Messages

1

Ask a Question / Re: Can Stencyl access external files?

« on: April 08, 2018, 03:51:54 pm »

Many thanks to you both for your replies.
I had checked on the possibility of using haxe file IO - but haven't coded anything to try it. I have downloaded the extension mentioned and will have a look.
I'll give it more thought before trying anything - after all, if my idea won't work there's no point going down that route.
Love Stencyl BTW - it's been a while since I last used it (as an IT teacher, now a retired and a hobby maker/coder).
Thanks again.
 

2

Ask a Question / Can Stencyl access external files?

« on: April 08, 2018, 11:51:55 am »

I'm considering switching to using Stencyl for a simulator project currently written in python and using PyGame. However, that all hinges on wether to not Stencyl can load user written scripts (text files).  The scripts are a simple language aimed at controlling the behaviours of, shall we say, an actor. Yes I know Stencyl has built in behaviours but the game needs to be recompiled when they are changed.  The commands in the simple language include MOVE, TURN, IF/THEN/ELSE etc
I have a working lexical analyser,written in python, interpreting the scripts into robot (machine) commands and would convert the analyser into a class which would be called from an actor. Actors would/could have different scripts.
The project is a robot simulator - the actual robots are arduino driven using a simple script which can be uploaded to change the robot behaviour. The simulator is intended to test scripts before uploading to the robots in a classroom situation. I understand there would be domain issues if compiling to flash. But I don't know if Stencyl can open a text file and read each line.
Is it possible?
Many thanks.

3

Ask a Question / V3.3 Changing Workspace Fails

« on: May 05, 2015, 02:44:32 pm »

Working on my machine at home quad core dell inspiron 64bit...
Just installed V3.3 to try it. Installed in seperate stencyl_3.3 folder to allow me to keep my 3.2 to fall back on.
Go to change my workspace (we have to do that at school due to network restrictions) and I get an Unexpected Problem dialogue.
Tried rebooting my machine as I'd just updated Java to 64bit to allow bigger JVM memory - same problem when changing workspace.
Uninstalled both 3.2 and 3.3 - re-installed 3.3 fresh - try to change workspace - nada - zilch - no error messages - no progress messages and nothing is moved.
The latest log entry (attached) is after the new install of 3.3.
Anyone else had problems with changing the workspace on 3.3?

4

Ask a Question / Re: Out of Disk Space when Saving

« on: May 05, 2015, 11:00:39 am »

Thanks for the prompt reply Jon.
It's what I thought. Is there any chance of adding some protection?
For example rename the game directory game.bak then if the save fails delete the new folder and restore game.bak as game?
We can get extra disk quota within minutes and students could then retry the save but once a curruption happens we are up the creek without a paddle as it can take days for the IT support people to restore a previous game from tape backups - we would lose any recent work done mean time.

5

Ask a Question / Out of Disk Space when Saving

« on: May 05, 2015, 10:46:57 am »

At my school students have a fixed disk quota and they are never ever aware that they've run out of space till, well, they have run out of space. Despite being told to check before doing work.

My question is "How does Stencyl go about saving game changes?"

Does it just overwrite the game folder contents or does it backup the current game folder and rewind if the save hits the out of disk space problem?

We seem to get game corruptions which I can only attribute to running out of disk space (Missing scenes, games not opening).

Of course, mid lesson, it isn't possible to restore work so you can end up with a miffed student who get up to no good because he's run out of things to do.

Thanks for any explanation on this.

6

Ask a Question / Re: Brackets on buttons

« on: March 13, 2015, 06:37:56 am »

Thanks, I'll try that next time I'm in the room. (Only there twice a week)

Tried it on my machine - yep, you are correct. Little blighter would have been trying to change the work folder and not paying attention.

Thanks Again

7

Ask a Question / Brackets on buttons

« on: March 13, 2015, 03:04:47 am »

Build 7994 V3.2 - only one student affected.
Started Stencyl but buttons have square brackets following the text on the button. Inside the square brackets we see things like [global.abc.xyz].

