Scirra.com has announced in an Open letter to the Construct community forums they will be releasing the eagerly awaited pre-alpha version of Construct 2.0 for public preview this weekend. Not much has been said about it yet but it promises to be a marked improvement over the original construct program and to quote “a totally modular export system, which means we can adapt it to new technologies for years to come “.
Construct 2 will not be backwards compatible with CAP files created in 0.xx release versions but was something that was expected with a new software architecture in C2.
Exciting times ahead now that they are going to focus on the C2 while granting access to continue 0.x releases to any interested developers.
It’s looking like it will continue to be free at this stage. There will be plenty of buzz over the weekend.
Construct is a voluntary based project with people contributing in their spare time.
Announced in the Scirra Construct forum the successor to the Advanced Camera plugin created by linkman2004 now comes MagiCam Beta
Features,
- Create an unlimited amount of cameras which you can switch between on the fly, either instantaneously or in a smooth motion.
- Create camera transitions between different points, angles, and zoom levels.
- Follow an unlimited number of objects — each with their own offset options — using a weighted average to determine which objects have more influence over the camera.
- Easily create customized camera shakes using a single action.
- Setup grid scrolling in the same vein as games such as MegaMan and Metroid.
- Lock cameras to integer positions to ensure that retro-style games stay crisp.
- Uses cosine interpolation to ensure smooth camera transitions.
Started work on the background graphics for the first level. I’m hoping to make it look like a South American landscape with rolling forests, early morning misty haze etc.
One of my first thoughts was establishing how long the level was going to scroll since that will effect the amount of graphics I wanted to create. The only way I figured I could do this was to time a typical length of video from youtube video game recording to get some ideas.
I realised the complexity of creating a rainforest background was not going to be so straight forward, especially when I didn’t have a lot of reference material to start from. I figured I wasn’t going to have enough time to hand-draw or create a montage from photographic references. I decided instead to create it all in 3d using e-on software Vue complete which unsurprisingly, is perfect for creating and rendering environments… I soon learnt it well enough to get a rough idea of what I wanted the background to look like. After all I paid for it, I want to get my money’s worth and will be using it a lot in this game!
A section of the South America Game scrolling background
The image above is part of one long scrolling background broken into sections and pasted together is Scirra Construct. I soon decided that the background it was a little flat, there was no parallax scrolling which I thought would would give the game a bit more depth dimension.
Inadvertently after editing the scene I altered the colours and lighting and reduced volumetric clouds before rendering out into layers again for parallax.
The video below demonstrates part of the level with parallax scrolling
Released Friday, Unstable builds means it’s untested. Only install for reporting bugs. Use the latest stable build to avoid problems with unknown bugs… stable release found here
Changelog
Editor
- [CHANGE] Cleartype enabled for as many places as I can find in the editor. Also changed the font in many places from Arial to Segoe UI. (Ashley)
Animation Bar
- [FIX] Launch Explorer no longer crashes when you have an action point
Runtime
- [FIX] Fixed slowdown when using per pixel collisions. (R0J0hound)
- [FIX] Fixed crashes when using families with private variables. (R0J0hound)
3d Object
- [ADD] Can now change the z position at runtime (Davo)
Event Wizard
- [FIX] Crash that occured if you obtained an expression from an object before typing anything into the expression editor. (Davo)
Testing the particles emitters in Construct to generate some standared looking explosions for the game. There are 3 particles emitters for each explosion, smoke, fire, and a sparks. Because there will be different sized enemy spites and types then the size of explosion will vary from small, medium, and large. There’s also a player bullet collision particle emitter to mimic bullet ricochet. I don’t yet have any decent game sprite graphics yet, I will be working on these later on once I get the gameplay and waves of enemies to fly in pattern formations. I think I will have to work on a custom sprite formation editor app to create these as I’m guessing it’s not going to easy to define these game sprites XY coordinates manually.
In the example below I’ve slowed the video down so it’s easier to see explosions of different sized sprite enemies. I haven’t got any games sprites so I’m using temporary graphics instead.
Next I added missile collisions. I’ve added an ‘exit’ particle emitter effect to give the impression of missile impact. I’ve again slowed the video down by half to easily see the subtle difference between a gun impact explosions and missile impact explosions.
Next I’ll look into working on background graphics and scrolling.
The game
Going to create my first game as a horizontal scroller shot’em up.
