Unfortuantely you can't really intereact with D3D too well with the SDK. I was hoping that we would get direct access to D3D features but as far as I know this won't happen until MMF3 (even if then).

awesome i gotta check this out, wish i saw it earlier

Are you running HWA mode? Because paste in backdrop DOES NOT work in HWA mode, instead it acts as add backdrop instead, so you have 10K backdrop objects slowing down the game.





Sorry mate...

must be a problem with your graphics card or drivers because HWA is reliable

I woudlnt use the active object approach, that will need a big image for large resolutions and you can create much nicer effects using HWA effects.
I dont play with them much but there are examples...

Sorry for the bump, but this shader sounds like something I been looking for. If I understand correctly, I can have use this shader to copy bitmap data from a seperate image mask, into the alpha...

Oh god, Angry Birds, the most boring and overhyped game ever

Sounds like you want a 'staggered isometric' grid.
I made an extension for this myself but never released it, this is the 3rd person that seems to want an extension to do this, maybe I'll release it...

Are you checking if the flag is active/inactive during that event?
Not much anyone can really suggest without some form of code example

Oh, Background Images isnt HWA compatible.

background images will do exactly what you want.

there are many ways to do this.
probably easiest way is to have an ini file with a value you use to determine wether a level is unlocked or not.

This could be as simple as:
currentLevel = 5...

Ok, well there is no extension to handle the maths for you. Maybe one day I will release my extension i started but I doubt it.
My extension took care of all grid maths and also handled drawing the...

OP, you don't sound experienced enough to make an online game yet.
You really should learn the basics of MMF first before you attempt this.
Theres no harm in trying it though, but you will just...

Are you making a diamond shape isometric map, or are you making a staggered isometric grid?
(diamond means a square map rotated on an angle, so the corners of the map are empty, while staggered is a...

First mistake you made - you focused on graphics before even completing an engine.

You should make a basic engine FIRST, work out gameplay, AI, rules etc. THEN focus on graphics once you know...

For like an RTS game?
You would have to compare the x and y bounds against the units + an offset.

For example:

xleft("selection box") < x("unit") - xoffset) &
xright("selection box") >...

I think its funny how OP raged about MMF being glitchy and then told a solution and then he asked for the thread to be closed without him actually apologising about his first comments

Yeh I dunno why they havn't released it yet, I want to test a few extensions I have been working on with proper HWA support so it would be nice to have it available

Add the "Restrict action for 0.25" condition to the bottom of your event and it should work fine.

Are you saying that you want the actives to be linked to eachoter?
So if you move one active the previous ones move with it?
If thats the case its quite easy to do and a number of way to accomplish...

I agree, we really need HWA SDK

cool nice article, thanks man

Yeh I know since Clickteam funded it.
Did you base the design on some sort of tutorial or example online that I can get a link to? Pathfinding is an interesting topic to me so I like to learn more...

2008

Hmm, sounds cool. Wish I could peek at the source code :(

whoops!

#include <string>
should say
#include <vector>

Mokhtar, is your pathfinding object grid based?
I had a look at the second example file you posted and to me it looks like it works from vectors or something, so that rather than being stuck to a...

I stored mine in a vector by adding:
#include <string>
using namespace std;

at the top of my header file.
Then just store a pointer to it in RunData.
I actually stored mine in my own class...

Works for me. Just follow the instructions in the help file and make sure you build the debug version of your extension.

it WILL work. You just need to code it differently to an active.
How about you actually test things for a while before you post and criticise others suggestions.

it WILL work, put it on another layer.
problem solved

^LB beat me to it

Check out 'background images object' which allows you to tile an image

I know things take time, but I really think you need to push for a quick release of the Iphone exporter. It's been over a year and other companies with much bigger budgets and dev teams will be...

Just use a standard Array. A 2D array is just like an excel spreadsheet with rows and columns.

