@KnightStar said:
Is there any way this data and code can be packaged up into a format that can be used in games / apps and more importantly easily accessible as a functional and workable tool for other GS devs??
I'm not 100% what the question means ? There's no special code really, It's just a technique, just the usual stuff, the constrain behaviour and the replicate behaviour get used a lot, but it honestly isn't difficult to do yourself, I'd feel bad selling people tools they already have !
@KnightStar said: I'm stating the obvious here in that this sh*t is brilliant.. and when I say brilliant, Socks makes me (and probably a lot of the rest of us) feel like I'm a coding Neanderthal thumping on a keyboard with a thigh-bone and a wooden spoon..
I think I've just had an idea for a game (runs off and copyrights NeanderthalSpoonz™).
Like I say it's not complex, the result might look abstruse, as if there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes, but - for example - if I uploaded a 100 x 100 pixel square, that I could rotate with the left and right arrow keyboard keys, and I'd got its opacity to change in relation to its rotation (constraining the alpha channel to self rotation) it wouldn't be particularly impressive, but that's basically all the above light effect is, throw a few of these simple tricks together and things start to look more than the sum of their parts.
Another little test, I thought this looked quite funny, the idea was for the object to react to different surfaces, for example as it moves over rough ground it would get quite bumpy - but I think I overdid the amount of bumpiness, lol
Ignore the background textures, they're just random images from Google.
You could also have icy surfaces where every left / right turn swings the car into oversteer and you generally skid around the place, or sand, where the speed drops and you get sluggish understeer . . . etc.
@Socks said:
Another little test, I thought this looked quite funny, the idea was for the object to react to different surfaces, for example as it moves over rough ground it would get quite bumpy - but I think I overdid the amount of bumpiness, lol
Ignore the background textures, they're just random images from Google.
You could also have icy surfaces where every left / right turn swings the car into oversteer and you generally skid around the place, or sand, where the speed drops and you get sluggish understeer . . . etc.
I hope that's not a camouflaged Russian tank running over areas leaving destruction in it's path. No, can't be.. something like that would never happen!
Here's another interesting little experiment (interesting to me at least ) . . . . .
It's a string of joined actors, I've tried a few of these in the past, but I liked this one as it's super manoeuvrable, it doesn't get snagged on little lumps in the environment like these kinds of things usually do (like on the corners of platform actors), it can even turn around in tight tunnels so you can explore small openings and otherwise difficult to reach areas.
Its 'skin' is pretty basic at the moment, just a bunch of lines and circles, but you could obviously make up some cool looking segments for it, I think it'd work for a train game too (from above).
Creep !! Caution nerdy sine wave discussion approaching.
Today I was trying to get something to creep along like a caterpillar, and after a lot of playing around realised what I really needed was a clipped sine wave, that is to say a sine wave with the negative part chopped off.
It's easy enough to limit a sine wave to just the positive half by limiting the angle the sine wave operates on to 180° (using %180 in GameSalad), but that gives you a sine wave that rises up, then drops down and when it gets to the mid point (where it would normally continue into negative values) it 'bounces' straight back up . . .
. . . . instead I wanted the value to rise up, fall down and then when it hits the mid point it just holds there until the sine wave picks it up again when it comes back around, so you get a value that rises from 0 to 1, then from 1 down to 0 and then holds for half a cycle, then repeats, jeez this is boring to explain ! . . .
Anyway, after struggling for a while trying to get a simple solution I ended up using an Index attribute, as Index attributes can only store positive values you can throw a sine wave at it and it will only hold the the top half ! Exactly what I wanted . . . anyhow, here's the result, it's not going to win any animation awards but it kind of works . . . .
Braydon_SFXMember, Sous Chef, Bowlboy SidekickPosts: 9,273
Ohh it's so beautiful... Really. That deserves an Awesome.
Here's a update on the vector isometric thing . . . .
