I've dabbled in a few languages, and construct is really it's own thing. There were alot of "is this possible with python?" questions I asked when I first got here, but as I got a little more experience I realized there are ways to do most of those things without python(which from what I understand, isn't fully functional at the moment anyway). The best thing is to ask alot of questions about anything you can't figure out, and try to figure out how to do things. there's a certain logic to it after a while, and things that seemed impossible without other language features start to work.

If you're asking about visual basic and such, you may want to tackle some more advanced ideas, make sure you read all the "hidden features" threads in the tutorials forum,

and read up in the wiki about:

system expressions, which can be good for math,

system actions, which has a lot of useful things you might not know about like "for each object" .

Also read the wiki for functions, families, groups, and private variables.

These all multiply the power and the level of complexity you can achieve.

Also, keep your eyes open. I'm thinking of posting a few advanced concept tutorials in the tutorials section, dealing with concepts like math, and object oriented design as it relates to construct. at least a little while away though, because I'm trying to get a big project off the ground

but seriously, just keep asking questions every time you get stuck. the community here is helpful and intelligent.

and welcome to construct

edit: oh yeah, and what mipey said, once you get a grasp of the construct flow of things, you'd be amazed by how much you can do in a few minutes. that's why you see so many responses to help questions with examples, because it takes no time at all to start a new cap, and try something out. then if it works by itself, you worry about putting it in the larger context

May I first say you guys (especially lucid) are my fuggin' superheroes for being so damned helpful! You blow away the Clickteam community : D

that's just how we roll here at scirra

never been to clickteam, or used mmf or whatever their thing is

now, ON TO THE KATAMARI! : O

I just noticed now, that the katamari video you posted and were talking about was a 2d version. I hadn't watched it

I think you should aim higher than a better looking version of the 2d one, you should make it like a 2d version of the original, which would be much cooler and interesting looking

I played around a little with the katamari thing

unfortunately I don't have alot of time to explain too much

and it's getting really ugly(the code)

but I will list the basic changes I made and you can investigate and analyze and ask questions

the level is larger now

I made the little guys you pick up not physics objects, they weren't in the original katamari. Also, I made the sticking system based on a canvas. it's cleaner this way, and when you have hundreds of objects it won't be tracking them all at all times, also, when your katamari reaches a whole new zoom level, like the original you will be able to draw the same katamari and trash, and forget about all the objects that are sticking to it. you'll notice there's a strange blurring effect that happens to the canvas over many uses, so the older stuff stuck to you gets blurry. I'm not sure why it's doing this, but there are ways around it, even if we don't figure out why it's doing that.

also, I made it so the controls change torque, not angular velocity, this means that the ball won't just keep spinning faster even when it should be slowed down by physocs, you're not telling it how fast to roll, you're telling it how hard to roll

also, I put limits on the speed, so if it's spinning too fast it won't add any more angular force

then I set it up so the physics ball get's 0.5 pixels larger length and width for every piece stuck on. I still think eventually you should add the ellipse thing, but this at least illustrates the basic concepts. all that weird temp variable setting and destroying the physics and remaking it, is to keep it from colliding with the ground when it gets 0.5 pixels bigger. you can press spacebar now to view the physics ball

finally, there was a problem with the growing physics ball and collisions, o things would start connecting to further and further invisible points away from the ball or other people stuck to it, so they looked like they were floating in an orbit of the ball. the solution is to make the canvas update it's collision mask with each new guy stuck to it. then you make it so new guys stick only if they intersect the physics ball AND the canvas. this means there's an invisible circle they are allowed to stick to, but only if they are also touching the canvas, which consists of the ball, and the guys stuck to it. they won't be able to stick to eachother in a long chain away from the ball. and they won't stick to random points in space where the invisible physics ball is.

enjoy: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1013446/katama.cap

gotta go for now,

in the meantime, you can make a sprite of a box, made of dotted lines, and set the width height as the screen dimensions. probably best to make it a small sprite, and expand it to the screen size. make it destroy on start during development, and remove it before exporting to exe.

yeah, so after beating it, I do say, the story did get continually more confusing and the ending was a little disappointing..less so because people here said the ending was disappointing

still overall, amazing game, especially the world 3 puzzles

Davo can say for sure, but I think he said he'd fixed some of the problems with Python in the next build.

