Demo game competition - My video tutorial series

Is it possible to upload your videos in better qualitiy? 360p is to low for a video of a fullscreen application. It is impossible to read the GUI elements or typed texts or inputed numbers....

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Is it possible to upload your videos in better qualitiy? 360p is to low for a video of a fullscreen application. It is impossible to read the GUI elements or typed texts or inputed numbers....

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err... Andi's videos go up to 720p. & Redspark's videos go up to 1080p.

Hey Andi,
I'd just like to thank you for your great Tutorials - they're really helpful and I'm looking forward to more of them :o)

I'll keep my fingers crossed and wish you luck for the competition!

Best
Werner

@andiliddell: your method to export all objects with the complete layer size is a good idea. That eliminates some of position work and the file size of these layer images are small (in png transparent or mono colored areas need some bytes only).

But I think this increases the needed sprite memory very much. Can anybody of the developers say, what effect does it have? What is the difference between one single layer with 9 small objects and 10 full size layers (9 of these almost empty)? Needs this 9 times more screen/sprite memory? What about the performance? I suspect the needed sprite memory is independent from the content, it depends from the size of the sprites only.

Thanks!

My opinion of the matter is that those few bytes or kb all add up. I guess it doesn't matter so much as long as you don't have lots & lots of animations with lots of frames playing at the same time, but if you want to optimize your game better, then it is recommended to crop your images / animations. However we don't really recommend cropping each animation frame to different sizes as that would be overkill & require loads of work from you having to nudge each frame into alignment.

By the way if you press the home key (pos1) while running your game through the editor it will bring up a load of graphs & specs that tell you about performance & memory of various different things. It runs in real time too (more or less), so it can be pretty useful.

Thank you for the statistic hint. It is so that I supposed. Every layer with 1920 x 1080 pixel needs exactly 8.3 MB memory (1920 x 1080 x 4 Byte), regardless of the content (empty or not). I have check two rooms of my game (without characters):
1) 1920 x 1080 pixel x 4 Bytes x 3 Layers = 24.9 MB (statistics output says: 25 MB)
2) 2880 x 1080 pixel x 4 Bytes x 4 Layers = 49.8 MB (statistics output says: 55 MB)
I think this is OK. 128 MB should have every graphic card today...

What about that 64 MB cache limit in the main settings? What is happened if I reach this limit with my room layers/images only?

You can increase the cache limit as needed; either via the game properties tab or via Lua script while the game is running. Basically the cache just stores recent animations to memory. I think if you exceed it that it will replace older stored animations with newer ones - I'm not 100% sure.

In general your game should run via the VRAM only in terms of graphics, but if the game exceeds the VRAM then it will start eating into the available RAM instead. This is all as far as I remember, which is a bit vague in my mind.

Is there a inventory tutorial anywhere? I have no idea how I should start. I hope a no-scrolling inventory with 8 x 5 = 40 slots is possible (more I don't need).

Hmm not sure if there is a tutorial available, other than Glenfx text / image tutorials. They are probably still valid.

Inventory consists of creating some buttons on the interface, setting them as type item placeholders in the properties tab for the button & then drawing the object area which will define where the item will be placed for that placeholder.

Items will always get added to the first empty slot, which is the same way that save games work. If an item is removed then the other items will shift down. If you want to get more creative like replacing one item with another item after combining instead of removing the 2 items & adding the new item to the end slot then Lua script will be required, however the basic inventory system is pretty straightforward.

It was easier I thought. But I have questions.

1. I am not sure, how the display position of the item images are calculated. The left upper corner? Or the center of the area polygon?

2. As long as free slots available, Visionaire don't scroll? I am afraid that items go out of sight because I don't use/need scroll buttons.

3. I have to create 40 slots (see image)? Or is there a possibility of a grid definition or something?

As long as you don't tick the "scroll to item" checkbox on add / remove item then they should stay as they are.

The positioning is probably based on the top left pixel of each items sprite.

Yes you need to manually create each slot. You could copy / paste / duplicate the slots & hold down ctrl key to select the object polygon to drag & reposition it for each slot which will save you from having to draw the polygon for each slot.