I won't bother going into great detail, because you're right... what you're asking for is pretty complex in terms of making an example cap. But I will give you this to start off with:

http://www.box.net/shared/miyyvk0t0t

You can draw boxes on a grid with the mouse.

As for making lines of boxes in a series like you mentioned, you could create a system where the first mouse click places a "tower" sprite and gives it the number 1 in a PV called something like "myNumber", and sets a global called "currentTower" to the same number. Now you need to place a second tower, but it would make sense to only place it in a straight line away from the first, so you would have to come up with a formula to make sure that placement is disabled if the next tower is placed at an odd angle away from the first:

+ Always
    -> Enable next tower placement

+ TowerSprite.Value('myNumber') = global('currentTower')
    + (TowerSprite.X - cursorSprite.X) Not equal to 0
    + (TowerSprite.Y - cursorSprite.Y) Not equal to 0
        -> Disable next tower placement
[/code:aqc87k3j]

So, if the X position [i][b]or[/b][/i] the Y position of the cursor is different to the current tower, then it's okay to place the next tower because we know that at least one of the axes to the cursor is in a straight line away from the tower (i.e. is equal to 0).  So you allow a click, and place the next tower, and lable it's myNumber to global(currentTower)+1, and add 1 to global('currentTower').

To draw between the two towers you need to find out how far away one is from the other so you can find out how many wall sprites need to be put into the space between them, then you need to loop through all the spaces and place walls.

The easiest way would be to start at tower 1 and find out if tower 2 is up, down, left, or right from it.  Then you make a loop that advances the cursor 32 pixels in that direction.  If the cursor doesn't overlap the next tower, it places a wall.  If it does overlap the next tower, it stops the loop and begins the process again with tower 2 & 3, up to whatever number global('currentTower') is at.

Anyway, that's how I would attempt it.  Hope that makes sense.

No, really. Ugh, it's a terrible site. I mean, just take a look at this:

http://i49.tinypic.com/dfbp50.jpg

And on top of that, I got a popup ad as well. Bleah. Now let's compare that to this:

http://i49.tinypic.com/2u8ku8w.jpg

Ahhhhh.... it's like a spring breeze lifting your soul. It's like puppies and kitties playing together in a meadow full of pillows and gumdrops. No ads, no popups, no garish, ghastly crap to look at... and it's a hell of a lot faster than Mediafire. Go there now! Sign up for an account! Make people happy to download your GS clones and Megaman/Sonic crossover RPGs.

Here's the link: http://www.box.net/

Okay fine, that was clever. You get to live...

What size are your background tiles? If they're not power-of-two square then that's likely the problem for the blurriness and misalignment. It's likely your video card.

Most video cards are optimized to handle textures that are power-of-two squared, and any other size causes these irregularities. This means that for a seamless, repeating texture you will need to use Tiled Backgrounds that are 8x8, 16x16, 32x32, 64x64, 128x128, etc. So if your background tiles are the same 25x25 as your player sprite, then you will run into problems.

This isn't a Construct issue, it's a hardware issue. Due to how bits work in computational terms, it's industry standard to conform to these because computers can crunch those numbers more efficiently. Some graphics cards though are designed to handle non-standard texture sizes like 25x25, but apparently that's not the case with yours.

If you redesign your tiles and sprites to conform to power-of-two sizes then you will probably see the results you are looking for. Yeah, it might be odd doing math for them at first because you can't do it in your head as easily as with factors of 5, but you'll get used to it eventually.

As for the grid shown in the layout editor, you can change the grid size to whatever you want

Apart from that, I can't quite tell from your post if your player sprite is moving how you intended... something about only appearing to move at the edge of the screen? I don't quite understand what you mean. Perhaps you could post a .cap showing what's going wrong, and explain in greater detail what the effect is that you're looking for.

OKAY HERE COMES THE BACON FAIRY TO CLOSE THE THREAD

<img src="http://i50.tinypic.com/2gspkr9.jpg">

Please don't advertise your website on our forum without at least introducing yourself and making an attempt to be a part of the community. Thanks

You don't need to use "Pick by comparison" in this case because there is a built-in expression for private variables. Just do like this:

+ Family.Ships: Value 'status' Equal to "Engaged"
    -> Do stuff
[/code:3ns3kf75]

You get that just by selecting the Ships family in the New Condition window and picking "Compare a private variable."  It's even hilighted in yellow.

And no, there is no need for a loop.  The action will be performed on every member of the Ship family that meets the criteria in the condition.

Another question though, in using textboxes, is it possible to trigger an event with the use of a textbox? I mean a specific word, it doesnt need to be the only word typed in that textbox, as long as that word is found in that textbox.

Ex. An event needs the word "heart" in textbox A. The player types "asjdjheartjdjd" or "dajglj heart jdkasj" in that textbox and that event will still be triggered.

Yes, you can do that. Check out some of the text expressions available on the wiki:

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/c ... sions#Text

You should be able to work something out from there. If you give it a try and still need help, please feel free to post a thread about it.

This would work great as-is laid over a vertical shmup or racing game.

