Topics

1

Ask a Question / How would one set the colours of actors to be mixed with a layer?

« on: September 08, 2018, 10:29:05 am »

I was wondering if it's possible to mix the colours of a layer (let's say "colourmap layer") with the actors of certain groups. I was wondering because I wanted to make a faux shadow-effect like this.

I've tried overlaying this layer on top of actors before, it just looks awkward because it doesn't set the actor color fully.

2

Ask a Question / Is it possible for behaviors to detect when they've been re-enabled?

« on: August 26, 2018, 05:09:08 pm »

I was wondering, as I need some variables to be reset when the behavior is re-enabled.

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Ask a Question / Visual studio not installing right.

« on: August 22, 2018, 02:17:44 pm »

So I just installed to a new hard-drive, and for some reason, Visual Studio pulls up these errors while installing. I've never had this happen before. Am I doing this wrong?

4

Chit-Chat / Experiments with Engine Step Size.

« on: August 19, 2018, 06:33:42 pm »

So, I've been fooling around with a simple formula that adjusts the game to adjust to step size.



The top code adjusts the step size (ten is default) and the bottom adjusts the based off the step size. This can be used to filter out movement so it works properly no matter the step size. For example, if you want consistent X-speed:



This works with most things step size tends to affect (x,y speeds, gravity) And thus, by theory, allows the game to remain consistent in timing for most of the issues step-size can cause.

Here's where it gets interesting. As higher step sizes (game runs slower) actually allows for more performance! I've done various tests below with always active, collision based actors. with a behavior attached to each.

Flash testing:

10 - default: 35-40 of these before heavy FPS drops on my PC on flash



20 - About 75-80-ish before heavy FPS drops. The game runs with 1 frame input delay, which doesn't function that badly. (Note, moving the camera other than pointing it to an actor causes it to stutter at anything after 10, which I would avoid)



30 - Input delay is noticeable, timing on variable functions feels iffy, almost 90 of these actors until heavy frame drops.



40 - Collision issues, and stiff feeling of control. Almost 110 actors before heavy frame drops. Game seems to skip frames?



Decided anything after 50 would not feel worth to document.

Windows:

It's been well known that windows runs miles better than Flash, so lets put that to the test, shall we? (Note, all the same odd effects like input delay also count here)

10 (default) - about 180 before dropping to 30 FPS on my rig



20 - 250 before I started getting some nasty lag.



30 -  about 290-ish before the lag got bad.



40 - 330 actors before heavy lag.



So what about a step size of 5? Which is the game running twice as fast, and thus demands more resources. Logically, it would make things move at half speed. But for impacts on FPS? Let's test.

Flash - 20 actors before serious lag.



Windows - 100 is when the FPS dropped badly



(Also, anyone with a 60 + FPS monitor want to test if it will run at beyond 60 FPS with this method? Would be interesting)

Lag and functions.

For those who don't know, change in attribute functions can react oddly in some ways when the FPS drops. Depending on how you use them, the following can happen on low FPS:

* If used for X and Y speed momentum, it'll cause you to slide about like ice heavily.

* Things will take longer to react (for example, if you used a function as a way to determine if a button has been held)

Logically, some automatic adjustment behavior will need to be set up based off the FPS in order to fix this.

In conclusion. If you wanted to squeeze out some extra performance subtly, you could make the game run at a step size of 20 and adjust the timing and movement as so.  This both doesn't look that awful, and doesn't hinder gameplay as much as others.

5

Ask a Question / Improving on .obj wireframes files from list.

« on: January 25, 2018, 08:53:19 pm »

So I've been making a flash .obj interpreter based off lists as a experimental project. While it mostly works, there's some issues. It seems like the order of triangles is a bit broken? Meshes don't work exactly right.

The list itself takes the assumed X, Y, and Z of a vert, and applies that, and the next one to form a line.

For an example here's a mesh I imported. I used the raw vertices from a .obj, they're organized fine, but the order it draws edges from is wrong.



And to compare it with the original wireframe:



Edit: Also wanted to mention the Z axis is a bit broken, as it doesn't rotate verts right.

Here's the script:

6

Ask a Question / Is customizing sound panning possible?

« on: January 21, 2018, 05:48:00 pm »

I was wondering this,  as I wanted it so that if something makes a sound to the left of you, it pans to the left and vice-versa. Though, Stencyl's blocks have no option related to panning. I assume it's dug deep into more complex coding, judging by m searches. And due to this, I assume it functions differently in modern builds of Stencyl?

My idea was to pan it based of position. Though, I could have hard left/hard right panning that are different sounds each. But that'd sound mechanical, and use more resources.

7

Ask a Question / Does indexing image colours to remove unused colours reduce memory use?

« on: November 09, 2017, 01:55:13 pm »

As we know, indexing an image can reduce the image file-size (losslessly) if you just index and set the colour pallet to only use the amount of colours the image has. While this is known to save on filesizes, does it also help with RAM usage?

