Topics

1

Shared Resources / [Windows] Exit to Desktop behavior

« on: July 17, 2014, 07:12:12 am »

I just released a scene behavior called ExitToDesktop on StencylForge.  It runs custom code that will exit to the desktop (Windows only). You can exit to desktop through pressing a control (like the escape key) or by trigger an event from another behavior (useful for buttons). Realized that it was quite essential to my Windows game, so I thought it'd make sense if I made it public since nearly all desktop games will have need for this.

Released into the public domain. If you have questions, suggestions, critiques, etc. please comment here (or PM me).

2

Fixed Bugs (3.x) / [BUG] Some pre-shipped behaviors are unnecessarily Flash-only

« on: June 27, 2014, 08:36:44 am »

Noticed that the Follow the Mouse and Face the Mouse behaviors still have part of there code within a Flash only block. It would work fine on other platforms in Stencyl 3.*, so it should be removed. Might be others with a similar situation, but these are two that I could remember.

3

Resolved Questions / [SUGGESTION] Center on Player option for the Camera Follow behavior

« on: November 25, 2013, 04:35:43 pm »

The pre-shipped Camera Follow behavior only starts following the actor when the actor is in view. Often, due to the level layout, this actor will not be in the standard screen. This could be solved by adding an <if boolean> in the Created section which asks the user whether or not the camera should start centered on the actor (which would be true by default). In this if block one simply needs to put the Move camera block that's also in the Always section.

4

Shared Resources / Tile Based Movement behavior for 3.0 and 2.2

« on: November 17, 2013, 01:00:59 pm »

I've taken this offline for a moment. I made some design errors when it came to event-based movement, which I didn't notice before. When that's fixed, I'll put it back online.

This behavior makes actors move on a grid, like many top-down NES, SNES and Game Boy games such as The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy and Pokémon. I made this because I loved those games and their movement style and 3.0 didn't have a tile based movement behavior on its StencylForge yet. So I loaded up some of the other behaviors on the old StencylForge, figured out how they worked and made this behavior for 3.0 (which also seems to work fine on 2.2).

Current Features:

• Usable with keyboard controls or by triggering events (handy for cutscenes)
• Tile gridsize is self-definable
• Four-way move and idle animations
• Works with both Stencyl 3.0 and 2.2

Planned Features:

• Move automatically (without holding the key) à la Pac-Man
• Allow side-scrolling implementation with gravity à la Lode Runner

License:
CC0 Public Domain

5

Dialog Extension / [SGST] Alignment, Left Right Faces

« on: November 17, 2013, 06:56:44 am »

Some suggestions which would make the Extension even more versatile:

Left and right face portrait positions: Having the faces be in the same place all the time can be a bit unintuitive. Left and right faces could be used to always have the player's face be on the left side (and others on the right) or to have the faces be on side that the actors in the world itself are on.

Indents: I could imagine that in some cases indents might be great for composition purposes.

Alignments: I had an idea for a movie script like dialogue presentation and having a centered alignment would make that possible. It would also be useful in combination with the left and right faces mentioned above. If the portrait is on the right you could have right alignment and vice versa.

6

Suggestion Archives / Blocks for changing screen size, scales, etc.

« on: September 28, 2013, 07:27:06 am »

I've been looking into what Stencyl could do for a desktop game and there's one important thing that's really lacking: the ability to change things like screen size and scales in-game.

Desktops have a wide variety of aspect ratios and resolutions, but having the screen size and scale mode only editable for the game before compiling means Stencyl handles this quite clumsy (especially for games with low-res retro graphics).

If one could change these things via a behavior, this problem would be pretty much solved. One could simply change the screen size to match a 4:3, 16:9 or other popular aspect ratio. For a few types games that wouldn't work, but for any game featuring a moving camera it would help a great deal. Being able to change the scaling would make windowed mode more useful (x2 might be too small for some resolutions, but big enough for others).

This is only relevant if it's even possible to do in-game, but if it is it would be great if this could be included.

