Ashley's Forum Posts

  • How's this looking for a new stable release folks?

  • Download Construct 0.99.9 (unstable)

    This is an

    unstable build. You can help Construct's development by downloading it, trying it out, testing and reporting bugs. If you have projects you want to work on without possible bugs getting in the way, stick to stable builds.

    Link to previous build (0.99.85) changelog

    Thanks to Davo for most of the changes this build - he's really worked hard and done some cool fixes and additions We're back on track for a 1.0 release as next major version - the following 0.99.9x builds should be becoming more stable ready for release candidacy.

    Changelog

    Platform Movement

    [FIX] - Fixed but where 0 deceleration meant you shouldn't turn to the right once you'd reached the max speed

    [FIX] - Collision detection errors where sometimes you might be 0.4 pixels into a wall, fixing this also fixed the jumping up a wall bug

    [FIX] - Running down a slope and jumping now produces the same jump strength as a regular jump

    [FIX] - Jumping sometimes getting stuck in the ceiling

    [FIX] - Jumping upwards onto a slope didn't reset the Y velocity to 0... making it seem like you were jumping up a slope

    Object Bar

    [ADD] - In the ribbon you can now hide and show the bar by clicking the 'Object Bar' button above Animation Bar. Finally you can hide and show that 'pesky little bar'

    Animation Bar

    [FIX] - Holding control now successfully duplicates the animation and its frames

    Event Sheet Editor

    [FIX] - Fixed some memory leaks with icons in the event wizard

    [FIX] - "hello" no longer becomes "hello^. It was caused by clipping of drawtext

    Panel Object

    [FIX] - Panel object didn't rotate property

    Shadow Caster & Light

    [ADD] - You can now create a polygon shape for your shadow

    [FIX] - Can now set, add, subtract private variables and it works

    Custom Movement

    [FIX] - Can now change movement speed and movement angle during the stepping stage. This should make it easy to do sonic style movements where you need to 'trace' along the walls as you move

    Window Object

    [ADD] - You can now use 'ClientWidth' and 'ClientHeight' to get the width and height of the client area of the window.

    [ADD] - 'Restore' - So you can restore the window if its maximized or minimized

    Sprite Object

    [FIX] - Distortion problems with sprites whose images and object sizes didn't match

    [FIX] - Absolute distortion point now works even when the object is rotated

    Misc

    [ADD] - Added new '3d object' just to annoy Quazi

    [ADD] - Added new 'Portal Maths' object - helps with doing the maths for portals

    [ADD] - Added new 'Sprite Ribbon' object that makes creating ribbons and trails easier

    [FIX] - Missing fixes from last build compiled in to this build

    [FIX] - Fixed the control system. Control states are reset between behaviors onFrame and the event cycle. 360 Controller updates the states in OnFrame2. Allows events to change the control states.

  • I'd go for learning C# or Java first - they are simpler in a lot of ways and easier for beginners (unless your college requires C++ or something else). After that, a specific programming language should not be important to an experienced programmer, since they share a lot of concepts in common and each should be treated as a tool suitable for certain jobs.

    So I'd be more concerned with career path, the university course itself, your lecturers, etc.

  • The web installer is ideal for downloaded games, since it's so much smaller. You can also choose the most recent DirectX version - all of the DirectX setups include everything that was in the previous releases, including the August 2008 files.

  • L5j is right, the little X only closes the current editor. It never closes the project. It's possible to have no editor windows open but the project bar still shows the project, because it is still open. When you close Construct itself, it then prompts you to save!

  • Rendering can look wrong if the graphics card drivers are old or buggy. Try updating the drivers on your friend's machine.

  • Seems reasonable to me - if they don't know or aren't sure, they'll say no, since it's safest for them. If you also say you're starting a company, they'll assume you have money to spend, will hire a lawyer, and have the issue checked out professionally.

    Is it that important to the game? Perhaps the easiest thing to do is just to not use the material then, especially if it's just a "this technique runs 10% faster than the usual" type thing.

  • Thanks for spending the time to post your experiences. This reads pretty critically of Construct, but I have a feeling a lot of it is justified. There are some serious problems in Construct that are really important to fix ASAP; we just don't always have the resources to fix them quickly, given our commitments to university, jobs, etc. I might also add Construct is officially still in beta, not yet 1.0, so bugs would be expected (was your tutor aware of this?).

    One point about the UI - you know you can collapse/auto-hide all the bars - and the Ribbon - so that they only appear when you mouse over tabs at the edge of the screen. This can give you a near-fullscreen editing.

    I'm going to take most of these points as suggestions for Construct 2, particularly:

    • Implement a smaller, leaner set of features, and test them better
    • Aim for solid reliability of all core features
    • Support for collaboration (we're planning a system that works with source control systems like SVN, so existing collaboration systems can be used to allow multiple developers to commit changes in parallel, use the existing source control conflict resolution, and so on).

  • Yeah, try the 'play sound at position' group of actions in XAudio2.

  • It depends on where you are in the world what you call them

  • Interesting feedback in this thread. Thanks for the posts.

    I know Construct isn't perfect, and there are some serious problems that may be causing people problems with large projects. We hope to get the serious things fixed and release 1.0. But we actually wanted to shift focus and concentrate on Construct 2 soon. I can't guarantee that all problems will be fixed in 0.x and you may have to rely on workarounds. The codebase in 0.x is not fantastic and it can be very difficult to work with. These kinds of problems are part of the motivation behind C2 - it's going to be completely redesigned, architected for reliability and flexibility, and as a side effect things like 30 second saves can be avoided as well (which is difficult to fix with the binary .cap file format in 0.x).

    I know this may be frustrating to many people who have invested so much in to Construct 0.x, but it does have serious architectural limitations. I doubt it can be taken much further than it is now, bar attempting fixes for the more serious problems. And C2 like the project already will be a spare time project. I hate to use this as a crutch, but we've never been able to guarantee fixes or support because this is essentially a hobby project. Some people watch TV, we write code. So I'm starting to see Construct 1 as a kind of a very big, complicated proof of concept, and C2 as the real thing getting going - we're much better at programming now, and some of us have professional experience to add to that.

    So can you make a major game? I think you can, if you try to keep things simple - but I can't guarantee an easy time, unfortunately. That's not saying things will go completely smoothly with other tools either though!

  • I've done that before, and had some success. It'd be cool if other people could do that or promote/link to the site/facebook/twitter/youtube account. Remember to be tactful when phrasing the emails, they don't owe us anything!

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  • It's pretty much impractical - you'd be better off waiting for the C2 architecture which is going to be designed for it.

  • Hi,

    Have you tried the Ghost Shooter tutorial? More here as well: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/c ... =Tutorials

  • Add a condition like "Object A layer does not equal Object 2 layer".