This is something I mentioned previously, the idea was basically to have fixed lights in a 3D space, before I simply had a single light source coming from a single direction (parallel rays), but fixed lights would mean you could manoeuvre around them and they would cast light onto your actors depending on their relationship to that actor. The idea was that as light sources are just points in space that an actor can measure its distance to (magnitude) and the direction the light is coming from (vector to angle), then you should be able to use this information to effect the actor's surface/colour.
Here's the first test of the idea, the light source effects the actor like this - a very distant light source will give you long and light shadows, whereas if you are right next the light source you will get a very short but very dense shadow (the length of the shadow also depends on the height of the light source), and unlike the previous test the surface of the actor now 'knows' where the light source is (rather than the light source being from one direction), so there's a lot more interaction, you can drive around the light and the side facing it will always be illuminated, you can then spin the car (ok, let's be honest here, the box ) however you like and the new side now facing it will be illuminated as the sides now facing away fall into shadow.
Using just simple maths you have quite a lot of control, you can have lights at different distances, brightnesses and positions (obviously), but also at differing heights, with differing fall offs, as well as multiple light sources and moving light sources which will all correctly intact with your actor.
In this video you can see two of these elements, a fixed light source which the actor can move around and then later in the video I keep the actor static and move the light source around.
Screencapture (much better quality that Youtube, as Youtube's compression has made everything a little too dark along with its usual stuttery frame rate): https://www.mediafire.com/?qaajtzsi9lmm51y
@Socks -- Are you even using the same GameSalad that I am using?
I have no clue how you are doing what you are doing. But I am glad that you are doing whatever it is that you do to make GameSalad do what it has never done before!
@RThurman said:
Socks -- Are you even using the same GameSalad that I am using?
Probably not, I'm still using 10.0.4, lol
@RThurman said:
I have no clue how you are doing what you are doing.
Replicate and constrain mostly driven by sin/cos + vector to angle + magnitude, and that's about it ! No tables or hundreds of attributes or anything like that, it's actually reasonably straightforward.
Socks -- Are you even using the same brain that I am using?
I wondered this, too.
Oh and Qix if anyone is interested, can be played at http://www.freewebarcade.com/game/qix. I've wanted to make that game from the first few moments I worked with GameSalad but I still haven't figured out how.
. . . then you get quite a nice foliage-like star pattern, I've made a load these up over the years, kind of like GS doodling, you get a lot of messy patterns but I like the shape of this one, you occasionally get plant like shapes like this, but rarely a five pointed one.
I like this part . . . 100xsin(game.Timex100xsin(game.Timex50)) . . . that's the nice looking bit.
In the video I draw out the pattern but with a kind of spinning rotating pen, then the pattern with the spinning/rotation switched off so you can see it in its full mathematical glory !
Smooth screen capture movie (much better than Youtube quality)
Here's that swimming jointed thing from previously, not done much with it yet, but I thought this was quite funny, the player (the jointed actor) has to find and rescue other little creatures, when he is in range the little creatures will see him and then are able to follow him, the thing I liked was the way in which the little creature follows him, like an excited little kid, swarming around him, never still, to the extent that he can occasionally fall behind and you can loose him, so you have to go back to pick him up again . . . . a lot like real kids then
The (badly aligned) white walls are just thrown in for testing !
These are all really cool. I love using SIN, COS to change colors or hover text in midair. These are above my mathematical expertise, but I was wondering, is there a way to create a trajectory line like in angry birds, except without spawning or using particles at all.
Could you create static lines on the bottom of your play area that automatically orient based on the initial angle of your actor.
SO have small actor lines like this ( - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ) that automatically orient to the angle and height of a curved trajectory. Let me know if you understand what I am saying. As a further cool aspect, you could make each small line slowly rotate based on sin as well.
I assume you could use SIN to create this effect. How, I cannot figure out.
@Supersonic9120 said:
. . . . is there a way to create a trajectory line like in angry birds, except without spawning or using particles at all.
I think ultimately you need to place actors into a scene to do this kind of thing, so there is no way (I am aware of) to do it without spawning.
@Supersonic9120 said:
SO have small actor lines like this ( - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ) that automatically orient to the angle and height of a curved trajectory.