7

Chit-Chat / Lifehacker recommends Stencyl

« on: January 17, 2013, 09:13:41 am »

Just thought I'd drop this:

http://lifehacker.com/5976725/build-your-own-adobe-creative-suite-with-free-and-cheap-software?utm_source=kotaku.com&utm_medium=recirculation&utm_campaign=recirculation

Finally, if making Flash games is more in your interest, Stencyl is an absolutely fantastic free tool for budding game developers. Its tutorials walk you though every aspect you need to know, and the visual design mimics a lot of what you'll also find in Flash, but works considerably better. The best part? It's entirely visual, so you don't need to code, and when you're done making something, you can instantly export it as an iOS game (Android support is also on the way).

8

Suggestion Archives / Default certificate settings in Stencyl preferences

« on: November 12, 2012, 04:36:54 pm »

Hi,

Often I want to try out something on iOS in a new game, as to not disturb the real one. The problem with that is that it means I have to re-enter all my certificate info. That can be quite tedious. My suggestion would be to have a page or two in the preferences for all of Stencyl that lets you sets a default certificate (and the app identifier perhaps). That way if you do a test game, you'll be ready to go without the hassle of certificate setups.

9

Chit-Chat / Twitter List for Stencyl users

« on: November 04, 2012, 01:51:09 am »

Hi,

I made a Twitter List so us Stencyl users can easily find each other on Twitter. I realized I was following only a couple of fellow Stencylers on Twitter and since I couldn't find a list that would help my find more, I decided to make a list of my own:

https://twitter.com/leaufai/stencyl

So if you want to get in contact with other Stencylers on Twitter, just subscribe.

10

Chit-Chat / Disney buys Lucasfilm for 4 billion, new Star Wars trilogy planned

« on: October 30, 2012, 02:48:22 pm »

The weirdest news just came in: Disney has bought Lucasfilm, aka Star Wars. A new trilogy is planned, with the first movie on the docket for 2015.

I really quite like the old trilogy, but started falling out of love as the 'oh-look-there-kids-cudly-stuff' increased. The blatant space racism in the prequels didn't help much either. Under Lucas this wouldn't have changed, but Disney is probably continue the kid-orientated course. They can do adult stuff like Pirates of the Carribean, but since this is already kid-orientated I doubt they'll change it. So I'm not very hopeful. Your opinions?

Coincidentally I started reading the Thrawn trilogy, aka the unofficial sequel trilogy. Would've loved to see that on screen.

11

Extension Ideas / Thousands seperator conversion [IDEA]

« on: October 23, 2012, 04:07:21 pm »

I'd like to see an extension which like the time conversion extension automatically adds thousands seperators every three digits. For my game and I imagine many others I want to display my highscores like this:

1.000.000 or 1,000,000 if you use American style

Shouldn't be too hard but I don't know much about custom stuff so I'll leave it to someone with the necessary skills.

12

Chit-Chat / What kind of naming convention to you use (ie. underscore, CamelCase, etc.)?

« on: October 12, 2012, 05:39:35 am »

I was wondering what naming convention you like to use when naming your Stencyl source files, behaviors, actors, etcetera?

Personally I like to use CamelCase (which uses a capital letter where the space would normally go, ie. MyFirstBehavior) as it's fast and looks good. So what do you use and why?

On a side note: initially I wanted to make this a poll but I couldn't find the option. Does anyone know how or if it's even possible?

13

Old Bugs (3.x) / [BUG] Joystick

« on: October 08, 2012, 01:11:52 pm »

I saw that the joystick behavior was being added in 3.0. I don't know if you're using/adapting Jon's version from StencylForge, but I have some things I'd like to see added nonetheless. Jon's version I found lacking, because it didn't integrate with anything. Unless you rewrote it, it was only good for 360 degrees movement. A lot of games will want something other than 360 degrees movement or no movement but something else like firing a weapon. Simulate key pressed/releases would probably be the best way to integrate it into the other prefabs. Just select how manys way you can go with the joystick (2/4/8 directions) and what keys it should simulate.

A way to input what the coordinates for a fixed joystick would be, would be essential as well.

