John Cutter's Forum Posts

  • I'm pretty familiar with Construct, and I'm an owner of Construct 3. I have not, however, tried to do anything with the multiplayer object.

    With that in mind, how difficult would it be for me to create a multiplayer quiz game for my office? I'm fully confident that I can make a quiz game, but I want to allow up to 30 people to connect to it and compete against each other, in realtime.

    PLAYER EXAMPLE:

    As a player, I go to a website link with my iPhone and am prompted to enter my name. A second or so later my name appears on the Quiz Screen. (In this case, on a large monitor in a conference room.)

    When the Quiz Creator clicks the READY button a question and four answers appear on the Quiz Screen. A moment later they appear on my iPhone and I choose one of the answers. (I have 20 seconds to pick.)

    After the timer runs out, or all answers are in, the correct answer appears on the Quiz Screen, along with the number of people who got the question right and wrong.

    And so on. Is this a moderately difficult endeavor, or a hugely complicated rip-my-hair-out kind of project. :-) (I've looked at the example "chat" app, and it doesn't look *too* bad...)

  • I did a quick Google search to see if this had already been suggested somewhere but didn't find anything...

    The game flow of my current project has gotten a bit complicated as I transition from my puzzle, to a scoring popup, and then on to the next puzzle. I was having strange issues and to help me find the problem I came up with the following idea:

    1. I added an array to my layout and called it "array_debug".

    2. Then I created an event that PUSHED a string value to my new array.

    3. I pasted this event in each of my main code Groups, and in each Function that wasn't part of a loop. (Then I changed the value I was pushing to represent the Group or Function name.)

    4. When I run my game in Debug Mode I can then look at array_debug to follow my event flow.

    What I EXPECTED to see was something like this:

    Initialize Group

    Setup Group

    Create Sprites Function

    Game Group

    Scoreboard Group

    Final Score Group

    What I ACTUALLY saw was this:

    Initialize Group

    Setup Group

    Create Sprites Function

    Game Group

    Scoreboard Group

    Scoreboard Group

    Scoreboard Group

    Scoreboard Group

    Scoreboard Group

    Scoreboard Group

    Scoreboard Group

    Scoreboard Group

    Scoreboard Group

    Scoreboard Group

    Scoreboard Group

    ...

    My scoreboard group was supposed to execute once and then exit, but I forgot to deactivate the group so it was running over and over again. Now I'm paranoid about other places where I'm looping through unnecessary code that might be slowing my game down. This trick should help me find those sorts of problems.

    EDIT: This trick can also be done by logging events to the browser console, but to be honest I haven't looked into how to do that.

  • [quote:319mkdi1]But i'm still confused as the array isn't showing as an object I can use for events.

    To add to what blackhornet wrote... In order to use many of the built-in features of Construct (like arrays) you have to first add them to your project. So go to your layout, right click, select "Insert New Object", and then pick Array. Now it will be available to events and actions.

    The next thing you will want to do is add an action for your AJAX event (On "shop" completed). Array --> Load --> AJAX.LastData.

    To make sure that everything worked, run your game using "Debug Layout" (instead of the triangular Preview button) and then click on your array on the left side of the debug panel. You should be able to see your data listed.

  • A tag is just a name you can assign to help Construct identify things. It's almost like a variable name, which means it can be anything you like.

    For example, when you use AJAX to "request" a project file you can add a tag like: "zebra_yoghurt". Then your next line would be:

    AJAX --> On "zebra_yoghurt" completed -- Dictionary --> Load from JSON string AJAX.LastData

    Another place where I use tags is with audio. When you play a music file, for example, you can assign it an optional tag. Again, it can be any name you want. By giving it a tag you can then do things like check to see if music with that tag is playing.

  • Try Construct 3

    Develop games in your browser. Powerful, performant & highly capable.

    Try Now Construct 3 users don't see these ads

  • For a bit more help, check out my recent thread here:

    Here's a quick overview:

    1. Right click on Files and select New --> Dictionary

    2. Edit your dictionary with keys and values (do NOT include quotes for text)

    3. Add AJAX to your project

    4. One of your first events should use AJAX to Request a Project File

    5. When it's loaded (AJAX "On [tag] Completed") then the Action for your Dictionary object should be "Load"

    6. You can then load AJAX.LastData into your Dictionary

    7. Now you can use keys to retrieve information from your dictionary

    8. If you created an array then you can do things like: Array.At(index) or Array Contains Value "Text"

  • Your project should work fine in Construct 3. In fact you can probably try it with the free version. (Just click on the Construct 3 link above.)

