Lou Bagel's Forum Posts

  • Tried again! Still couldn't get up there! Are you sure there is a way?

    FYI - it got stuck twice for a small amount of time (10 seconds) after getting hit - not everytime though

  • Has anyone come up with an efficient way to create a game with spaces/tiles? If you are not sure what I mean think checkers.

    I have seen a couple of ways people have been working on it (and seemingly struggling) and have thought of a few ways to do it. But I feel like there has to be a simpler and more efficient way.

    Is there a table object I'm missing? The rows and columns of a table would work fine. Has anyone used an array to keep track of the contents of their 'tile' game?

    I'm almost hoping that a 'tile' behavior (and object?) will be added. Could be paired easily with a tilemap (if you want a space in the tilemap to equal a space in the game). That would be a great help in making games like strategic combat games (like Xcom; FF tactics), board games, old school RPG type games, or sim games (like SimCity, Harvest Moon). Simple commands/events like 'if tile occupied' or 'move x tiles' would simplify some of these events sheets I've seen in examples.

    I have digressed, sorry. Let me know if you have tackled this. I don't usually mind finding complex solutions, but I feel like if basic html can create a table then I don't feel like spending my time reinventing that.

  • You don't need to try to lure anyone to the wonders of unpaid gigs, just say you're making a game as a hobby and you're looking for a hobbyist artist. Lay out your idea and what you're looking for and you'll find someone in no time

    haha, thanks. I'm realizing I type too much . . .

  • ***Not Paid*** (or at least no guarantee of money)

    ***No Commitment or Deadlines***

    Why would you be interested in this then?

    I have a day job but love the idea of making video games as a hobby. I am looking for someone in a similar situation but with art. I keep spending so much time with the art side and am not satisfied - I want to spend more time designing, developing and coding. I am in no place to make any promises on how skilled I am so I don't expect you to either.

    If you are in a place where you aren't confident enough to sign up for a paid gig where a certain quality is expected and deadlines must be met then hit me up and we will chat. (you just have to be better than me, which isn't saying much! ha)

    Right now I want to work on a game that is all in an office setting - so not real complicated and not that much needed. 'Pixel art' is perfectly acceptable, if you are old like me (okay I'm not that old) I'm talking around SNES level of graphics is fine. Contact me for more details.

    If office setting isn't your thing but the rest sounds like you contact me as I have other projects I stopped because I was depressed from looking at my poor art.

    My goal is to get a fun little interesting game completed and published to AppStore. It would be free to play (none of my friends pay for phone games and I would want them to check it out) - just want to get something out there.

    So let me sum up some Pros for you if you aren't enticed yet

    Pros:

    • Work on your art and see it in a project
    • Add to your portfolio (credit you on title screen)
    • No deadlines or commitment
    • Networking (if work together well could do it again - maybe for money next time)
    • Website - if you don't have a website but are interesting in getting one I do web development, too. If establish a good working relationship could help you out in that area.

  • Just use multiple layouts. No need to deal with xml or databases.

    I've used xml before and enjoyed it since as I'm using web browser I can edit it without having to export and upload each time.

  • Up until now most of the projects I have worked on have been small projects which real end goal is to learn more about Construct. So most projects have been laid out on the layout screen. With pondering more advanced projects I have been searching and brainstorming other ways. I have seen references to each level stored in xml or json files. I have thought about multiplayer games connecting to mySQL tables. And of course don't leave out all of the convenient events Construct contains.

    So for those of you that have made either large layout games or advanced projects, where you do not simply put everything on the layout screen, what have you found works for your.

    Give advice on simple things from creating enemies - every x seconds, when character passes X, distance close to x, y, etc. - to advanced methods such as storing whole levels in xml files. All comments appreciated.

  • Ladies and Gents,

    For those that have made intros to their games - which way do you prefer?

    Such as:

    Video

    Full Screen Sprite w/animations

    Long event that starts on load

    I think it is always best to put in separate layout and give option to skip intro (especially for repeat users) , but past that it seems all personal preference. I haven't made a video intro but have the other two ways I listed, each with their pros and cons. So for those that have made intros to their game feel free to post your experiences, pros and cons, tips, etc.

    Thanks

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  • i did take a look inside... ... have a great day hope it helped u ..

    Thank you so much for taking a look at it and all the comments. I really do appreciate it. That's weird such a difference in debug mode - maybe difficult to track and report all the physics and physic joints.

    Now I guess I can move on without feeling like I was missing something huge and gave up.

    There are two image files that are HUGE after export even though I tried to resize. I may try resizing in GIMP and reloading completely because one is getting pixelated already but file size isn't small - feels glitchy.

  • >

    > > .. if it doesn't then its something else u might missing cant really say if i dont see ur capx

    > >

    >

    > I don't mind sharing capx but don't have enough rep to post link or send PM so not sure how...

    >

    Export as a single file .capx and host it on one of the free hosting sites provided by the likes of Google, Microsoft, Dropbox etc.

    Place the 'publicly accessible' link here. To bypass posting restrictions, just add an unusual character in the URL, i.e..

    > htt*p://*www.mysite.com/mygame.capx
[/code:3tny5ujt]

    Didn't want to get in trouble for bypassing their posting restrictions . . . but since I can blame it on someone else now here's the capx:

    ***https://www****.dropbox.***com/s/ukmxt5t93pj9j8o/Dempsey2SingleFile.capx?dl=0***

    Maybe this is as good as it gets for projects containing physics elements - but if so then I will stay away with any physics behaviors when targeting mobiles.

