Posts by Crash86

Dear All,
I wanted to add some feedback regarding the latest version.
I'm very impressed with the new user interface - however the scroll bars should have a higher contrast, as if the scrollbar is small (ie. when the scrollable area is large), then it can be tricky to find.

This new version of MMF has a strange graphical glitch where, if an object is created with only a "disappearing" animation, then it lingers on the screen for a frame longer than it should, even when the animation speed is set to "100".

Equally, if you have a timer event within a fast loop, this does not seem to function reliably. If you set your condition to "every 00-20", then the overall rate appears to be the same but it doesn't actually seem to trigger every 20th of a second.

For the time being, I will have to fall back to v293.

I saw that in the release notes that I was browsing through as I was downloading various installers the other day.

You know, I think that could well have been it because the game creates lots of enemy ships and then relies on them being destroyed or ignored once they stray too far from the frame/window.
Maybe that wasn't happening with build 290 onwards and that would explain why the framerate just got slower and slower and why it then behaved like it couldn't create any further objects and did some crazy things with them.

That definitely would fit the facts.
I will need some time to test that for sure and I don't get enough of that these days but I will be sure to mention it here when I find out.

[MENTION=12521]Julian82[/MENTION]
Thanks very much for the answer,
I will do exactly as you suggest. I will stick with the 289.3 version for now and find that out quietly in the background in case I need any features in newer versions.

I get the impression from the forum that Fusion 3 is not far off anyway and I don't think my old project will be able to make the jump, assuming that Fusion 3 will be able to import Fusion 2.5 MFA files in general.

I came back to working on a long-running little project last night ...
Clickteam Fusion recommended an upgrade from 289.3 to 290.4, which I let it do.

The new editor runtime gradually ran slower-and-slower while running a level and then goes kinda crazy after about 30 seconds ...
Objects start jumping around and while others aren't created.
It behaves pretty much as though:
-------- A) hardware acceleration is not working
-------- B) the object limit on the frame is too low

I tested the new 291.2 beta version and the exact same behaviour persisted.
I rolled back to 289.3 and everything seemed fine again.

I even took the file, which I'd opened (and saved!) in 290.4 and 291.2 and opened it in 289.3 and it was running fine.

- Is it especially "dangerous" to take an MFA file saved with a newer Fusion version and then open it in an earlier version?

- Does anyone know what changes to the new versions might account for this?
- Has anyone else encountered any similar behaviour with the newer builds?

We're talking about a Windows application with DirectX9 acceleration.

That's very interesting, I'll give that a look.
Thanks for the suggestion!

Aces, well...

I seem to have managed to correct this problem by creating a large active object, consisting of a large, black rectangle that covers the entire window / play area.
I set its effect to "additive" and its alpha-blend to 255 so that it is invisible to play area.

The fact that it is a solid object with additive blend seems to counteract the problem described altogether, from what I've observed.

Danworth, thanks very much for that.
I found that extension after I followed a new tutorial on online high scores that I found on this site this morning. I was very gratified to find it!
You beat me to posting the solution.
I really appreciate you letting me know.

HappyGreenFrog, Danworth - the two of you have been brilliant, guys.

That is an excellent explanation. I just couldn't understand how the connection could be actively blocked by the firewall, even with the firewall turned off.
When I get time, I'll test it under XP or something like that.

If anyone knew of a more modern/compatible extension, I'd be interested to know.
All I'd like to do is send a text line (a query string) to a PHP file on the server to upload some high scores etc. and check for updates.

Dear All,

I'm suddenly having trouble making Moosock connect to any server from any Windows 7 or 8 machine on any network.
This affects new MMF2 and CF2.5 applications as well as older ones that have worked well for years.

That tells me that MMF/CF is blameless, as are the networks and the individual configurations of the machines.
It strikes me as though an update to Windows is blocking the application from sending info to the server, even though I have turned Windows Firewall and Defender off and have no other security software installed.

I have created a CF2.5 example here. If anyone can get that to connect to a website and print the response from the server in the string, I'd be very interested in hearing from you.

Please login to see this link.

*bump*

That's an interesting glitch, you've found there.
I think it's because the window size must stay the same but is being filled with the title and menu bar when they're enabled.
Therefore, I suppose it makes some rows of pixels shorter in height to allow the title etc to fit into a window of the same size.

I'm not sure I can think of a work-around for it

Just use an invisible cone or pizza-slice-shaped object that fans-out and rotates along with the enemy.
If the player finds himself overlapping that object, then player is visible, assuming that nothing lies between the enemy and the player.

I looked into this further and disabled the shadows on level 10.
In this level, the instruments/HUD are set to Subtract to make them contrast with the sun on the left.
The blacking-out happens with the instruments even when the shadows are turned off.

So, it seems like an intermittent problem that affects the capture of any object with subtract effect in HWA.

This image shows what I mean in the top-left:
Please login to see this link.

In MMF2 and 2.5, when I use the Screen Capture object to capture the frame area of a 'change-resolution-style' full-screen application, I sometimes run into trouble.

The shadows in my game are an object with a subtract effect that scales to match the dimensions and supposed height of any aircraft or installation.

The shadows are only turned on in planet levels, as opposed to space levels. Space levels always capture fine but the planetary levels never capture perfectly.

I tried turning off the subtract effect on the scaling shadow object and that seems to cure the problem but, that way, the shadows don't look good.

I've tried capturing "window" and "screen" using the capture object but that just gave me blank images.

FRAPS can take pictures of the affected levels just fine but screen capture gives the following:

Please login to see this link.

In summary, Screen Capture works well in HWA but seems to stumble when capturing scaled objects with a subtract effect.
I wondered if Clickteam might have a look into it?

Fixed it, don't anyone start scratching their heads.

I messed about with spreading values and fast loops until it worked.
Is quite a nice solution, really.

I need your help, people.

I had a great system to check what percentage of damage was done to an enemy.
All my enemies are "Group.Bad".
If I test a certain enemy class such as "Fighter" (which is within Group.Bad) for the following:
"Value A < Value Y*0.5"
... it works great - (It picks out the enemies that have less than 50% health remaining).

However, if I try to simplify my code by testing the entire Group.Bad for the same thing, it all goes a bit wrong.
It basically the compares [Value A] of each object (as it should) to the highest existing [Value Y] in Group.Bad (not to the Value Y of the same object, which is clearly wrong).
To put it another way: It compares [Value A] of a Fighter to [Value Y] of a capital ship (or whatever is on the screen that has the highest value of Y).

Is there any way I can work around this?

FYI, I'm on version 257.12 on Windows 8 x64, Many thanks in advance or any suggestions.

I think, if you make your slider additive blend and make the mask subtractive (and set it on top) ... I hope you'll end up with the effect you want but I haven't tried it.

Thanks LB, I was thinking that was how it worked. I figured that coudn't be right though.
I suppose, as long as it keeps the object synced now, it doesn't matter too much.

I guess it just makes even more sense to build every level into a single frame.

If you have a Global Object, does MMF store all of its animations etc. once for each time it's used in a frame, or is it a single, centralised object that each frame taps into?

Put another way:
If you have 1 Global Object in 7 Frames - do you have 7x objects worth of animations etc. or do you have just the one, like you would hope?

You're absolutely right - the Expression button shows for me with Active Picture and normal Picture objects in #254 standard, Windows 7 x64.
I suggest reinstalling the whole thing and then patching to #254.
Not sure what else you can do, unless there's been a mistake in the developer builds.