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Very cool. Nice to see my examples getting some use :)

Hi everyone,

I've isolated a problem with string objects with a lot of text causing massive slowdowns in MMF2 apps.

If a string object is in the frame and contains a large amount of text, it...

Francois - ahhh yep that makes sense. So does it allocate space for those 20,000 objects at the start? My PC game typically has 1,000-2,000 objects at runtime. Will I see a performance increase or...

I always seem to set mine to 20,000. Is there any difference if you don't?

When you reach the object limit the consequences are always going to be worse than slowdown. Randomly not creating /...

Wow that is slick. I like it a lot.

I always use filled boxes these days as well. The new ticks look nicer, but I'll stick to boxes I think. Easier to read.

While I don't have time to create tutorials, I have a great deal of experience in testing many different runtimes of MMF2.

I've got some big projects that I'd like to test for compatability with...

Yeah you don't want to give it a custom titlebar.

I've done what Snail said - the window isn't draggable to resize it, but the player can change resolution options in-game. Does that help?

That is a very good idea Marv. My game, Dungeon Dashers, however has 3400 lines of code in the main frame spread across countless groups. It would be hard for me to manually add in counters.
...

Is there any intelligent way of profiling a MMF2 app to see where possible slowdowns might be? I'm interested to see where my game spends most of its time running.

Perhaps through an extension...

I didn't mean to scare anyone, just wanted to make sure you were backing things up. Corruption is very very rare, but devastating when it happens. It's not really known why things get corrupted.
...

It's most likely due to a firewall on your computer or router. Make sure that you have the appropriate ports unblocked/forwarded.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I tried modifying my GPU texture settings to no avail. I still get the banding, but hopefully it's not an issue for many people. I'll try updating my graphics drivers to...

I've had this issue before and my .mfa was corrupted. Hopefully yours is not. Be really careful. Open up some of the objects that are swapping and look at the graphics inside them. If they're...

My game uses pixel perfect scaling, so it's very important to have no anti-aliasing for resizing.

Just heard about this! Looking forward to hearing more about it!

Here's an example file which is using DirectX 9:

10586

My monitor is 1920x1080, so if you have the same resolution, you should see the same banding issue as in my first screenshot. If you have...

I've recently discovered that the scaling behaviour for the DirectX 9 Runtime doesn't work the same way as the DirectX 8 Runtime.

I'm trying to upscale a 640x360, three times, to a resolution of...

Don't use the encryption, it's quite simply just not working and I believe may lead to corruption.

I think hashing is a good way to go if you're worried about people modifying the data. Make up a...

Just wanted to say thank you for this update. My game started acting strange after being played for a long time, and the memory was being leaked. Good to see that this fixed solved that issue.

Great idea! Thanks for the extension.

Just a quick bug report:

If you destroy a list object and then try to reference it in a following line, e.g.:

Destroy List object
Set counter to [Contents of Line 1]

Then the application...

That sounds really quite serious. Has there been any update on this issue?

Okay I can confirm that there are some major problems related to Windows 8 and I can confirm your problem as well. Ticking "No Thick Frame" fixes the issue for me (as do some other combinations of...

Still looking for a solution to this. Nobody ever posted one in http://community.clickteam.com/showthread.php?t=70438

Hmmm I tried my game, Dungeon Dashers, on a Windows 8 PC the other day. I have those same options and it seems to work. I'll be getting a Windows 8 laptop next week so I'll be able to confirm, but it...

This is awesome. I wish this existed when I started developing Dungeon Dashers. All my levels are loaded from ini files.

File Object will cause an application crash if no file has been loaded with the multi-select option, using this expression:
FileSelReturnAt$( "File", 0)

Workaround:
Check for NumSelFiles( "File"...

Hidden Object games have been around for over 5 years on their website, so I wouldn't worry too much about fatigue. It's saturated as much as any other big genre. There's always a market for all the...

Thanks for the great post Pixelthief. I've noticed that many lines of collision checking code were causing slow down in my game (on slow computers). I'm still not 100% sure how to optimize it all,...

It's all about cracking the Top 3 games. If you get number 1 you can expect to make $300,000+. Number 2 probably about $100k+. And it goes down significantly from there. These are just rough figures...