    — - if you want to take a look and let me know if you still think images are the problem or you see something else.

    Anyone else that wants to take a look feel free.

    Like I said before, my goal is to learn from this - so even if you see a problem that is only small please let me know so I don't repeat it on a larger scale in larger projects.

    Thanks all!

  • .. if it doesn't then its something else u might missing cant really say if i dont see ur capx

    I don't mind sharing capx but don't have enough rep to post link or send PM so not sure how...

  • One thing i noticed in my game was that optimising the event sheet gave me a lot of FPS boost. Here are some of the things i did that had most impact.

    * If you have a lot of events, place them in groups and enable/disable the groups only when needed. The less events running at the same time the better.

    * Using functions and "once when true" can save some CPU, as well as using "every X second" instead of having events run every tick.

    * Use Sprite fonts instead of regular text object. Can do a big difference if you have a lot of text.

    * Use the condition "Is On Screen" when possible, so the Event's won't pick stuff that is not on screen. Very useful in many cases.

    In general. Try narrow down the event object picking with conditions as much as you can, and structure the event sheet so that you can turn off and turn on groups of events when needed.

    Based on Ashley's Optimisation: Don't waste your time where he states only 10% is logic I followed his logic/events tips on there, similar to some you just mentioned, and then focused on image size.

    I think a lot of the cpu is because I am using physics but I will still test out things in other areas to see if it helps.

    Thanks for the tips! I will try those out and keep in mind for future projects.

  • I reduced the size in the animation editor, not just in the layout (I mistakenly referred to it as image editor above) and always reduce as much white space as possible

  • seems about right however all my image memory on a 800 events game has 1.2 mb image memory... tops ... with high quality sprites... something u do there that heavy's the image cache... however on my projects total download memory is around 10 mb... u can see those stats at the bottom of c2 ... cpu utilization u can lower it down by tweaking and optimizing ur events... i did a gain of 5-10 -20 fps by re arranging the entire events-sheet... maybe take a look at what ur events triggers?and when... and yes debug mode uses more cpu about 20% more then what actually the app uses... which is weird... so based on ur performance benchmark ur app should be in the optimal running area... and u should have 45/50+fps ...dont worry if ur app isn't running at 60fps.. it will depend also on the power the devices used have

    I am not too worried about getting this game running perfectly but more so figuring out things I am doing wrong before I start on bigger projects. So that worries me that my tiny game is that much larger in image memory than your large projects. What is the best way to figure out what is heavy in the image cache? Is exporting the project and just looking at the image file sizes a valid way of checking that? Those are compressed sizes though, correct, so would have to remember which images I changed compression settings on?

    Is opening the image in Construct's image editor and scaling down the image work as well as in an outside program? They both will reduce the number of pixels, right? Or does Construct save the original image somewhere or something.

    Thanks again, I would really like to figure this out so when I start my next project I can get things right from the beginning.

  • All mages are decompressed before rendering to the canvas, so the size they are on disk is only of importance in the final project size.

    I don't have any mages though - it's not that kind of game . . . jk

    So for instance, the image you say is 1000x600 would use approx 1000x600x4 24MB of memory just for that one image, although if it needed to be power of 2 aligned, which older hardware requires, then it would need approx. 42MB.

    You must be very careful with old hardware and image size.

    Useful article from Ashley:

    I read that article before and just reread it. I get what they are saying with the old processors and the power of 2s. But would it be beneficial to break up the large images into power of 2s myself? So I could cut into two 640x640 images. I would still be wasting some space myself but not as much - is it worth the trouble?

    There is something else I am confused about:

    In Ashley's "How the Construct 2 WebGL renderer works" Blog post I read:

    I'm not sure why, but people occasionally wonder if off-screen objects are rendered and if it would help if they were made invisible. Of course off-screen objects are not rendered and making them invisible will do nothing apart from needlessly complicate your events.

    But of course it will be loaded into image memory if it is part of the layout. So if I have a large image at the very end (it is the finishing backdrop) how much will it affect the fps at the beginning of the game? It is in image memory but not rendered, which Ashley has mention the rendering accounts for about 90% of the processing.

    And there is no point in having it not at the end and spawned before arrives at the end as it will still be in image memory, correct?

    Thanks

  • image size is huge... lower it down a bit...

    Thanks for pointing me towards that as I was able to reduce a lot of the image sizes and I think that helped. If it is still slow because of image size then that is sad because this is not a graphic intense game.

    I tested with disabling WEBGL and didn't see much affect.

    I have four 'cues' as I call them that check where the character is by comparing x. That checks every tick but I wouldn't think there is much processing to save there. They are all four being checked at the same time so I guess I could have it check for the first one then once past that x marker start checking for the next one. With only four I doubt I would see an impact but let me know if wrong.

    Not up to 60 but consistently around 40 - I'll try on ipad again now. Does the debugger take up considerable amount of CPU for everyone? I feel like most things I've tried get choppy in the debugger even if perfectly smooth when previewed.

    Performance

    Frames per second 38 (26.3 ms/frame)

    Est. CPU utilisation 42.6%

    Est. image memory 6.8 mb

    Renderer webgl

    Object count 64