    That said, if you SAVE your project using Construct 3 you will no longer be able to load it in Construct 2. At least, this is my understanding.

  • [quote:1blze4vj]If this is for C3, why post in the C2 section?

    Yeah, sorry about that. I initially posted in the C2 section because more people seem to read that section. When I realized my problem was specific to C3 I posted again there, then found out it was too late for me to delete this thread. Can you do that for me? Thanks!

  • Update: blackhornet provided the solution to my problem! When I entered the data in the JSON file (using Construct 3 I was able to type values into a table) I was using quotation marks for strings. Apparently, this isn't necessary. When I removed them everything worked correctly.

    In case anyone else runs into this issue in the future I made a quick illustration:

  • [quote:34y3482z]You don't need the quotes in the JSON file. Get rid of all of them, and it works.

    That did the trick! Thank you very much, blackhornet. That was driving me nuts.

    For anyone else who might run into this same issue in the future I made a quick diagram:

  • That sounds amazing, oosyrag! When I get some time I'll check it out!

  • I started this thread in the Construct 2 General Discussion board, but I think the problem may be specific to Construct 3 so I'm recreating it here.

    I was trying to learn about the Dictionary object the other day and I created a simple test:

    1. I started a new project

    2. I added a dictionary object, AJAX, a button, and a text object.

    3. I right clicked on "Files" and picked New --> Dictionary

    4. I made size = 4 and I created four sample keys:

    "Name" = "John"

    "Age" = 56

    "last_played" = 0

    "puzzles_lost" = 0

    Then I created a few events that looked like this:

    To my surprise, clicking the button on my layout did NOT change my text string to "John" as I expected. It changed to "0". When I looked at the debug panel the dictionary appeared to have the correct information, though when I looked at the string for AJAX.LastData it looked like this:

    {
   "c2dictionary": true,
   "data": {
      "\"Name\"": "\"John\"",
      "\"Age\"": 32,
      "\"last_played\"": 0,
      "\"puzzles_lost\"": 0
   }
}[/code:1b28gtnl]

Are the back slashes normal? I didn't edit the JSON data, I just had C3 make it for me...

As a test I added some keys to my dictionary object using "Add Key" and everything worked as intended.

[img="http://i68.tinypic.com/2s1m2rq.jpg"]

I'm stumped. Is this a bug in Construct 3? Or is it, [b][i]once again[/i][/b], something stupid I'm doing wrong? 

Here's my .c3p file:
[url]https://ufile.io/hk7a1[/url]

  • [quote:2dwry3bw]Post a CAPX.

    As I mentioned, I built my dictionary test using Construct 3. (But the file is small enough for people with the FREE version to view.)

    dictionary_test.c3p

    https://ufile.io/hk7a1

    UPDATE:

    I just tried adding keys to my dictionary manually, and that worked as intended. Here's the code:

    So I seem to be having an issue when I use Construct 3 to generate my dictionary file. I'll put up a new post in the Construct 3 area.

  • Try this: forget about the form for now, try to directly print Dictionary.Get("Name") to the console after loading the dictionary.[/code:3d55xobx]

To be honest, I'm not sure how to do that. I need a plugin, right?

As a test I just started completely over with fresh code and tried setting a Global String variable to Dictionary.Get("Name"). I tried triggering this based on a button press (the debugger says the value of the variable was still "O"), then I moved it below the line where the dictionary loads AJAX.LastData. The debugger still says "O".

I'm stumped.

  • Thank you for the reply, Zed!

    Here is the JSON string from Ajax.LastData:

    {
	"c2dictionary": true,
	"data": {
		"\"Name\"": "\"John\"",
		"\"Age\"": 32,
		"\"last_played\"": 0,
		"\"puzzles_lost\"": 0
	}
}[/code:zs15n2r5]

I created the json file within Construct 3. I right clicked on the "Files" button and chose "New" & "Dictionary". Then I just entered some values:

"Name" = "John"
"Age" = 32
"last_played" = 0
"puzzles_lost" = 0

  • I was doing some simple tests with the dictionary object and I immediately ran into a snag. (See image below.) When I click the button on my form the text string changes to "0". What am I doing wrong?

    NOTE: I included a picture of the debugger. The dictionary object has the correct data, I just can't seem to retrieve it using the key value "Name".