A curved trajectory is basically the top section of a circle, and as you angle your direction of throw up it becomes taller and thinner, and as you angle your direction of throw more horizontally it becomes shorter and wider, so all you would be doing is squashing a circle based on the direction your thrower is facing . . . . ?
@Socks said:
Here's that swimming jointed thing from previously, not done much with it yet, but I thought this was quite funny, the player (the jointed actor) has to find and rescue other little creatures, when he is in range the little creatures will see him and then are able to follow him, the thing I liked was the way in which the little creature follows him, like an excited little kid, swarming around him, never still, to the extent that he can occasionally fall behind and you can loose him, so you have to go back to pick him up again . . . . a lot like real kids then
The (badly aligned) white walls are just thrown in for testing !
Holy crap! That looks like it would make an excellent game! Socks, I would look into developing that further if I were you! Let me know if you don't want to use it, cause I'd be willing to "take it off your hands."...uh Feet?
@gamestudent said:
That looks like it would make an excellent game!
Cheers Gamestudent, if I get time I think I will try and develop a couple of these experiments into actual games !
Here's a couple of the previous ideas thrown together to see how they might work all in the same project, it's your basic fight for life ! : ) don't let the bad guys get you, if they manage to get to you they destroy segments of your player, the further up towards your head they touch the more damage they will do, if they touch just the last segment only that will be destroyed, but if they touch - for example - the third from the end segment then all the segments from there to the tail are destroyed, and if they touch your head . . . well . . . I really don't want to discuss that, let's just say you don't want that to happen.
This one has true polygonal collisions too ! It's actually not the sort of project where you would particularly need polygonal collisions, but it just happens to be a side effect of the method used to construct the players.
Youtube has absolutely killed the quality on this one, HD helps a little, but it's still bad, - so here's the original screen capture movie (which itself is nowhere near as smooth as the actual GS project)
Link: https://www.mediafire.com/?v5fykd05mwg7rsv
Comments
I'm not 100% what the question means ? There's no special code really, It's just a technique, just the usual stuff, the constrain behaviour and the replicate behaviour get used a lot, but it honestly isn't difficult to do yourself, I'd feel bad selling people tools they already have !
I think I've just had an idea for a game (runs off and copyrights NeanderthalSpoonz™).
Like I say it's not complex, the result might look abstruse, as if there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes, but - for example - if I uploaded a 100 x 100 pixel square, that I could rotate with the left and right arrow keyboard keys, and I'd got its opacity to change in relation to its rotation (constraining the alpha channel to self rotation) it wouldn't be particularly impressive, but that's basically all the above light effect is, throw a few of these simple tricks together and things start to look more than the sum of their parts.
Another little test, I thought this looked quite funny, the idea was for the object to react to different surfaces, for example as it moves over rough ground it would get quite bumpy - but I think I overdid the amount of bumpiness, lol
Ignore the background textures, they're just random images from Google.
You could also have icy surfaces where every left / right turn swings the car into oversteer and you generally skid around the place, or sand, where the speed drops and you get sluggish understeer . . . etc.
Screencapture movie (smoother than Youtube) https://www.mediafire.com/?ej50e1o23kv2qbw
...obviously....
Lol
My GameSalad Academy Courses! ◦ Check out my quality templates! ◦ Add me on Skype: braydon_sfx
I hope that's not a camouflaged Russian tank running over areas leaving destruction in it's path. No, can't be.. something like that would never happen!
Here's another interesting little experiment (interesting to me at least
) . . . . .
It's a string of joined actors, I've tried a few of these in the past, but I liked this one as it's super manoeuvrable, it doesn't get snagged on little lumps in the environment like these kinds of things usually do (like on the corners of platform actors), it can even turn around in tight tunnels so you can explore small openings and otherwise difficult to reach areas.
Its 'skin' is pretty basic at the moment, just a bunch of lines and circles, but you could obviously make up some cool looking segments for it, I think it'd work for a train game too (from above).
Screencapture movie (smoother than Youtube): https://www.mediafire.com/?8gw05cyxra80470
Creep !! Caution nerdy sine wave discussion approaching.
