Messages

1

Ask a Question / Re: Draw Order by Depth

« on: April 19, 2020, 02:57:07 pm »

I didn't know that the Z order had that limit. Another idea would be to check what your player actor is colliding with, and set it's Z order to the collided actor's -1, or switch the Z order of the two actors.

Yes it's frustrating.

I've ended up going with a very rough solution.

I've made a behaviour for my character that sets its Z order to 1, then cycles through each actor on screen and checks its Y position. If it's greater, it sets the Z order to 2, if not, 0.

Luckily I only have a handful of objects on screen at once as I suspect this will eat FPS very quickly.

Still very pokey though.

2

Ask a Question / Re: Draw Order by Depth

« on: April 19, 2020, 02:49:47 pm »

I think you need to use the z order block in a drawing event in order for It to work.
Try to put z order to y of self for each actor in a drawing event and see if that works.

When I do this, all the Z values are maxed out at the total number of objects in the room. I did get a response from the z-block being in the Update event, just not what was expected - erratic changing of Z positions.

3

Ask a Question / Re: Draw Order by Depth

« on: April 19, 2020, 01:20:16 pm »

Ah... that's a new block on me.

Doesn't seem to be having the desired effect though, the result is quite erratic. I notice that an actor's z-order never goes above the number of actors in the layer, despite the block trying to set it to a much higher value. Could that be the issue?

4

Ask a Question / Draw Order by Depth

« on: April 19, 2020, 02:21:37 am »

Hi everyone,

It's been several years since I used Stencyl but I've entered LudumDare46 and I'm looking for some help!

Is there a simple way to have Stencyl order the drawing based on Y value?

I'm just trying to work a depth system for a side on rpg. I've tried some prefabs from StencylForge but none seem to work (unless I've just not configured them correctly but I don't think that's it).

I considered ditching it but I have big trees and it's ruining the look of the game having the player have to run around the big branches etc.


Any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Joe

5

Suggestion Archives / Dear Jon... (Get it?)

« on: December 08, 2015, 11:06:14 am »

Hi guys and girls,

I've been using Stencyl for a few years now and although I don't post in the forums that often I do visit frequently - the community here is fantastic and I've really enjoyed being a part of it, if only as a spectator. I've made a few flash games during my time here and have been lucky enough to have several of them sponsored, but I feel like I'm ready to move on to larger, desktop orientated games and had been looking forward to meeting this challenge with Stencyl. However, upon further evaluation I feel that not only is Stencyl not the best option, it is not really viable. I know there have been several (successful) efforts to develop higher quality games for desktop platforms, but quite frankly there are features missing from the tool kit that are inexcusable and make the task infinitely harder... some of these omissions affect the quality of even flash games and our ability to get our work sponsored.

As a result, I've decided that in order to take my career as a games developer further, the only logical solution is to move onto a new development platform. I've enjoyed my experiences with Stencyl, and before I closed the door on my time here, I felt it only fair to give some feedback in the hopes that the software can be improved to a point that people like me may be inclined to stay on board.

Flash pre-loaders The support for flash pre-loaders is awful. Anything more than a splash screen with a customisable load bar is either impossible or a nightmare to get working. If you're looking to get your game sponsored, you will almost certainly have to use a custom pre-loader supplied by the sponsor. In my experience, most sponsors have been fairly amicable in accepting an alternative that is within the capabilities of Stencyl, but it makes me look less than professional and at some point I can imagine it being a deal breaker. Also, advertisers these days make use of pre-loaders that require click-to-continue mechanics. This is not possible for the novice user (if at all) and therefore limits potential valuations of Stencyl games.

File I/O While the Save/Load blocks are useful and make the process easy for beginners, the system lacks depth and makes any more sophisticated saving systems unfeasible. It would be nice to have some input/output blocks to take this into our own hands, as well as save settings, import resources etc.

2Dimensional Array For the love of god can we please get a 2d array attribute?! Not Maps, not 3rd party extensions, just a working block that allows me to use one of the most basic fundamentals in programming/data storage.

Right Click Support See previous item.

Displaying Text The methods for displaying text are incredibly crude. With no built in controls for things like text entry fields, list boxes etc any efforts to display large amounts of data become incredibly tiresome.

StencylForge The StencylForge is a joke. Most of what little resources are on there are of terrible quality, it's incredibly slow to respond and it's organised very poorly. It needs a MAJOR overhaul to be of any real use and without a way of monetising downloads there is no real incentive for anyone to spend the time to make good quality content. A decent resource library a la Unity's Asset Store would help create higher quality projects, speed up workflow and allow users to earn additional revenue.

Cross Platform/Version Issues The situation as it stands now means if I'm making a game on my Mac with version 3.2, I have to finish it on my Mac with version 3.2. Every experiment I've had with sharing game files between different computers (Windows/Mac) or updating Stencyl mid-development has led to failure. Obviously, this has huge implications when it comes to working as part of a team.