Nice effect

youtube.com/watch a very good example, as it has everything I mentioned, 2D graphics imitating 3D ones, and fog for extra effect, and theres even some snow in this one, think itd be possible somehow?

Yep, you could make something like that. There have been a couple Wolfenstein type games/demos made with Construct, and to get that "in the air" perspective like in the video you would pretty much just need to change the angle at which the "camera" is facing.

Here's David's Wolfenstein engine:

If you tinker around with it I'm sure you will be able to come up with something that will fit your needs.

Yeah, you should talk to Soldjaboy about it. He's done pretty much exactly this, only instead of drawing the lines manually, the lines are randomly generated. Drawing the lines would be easy, though... the filling-in part is the part you need. Anyway, I'm sure he'd be happy to help you out.

[quote:3tfzs5oq]It will be a bother to redo everything in that map though

Seriously? If you can't be "bothered" to do it right, then you probably shouldn't. I really don't mean to sound harsh here, so please forgive me if I sound like an ******** The very easiest thing to do when making an RPG is to make the map and have the character walk around in it. Once that's done, it's all uphill from there. If you can't bother to do the easy part correctly, then what will you do when you get to the hard part?

And how do you expect to use BoF4 graphics, anyway? BoF4 is in 3D... it doesn't use tiles. It's rather ridiculous to expect that you can just screenshot a 3D game and cut out the pieces you need. You're not saving yourself any time by doing that, because it won't work and you'll eventually have to start over from scratch and do it the proper way.

Anyway, if your team has this idea that BoF4 screencaps are a great solution to your graphics needs then my advice is to ditch your team because they don't know what the hell they're doing and you're in a dead end project. Or at least try to convince them that their idea is ridiculous. Also, if you have a team then at least one of your team members should be an artist who can make proper tiles for you, so you should probably seek out an artist.

Another piece of advice: Don't even worry about putting graphics in the game right now. No... seriously. Use plain colored boxes. Make the game itself work first, and then worry about graphics. You're concerned with how to make NPCs walk from map to map? Well, work on that. You don't need graphics to do that, you just need to put events together and move little colored boxes around the screen. Who knows... by the time you're done with the basic mechanics of the gameplay your team may have found a proper artist.

As for the shading at the edge, why not make a Tiled Background that is a gradient from black to clear and then just stretch it?

Not really, the map is made up of small objects, well the "ground" part of the map was once actually one big image, but i split it into 29 small parts and just sticked them together in Construct.

Well heres my cap: http://www.mediafire.com/?hywqnuy2dli

Yeah probably, but I need the layout to be big since I need NPCs to travel between maps. Anyway, is there a way for it to lag less?

What are you doing? You're going about this the entirely wrong way. You need some Game Design 101 help here.

Look at this:

http://i45.tinypic.com/25psieh.png

That thing is ONE SPRITE. Jesus, man! You just can't do that. NO GAME on the planet does that. And that's just one part of your map... there's stuff like that all over the place.

You need a tile set. Games are made up of small, individual tiles. Each of those trees in that one sprite should be separate instances of one tree. (In fact, the top of the tree should probably be separate from the bottom so you can walk underneath the leaves.) Anyway, if you need trees, you copy and paste your tree sprite where you need it... you don't make one huge image with fifteen trees in it. It's going to suck up VRAM like crazy if you do.

You want rocks and bushes and grass and dirt and all that? You have a single rock sprite, a single bush sprite, a single dirt tile, and you copy/paste as necessary. For large areas of dirt, you can make a small, repeating texture out of a Tiled Background object and stretch it to the size you need.

Even your houses are pretty much wrong. Yes, even the houses in games are made up of pieces... you put them together like a puzzle when you make your map. Lots of small pieces. Believe it or not, it's WAY more efficient than having a few huge pieces.

What you need is something like this:

http://i48.tinypic.com/156ab77.jpg

Those tiles are each no bigger than 32x32 pixels. You cut them out and make Tiled Background or Sprite images with them. And with that, you can put the pieces together and create large, complex images like this in your layout by copy/pasting the pieces:

http://i49.tinypic.com/fdd4e8.jpg

As for having your NPCs go from map to map... go ahead! Have them walk from map to map! You can do it, it's entirely possible for you to have a sprite character "leave" the map. It would be complex, but you could set up each character's location information in a global Hash Table object. When a character "enters" another map, destroy the sprite. If the player then "enters" that map, then when you start the layout you check the hash table, and any NPCs that have that map listed as their location get created.

You could even have them "walk into" the current map by giving them each a timer trigger in their hash table entry... when the timer triggers, spawn the NPC on the map at the door where they should be appearing. Then update their timer and give them a new location to which map they should be on when the timer runs out.

It sounds complicated, I know... but it could be done if you're willing to put in the work. And if you're going to make an RPG with such advanced features as having NPCs walk from map to map then you SHOULD be willing to put in that work. Otherwise, it will never get done.

But my advice would be to try tackling a smaller project with goals that aren't set quite so high first... it seems to me that you need to get some practice at making games before you can go after something huge like an RPG.