It would be interesting to see how Xeeko got on with this.

This is a personal anecdote, but I'd be wary of the encryption feature of INI++. I think it's possibly unstable, and Jax has posted in his notes that there might be some crash issues with it, even in...

Could you elaborate on this? Is it just a general performance boost? What conditions will this happen under?

Just tested using a PNG with 128 colours. The GIF with 256 colours used less memory at runtime. Original PNG still used the most.

It seems if I use a GIF it does use less memory at runtime, so I assume that's because it's not using alpha. Filesize differs by about 100kb, yet in game memory differs by up to 5mb depending on how...

I'd like to know how MMF chooses whether or not to use alpha-channel transparency when importing a graphic into an Active object using the "Load Frame" action at runtime.

Since Alpha Channels use...

MMF2 will crash at runtime if both a subapp and another frame try to load a frame into an active object from the same file.

In this example, pressing "Space" will hang the application, causing it...

I haven't experienced this, but I'd be scared if it did happen! Are you sure it's not due to what the received message is making it do? What happens if the received message makes it do nothing (or...

My work around was to just leave them non-pasted and detect collisions with them. Sorry I did a search first and didn't come up with any results.

The number of inconsistencies between each runtime...

7815

Add to Backdrop as not-obstacle doesn't work.

Just doesn't. Collisions are still registered.

I haven't experienced this before, but it's good to know about.

In my current game I'm using the Key object to detect my controls and I have an event:
"Windows has Focus" > Enable (Key Object)...

Hi!

This will happen when there are no instances of one or the other object. I made a post about this same unintuitive behaviour earlier here: http://community.clickteam.com/showthread.php?t=70633...

Glad that you worked it out! I was going to mention binaries but I didn't want to confuse you, as a lot of people struggle with how binaries work (even though they're pretty straight forward!).
...

You do the damage the same way that you do the movement. Congratulations on getting that working!

It depends how much authority you want on your network communications. People will say that you...

Can you state exactly what it is you're trying to achieve? Why do you want to know "if an Active is overlapped by another instance of itself"? What are you trying to make?

From what you've said,...

oasuke - Your method works well too, however "Collision between..." really only works properly when both objects use inbuilt movements, and not with custom movements. This is why using Overlapping...

MMF3 would be ages away so you're best to go with what you're using now. In the past Clickteam have also offered upgrade discounts from MMF 1.5 to MMF2.0 for example, so you're likely to see the same...

I looked at the example and read this thread but I don't really understand what it is you're trying to do. The "overlapping" condition is really another variant of "collision" between two objects and...

A quick way to fix this is to add "Pick Enemy at Random" as the last condition after "Detector collides with enemy". This will choose one of the enemies from the pack to damage at a time.

The intersection points would just be the static x position of where the wall/ledge starts +/- the x position of either shadow +/- its width.

That is a really cool technique! Nice idea! It would be cool if there was yet another shadow element on the side wall to show it curving around the edge.

It seems like a very difficult problem, the kind that MMF2 isn't good at handling. If it was really important to you, you could try using something like a Surface Object or Active Overlay Object to...

I actually have a lot of objects which have identical coordinates, due to my game being grid-based, and that's where the problem of the flickering comes in. Otherwise that ordering by X is a great...

Any chance of this happening yet?

Hi,

I have a .mfa file that is acting strangely. I recently deleted a bunch of objects and lines of code from it.

If I run the .mfa file as is, it will crash at the start of a frame with:
...

Character Image Objects do seem to run quite slow unfortunately.

I love this idea. This is fantastic! Great Can we expand this to decreasing loading times and memory usage as well (i.e. general performance)?

1. Use "Load On Call" for large objects to reduce...

I've forgotten what it was too. It would be good to know. It's something to do with alt + numpad keys as well for other hotspots.

edit: thanks marv!

PMO is great. I've used it in a few flash games and I'd recommend it.

I think there needs to be an expression to get the number of nodes. Otherwise I can't really see a good way of generating node IDs.

Also, can you have loops among nodes? i.e. non-tree structured...

Sounds like a fantastic extension!

The ability to have nodes with references to other nodes sounds great and should allow some nice complex data structures.

Will give it a go.

