Tutorial: Platform School

No, that's because there is a specific animation defined for 180 degrees. If there were no 180 animation, then the sprite would turn upside down.

rofl thanks, I see now. I assumed there was flipping of the sprites for left and right to save on memory or whatever.

I guess in the end a simple flip of your character would cause as many problems as it solves. Like z order of the weapon in his hands etc.

I guess in the end a simple flip of your character would cause as many problems as it solves.

Eh, not necessarily. You could flip the player sprite, I just didn't .

Remember, this is just how I do things. It's not necessarily the right or wrong way, but I do try to keep things simple and efficient. And if something is slightly less efficient but slightly more simple, I'm bound to lean towards the simple side. Sure, flipping the sprite would save on VRAM but for small, low-res sprites like this it doesn't really matter too much.

I added the spring bouncer and it works but my player's regular jump strength is now lower, why is that? Also, the spring animation does not work.

I added the spring bouncer and it works but my player's regular jump strength is now lower, why is that?

How could I possibly know?

Someone would have to look at your .cap to see why that is. Same for the animation.

Firstly, its nice to see a unique approach to learning. I really enjoy going through your demos and trying to rip them apart.

One comment I will make though is that sometimes the tutorials seem like they are made for people to grasp some ideas, but then assume that the users can think for themselves in an environment that is completely alien to them. Toward the later demos I found it actually easier to follow because they started to point the user by explaining in a little more detail of where things could be found. Early on when the demos mentioned something like "go to the animation control" I was stuck because the application showed the Layers by default, and I didnt know that I had to first go to projects/ and then open up the sheet with the events called animation controls. ( I dont remember if that was the name of the object but im just giving you an example ) .I remember going through the ribbons to find what you were trying to hint at but i just couldnt find it. In the end it was something that you built and not specifically something that was a part of the application itself.

Another thing that I should mention is that I am personally having a hard time with "syntax" so to speak, so perhaps explaining something like why the event sheets are set up a certain way would go very far. perhaps when to include a system event, or when to attach an object within the scene. how to set up variables properly to do things like maybe translate an object with every tick ( like background clouds ), and have them tile/wrap as well. having some sort of elaboration on logic behing the way the application expects things to be set up would be very appreciated.

Now, while these demos are great in showing ideas, for us to rip through, I find that what they lack mostly is the process. I went through all the demos yesterday, but when I tried to do some simple things, I was actually having a hard time due to not knowing what types of objects I should add. There are image lists, Tiled backgrounds, boxes, etc but while the early demos gave us some very vague ideas, they never told us specifically which objects were used from the interface, because they were already added in, and renamed, which adds more confusion. or how to go through adding an image. I had to go through some trial and error before I found out that what i really had to do was open an image, and then press the save function ( which to me personally makes no sense, because saving an image in every other application does so, but to the hard drive and not to the application itself ).

Again, these comments are just meant as constructive criticism.

Anyway, what I would love to see is how to make some elements in the background move/ remain tiled, and wrap. Also maybe how to set up a character to hang onto a ledge and climb up on it, or how to switch levels/layouts,or setting up a menu with start game, quit game functions, talk to npcs ( or rather how to set the npcs to give us a bubble like those signs do, because while I can find the signs in the event sheets, I cant seem to find where the author put the text that is written within them ). Those kind of things would help a ton

cheers man, and keep it up.

One comment I will make though is that sometimes the tutorials seem like they are made for people to grasp some ideas, but then assume that the users can think for themselves in an environment that is completely alien to them.

Disclaimer from the first post in this thread:

[quote:2lk6og1x]This is a series of tutorials aimed at novice Construct users. These tutorials assume you have a basic knowledge of the Construct IDE and event system. If you're totally new to Construct I recommend you go through the Ghost Shooter tutorial before starting Platform School. You can find the Ghost Shooter tutorial here.

When I first started making these everyone said "You should do a completely noob-friendly tut with the very basics like how to add a sprite, etc. etc." I tried that, and it was really friggin boring. If I'd gone that route, these would never have been made. So yeah, I'm sorry they're not aimed at total beginners.

I do see where I could elaborate on some issues (for instance, the Ghost Shooter tut doesn't cover global variables), and there have been a few things brought up by other users that show where I need to explain things a little more clearly, and those will be changed when the re-writes happen.

As for your suggestions, yes, some of them will be in future lessons, and some of them won't be. For instance, I will be showing how to make a menu screen and how to add decorative elements like clouds, but no I won't be showing how to make the player cling to a ledge and climb up.

But... I helped someone out with ledge climbing in Help/Tech a few days ago:

It's just a prototype, and you'll have to work out how to do animation for it on your own, but there you go

Needs some tweaks, but here it is

<img src="http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/472186/Construct/Forums/Irudiak/charlie3d.jpg">

Needs a tie.

Needs some tweaks, but here it is

<img src="http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/472186/Construct/Forums/Irudiak/charlie3d.jpg">

<img src="http://www.b3tards.com/u/2951c544e5d930f23b20/giantpsypop.gif">

Holy crap, that's awesome . What program did you use?

Thanks

Neck?

Charlie doesn't have a neck.

Haven't had time for any sort of programming or design for a while (let alone release the next maze tutorial), but when I do find time to dabble with the latest version of construct, I like to test your tutorials with it deadeye, as they seem to like to break them for you.

So I'm not sure if it's been mentioned in this thread or another, but your last tutorial has problems in 993.

The ones that I can remember off the top of my head are;

:: Animation direction is always RIGHT regardless of which direction you're moving.

:: Double Jump doesn't work

:: Climbing ladders doesn't work

:: I think running didn't work, but I can't remember for sure.

Maybe this is old news to you, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

That's because of the new Player 1 controls parameter. You just need to go through all of the control-press events and set them (just double-click the condition and hit 'Finish') and all of the controls work fine. It's a known issue since 0.99.

I tested the latest lesson last night and after some tinkering I found two problems:

1. Jumping on a doomba when it's walking left sometimes spawns the dead doomba upside down (angle 180). This can be fixed by setting the dead doomba to 'No rotation.'

2. The Cooper enemies will jump when they collide with the side of an object with Platform Attribute. The platform objects are triggering "Has wall to left/right" when they shouldn't be. This is a bug that needs to be reported, and I'll be doing that shortly.

At this point, all of the lessons need to be rewritten again (as I figured they would). I don't recommend that folks use them until that happens.

....It's a known issue since 0.99.

Well that sounds about right.

I think 0.98 was the last version I used before downloading 0.993 today.

Life is just too busy at the moment to be able to explore the new features in Construct, which is a real pain.

Good to know that it's easily fixable.

And I'll have a bit more time in the next couple of weeks, so I'll be able to join in the fun again.

Cheers.