this level, it dont charm me much.

Sorry for beeing honest.

There is no way to escape the boss, or to use strategy in killing it.

But thats of course personal, needless to say i dont like "just click" games much as can be find in "shoot them ups" .

To return to your questions.

1/ No you dont need to set up very big layouts for this. The solution to this you did already. Create the objects outside screen. And call them to the screen on the right moment. Or make different layouts to represent levels, as you did already.

2/

You can warp the stars and bring them to normal speed, dont matter wich solution you go for.

3/

You should name your objects. Anyway. The Ship object is moved by an '8 direction' behavior.

What happens is, you force the ship to move away from the edge of the screen, while the behavior keeps pushing it back to the edge. And that feels like sticking.

So to keep the Ship from moving outside the screen, you have to communicate directly with the "8 direction behavior". Not do things behind its back.

To do this, just place a colider on the right and left of the screen. Make them "solid" in the groups/attributes properties. And the behavior will not intrude those, or put in in other words: keep it on the screen

This for your questions.

Another thing about "waves of objects". The events you build now, mainly control 3 objects and a bunch of particle objects. They are all different objects.

To keep a wave under control, you will need to learn to go along with instances, and the events to control instances.

I wrote about those, towards beginners, from out the eye of a beginner. Well thats what i still am.

You can find them here:

Enjoy constructing. : )

Hi Ktel,

[quote:3nu4s9ob]3) When I try to stop the player's sprite from moving outside the screen, the ship sticks for a while and it's really annoying for the player I use an event which checks if the Sprite's X (or Y) is less or equal to a max or min value and then if it's true I set the sprite's X (or Y) to that value. The ship can't move past that point, but when players wants to go away there is a slight delay.

I think its easy fix for this one. Its in the Acceleration and Deceleration. If you set Acceleration to 10000 and Deceleration to 10000 in your ship object you will see the delay from moving away from the wall gone.

The other thing you could look at is the checks you have for you ship and the walls.

Ship.X Less or equal 50 then you change the Ship.X to 50.

Which makes a little loop. Maybe set the Ship.X to 51

By the way I like your graphics. I wish I could make my own graphics like that.

As far as your enemy waves thing, I've been (slowly) putting together an update to my Starfox project that addresses this very thing. Please stay tuned.

The acceleration and deceleration is definately the problem. Also, i LOVE the graphics!

The Ship object is moved by an '8 direction' behavior.

What happens is, you force the ship to move away from the edge of the screen, while the behavior keeps pushing it back to the edge. And that feels like sticking.

So to keep the Ship from moving outside the screen, you have to communicate directly with the "8 direction behavior". Not do things behind its back.

To do this, just place a colider on the right and left of the screen. Make them "solid" in the groups/attributes properties. And the behavior will not intrude those, or put in in other words: keep it on the screen

Thank you my friend! By adding solid objects around the layout my problem was solved! No need to mess with events or acceleration! As far as the gameplay is concerned, I will improve it for sure... This was just a very early attemp... And believe me there is indeed a strategy to defeat the boss