Anacondabuild.log says:
"Building for target platform 'darwin'...
Extra extensions: set([('Lacewing', 'C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Multimedia Fusion Developer...

Sorry, where's anaconda.log located?

I've been trying to make a game with Lacewing for Mac using Anaconda and Flash except I haven't been able to get either to work.

For Anaconda, I simply switch the runtime to Mac and built it. It...

You can also use the String Replace object which is perfect for this kind of thing. You would simply need to replace the quotations with nothing "".

It sounds like you're doing some pretty advanced stuff already!

Here's an example of how to do what you want. It's only two lines of code so it should be pretty self-explanatory:

7310

The...

MMF doesn't take floats for positions. It rounds every time. For this reason you need to use a temporary alterable value or other counter to hold the 'inbetween' positions.

For example, if you...

This is really fantastic! Great example. I've thought about this method before but never implemented it. You've made a great base here.

Do you know of any potential problems with using a sub-app...

To make them flash red you can use a hardware runtime and a hue shifting shader on the active object.

@Shawn - The reason I don't use another active object next to the counter is because I'm using it for damage numbers like you suggested. There are a few on screen at once so it means there are twice...

Give them two alterable values:

1. "Width"
2. "Current X Position"

Always set "Width" to "(X Right( "Active" )-X Left( "Active" ))" ==> This is the right edge - the left edge = the width....

High memory comes from lots of graphical objects loaded on screen. If not all of them are being used at once you can use the "Load on Call" property to make them only be loaded in when they're...

Is there a specific problem you are trying to solve, or are you looking for an "equivalent" to functions in MMF2? If you've got a problem that we can take a look at which you believe involves...

I've found a pretty cool solution to this as long as you don't need negative numbers.

In your counter object, for the negative "-" frame, draw a plus symbol.

When you set your counter, simply...

Ryan - I live in Melbourne, but it would be great to see some jamming in Adelaide!

Edit: It seems like there's a fair bit of interest from Australians, including Melbournians. Anyone able to host...

Let us know when you find a solution!

I don't quite recall the version of MMF2 that Faerie Solitaire used, but it was 2009 so it was many many versions ago. I suspect you're right and it's some recent addition to MMF. Might have to ask...

So are you using Armadillo in your own application, or is BFG applying Armadillo? I don't think I had to use Armadillo myself when we released FS. BFG wrapped it for us.

My other other idea is...

Faerie Solitaire was launched on BFG with no problems, using their wrapper for the timed demo. I was going to suggest no compression, but that's all I can really think of!

What other application...

Stays at a constant 60 FPS :)

BigFishGames can wrap their own 1 hour DRM around the fullversion of your game to make it into a 1 hour trial. Alternatively you can code your own 1 hour version.

This is exciting news! Can't wait! :)

I made a post about this back in May:

http://community.clickteam.com/showthread.php?t=70742

I actually think it's a recent change, but I could be wrong. I'm not sure if it was always like that.

nivram, Outcast - Thank you! I'm working on it pretty much full time at the moment. It uses many different extensions including: Lacewing (for multiplayer), INI++, Ultimate Fullscreen, Pathfinding...

Konidias - The main problem for my game is that I do need it to be ordered all the time and I would think that many games that use this extension use some sort of isometric view and need to as well....

Outcast - yes, my main site is here: http://cdn2.jigxor.com/ld23/

It's one of MMF2's downfalls that switching between resolutions is not very simple at all.

Your best bet is to use Ultimate Walrus' Full Screen Extension: http://ultimatewalrus.com/mmf.php

The...

Check out the source code for my game, Stray Whisker: http://cdn2.jigxor.com/ld22/Stray%20Whisker%20SOURCE%20Andrew%20Sum.zip It has a butterfly in it with a convincing random movement for a...

There's a graphical problem in the Layer object which has been in there forever.

If you always order objects by their Y position, and two objects have the same Y position, then MMF will flicker...

If it's killing you, why don't you try and make an example of it to test? :P

Change the runtime mode to use one of the DirectX runtimes, set the FPS to the same as your monitor and it will generally not stutter. Standard runtime sucks!

UrbanMonk - that sounds awesome! Well done for making it work. If you have the time, would you be able to upload a small example?

