Topics

1

Ask a Question / Blend modes (additive/multiply/screen) on native

« on: October 19, 2016, 10:43:15 am »

Hello!

So ever since Stencyl moved over to OpenFL and Haxe, setting blends on actors and layers in mobile or desktop don't work in the same way as they do on the Flash target - ie, they only affect themselves and do not affect other actors or layers. In fact, raw drawing on to layers doesn't do anything blendy at all! This prohibits doing funky lighting effects, particles and other whizzy things that are a doddle in say, GameMaker or another OpenGL powered 2D engine.

Given that Multiply, Add and Screen are actually supported in native targets, it seems to be that the implementation is buggy and may be able to be addressed? It doesn't seem to be a next/legacy thing as the same behaviour is noticeable in either compile mode.

If any of the Stencyl super-whizzes are able to look in to this and see if it's something that can be remedied, that would be super amazing!

2

Chit-Chat / Leaderboards for Mac/Windows/Linux

« on: April 25, 2016, 03:19:26 am »

Hello!

So Google Play and Game Center are pretty great for quickly adding leaderboards and achievements to mobile games, but outside of Steam are there any really good services that are similar for desktop? Am I correct in thinking that both Apple and Google's APIs can also intergrate with their respective Mac/Windows platforms?

3

Journals / Total Spaghettification [WIP]

« on: February 20, 2016, 03:28:44 pm »

Hello everyone!

A couple of years for Ludum Dare I made a two-button platformer with the intention of it being speed-run called Total Spaghettification. Here's someone doing just that! https://youtu.be/aVT2p3jS4cE

I've recently dug it out of storage and started remaking it for an iOS/Android release, complete with a whole ton of new levels, features, time tracking medals and loads of other stuff.



Planning to fill this thread up with animated gifs, sounds, music and progress as it develops

4

Bug Archives / soundchannel.position returns inaccurate value with streamed (music) asset

« on: September 26, 2015, 03:28:36 pm »

Hello!

I've got a bit of a conundrum here that I think is a deeper issue with OpenFL than Stencyl, but hopefully something can be done to help! The behaviour is the same on iOS and Mac Native

I'm making a music game that locks the time-keeping of everything to the BPM of the current playing music, using a custom script to create a soundchannel, and then use "soundchannel.position" / 4 to track the beat. I scripted this perhaps a year ago and returned to it recently, updating to the latest Stencyl, and it seems that everything is completely out of time and the "position" value isn't being updated every frame as I'm sure it used to!

If I change the sound type from "Music" to "Sound Effect", move the assets in to an unloaded atlas and then use "Asset.getSound("[music file I'm loading")", there's an almighty delay as the file is loaded in to memory BUT the soundchannel.position returned is rock solid accurate!

There is a downside to this of course, as 1) there's 7 selectable tracks, which creates a horrendous delay when you first start the game that is unacceptable, 2) I'm not sure what's going on memory-wise, but it seems the files are cached in some way as if I do Asset.getSound again it loads instantly with no delay (hooray!) - which means that I might start crashing things, as if the files are in the main atlas the game will not boot up on iOS (which is my target platform).

Edit: It seems that Atlases have no effect on whether Asset.getSound will try and load the same file in to memory again... I did a bit of playing around and it made no difference, the delay still happened even though I had introduced their atlas in to memory when loading the scene.

Is there any way I can do a non-blocking load of the music tracks as sound effects in the background? Or is it possible to fix the reporting of the soundchannel.position? There's a thread from January 2015 on this, but it's not been updated in ages...

http://community.openfl.org/t/soundchannel-position-accuracy/438

Any thoughts would be hugely appreciated!

5

iPhone / iPad / Android / Square Rave! Out now on the App Store!

« on: September 20, 2014, 03:41:40 pm »

Out now on the App Store! https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/square-rave/id904018075?mt=8

"Square Rave is as satisfying as it is intuitive, and more addictive than both." - Pocket Gamer

"Square Rave is an awesome little music-oriented puzzle game that smacks of games like Lumines, but with its own unique sense of gameplay" - 148Apps

"It can be stressful, but that good kind of stressful... I think Square Rave will be a hit with the twitch gaming crowd" - Touch Arcade

Square Rave is a high-score chasing action game, speeding around an ever-changing field of squares to find safety before the end of each bar of music!

