Effects galore

Now that the steam summer sale is over, I feel like I can breathe again. All those sweet games so damn cheap... but I disgress.

Heading over to the Scirra forums I found to my surprise almost a dozen new effects waiting for me to grab. Responsible for this influx are two users who go by the names of Animmaniac and Shinkan. Thanks guys!

Here's a photograph of me smoking a cigarre with all the effects applied (it's hard to get a picture where I don't smoke one).

If that doesn't get you interested, then I don't know what will. Here you have a list of all the effects which bring you directly to the official thread on the Scirra forum when you click them:

Scirra.com redesign

For a few days now you can enjoy the completely redesigned Scirra website, which keeps the green color scheme, but has a much cleaner and more professional look to it. Definitely an overdue step in the right direction regarding Scirra's future business plans with Construct 2.

Most importantly the new site now properly integrates the forum, forming a single community-friendly entity. There are more interactive features like a blog you can comment on and a special section to post indepth tutorials. All that's complemented by a reputation points system, which is supposed to reward you for contributing. A nice little touch, which will hopefully encourage good content rather than wake some of the spam devils.

As expected there are a few minor quirks to be worked out, some of which already have been addressed, like the too big font in forum posts. Also it seems to take some time to spread the word about gravatar.com, which is now the service used for displaying the avatar image (many reputable sites use it, this is not evil ;).

Overall I'm quite happy with the new face of Scirra and the efforts that are made to make the site a better community. They promise there's more to come and with Construct 2 dropping new builds left and right at the moment, it surely seems this will gonna be a good summer for all users!

Have a happy inventory!

Do you like inventories? Oh, I know you do. Because everybody does. It's a shame though that in the last few years, probably in a misguided attempt to make RPGs more accessible to console players, many games feature bothersome lists of objects you have to endlessly scroll through to find the desired item. Better take a look at the awesome inventory from Deus Ex:

My absolutely favorite kind of inventory: a grid of cells, with bigger objects eventually taking up more space than just one cell. It just feels right to me. Now you might not share my preference on this, but let me roll a bit with it as I try to talk briefly about including such a feature in a Construct project.

Say hello to Construct Classic

Many users were disappointed by the abandonment of Construct 0.x, although this decision might have been an inevitable step for Scirra.

With the responsibility for the further development of the original Construct in the community's hand, one could only wonder if the software would be seeing any major updates at all from this point on.

All doubt can be set aside once and for all, now that there's a new major Construct build out, which is even complimented by a new name: Construct Classic.

Let me tell you the changlelog is long, very long! Most notable changes concern physics and platform behavior, but also so many improvements in other departments. My favorite three changes straight from the log:

New plugin: Noise 2.0

Developer Arsonide is well known for creating the very useful Perlin Noise plugin. Now he took the concept to a whole new level with the Noise 2.0 plugin, which includes awesome stuff like ridged multifractal noise, voronoi noise, planatery noise, color mapping, lighting and even integrated camera controls!

So apparently this opens a whole lot of new possibilities for creating procuderal game content. Think about entire universes created by this wonderful plugin. Hot damn!
Go ahead, learn all the details and download Noise 2.0 in the official thread.

Oh, and if the plugin proves useful to you and you'd like to support the developer, you should consider donating.

Lerp that angle!

Before this gets buried all too deep within the depths of the official Scirra forum and will be lost to future generations, I thought I do the little that I can and mention it here on the blog.

If you ever had trouble interpolating angles properly, you don't have to resort to more or less sketchy workarounds anymore. All thanks to Construct-uberuser lucid, who made a mini-plugin with one single purpose: providing an anglelerp expression.

Yes folks, you better believe it and get this useful tiny thing asap from here.

Minitroid Tech Demo released

I'm sure I haven't been the only one adoring the sheer cutish beauty of the Minitroid project, which is a Metroid fangame being developed by Tokinsom, alongside graphics artist Betatronic and composer Jamie Billings. So far there have only been screenshots and videos to stare at, but now you can finally get the long awaited hands-on experience with the tech demo.

Minitroid Tech Demo @ Metroid Database
Minitroid Tech Demo @ Scirra forum

Game spotlight #002: Mini Ghost Hunter

There aren't that many games done in Construct sporting RPG elements. In fact I would have to do some research to name any right now. Good thing 7Soul made 'Mini Ghost Hunter' for the  Ludum Dare 19 competition. In only 48 hours he managed to include a skill and battle system, as well as leveling mechanics.

Forum rescue #002: Timer

Okay, time to tackle an easy but nonetheless important one!

Here's what U-Corp wrote (original thread):

So the task at hand is to have an object created and after 5 seconds destroyed. Sounds simple enough, but if you're going to do the following

you'll be out of luck.

Forum rescue #001: Sun

Welcome to the first 'Forum rescue' post! Here we will pick up a problem/request posed on the official Construct forum and try to provide a solution. With detailed explanations and the cap file to go along with it.

Here's what Dewaldt wrote (original thread):

So let's try our luck with a glowy sun that emits a bunch of light rays. For that we just need two sprites: a white circle with a soft edge and a line that's faded from white to transparency (left to right). Simple stuff anyone can make in his favorite graphics application. Let's import these into Construct and go from there.

Impressive first gameplay video of Yokai

Seems like there's another high quality Construct game shaping up. The first gameplay video of the gorgeous indie platformer 'Yokai' by 2 Bad Company displays a very beautiful art style and a level of polish that matches commercial quality for sure. Take a look:

If I felt like criticizing anything about that video, I'd prolly mention that the smoothness of the animations doesn't seem to be quite there yet.

Game spotlight #001: Tedium - The Generic Space Survival Game

You simply have to adore a beautiful little game like 'Tedium - The Generic Space Survival Game' made by Squeemish. It's a simple affair of having to survive as long as you can while an increasing number of enemies is seeking to destroy your spacecraft.