Tutorial: Platform School

I love these tutorials (and the new frequent update schedule)

Thanks so much for posting these. As a beginner, they're a huge help getting a handle on Construct.

Maybe the last tutorial could be "making a level editor" and then making the game would turn into a community challenge

Making a level editor would be more of an advanced tutorial, and I'm just sticking to the basics.

Thanks so much for posting these. As a beginner, they're a huge help getting a handle on Construct.

Glad to hear it . I sometimes worry that maybe I'm being to vague and concept-oriented. But just in case any part of the tut isn't clear, everyone feel free to post questions and I'll try to cover that part better.

Very nice addition to the series Deadeye.

I have noticed that Charlie appears to speed up when he is running on slopes. His horizontal speed remains the same, but he gains vertical speed. So his overall speed gets a boost. Is this something that should be handled by Construct or by the programmer?

I think that's just an optical illusion caused by the change in direction. His rate of movement along the X axis stays constant. As a test, focus instead on the background parallax layer and you will see that it scrolls along at a steady rate.

You could alter his speed in the Slopes event sheet if you wanted to slow him down on on the slopes though.

Thanks very much for the Platform School lessons. It's great to see learning injected with humor. I've enjoyed them a lot. I love the little guy: Charlie's cool and graceful all wrapped up in one neat package. His jumping and falling animations are priceless. Seeing him jump up and down on the spring/trampoline was a real highlight.

I've found lessons four and five a bit out of my league at the moment. They are something to come back to when I've had more practice with the things I know. It would be good to be able to read back over the lessons without playing the game each time. I've been trying to find where the different messageTexts are stored. They still elude me. I see that you make them invisible at runtime then visible again when Charlie overlaps them while up arrow is being pressed. I'm surprised no one else has wondered where to find them, so hope I'm not being incredibly dim witted.

Looking forward to seeing Charlie swim next lesson.

Thanks

Deadeye, these tutorials are fantastic. Well done, and thanks! They're sure to help a lot of people out.

Don't worry table, I've wondered where the text was too. Although I confess I haven't performed a thorough search ... at least not lately.

The text for the textboxes are in private variables attached to the woodSign objects. :P

When you look at the events for the signs, the command that gives the textbox its text is the "messageText: Set Text to woodSign.value('signText')" line, which as you can see, grabs the text from the value of the 'signText' private variable associated with the woodSign.

But when I try to view the content of that variable for a randomly picked sign it seems to be blank.

You're clicking it in the layout editor, right? And if you click the Edit Variables: Add/Edit, that edits the variables of all instances of your object instead of just the one you clicked on, so that's why it's turning out blank. Just click on a woodSign object in the layout editor, then in the properties bar go to the private variables section, and next to signText variable it should say the text. You can click on the text to edit it just for that sign.

Okay, wow. It's like a light just clicked on. I don't know how I didn't see it before. Thanks.

Sorry I missed the whole conversation . Yes, I stored the sign text in a variable for each sign. In restrospect maybe I should have come up with a different solution... they're kind of a pain to edit that way. Oh well, live and learn.

And I guess I didn't take repeated viewings into account. I suppose it would be a bit tedious to play through again if you just wanted to check something really quick. Perhaps I'll whip up a readme for each one that has all the sign text numbered in a .txt file or something that you could download separately if you want.

Thanks very much for the Platform School lessons...

I've found lessons four and five a bit out of my league at the moment.

You're welcome . And if there's anything you'd like me to cover in more detail, let me know.

Looking forward to seeing Charlie swim next lesson.

Well, the next lesson might be a while. I haven't yet drawn Charlie's swimming or climbing sprites . I also have to draw a ladder, but I already have some animated water sprites I can scrap from an older project (the same project I took all the ground tiles from... it's not going to get finished, so I might as well put them to use).

[quote:32op0j0x]Perhaps I'll whip up a readme for each one that has all the sign text numbered in a .txt file or something that you could download separately if you want.

Yes Please

Great lessons, they�ve thought me things I didn�t even know I was missing. However, and I�m sorry to say this, I�ve found some problems in lesson 4 and 5. In lesson 4 everything works fine, except the moving platforms. For some reason Charlie seems to have higher speed than the platform and is there fore being pushed of. Strangely enough does this problem not occur in lesson 5. Any changes, perhaps? My problem in lesson 5 is instead that I can�t run and jump to the right, just to the left. I do know that this is a keyboard issue, but at least I think people should be aware of it, and the real issue in this case was that I wasn�t able to change the controls in Construct. Does any one know why?

Whoops! Looks like you got the old version before Construct v0.98 came out. It has old code that isn't necessary any more because moving platforms are now automatically recognized by the Platform behavior. So either you downloaded it before I made the update, or you got it off the wiki (which doesn't appear to have been changed yet).

You need the version of Lesson 4 in the first post:

And I'm afraid I don't know what you mean about Lesson 5. I can move to the right just fine. Is anyone else having this problem?