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1

Shared Resources / Metroid Map System (Updated 3/16/2018)

« on: January 30, 2018, 11:13:36 am »

UPDATED 3/16/2018:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0i5w3ta8e38v4qi/Metroid%20Map.stencyl?dl=0
^^^^^
Get it now, full working version for 3.4
Import the whole example game and try it out!

===================================

Decided it's time. Been with Stencyl for 6 years and I've seen nothing public similar to it so why not. I'm releasing a version that's a few iterations back, so it's not the fanciest but it is the most versatile.

It's the whole project exported, but IT DOES NOT WORK. It'll be up to you to export, import, and fix the parts you need and place them into your own project. These old files don't translate well over the numerous Stencyl updates. A tip for repairing it is to export the behavior to a clean project of your choosing, preferably a platformer kit or template, and copy over the images from the extras folder.

Saying it’s a Metroid map is inaccurate, it just paints open space on a blank canvas, but understanding the image API can let you format this however you want. I apologize the behavior is in poor health, I invite anyone who chooses to clean up and make the behavior friendly for anyone to use.

See attachment for download. Hope you enjoy it.

2

Ask a Question / [solved] Camera Dolly

« on: July 25, 2017, 03:18:54 pm »

So my camera is attached to an actor, named 'dolly' (after the carts that hold cameras in Hollywood) and as this dolly moves around, it will collide with other actors designed to block it. This basically keeps the camera focused on the playable area like we see in Metroid, Mega Man, and many other platdormers. Seems simple right?

The fundamental issue is the physics and what shape the dolly has. If it's square, it snags and stops on everything. The best is a circle in the center but it leaves an undesirable spacing on the sides. The middle ground is two circles that overlap to cover the screen's dimensions with a pill shape. This is ALMOST perfect, flawed in only the fact that the pill shape still has a flat side on the top and bottom. This snags if the player takes a sharp corner, but is fine after the corner gets to the round part of the pill shape.

My theorized solution is to have the dolly somehow slide out of the way somehow when the flat side gets snagged. Either physically or offsetting the camera's position on the dolly. I can't seem to reliably make that happen.

Anyone who wants to try it, I can post the code, it's surprisingly simple. Plus I believe it would be a valuable behavior to have around once this last challenge is overcome.

I welcome any and all suggestions, thoughts, and ideas here.

3

Ask a Question / [Solved] Tiles and Physics

« on: May 27, 2017, 07:01:55 pm »

If I use the tile API to change a tile with a collisions box, how does that affect the physics? Like if I remove a tile in a wall, is there a hole in the wall for things to pass trough? Any insights are welcome.

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Dialog Extension / Extension Failed to Compile

« on: December 26, 2016, 11:16:56 am »

Not sure how to deal with this one. Seems to error across all of my games with the Dialog Extension enabled.

Latest Dialog Extension version using the offline repository provided and the latest version of public stencyl.
Rolling back the versions didn't fix anything either, which was odd.
The target platform doesn't matter, errors on all platforms.

see attachments to post for pic and log.

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Ask a Question / Engine Extension Compile Error

« on: December 22, 2016, 11:35:20 am »

This one is baffling me.
(see attached image)

Started showing up when I went into a project that uses the Dialog extension. I updated the extensions and it didn't fix it. I'm on Stencyl 9279 with a clean install. I updated my Haxe and OpenFL as well.

Any thoughts?

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Ask a Question / Ray Tracing a Lot...

« on: December 09, 2016, 09:22:19 am »

I'm updating an old thing I made and moved to version 9279.
It seemed to have broken a few of my other ray trace projects as well.

I can't seem to detect the results of a ray trace properly.

I thought I found a work-around since things might have changed for the better, as far as stencyl goes, but trying to re-understand and make it work is tricky.

Why this is important is because I'm updating my pixel perfect Mini-mapping system to chart only where the player can see. This way, secrets  remain hidden and doors block sight.

If anyone wants to take a legit stab at it, I have a download ready for the testing project that has the behavior. Reply or Message me if you might have a solution.

Thanks.

7

Ask a Question / RaycastAPI and Stencyl 9170?

« on: July 30, 2016, 11:45:17 am »

Can anyone else confirm any problems with the Raycast API and version 9170?
It keeps reporting it's collision points as 0 and not behaving properly in repeat blocks.

Also I thought Raycast would be canon by now, it's super useful and not too difficult to understand.

8

Ask a Question / Concerns for ambitious projects.

« on: June 24, 2016, 08:55:05 am »

How confident are you with Stencyl, it's editor, it's engine?

I hope the best for Stencyl. It is indeed a contender in the realm of game makers. I've used a lot of different editors and this is the first with performance hitches. It's also the best.

I was recently given a game to add some things to and it was a 300mb project. Upon attempting to open it, I immediately ran out of ram and had to look on the website to fix that. After doing so the editor was slow and took a long time to switch to anything and save. I know stencyl is made in Java and that's innately concerning as a platform. In my smaller dabblings it's been great but I have an ambitious project, as do many others. Will stencyl get the power and optimizations that will give power-users confidence and stability do build such large projects?