Here's a tileset in both indexed, and normal colour counts.



It's easily possible to do this with GIMP in seconds. So if this actually shaves off RAM usage, I may actually look into this trick, then.

8

Ask a Question / Do terrains use more resources than tilesets for collision?

« on: October 27, 2017, 11:52:23 am »

This has been something that has been of interest of me, since I've been using terrains for collision quite a bit more. As it allows for more organic collision than having everything be based off the tile presets you've made. This also means I can use less tilesets and make stuff mostly with actors on layers than out of tiles. Thus, making my workflow less limited.

So my question is: Is a map using mostly terrains going to have a worse impact on the game's resource use than basic tileset collision? (As in, do tilesets use less CPU).

This is something I'm worried about. As small scenes probably have no issue running right with terrain-based collision, but I imagine big scenes will just flat-our crash or lag.

9

Windows / Mac / Flash / HTML5 / Ported a Scratch game to Stencyl (Yes, you heard that right)

« on: October 21, 2017, 06:49:51 pm »

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/37678



So I ported a Scratch game of mine (of all things) to Stencyl. (As in port, I mean a single level). It's also not 100% accurate, and I may have missed things. But it works overall functionally.

It's basically the only real functional game on Scratch I made. I pretty much redid the physics (as the original physics were bad), and I'd be able to take use of box 2D if I did.

The map was harder to convert, as my original game had each level in chunks that were scaled by 200% (1.5x in Stencyl), as I had to re-export all the assets and scale them in the scene editor accordingly. And since I used colour-based collision on Scratch, I redid all the collision with terrains. This also means I re-inserted each asset by scratch (no pun intended)

I also tried my best to keep the "cheap" feel of the movement. As the movement on the original was rather... questionable, and I made sure it was just as bad, but in a different way. If that makes sense.

Due to changes in the game when running from Scratch to Stencyl, the map appears less seamed and overall more consistent. And the FPS gains a massive boost due to how each engine handles things. (I'm pretty sure my original FPS counter isn't even coded right, anyways. I also removed the FPS counter as it's obvious how fast it'll run, which is 60 FPS)

If you're wondering why I did this, it was to test how Stencyl can handle maps made purely from objects and terrain, and that fact that Scratch is pretty much is the reason why I went and learnt Stencyl.

The original game can be found here for comparison needs:

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/3013378/ (My use of speech and coding skills have aged badly there, so beware)

Sorry if this was out of the blue, but I just wanted to try something while I was bored. As this only took 2-ish hours.

10

Ask a Question / Is it possible to get the name of the current name of the gamepad in use?

« on: October 14, 2017, 09:30:32 pm »

Just wondering. As when I want to set up the control menu for my game, I'd think the player would want to know if their device is plugged in, and in use so they don't need to check physically.

11

Ask a Question / Spambots flooding the forums.

« on: August 30, 2017, 05:59:24 am »

If you can't tell, a user is posting topics insanely last in f origin languages.

This is clogging up the forums pretty fast. And there has been forums that have died from too much activity by these bots in the past, so I assume the best way would be to stop it is:

* Make topics with URLS in the title invalid to post

* Make topic with non-English typesets invalid to post.

Either way, both of those solutions (even if they cause other issues) are better than having the sites overloaded by spam.

Just a quick edit: Had to machine translate these messages myself. And no big surprise, they're for casino sites (common theme for spamming/link abuse).

12

Ask a Question / Do music tracks still loop even if the atlas they're in is unloaded?

« on: August 25, 2017, 06:18:13 am »

Just a simple question.

If I were to loop an audio track into the next scene, and that scene has the atlas for that track unloaded. Would the song still loop, or just flat out not play?

13

Ask a Question / Stencyl memory raising batch files not working.

« on: August 09, 2017, 05:51:19 am »

I've been trying to run the 6GB Stencyl batch launch, but it hasn't been working for me at all.

I installed it in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Stencyl" And launched the batch file as admin, and it didn't do anything.

14

Ask a Question / Is there a way to automatically load/unload atlases from the assets used?

« on: July 24, 2017, 07:25:57 am »

Just wondering, as it'd be a big help for organization.

15

Ask a Question / Is simple, low-level path finding possible?

« on: July 13, 2017, 08:05:09 pm »

So enemies in my game run away from players when they get scared. This is done by using  invisible "raidus" actors that they walk and into and hide. It works fine if there's no obstacles in their path, but they'll just walk into a wall if there is anything in their way.



The red follow squares are the actors that are used to tell where the hiding spots are, but the one on the bottom causes the enemy to walk into a wall when they try to get to there.

I was thinking of doing some sort of simple pathfinding to get across, I tried the AI tools extension, but it caused a lot of lag, and I had no idea how to make it pathfind right.