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Subapps = Don't work with Flash, don't let you close the game while paused, in fact... they make you click inside the subapp window just to do anything
Activating/Deactivating groups = Huge pain in the rear... lots of little things to consider like animations playing or using MMF movements.
Built in Pause = Is just awful and also doesn't work with Flash.
Is there any other way to pause the game without a tremendous amount of work? It really shouldn't be this difficult to pause a game.
Switch Frames,Ignore player input, set frame rate to 0? I don't know!
I can truthfully say that activating and deactivating groups is NOT that cumbersome. Just be sure to stop movements and animations.
How do you think other games not made in MMF2 do it? The equivalent is indeed activating and deactivating groups and animations/movements.
Try using qualifiers to put all your animating objects together. Then you only need to start/stop the animations in a single qualifier.
The way I put pauses in my games is by adding a second layer and putting a transparent background on it with the word paused in the middle, so you can see through the background and know it is paused.
Then you just go:
Upon Pressing "P"
- Pause application and resume when key "p" is pressed (this is under storyboard controls)
-show layer 2
End of pause
-hide layer 2
Then all you have to do is make sure all counters and strings are not displayed as background or they will get picked up by the second layer, and this will pause the game easily.
*To put in the events of showing the other layers you have to put in the layer object.
Hope this helps.
~Squibs
Interesting technique Squibs. Thanks for sharing. Layers won't work with Flash though, will they?
they work fine in flash :)
What does that have to do with the thread, OldLongDragon?
You can use the Question & Answer object.Quote:
Originally Posted by Konidias
Just ask a question with one possible answer. The question could be Click OK to resume! with the only answer being OK.
This is NOT the prettiest but it is the easiest solution.
One thing to consider when making a pause is how much functionality you need. If you just want a way to freeze everything and then resume everything based on a button press, then alot of these solutions will work fine. But if you want a proper pause menu, with options to resume, quit, config, etc... you will need to do some kind of object managment to start and stop animations. Then you are probably better off using the group method or a subapp.
I was just wanting a pausing solution that let me freeze everything, or certain things, possibly have a custom pause menu, but nothing too crazy. Really I'd be happy with just a nice graphic that pops up that says "Paused" and have everything just pause until a key is pressed.
But the important thing is that it needs to be flexible on export... meaning I want it to work in an EXE and as a Flash game. I don't want to go and implement some system for pausing and it works great in an EXE but doesn't work at all in Flash... that completely defeats the point of making it playable in Flash.
I really wish MMF had a better built in pause that allowed you to exclude groups or something... Then you could just do like:
+Player presses "spacebar"
- Exclude group "Pause Menu"
- Pause Frame
This would pause everything in the frame (much like sub app does) but you could exclude certain groups in that frame from the pause... which would allow you to create inventories or options menus the player could access while paused. This would be pretty similar to the whole "activating/deactivating" groups workaround that we have now... except you wouldn't need to bother with stopping animations and movements yourself, it would handle that.
The problem is that I have quite a few animations (with events tied to those animations) and I have MMF movements that are independent from script... so I need to stop all those animations/movements and then start them back up. It's not a huge issue but it would just be that much easier if there was an option built in that could handle this.
Anyway, I guess I'll end up using the grouping method. Thanks for the help everyone. I sort of figured I'd have to do it this way, I think I just made this thread in hopes to get some feedback on possibly getting a better built in pause feature at some point. (MMF 3?)
Hehe this actually works in Flash! The only problem is, if the application isn't mouse controlled it is a bit cumbersome for the player to switch mouse / keyboard two times just to pause / unpause the application... and the default look of the question box is a bit ugly.Quote:
Originally Posted by DT
But hey it works so I'm not complaining!
Pretty excellent idea!Quote:
Originally Posted by Konidias
Oh yeah Clickteam, we need it!
Also i haven't tried but what about Setting the Frame Rate to 0?
I've used altering the Frame Rate to make a slow motion explosion but not dropping the Frame Rate to 0.
What's a simple tool?Quote:
Originally Posted by OldLongDragon
A hammer.
How about you just use the screen capture function to take a picture of the gameplay, save the picture, then go to the next frame and show the game window on one layer, and post your pause screen with semi transparency where you want it on the second layer to overlap the picture. This, I think, would provide a good effect.
The only two issues that I am unsure about are whether the screen capture function has been ported to flash, and the other issue is how you plan to take a picture of just the game being played.
That's an awful lot more work than just the most simple method of enabling and disabling groups.
Also it sounds like there would be issues... like what happens if the game messes up somehow and takes a snapshot of the desktop or something? Then it's showing the wrong image when paused. That would just cause unnecessary confusion for the player. =p
Perhaps in MMF3 they can add an option to event grouping that is something like 'ignore paused state' which would let you have a nice pause menu with events that can still run, even though the rest of the game is paused.
Disabling groups is easy, its the stopping and starting of all the possible moving actives that is a pain in the rear. That's why I've just used sub-apps (which they don't pause in HWA, so going to need to get creative when I switch...)
I've actually find it easier, for that reason, to manually make my own movements and animations. The built-in systems don't like to work with each other part of themselves or each other.
Actually before I upgraded to Win 7, with Vista there was an option to "upon press key --> pause app and resume when key is pressed." But in Win 7 it's gone. What happened? Didn't any of you ever use that in the event editor?
What do you mean it is gone? It is still there...