I haven't had a chance to try it yet! I went on holiday for 3 weeks overseas while you've been waiting haha. I'll get back to you :)

Looking great! Can't wait to try it out.

Thanks Phi, that's a really good fix! I'll give it a go :)

Prepending it if it doesn't exist is a good idea! It's just annoying to have to do all these 'workarounds' for something that seems so simple.

In the messages I've exchanged with Yves it seems MMF...

I installed the version of the extension that you specified, however when I run the example, first the .exe crashes due to "KcWebX.mfx", and then MMF itself crashes, also due to "KcWebX.mfx" :(
...

I opened your example .mfa but it crashed when I tried to open a file. I didn't have the WebView extension, and your program required "Webview2.mfx" which I thought may have been a duplicate?

I...

I've tried the Edit object, File Stream and the List object and none of them work!

I'm finding this quite frustrating because I bought Unicode MMF with the intention of being able to read Unicode...

I'm trying to simply load a UTF-8 encoded text file into MMF2, however it still seems to display it with ANSI encoding.

I have this simple code for a textbox:

"start of frame - load text file...

Thanks, since it was only LOS.mfx and AspectRatio.mfx, it's not a huge hassle to rename them, but I'll do the cats=none for them as well.

I have this problem as well, with more than just the LOS object, so what's the solution/work around? I'm using LOS in other non-unicode projects so I can't remove it, is there a way to bypass certain...

Thanks for the link, I just bought the Unicode add-on for MMF. It was on sale too, woo!

I'm trying to display text from a UTF-8 formatted text file, and the characters aren't displaying correctly. I know that MMF uses a different character set for strings and I was wondering if there's...

I've noticed that an animation will occasionally stop (it sticks to one frame and doesn't keep going) but it seems to be random and I can't pinpoint a reason. So, I can confirm this bug.

Wow, I didn't realise that it was still stuttering. I recently made a game and didn't notice the stutter, but your example makes it obvious. In Firefox 13 and Flash 11.2 it stutters every couple of...

I haven't used Lacewing and flash before but I'd like to in the future, so I'm also interested in any information about this. If it's dropping messages, that can't be a good thing!

Has this issue been looked into yet? It's actually causing me a few problems since I have to delay lots of 'start of frame' events by one MMF game loop now because they run loops on checking the...

Is this extension still the best way to double the stage size for a game? I like making pixel art games, which I often want to display at 2x the size, currently I have to do that through setting the...

MMF2 uses a pseudo random number generator which is really quite bad. If you're generating lots of numbers you'll definitely see patterns after a while. If you need better randomness you should use...

Thanks for the tests Pixelthief. Using int() is a good idea too, I forgot about that. This issue also caused me the most problems with min and max.

My other concern is that MMF2 is being slightly...

I noticed odd behavior because of this sort of thing about a year ago, but I never isolated the exact reasons until now.

If you use the functions abs(), max(), min() or a few others they seem to...

http://cdn2.jigxor.com/ld23/ss/LD23-ONWARDNOBLESTEED.png

Play here!

Ant Surf Hero is a game that I made for the most recent Ludum Dare competition (LD #23).

It is a platforming shooter game...

Thanks for the extension. Looks great!

King_Cool - I've implemented that system before, also with random nodes. I think I made it precalculate a bunch of paths so that it would know how to get from one to another (there were only a...

I'm currently looking to implement A* in my game right now with the pathfinding extension, so I'm interested in alternatives as well :P Currently my enemies move in the direction of the player (on a...

The game I made for global game jam this year is a side-scrolling beat 'em up game, and is open source (made with MMF2): http://globalgamejam.org/2012/ave-imperator The code is messy but it might...

There seems to be a lot of interest! Are there any plans to implement Notifications?

I should have originally said that I'm using Beta 2, Build 254 as well.

That sounds good. That's what I'd do.

Yikes - I did forget to mention the whole point of me doing that system :P It was because I had music and sound effects, and I wanted to be able to set the volume of them independently. Using the...

I'm hesitant to label something else as a "bug" again, but here we go :P

The basic problem is, if I use "start of frame" to create two objects, and then manually set their position in the same...

@Yikes + SergeantBiscuits - that's the exact technique I used for sounds in Faerie Solitaire. I have a "current sound" value, and whenever I play a sound I play it on the "current sound" value...