Any idea how this can be reset to normal?

8

Ask a Question / Re: mambo does not respond to keyboard

« on: March 10, 2015, 07:05:23 am »

No, they are all enabled. But the code is missing :-( I feel like an idiot not spotting that but I don't think the student removed it (trustworthy). I think it went walkabout when she tried to save to a full disk - maybe.

Thanks for your help. It's hard debugging with 27 students in the room.

9

Ask a Question / mambo does not respond to keyboard

« on: March 10, 2015, 05:45:50 am »

Using the crash course kit - Stencyl V3.2.
With two of my students games Mambo no longer responds to the left/right/jump keys.  They have the run/jump behaviour configured correctly. I have tried clean up unused files. I'm not seeing any error in the logs.
Can anyone give me pointers where else to look?
Thanks

10

Ask a Question / Re: Particle effect from center of actor?

« on: March 03, 2015, 05:25:24 am »

Well it will do, x-Centre of Self - Half-Width of self is the leftmost edge,  you just want x-centre of self surely.

11

Ask a Question / Re: How to fix this problem error ?

« on: March 03, 2015, 05:20:08 am »

You need to post logs for the whizz kids to look at. Have you tried Debug->Game->Clean Unused Files?

12

Resolved Questions / Re: Unable to Get V3.2 to compile on school system

« on: March 03, 2015, 05:16:51 am »

Ok, setting both user.home and WorkSpace to a writable location fixed the problem. V3.2 is able to compile games and most of my students succeeded with the crash course. So many thanks for your help.

We did get the IT support people to re-install V3.1 because it worked ok before the Half Term break - but guess what - it fails in the same way and works if user.home and WorkSpace are both writable - and they told me they hadn't changed anything. Yeah right.

So to summarise we have a student writable partition D: , we start Stencyl with this script :-

ECHO OFF
rem
rem wrapper for Stencyl V3.2
rem

rem
rem create a writeable folder if needed
rem
if NOT EXIST D:\Stencyl md D:\Stencyl

rem
rem if we don't do this Stencyl cannot find the stuff it needs
rem
cd /d "C:\"
cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Stencyl"

rem
rem set Java's user.home and launch stencyl
rem
set _JAVA_OPTIONS=-Duser.home=D:\Stencyl
start Stencyl.exe

Then the students change the work folder to D:\Stencyl and it works fine.

Thanks again.

13

Resolved Questions / Re: Unable to Get V3.2 to compile on school system

« on: March 02, 2015, 09:52:44 am »

Will try again tomorrow - thanks.

If that's the case how do others manage with network mounted home directories? Oh, and why does V3.1 work ok with it?

14

Resolved Questions / Re: Unable to Get V3.2 to compile on school system

« on: March 02, 2015, 03:06:37 am »

Spoke too soon. Compile fails again.  Behaviour is not consistent on all student machines.

Saved game doesn't record the fact it has a scene. The log file says it can't find scenes.xml but the file is there when I look in the folder.

Import game -proceeds - log says it cannot find the file but it is visible on disk in the games folder

OMG - a nightmare.

15

Resolved Questions / Re: Unable to Get V3.2 to compile on school system

« on: March 02, 2015, 12:26:21 am »

The build number is 7994.

Finally got this working using this BAT script. Note, at our school there is a writeable drive D: which students can access.  I need our technicians to give me an environment variable for home drives to be able to setup the WorkDir as  %APPDATA% is removed on logoff. (Next task)

ECHO OFF
rem
rem wrapper for Stencyl V3.2
rem

rem
rem create a writeable folder if needed
rem
if NOT EXIST D:\Stencyl md D:\Stencyl

rem
rem if we don't do this Stencyl cannot find the stuff it needs
rem
cd /d "C:\"
cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Stencyl"

rem
rem set Java's user.home and launch stencyl
rem
set _JAVA_OPTIONS=-Duser.home=D:\Stencyl
start Stencyl.exe