That's it folks! I hope my feedback will be considered constructive and who knows, if some of these features are implemented in future releases I may well find myself back on the wagon. My hearty congratulations and thanks go out to Jon and the team for the sterling work they've done so far, and I wish you all good luck in your game-making endeavours.

Stay frosty!

Joe

6

Chit-Chat / Re: Stencyl vs Unity 3D

« on: November 09, 2015, 04:49:15 pm »

Sorry, I realise it's a dead thread now but I couldn't hold my tongue. Anyone who says Unity and Stencyl are even close to being even in the difficulty rating have either never used Unity, or are lying to conceal the fact they don't have the intelligence/patience to master Unity. Stencyl is SIGNIFICANTLY easier to get to grips with and use on a day-to-day basis, end of story. If they really were even, why would anyone bother with Stencyl when Unity has so much more to offer in terms of features, design potential, compiling options etc.... Ignoring the kids/fake vs real programming IDE argument (it's a dumb conversation no matter what stance you take) the WHOLE POINT of Stencyl is to create an environment that's more palatable for inexperienced designers and programmers (i.e. easier). When I first started using it I had very limited knowledge of programming, particularly for games, and within one week of first downloading it I had made a game that ended up selling on FGL for a decent amount of cash (more than I could earn in a week at my day job). Show me an example of that in Unity. You can get by with no coding experience and the interface is far more intuitive... it's a no-brainer. Of course you pay for that when you compare features and engine 'power' but the question wasn't "which engine is more powerful?", it was "which is easier?" and the answer is Stencyl. To argue otherwise is an insult to the efforts of Jon and the rest of the Stencyl team.

7

Windows / Mac / Flash / HTML5 / Tower of Evil

« on: January 08, 2014, 09:09:56 pm »

Hi,

I downloaded Stencyl a few months ago and made this game. I was lucky enough to get a sponsorship on FGL - my first game ever! I hope you like it.

http://www.squiglysplayhouse.com/Games/Flash/Action/TowerofEvil/index.php

8

Game Ideas / Re: I have A game Idea but i need help programing the Multiplayer part of it.

« on: December 18, 2013, 11:04:28 pm »

That's a cool looking demo mate. Hope you get some help with it!

9

Ask a Question / Re: Before i get too excited

« on: July 01, 2013, 05:39:37 pm »

In a word, yes. 

10

Ask a Question / Re: How to Make Bullet go the way Actor is Facing?

« on: June 30, 2013, 04:07:06 pm »

You're best bet is to use a boolean that tracks whether the character is facing left or right, but you can go direct to the animations if need be. Rather than use the bullet events, I'd do the work when creating it. The code would look something like -

Code: [Select]


When FireButton is pressed:

Create Bullet at x,y

if Player animation = walking left OR Player animation = stopped left

For last created actor, set x speed to -15

otherwise if Player animation = walking right OR Player animation = stopped right

For last created actore, set x speed to 15
As you can see, you'll need to put all the left and right facing animations into the code to get the correct response (ie jumping left/right, climbing left/right etc) whereas if you kept track of it with a boolean you could just use if PlayerIsFacingRight = true...

Hope that helps.

11

Ask a Question / Re: Layers Bug - Please Help.

« on: June 30, 2013, 03:58:58 pm »

if your actor is a created actor from a event, it's had to be created at "front".

This always seems to be what catches me out. An odd way of doing things to say the least, I don't know why you can't just specify which layer you'd like to create an actor in. Hopefully Stencyl 3.0 does something about this...

12

Resolved Questions / Re: in game menus [SOLVED]

« on: June 30, 2013, 03:16:25 pm »

I'm fairly new to Stencyl but I haven't had nearly as much trouble as others seem to...

First, create a layer and position it at the front of the scene. When the scene is created, fade the layer to 0% over 0.01 seconds, then when the user clicks/presses the menu button, fade the layer in. You'll need a boolean attribute to monitor if the menu is visible or clicks on the buttons will still register whether the layer is showing or not*. Then your buttons just check if the menu is visible before they perform their actions. To hide the menu again, just fade back to 0% and set the menu boolean to false.

*this also goes the other way too - you probably won't want your in-game buttons to trigger if the menu is showing.

I think as far as whether to draw or use actors, you'll more than likely have to use a combination of both. Dynamic data such as scores/lives etc will almost always need to be drawn, but there's no reason you can't use actors for buttons, logos etc. To me, the question is whether you'd rather place the actors in the Stencyl scene editor or use a behaviour to create them on the fly. Placing them manually will mean you'll need to add them to each scene yourself, so it may not be the best way to go if you have a lot of levels (any changes you make you'll have to do in each level) but using a behaviour is just a bit more tedious than drag and drop....

Hope this helps.

13

Paid Work / Re: How to make a video from screens of game? (on Mac)

« on: June 29, 2013, 02:10:47 pm »

Bit late reply, but you can do it direct from QuickTime. Just open up the QT program and it's in one of the menus.