The more blue squares you pass through the higher your score will climb, but be careful - the trail you leave behind will block your path. As the tempo rises, your skills and reflexes will be tested to the extreme!

It's quick to fail, but quick to restart too...



For iPads, iPhones and iPods.

More info:
Blog Post!
Website! www.unusualcadence.com

And here's a trailer!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZBb2fIykNI

6

Ludum Dare 28 / Underbyte!

« on: December 16, 2013, 06:46:50 pm »

Hello! I'm going to update this more tomorrow coz it's 3 am and I need sleep. Anyway here's my LDjam entry, It's called Underbyte and it does fun things with tiles!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=20697

7

Fixed Bugs (3.x) / Animations on desktop - skipping 1st frame (recycling actor problem?)

« on: December 14, 2013, 08:46:29 am »

Hello! I've discovered an odd thing with animations on windows/desktop builds - it seems that fast animations are getting skipped or not rendered properly! Have a look at the difference between how a Flash target and Desktop target looks with this test level:

Z/X to jump/fire. The muzzle flashes and explosions disappear on windows builds!

Is it to do with the fact the actors are being recycled quite quickly?

Would be great to fix this as I'd like to release my game as a native build, rather than flash

Edit: I'm using the most up-to-date Stencyl build that can be downloaded

8

Windows / Mac / Flash / HTML5 / Invertigo! (Ludum Dare 26 entry)

« on: May 22, 2013, 12:01:34 pm »

Platforms! Triangles! Circles! Shootin'! There's not much to it really, shoot the shapes, push the switches, win the level. Invertigo is a fast-paced platform shooter with a synth-tastic soundtrack, made for Ludum Dare 26 in less than 48 hours. This animated gif explains all:

Play it at the Stencyl Arcade!

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/19200

Or at GameJolt:

http://gamejolt.com/games/arcade/invertigo-bonus-beats/14400/

9

Windows / Mac / Flash / HTML5 / Caverns of Shrug - Zelda meets Nethack

« on: April 22, 2013, 03:09:28 am »

http://youtu.be/l-77T-8RvU8

Descend in to the monochrome Caverns of Shrug to find the legendary Power of Shrug, or something. Developed for the 7 Day Rougelike Challenge, this action-adventure-RPG thing takes random level generation, lootin' and permadeath and wraps it in a real time strafe-shootin' duvet.

Abstract, spooky and some measure of fun!

Play it on the Stencyl Arcade!
http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/19199

Or at GameJolt!:
http://gamejolt.com/games/rpg/caverns-of-shrug/13781/

Comments, feedback and thoughts are welcomed and encouraged! This was made in 7 days, and pretty much the first thing I've released in Stencyl, so it's got some quirks... but it's still mighty playable.

10

Suggestion Archives / Sound - Panning

« on: April 14, 2013, 05:32:10 am »

Hello! I really miss being able to pan sounds in Stencyl. It would be great to be able to affect the panning of a sound channel, perhaps from -100 for Left, 0 for Centre and 100 for Right. It would make it possible to start giving sounds falloff and attenuation based on their position, and that would be great!

11

Ask a Question / Right click menu in flash - pausing music

« on: February 12, 2013, 04:20:04 am »

Hello!

I'm making a game that is dependent on the game being synced to the music track running in the background. The game is pretty extensively optimised to keep running at 60fps to allow this to work, but it's still a rather delicate system that can be broken... which it unfortunatly seems to do when you right click and bring up the flash menu!

When I right click, the game stalls, drops to 0fps for a while. I thought that I could catch this with a check for the game being paused and unpaused in the scene events, and pause the music track when this happens. Unfortunatly it doesn't look like the right-click stall is registered as a pause event as far as I can tell!

Perhaps this is something trivial, I'm not an expert on the underlying quirks of Stencyl and Flash, but it'd be groovy to be able to find a way to solve this... even if it's just a bit of code or something that can check that the right click menu has been invoked and pause the whole game as necessary!