Today I was trying to get something to creep along like a caterpillar, and after a lot of playing around realised what I really needed was a clipped sine wave, that is to say a sine wave with the negative part chopped off.
It's easy enough to limit a sine wave to just the positive half by limiting the angle the sine wave operates on to 180° (using %180 in GameSalad), but that gives you a sine wave that rises up, then drops down and when it gets to the mid point (where it would normally continue into negative values) it 'bounces' straight back up . . .
. . . . instead I wanted the value to rise up, fall down and then when it hits the mid point it just holds there until the sine wave picks it up again when it comes back around, so you get a value that rises from 0 to 1, then from 1 down to 0 and then holds for half a cycle, then repeats, jeez this is boring to explain !
. . .
Anyway, after struggling for a while trying to get a simple solution I ended up using an Index attribute, as Index attributes can only store positive values you can throw a sine wave at it and it will only hold the the top half ! Exactly what I wanted . . . anyhow, here's the result, it's not going to win any animation awards
but it kind of works . . . .
Ohh it's so beautiful... Really. That deserves an Awesome.
My GameSalad Academy Courses! ◦ Check out my quality templates! ◦ Add me on Skype: braydon_sfx
oooh! Very interesting!
At last !
I can retire now !
(Awesome returned, lol).
Here's a update on the vector isometric thing . . . .
This is something I mentioned previously, the idea was basically to have fixed lights in a 3D space, before I simply had a single light source coming from a single direction (parallel rays), but fixed lights would mean you could manoeuvre around them and they would cast light onto your actors depending on their relationship to that actor. The idea was that as light sources are just points in space that an actor can measure its distance to (magnitude) and the direction the light is coming from (vector to angle), then you should be able to use this information to effect the actor's surface/colour.
Here's the first test of the idea, the light source effects the actor like this - a very distant light source will give you long and light shadows, whereas if you are right next the light source you will get a very short but very dense shadow (the length of the shadow also depends on the height of the light source), and unlike the previous test the surface of the actor now 'knows' where the light source is (rather than the light source being from one direction), so there's a lot more interaction, you can drive around the light and the side facing it will always be illuminated, you can then spin the car (ok, let's be honest here, the box
) however you like and the new side now facing it will be illuminated as the sides now facing away fall into shadow.
Using just simple maths you have quite a lot of control, you can have lights at different distances, brightnesses and positions (obviously), but also at differing heights, with differing fall offs, as well as multiple light sources and moving light sources which will all correctly intact with your actor.
In this video you can see two of these elements, a fixed light source which the actor can move around and then later in the video I keep the actor static and move the light source around.
. . . . . . . . .
tl;dr look ! lights ! : ) It's probably aliens or something.
. . . . . . . . .
Screencapture (much better quality that Youtube, as Youtube's compression has made everything a little too dark along with its usual stuttery frame rate): https://www.mediafire.com/?qaajtzsi9lmm51y
Cheers game student
Awesome!
Genius
@Socks -- Are you even using the same GameSalad that I am using?
I have no clue how you are doing what you are doing. But I am glad that you are doing whatever it is that you do to make GameSalad do what it has never done before!
Probably not, I'm still using 10.0.4, lol
Replicate and constrain mostly driven by sin/cos + vector to angle + magnitude, and that's about it ! No tables or hundreds of attributes or anything like that, it's actually reasonably straightforward.
This is on a whole nother level. Im amazed, great work you got there.
Fortuna Infortuna Forti Una
@RThurman said:
I wondered this, too.
Oh and Qix if anyone is interested, can be played at http://www.freewebarcade.com/game/qix. I've wanted to make that game from the first few moments I worked with GameSalad but I still haven't figured out how.
New to GameSalad? (FAQs) | Tutorials | Templates | Greenleaf Games | Educator & Certified GameSalad User
Hats off @Socks, really mindblowing stuff!
Again, it shows how nimble GS is, now we need to get the business end of GS just as smooth.
MESSAGING, X-PLATFORM LEADERBOARDS, OFFLINE-TIMER, ANALYTICS and BACK-END CONTROL for your GameSalad projects
www.APPFORMATIVE.com
Yep, you can really squeeze a lot of stuff out of GS.