I’m not doing anything in any particular order since I’m just starting out this project I’m going to play with various aspects the game and assemble it a bit at a time.
The game story will probably develop sooner rather than later and it’s something I’m thinking about as I progress. The story will give me ideas for game dynamics, how it will play, and the length of the game. I want the game levels to start on Earth, eventually move into space and then onto an alien world. This requires the player to change from Air to Air combat to deep space combat. Though I do have a rough storyline I don’t won’t to give too much away at this stage.
Getting started
The first step i’m going to look into is player control. It’s going to be primarily mouse controlled input with left and right buttons for primary and secondary weapons. I want to use graphics representative of what I want. Air to air will start with a helicopter.
The helicopter, otherwise know as Littlebird. Will eventually pack quite a punch when I’m done with it.
This may or may not be the final graphic for the first level but its a start. An example of player control and primary weapons can be seen in the video below. Sprite continuously follows mouse with a delay or a set speed. This to me feels more comfortable than keyboard control and I think it more likely casual gamers will be used to mouse control.
No animation for the rotatory blades yet and temp graphics for missiles and bullets. The number counting down from 400 to 0 represents gun heat, this will be a hidden feature in the final game. If you fire continuously and for too long the number eventually decreases to Zero, then the bullets become infrequent, random, and less predictable pattern. On releasing the mouse button the number increments back up to 400 and the bullets fire normally again. The reason why I’ve used a floating number and not rounded it is due to the way construct processes the event system and when it draws the graphics on screen. Different computers and GPU’s will process data at different speeds so theres a concept called Timedelta that simply processes something no matter the difference in speed one computer has over another. Timedelta is a very small floating value. I found if I round the number to a whole number then the primary gun speed varies on different computers. When the number reaches 150 note the smoke on littlebird guns. This will probably be the only indication that the player knows they should be aware to preserve the primary weapon by releasing the left mouse button for only a few seconds.
Power ups
Cant have a shot’em up with out power ups! I’ve yet to decide what type of power ups I’m going to add, but I know how they the system will work but still need to design it. I will revisit it after I’ve do more experimentation with the rest if the game.
First things first I decided to search YouTube for ideas. What style is this game going to take on, it’s not going to be an original game, just something anyone can pick up and have fun blasting and maybe have a retro feel but modern looking. In my other posts I mentioned creating something in the style of Project X or R-Type. They look to have a relatively simple game dynamic and weapon powerup system. Though I don’t want to do a clone of another game I want to make it in my own style. I also like the graphics style of metal slug but I may do some graphics in 3d. Those military vehicles in metal slug look awesome!
Jets’n’Guns by Rake in Grass is a modern classic. It’s got over-the-top artillery and fire-power, brings an enormous gratifying sense of pleasure when playing. But that would be too overkill for my humble project. I want to keep it simple, but enjoyable and looking the best I can make it.
Metal Slug
No one can deny the game looks great and the animations are excellent. I’ve not played this game before but I really like the way the game looks and plays. I think I can get some great ideas for enemy sprite designs from here.
Jets’n’Guns
Great presentation and music. Keyboard or mouse controlled player input provides a satisfying experience.
Project X
A classy game of its time and still looks the piece today! Simpler mechanics and gameplay but very challenging when I played it on the Amiga back in the day when it came out, I still have the demo floppy disk of the game from a cover magazine. I like it for the graphics and simplicity of gamplay, no massive weapons or bombs just requires skill to make it to the end of the level.
1944
Even though these titles are vertical shot’em up, I want to create a horizontal version, they are great to watch. The bullet patterns are sometimes hypnotic to watch.
Shopping basket has been fixed. There was a problem after adding an item it would open the sister site on cafepress and made it a little confusing to see what you added and you couldn’t get back to the main meisgood website.
Now a shopping basket window pops up with selected items.
So I’m going to try and make a game, or least a demo. I’ve had a few ideas and decided to muddle together a side-scroller shoot ‘em up or shumup. I found what looks like an easy to use free open-source game creator at scirra.com called Construct.
Looking at some the demos it looks fairly easy to use and requires no programming experience. It’s driven by events and conditions triggered from top to bottom. Sprites, I/O, and sounds are driven by these events and conditions and logic trigger events and sub-events.
I’ve had a quick play with the interface and it seems stable. The Application also has an API and allows others to add their own specialised plug-ins for the community to use and looking at what other have created it all looks like a supportive community.