Just curious about the status of the python stuff in general

especially any changes planned for the .99 build

in particular:

making it so you don't have to have the extra python file with your exe

whatever it is that makes everyone say "python is broken right now"

and also the object picking issue

wondering what the priority and/or progress is on those

Don't you think it would be useful to visually represent where the resolution of the window would be in the layout editor?

yes

[quote:7u7r5om6]What I still don't understand is the ability to have these things (katamaris) grow. I'm not entirely sure myself of how it would work conceptually, not just on Construct. I tried adding the size value of the pickup to the size value of the ball when it picks it up but it didn't work out so well.

make the physics sprite visible, and set the opacity to 20 percent

make sure it is on top of everything else

so you can see the physics circle, but you can see the trash and katamari through it

now watch what happens when it gets bigger

your bigger sprite probably isn't repositioning itself to be circling around the katamari and the trash, it's just making a big invisible circle around the original katamari.

you have to figure out the math to make the new size be circling the katamari plus the junk.

it should stretch to an oval, and set itself to an angle thats the best fit for the trash

math is power

and the math section of the system expressions wiki will come in handy

for this to work, you may have to destroy the original physics sprite and create a new one in it's place in order to align the physics circle with the trash it's supposed to be circling. the physics behavior doesn't allow you to move objects without using the physics itself to do it. you can copy over the velocity and angular velocity to the new object so it will continue to move the way the original one did

may also use a second invisible sprite to choose which objects should be picked up

because if you think about it, if you pick up a pencil and it's poking far out from the karamari, causing it to roll differently, you don't want guys sticking to the tip of the pencil. it's a growing circle around the katamari itself, even if the trash is changing the overall shape with one or two odd items, it never loses it's roundness for too long, so the collision mask should grow, but not in the same way the physics object does.

EDIT: For dropbox, make sure you put the file you want to share in the public folder of dropbox, and then rightclick and copy public link

You can already apply behaviors to canvases, what are you talking about?

I'm not quite sure anymore....

...I guess I must've been tired and not realized I was on event sheet editor when I tried. I can't see why else I would've thought you couldn't. Well, at least now my feature request is filled.

I didn't watch the video

but I was a big katamari fan back in the day

I think the katamari has phyics, and I think it's kindof similar to the oval thing

or else it would never roll with a big pencil sticking out

check out the platform school tutorial...I'm not sure which one, but it uses an invisible sprite to control collisions

it's quite simple though, you can try it for yourself

I don't have much time at the moment to make a cap, but try this

right click the ball we have now

then right click on blank space

right click - then paste clone

this makes it paste a whole new object, not just a copy of that object

now the new sprite

go into behaviors, and delete the physics behavior

edit the sprite of the original object

just color it green or something

make that sprite invisible

it's at the bottom of the properties panel

start invisible

now make a new event

system-always

in this event create an action

double click the new sprite (that looks like the one we've been using, but has no physics now, remember)

doubleclick on the action set position to object

and then choose the green physics object as the object

create another new action under that one

again with our new sprite(not the green physics sprite)

the new action will be set angle

now play it again

it should look and play exactly the same as it did before

if it does that means, you did the invisible sprite thing

it all makes sense

you'd be surprised how nice the wobble would feel

load up the original katamari thing I posted

and stretch the katamari a little bit

so it's an oval and then run a preview

it has a nice feel to it

very katamariesque <---that's a real word, look it up

apply behaviors to canvases

you can put something there, and then make it do stuff

I think it's awesome as hell

and I think the story is awesome as hell, too, the way each part of the story introduces the concept of the next levels

and the puzzles are just plain brilliant

I thought when I first heard of it, "oh great, everyone thinks yet another time rewind game is original"

but I was totally blown away by all the creative ways it was used, and some of the crazy stuff you have to do in world 3 with the right left, forward rewind thing is...goodness

it's just freakin badass,

and just...