Ashley's Recent Forum Activity

  • I haven't actually tried it out either, there's a few screenshots in the documentation though. Was just pointing it out really.

  • Only C2 is portable, 0.x isn't portable... by "It should already be portable" I meant "Construct 2 is already portable"!

  • Do you mean editing the project files directly rather than through the image editor?

    Edit: maybe it would be handy to clarify what the problem was and how you solved it, for the benefit of other users?

  • Edit: this is actually a 3rd party addon!

    'Playmaker' just got released for Unity, a way of visually scripting an application. Have a look:

    http://u3d.as/content/hutong-games-llc/playmaker/1Az

    It appears to be a fairly simple flowchart - I don't think it does anything like instance picking, and I'm always skeptical of tools that try to let you code in 2D, placing stuff in a large area (doesn't it get messy?). So I wouldn't call it a competitor just yet, but it's still interesting.

  • I've always thought if people regularly code their own movements instead of using behaviours (e.g. a custom platform movement instead of platform behaviour) then the behaviours should be improved so that everyone uses them. They're not meant to be a toy for newbies, they're actually meant to provide functionality in a useful and accessible way. They should also be customisable enough that you can implement custom functionality to make your game unique and interesting, be that springs or reversing gravity or whatever.

    If you have any ideas on how behaviours can be improved towards this - especially in C2 - do tell us your ideas! I was under the impression most people use the behaviours, even for full games - if that's not the case, I'd be interested to learn why.

  • Does C2 need as much power or more as C1 to run?

    You should find C2 is faster and uses less memory than 0.x.

    [quote:4ckldxkd]will C2 be portable

    It should already be portable. Try copying it to a thumb drive and taking it to another computer. You should be able to launch it directly from the thumb drive, without even copying it over.

  • Maybe Construct 2 already does it but will "effects" include "set color filter"? I pretty much use that more than I do any pixel shader.

    Canvas doesn't seem to support it natively yet. However, it's possible to do it basically by a bunch of setpixels and then caching the result. The problem with this is if you change the filter every tick it will be incredibly slow (probably unusable, since creating a new tinted image will take a long time), and if you have lots of different instances all with different tints, it will use a lot of memory from caching a separate image for each instance.

    I'd prefer not to do it that way because it's grossly inefficient if you haven't heard of that limitation, assume it works like 0.x, and then wonder why your game is crawling slow or using tonnes of memory. I think it's best to wait for native support for this type of thing (WebGL would also allow this, since it is equivalent in functionality to the 0.x DirectX runtime).

    What do you use tints for? Do you tend to only have one or two different colour filters?

    Firefox 4 beta 12 drops to around 31 fps.

    Holds a steady 60fps for me - but if it's slow, it should be easy for browser makers to speed it up. Most graphics cards support additive as easily and as efficiently as ordinary alpha blending.

  • Construct's code doesn't survive 'advanced optimisations' in the closure compiler, only 'simple optimisations' which has much less of an obfuscating effect. It might be something we can fix though, it's on my todo list to figure out at some point (but it's low priority right now since it doesn't actually affect any functionality).

  • Download Construct 2 public preview 30

    Link to release 29

    Autocomplete and tips in the parameters dialog, and some basic canvas effects, notably 'additive', which is great for explosions, lasers, lighting etc., as well as opacity.

    The autocomplete works a bit better than the 0.x one, including listing instance variables, and with better keyboard shortcuts:

    <img src="http://www.scirra.com/labs/autocomplete.png">

    Parameter tips (only for system expressions right now, there aren't any object expressions with parameters yet anyway) help show you how to use different system expressions. The implementation is a little naive at the moment, it doesn't support nesting and so on. However, it's still handy when used in simple cases, or as a reminder if you've hidden the object panel.

    <img src="http://www.scirra.com/labs/paramtips.png">

    The additive effect, and the new opacity property, are great for games! This should spruce up the visual appearance of lots of games, and is all hardware accelerated in the latest browsers (IE9, FFox4, Chrome). You can also try a live demo of the additive effect (here's the .capx file). Canvas does support one or two other effects (XOR, some basic overlap effects), but they're not as useful as additive. It looks like this on supporting browsers:

    Changelog

    • [Add] Sprite & Text: 'Opacity' property, and set, get and compare opacity ACEs.
    • [Add] Sprite: 'Effect' property and 'Set Effect' action. This isn't a substitute for the full shader support in 0.x, but allows a quick way to access a couple of the simple effects that HTML5 Canvas has. Effects don't currently preview in the layout.
    • [Add] Parameters dialog: simple expression autocomplete. E.g. type 'Sprite.' and you get a popup of all expressions and instance variables in Sprite to choose from. Seems to work a bit nicer than the old 0.x autocomplete.
    • [Add] Parameters dialog: parameter tips for system expressions with parameters, e.g. typing 'distance(' pops up 'distance(x1, y1, x2, y2) - X position of first point.' These only work with system expressions (there are no object expressions with parameters yet anyway). It also doesn't handle nesting or editing after it's all typed, but is handy in simple situations.
    • [Add] Object panel: F4 toggles visible. This state is remembered. (You might want to hide it and just go by autocomplete.)
    • [Change] Object panel: instance variables are no longer listed in alphabetical order - they're ordered the same way you specify them in the Instance Variables dialog.
    • [Performance] Fixed some known inefficiencies in the javascript runtime that were a result of writing it as quickly as possible. Looping conditions and subevent performance should be improved.
    • [Fix] Fixed issues with string escaping (backslashes disappearing, error using newlines)
    • [Remove] Got rid of pay-what-you-want UI.

  • I think inkBot is right: this discussion has gone as far as it is usefully going to.

    Rest assured: we've read every post of feedback. We hear you. However, now I think is the time where we take this in to our hands. Thanks for all you posts, but I'm locking this now. If you really have a burning issue to take up, feel free to email/PM me.

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  • HTML5 canvas doesn't have shaders, anyway.

  • (& is the correct syntax for string concatenation)

    That's a bug in the HTML5 exporter, it's fixed in the next build.

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Ashley

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