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Ask a Question / Show/Hide Image Instance

« on: June 09, 2016, 03:18:55 pm »

I've made a map system that paints in the explored areas by applying color to a blank image.
Like in this example. http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/29121

I've encountered a challenge where I can't simply hide and show the map's image, like if I were to hold TAB to make it show and release TAB to hide it. How can I show/hide the image? Can I still draw on it when it is hidden?

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Ask a Question / Organization / Optimization Question...

« on: May 15, 2016, 04:45:08 pm »

What is the difference between putting all of a behavior's code under 1 update event and organizing code by separating into multiple Update events. Does the engine take any performance hit or does it really not matter? I guess likewise with all other events like Created and Drawing as well. Any ideas?

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Ask a Question / Frame Accurate FPS Counter

« on: January 05, 2016, 08:38:58 am »

So I've been playing with this idea for a few days and I'd like see what you think of it.

Put on your Math-Hats now.

So the premise is to use a list of the time between the last 60 frame draws.
Each frame would insert the time from the previous frame at position 0 on the list, then to save data remove the number in position 60. It would then add up 0-59 in the list to give the time it took to draw 60 frames.

At 60 fps, 1 / 60 = 0.01666667 seconds. So essentially if you multiply 0.01666667 by 60 you'd get 1 or negligibly close to it.  With that ~1, multiply it by 60 and draw the number. So if your game ran a little slow, for example; it took 1.12 seconds to draw 60 frames,  the number would read 67.2 and to adjust it, minus 60 and subtract the remainder from 60. which turns into 52.8 fps. This number would update accurately every single frame as the list of time constantly get updated. Also a graph could be drawn with the data in the list.

Here's the issue so far that boggled me. I can't seem to get the actual time between frames. Stencyl doesn't seem to like "do every 0.001 seconds" or smaller as it doesn't give me an accurate number, and I didn't really think that the step size helped either. So that's what I'm left with. Any thoughts?

Any ideas?

This isn't a project critical behavior, just something I thought of. I think there was a thread a long time ago about it too but no solution was found.

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Shared Resources / Vector Tail Behavior

« on: November 22, 2015, 04:09:09 pm »

EXAMPLE: http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/32731

I made a really smooth subframe-interpolated vector tail behavior. It works in world-space so attach it to an actor and choose some settings, and that's it.

This requires you have the Color Utils Extension found here http://community.stencyl.com/index.php/topic,34370.0.html

Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9wkphlifso5tf03/Vector%20Tail.stencyl?dl=0

Here's a rundown of the attributes.

Colors are pretty self-explanitory

Tail Length: The small the number, the longer.

Width Start and End: If you want to taper off the line at all, this is where you can do that.

X and Y Offsets: Initial offset if you need the line to start at a specific location on your actor.

Tail Random X and Y: This randomizes a little off the current location, adding a jaggedness to the final line being drawn.

Tail Noise: Each frame, the line receives a new random number to chop the line up. It's a neat effect if used right.

Tail Gravity: The line will rise or drop base on this number.

NOTES: Without any noise or randomness, the line disappears naturally when the actor is completely still.

Its free to use. I started with the "string avoider" example project and just went from there. So yeah, free.
Enjoy!

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Ask a Question / RGB numbers from a color attribute

« on: November 19, 2015, 04:38:58 am »

So I'm playing with some vector stuff and encountered this interesting predicament.

I have two attributes to set a starting color and an ending color. I'm trying to animate a line whose color is going from one to the other. I imagine it would be a change in the RGB values so I started there. However, I cannot get an RGB value from a color attribute. I have a block to use three numbers as an RGB value but it's not as useful without extracting the values from the color attribute.

So is there a way to do that? Get the individual RGB numbers from a color attribute?

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Shared Resources / 3D Sound Emitter Behaviors

« on: October 27, 2015, 08:27:22 am »

EXAMPLE:
http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/31925

DOWNLOAD:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/eta4zkt1ptvbknc/3D%20Stereo%20Sound%20Emitters%20v01.stencyl?dl=0

KNOWN ISSUES:
• The part of the code that finds an open channel sometimes fails its purpose, making a channel of a sound fail to play.
• Sometimes sound doesn't sync up but I think its a performance issue. Only tested in flash and could be related to the game loading directly into a scene rather than going to the scene from another scene. This theory is untested though.
• Sounds sometimes overlap and cancel each other out. Probably has to do with the free channel check.
• Stereo sound emission doesn't work reliably. The other three work ok with the above issues being the exceptions.

Hope you find it useful, and if you can improve this system, please do and post.

NOTES:
If you need to edit sounds, I use Audicity for all that stuff. Works great, easy to use.

15

Ask a Question / Masking Layers

« on: October 01, 2015, 04:22:54 pm »

Is it possible at all to have one layer mask another?

I could use it for a good variety of things, like lighting, water, refracting effects if done right, etc. all without shaders. I think it would be neat but I don't know where to begin with this one.

Thoughts?