It is possible, but MMF's sound support could be better when it comes to seperate channels. The basic idea is that you play each moan sample on a separate channel, and then you pan that channel...

I'm interested in this as well

I didn't know that about the scrollbar. Thank you!

I understand the logic of why it happens, but I guess I was just saying it's not intuitive. It's just another one of MMF2's esoteric nuances, and now I know about it I'll look out for it! :P I was...

I noticed what I believe to be a bug with the condition "[Negated] Overlapping an object" in all recent builds of MMF2. I tried it in 253 and 254, but I'm not sure how long it has existed for. I only...

Hey Pharanygitis, any chance of a new update soon? :)

I just did a test submission for Kongregate, and if you select their "iFrame" option, then you can specify the app width and height, and it seems to work okay. I'd still prefer a native solution in...

I'd be very interested in this as well. Is there a version that works with their current API?

MJK - So are you able to do Double Pixel resolution for Kongregate? Or does it not work? I too want to make a 320x240 game and submit it at double-pixel sized 640x480

Do you have any frame/layer effects enabled? What graphics card do you have?

I've been wanting this feature since beta! Please make a notifications extension!

I'm using LB's option 2 for Dungeon Dashers, however I don't think sending the Fixed Value would work. The fixed values of objects are determined client side and are different each time you run an...

Visible lists still have to do a call to be drawn which takes up time.


I have 14 invisible list objects in one frame on my current game, Dungeon Dashers. And Faerie Solitaire used ~8 on a single...

I've been experiencing this bug with other objects besides counters as well. In addition, both alspal and I are using the Layer object in previous events, which may be the source of the problem. This...

Make sure handle background collisions even out of window is checked in frame options!

Also, specifically with the 'platform' property of a background and the default platform movement, if you...

Mmf3!

I just stumbled across this today! It's pretty crazy how recent this post is and I've never had to look into it until now. Thanks LB for your example, that works perfectly for me :)

Spreading values doesn't bind objects together. You have to use a loop to position them. Search around the forums for some tutorials on Spreading Values.

Your code works the way it does due to...

Edit: I didn't check the extensions first. But the Layer object is available on iOS and Flash, so you should try to use that if possible. My solution below uses the Select Object extension, just for...

I'd be interested to know an answer to this well. The ultimate fullscreen object scales the shader effects too (as it should!) when your screen is resized.

It would be really good if this could be fixed!

I've been doing them at the same house recently, though I install it and uninstall it each time so that they can't use it once I leave (but maybe they'll have the same IP if that matters?). I...

Lately I've been using MMF2 Developer at a lot of gamejams (where I bring my copy of MMF2 along and install it on whatever desktop is there because I don't have a laptop). I own MMF2 Developer, and...

Awesome extension. Thanks!

Looki that example is awesome! Very clever method.

Do you know which is the latest one? Jax did a blogpost about the different versions, but I think I'm still confused.

That post he made was only in December. So I was wondering if the encryption...

I am looking for the most stable of INI++ which allows for encryption. I have just read this informative post on Jax's website:...

Having multiple developers working on one project has always been a flaw in MMF2's design. It's why I find the best team is usually a coder and an artist.

Also, <3ing Lacewing :D

Thanks for the Clarification Jamie. That's what I suspected was happening! Good to know! :)

I think there may have been some misunderstanding in what I was saying, so here's a quick example with 4 different configurations of activating/deactivating groups and minimal commenting. You'll...

I don't think I quite follow what you're saying here. Could you please elaborate? Are "true events" the red ones? If you replace the "User clicks with left button" event with an always, it will...

I worked out what the weird behaviour was today, and while it's not ideal it's MMF's fault, not Lacewing. Here's a screenshot of some code:

http://jigxor.com/j843/mmf-bad-behaviour.png...

I had some weird behaviour and I thought perhaps binaries weren't being automatically cleared in loops or something, but I just ran some thorough tests and it seems to all be in order. Must be...

I've run some tests but I'm not entirely sure of the behavior of a few things in Lacewing. I'm looking here for a bit of clarification:

If I run a MMF Fastloop and send data within that to other...

Works for me! Thanks for the file LB. It was very helpful!

Any chance of making this extension for the Anaconda Runtime?