14

Old Questions (from 1.x/2.x) / Can't build my game for Ad Hoc properly (first time trying to test)

« on: September 24, 2012, 01:44:19 pm »

Hi,

I just got my iOS developer license and since I got my iPod Touch 2nd generation (4.2.1) in the mail last week I had everything I needed to start testing the iOS game I had been working on. And then I failed. Can't get it to work. The thing is, I use Windows so part of the process isn't as straight forward as on a Mac which is probably the part where I got it wrong. Since there's so many steps I'll just go through all of them. Hopefully someone will be able to help.

I used this tutorial to get a .p12 as I was informed to do by the Stencyl help article:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/articles/packaging-air-apps-ios.html

1. I got my App ID:



2. I got my device name and UDID and copied it directly to New Device and set it up correctly.

3. I generated a CSR file. I downloaded OpenSSL-Win32 and used CD to set CMD to the correct directory.

Had an error: WARNING: CAN’T OPEN CONFIG FILE: /USR/LOCAL/SSL/OPENSSL.CNF
but using this I fixed it:

Code: [Select]

set OPENSSL_CONF=c:\OpenSSL-Win32\bin\openssl.cfg
I then used CMD to do the following command:

Code: [Select]

openssl genrsa -out mykey.key 2048.
That got me a mykey.key file in the bin folder.

Then I used this command:

Code: [Select]

openssl req -new -key mykey.key -out CertificateSigningRequest.certSigningRequest -subj "/emailAddress=myaddress@example.com, CN=Stefan Rumen, C=NL"
That got me a file called CertificateSigningRequest.certSigningRequest

I then went to Certificate>Developer
Put the file above in the Request Certificate window and after a few minutes I was able to download ios_development.cer



Did not download the WWDRCA.cer file at the time, but it doesn't seem to use it in the Windows procedure, only the OSX one.

Then I went back to CMD and put in:

Code: [Select]

openssl x509 -in ios_development.cer -inform DER -out ios_development.pem -outform PEM
That got a pem file. Then I did:

Code: [Select]

openssl pkcs12 -export -inkey mykey.key -in developer_identity.pem -out iOS_dev.p12
That asked me for a password, which I was unable to enter anyway. I looked on the internet and seemed to find a solution. Did this:

Code: [Select]

openssl pkcs12 -export -inkey mykey.key -in developer_identity.pem -password pass:fakepassword -out iOS_dev.p12
That got me a p12 file. I later learned that the password input is invisible, but even when I did the original code and typed in a password it didn't work. Anyway I then set up two distribution profiles like this:





Then I set up my Stencyl like this:



Tried the Joystick example to test it but I then got this message. Kept changing it but it never compiled correctly.

                                   
1 identity imported.
iPhone Developer: Stefan Rumen (3R2DAF83YQ)
Build settings from command line:
    CODE_SIGN_IDENTITY = iPhone Developer: Stefan Rumen (3R2DAF83YQ)
    SDKROOT = iphoneos5.1

=== BUILD NATIVE TARGET AppScaffold OF PROJECT AppScaffold WITH CONFIGURATION Release ===
Check dependencies
Code Sign error: No unexpired provisioning profiles found that contain any of the keychain's signing certificates

15

Chit-Chat / To lite or not to lite? Should you do Lite versions of mobile games?

« on: September 21, 2012, 10:07:44 am »

This is part question, part debate so I thought it'd fit best in Chit-Chat. I was wondering what your viewpoints were on Lite versions for mobile games.

For those who don't know, Lite versions are free versions of a game that are, generally speaking, either the full game with ads (with the paid version usually only different in that it has no ads) or part of the full game (making it more like the traditional demo).

I'm a bit on the fence about lite versions. I've heard that iAds aren't that profitable unless you're big, so it wouldn't be smart to just put out a Lite version and hope to get all your income from ads. On the other hand a demo-like Lite version might get you more customers for your paid version, but I don't know any statistics on whether it's worth the effort (I see a lot of successful paid games that don't have a lite version).

What's your views on Lite versions? Does anyone have experience with Lite versions?