Here's another interesting little thing, if you move an object along a path that is moving in this direction . . .
100xsin(game.Timex100xsin(game.Timex50))+(game.Timex20)
. . . and at this speed . . .
200xsin( game.Time x50)
. . . then you get quite a nice foliage-like star pattern, I've made a load these up over the years, kind of like GS doodling, you get a lot of messy patterns but I like the shape of this one, you occasionally get plant like shapes like this, but rarely a five pointed one.
I like this part . . . 100xsin(game.Timex100xsin(game.Timex50)) . . . that's the nice looking bit.
In the video I draw out the pattern but with a kind of spinning rotating pen, then the pattern with the spinning/rotation switched off so you can see it in its full mathematical glory !
Smooth screen capture movie (much better than Youtube quality)
Link: https://www.mediafire.com/?h0tgd70cwj9xj5w
. . .
Appolgies for the editing in the middle of the video !
I wanted to switch the alpha channel changes off but couldn't find the right behaviour . . . 
. . .
Here's that swimming jointed thing from previously, not done much with it yet, but I thought this was quite funny, the player (the jointed actor) has to find and rescue other little creatures, when he is in range the little creatures will see him and then are able to follow him, the thing I liked was the way in which the little creature follows him, like an excited little kid, swarming around him, never still, to the extent that he can occasionally fall behind and you can loose him, so you have to go back to pick him up again . . . . a lot like real kids then
The (badly aligned) white walls are just thrown in for testing !
Smooth screen capture movie: https://www.mediafire.com/?thcexwke3xc54yq
@Socks
These are all really cool. I love using SIN, COS to change colors or hover text in midair. These are above my mathematical expertise, but I was wondering, is there a way to create a trajectory line like in angry birds, except without spawning or using particles at all.
Could you create static lines on the bottom of your play area that automatically orient based on the initial angle of your actor.
SO have small actor lines like this ( - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ) that automatically orient to the angle and height of a curved trajectory. Let me know if you understand what I am saying. As a further cool aspect, you could make each small line slowly rotate based on sin as well.
I assume you could use SIN to create this effect. How, I cannot figure out.
Dan
Beautiful!
http://www.arcaderz.com
Hmmm... I don't know if I am amused, bemused, or demused!
Or perhaps I should accept my fate and station in life and agree with the "quote".
Nevertheless, it is clear that you are on a roll and its great to see GameSalad being used so creatively.
I think ultimately you need to place actors into a scene to do this kind of thing, so there is no way (I am aware of) to do it without spawning.
A curved trajectory is basically the top section of a circle, and as you angle your direction of throw up it becomes taller and thinner, and as you angle your direction of throw more horizontally it becomes shorter and wider, so all you would be doing is squashing a circle based on the direction your thrower is facing . . . . ?
Cheerzcake.
Cheers RThurman !
Holy crap! That looks like it would make an excellent game! Socks, I would look into developing that further if I were you! Let me know if you don't want to use it, cause I'd be willing to "take it off your hands."...uh Feet?
Cheers Gamestudent, if I get time I think I will try and develop a couple of these experiments into actual games !
Here's a couple of the previous ideas thrown together to see how they might work all in the same project, it's your basic fight for life ! : ) don't let the bad guys get you, if they manage to get to you they destroy segments of your player, the further up towards your head they touch the more damage they will do, if they touch just the last segment only that will be destroyed, but if they touch - for example - the third from the end segment then all the segments from there to the tail are destroyed, and if they touch your head . . . well . . . I really don't want to discuss that, let's just say you don't want that to happen.
This one has true polygonal collisions too ! It's actually not the sort of project where you would particularly need polygonal collisions, but it just happens to be a side effect of the method used to construct the players.
Youtube has absolutely killed the quality on this one, HD helps a little, but it's still bad, - so here's the original screen capture movie (which itself is nowhere near as smooth as the actual GS project)
Link: https://www.mediafire.com/?v5fykd05mwg7rsv
. . . .