You can also use the List object by itself and use the index as the key. This is of course slower than the Internal List Object (which is why it was built), but if you have no other option you can do...

Yes. Sorry to everyone, ignore my posts from before. The error I was getting was from a bug in the MT Random object, which Francois has since fixed.

Thank you very much! I really appreciate it :)

Sorry for the confusion, it does seem that it's crashing without the GC object now, so it wouldn't be GC (alone). It didn't crash for a very long time when I didn't use GC, so I thought that fixed...

Is that MMF2 iOS specific? My internet connection has been on the entire time (using 3G with Telstra) and it still seems to crash a lot. I just sent my whole game to Francois because I couldn't seem...

I'm still getting random crashing issues from Game Center. I know it's due to GC because I've created two versions of my game, one with the object and one without, and only the version with GC in it...

I put it in the very first frame of my application, and while it worked, I think I might have uncovered a bug to do with loading new frames and GC, but I haven't had time to verify it.

My first...

I did use a iOS XCode project as the MMF build type, but perhaps I chose "final" instead of a normal one. Thanks!

I fixed the error after reading the posts here again. So what you need to do is delete the two lines which import CRunCamera.h. And then it will compile fine. I hope this minor bug is fixed in later...

I get this same error. How did you fix it in the end?
(Using XCode 4.1 and runtime Release 1 - Beta 2)

Try the ultimate fullscreen object:
http://www.clickteam.com/epicenter/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=32961&Number=240909

It will allow you to scale your game properly for pixel art.

I got a Nocturn 25 for my birthday, so I'm looking forward to testing this extension out and seeing it develop! :)

The sound generator extension sounds really awesome! I use SFXR all the time for my games, so it would be cool to generate them on the fly... as long as it's not too CPU intensive.

Yep! I use a Mac Mini from 09 for iOS Dev. Works great!

Wow. There's a French forum with completely different content? Who knew!

I don't think it is. I think it's the same condition. But I have no proof of this, just a general hunch. Anyone else know for sure?

I'm still secretly hoping for a tickbox somewhere that will just do that for me :P

Thank you for the very detailed and thorough response SEELE. I really appreciate it!

The game I am currently developing uses only custom movement (i.e. X=X+1), so it is tied to MMF's Framerate...

I'm still a little bit confused about how VSync works in a MMF2 application. I know how it works in other games, but I am wondering if MMF2 is different, since FrameRate is directly coupled to the...

Yeah I tried it at fullscreen at it looks great too!

August 2 is my Birthday :D

Thank you so much Looki! This is absolutely amazing. Exactly what I wanted. Thank you again! :D

http://jigxor.com/20event/DDCRTEmulation.jpg
http://jigxor.com/20event/DDCRTEmulation.jpg

Absolutely amazing extension! Love it. Thank you!

Hey guys, I don't know a lot about shaders, but I was wondering if anyone would be willing to have a stab at creating a retro/CRT/SNES/old-school screen emulation using shaders (unless there is a...

Omg omg omg omg. Can I just say that I can't believe you've made this extension UltimateWalrus! I was just about to start looking at some more hacky ways to do full screen with pixel art and you've...

Congratulations guys! I hope everything goes well!

My game (Star Count) has sold 10 copies to date - all in the first few days of it being released, presumably from people who saw it in the "new apps" list.

I made the game in 3 days as an...

Quick feedback (I played for a few minutes):
1. Game crashes during the "memory screen" - the one where stuff falls into the basket, if I just mash anywhere on the screen with my fingers.
2. I...

I used 3WYHW9KWWRHL. Thanks!

Nice job!

Thanks!

Have fun!

Thanks guys!

Unfortunately I had another person with iOS 5 Beta on an iPhone 4 tell me that the game also doesn't work on his phone :(

Hey guys!

I made my game Star Count in a short amount of time so that I could get something up on the AppStore. I did it as bit of fun and a bit of an experiment in marketing. It's a quick game so...

And notifications :p

Thank you Francois!

Currently if your iPhone is playing music through the iPod app and you open your game made with the MMF Runtime then the iPod music will stop. This is a good default behaviour most of the time,...

That's okay! I understand, but perhaps an event similar to "End of Frame", which would allow you to do things just before the app suspends would be good.