If you want a simple 1,2 or 3 dimensional text/number array, use the "Array" object. If you want tables within tables, with varying data types etc, use "Magic Deque"

This message appears if you are not building in debug mode.
If you are, you might not have set up debugging correctly

Too many objects most likely.
Try ticking the box for active objects if they are too far from frame see if that helps. Otherwise its simply too many objects for your computer to handle, or you have...

FYI transparency has no effect on collision as far as I am aware, since objects have their own collision masks which are seperate to the actual object image

Hmm, I wonder if an extension could be made to do this.
All you would need to do is get the surface of the whole MMF frame and then copy it to another surface, but rotated at an angle, then draw...

As retriever said. You shouldn't define and variables in a header file like that but you can do it inside the class declaration, or in a seperate cpp file with same name

i think pixel shader would be your best (and fastest) option

^ nice plug for your new surface object ;)

(its really great btw!)

Make sure you have the latest update of MMF. You can get it over there ->
Also make sure you are not hitting your object limit which is set to 500 by default in MMF

If you are using STL, You shouldn't need to resize it, it will do it automatically.
All you do is MyVector.push_back( data ) which will add a new entry to the back of the list.

Try debugging your extension to find out where the crash is. If you are using VC++ it will break on the line where the error occured.

Otherwise, can you loop through the vector and delete each one...

Look at the background images object

The number of loops should not cause crashes on mmf. I would say its something to do with your events, or you are using a windows object as mentioned by LB which causes massive slowdown.
Maybe you...

He is only doing 1 calculation per MMF frame, my bet in an always event.
OP what you need to do is a fastloop, see below.

+ Start of frame
- start loop "calculate" -1 times

+...

^ yup. age of empires used a similar approach in their games.

I can think of a few good uses for this for a strategy/RTS game. namely pre-computing fog of war radius's and storing in an array for easy and quick lookup at runtime. Also circle based collisions...

As Jason said above, you can use the path movement... but in my opinion this sucks and after a few laps you can tell the exact path the car will make which is not realistic.
If you want racing to be...

Check out the Open GL extension

Yeh, why the guitar???
Seriously, an RPG extension should be for RPG related things...

Are you sure your computer isnt running out of memory?

really? I havnt seen any raycasting examples in MMF ever.

His name means Lithium Battery. :P

It works in HWA but only with Standard, Directx or Directx + VRAM. It doesn't work with DirectX 8 or 9. [/quote]

Yes, that is not HWA. That is standard.

layers only slow down the application at runtime.
I agree there needs to be a good grouping method

I uploaded an example here ages ago I will dig it up for you

EDIT: here ya go - http://www.clickteam.com/epicenter/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=22383&Number=161518#Post161518

I wish we could specify how far from the frame the object would be destroyed... At the moment we rely on some unknown pre-defined number

I think you got a typo there. Shouldnt the last letter be Y not X? :)

I think you need to look more into LUA, it should be suitable for what you want.
You just ened to hardcode the core part such as coroutines and such so its transparent to teh user and you can easily...

background images will do this.
Store all your images inside the object, place however many objects you need for your frame (usually enough to cover your visible frame) and use its alterable values...

:D

Use the background images object.
I posted an isometric example in the file archive a while ago, I will dig it out for you

EDIT: found it...

you can't do anything about it. sorry. it's a mmf thing.

yeh you are right. I will play around with that extension and start a new thread if I have any questions.
But thanks again LB for the article, I finally learnt how the binary data elements work

Hmm thanks I will look into it.
Would it be possible for people to see the files inside the directory though? If there is no compression, is there encryption at least?

I am sure it works with an expression, but I dont have mmf installed here to test. Isn't there an option to open groups by expression?

You probably have a slow computer. Time for an upgrade.

Wow...
Can you post an MMF example of this working?

Yes it should be possible.
I have done such things with loops before and it worked OK.

But you should check your syntax, it should work by simply activating group text(Editbox)

Well I was hoping it could be something inbuilt into MMF.
And I looked at a directory packing extension but the only one I could see was zip files. I dont want it in a zip format if I can avoid it....

Just reading over this and I am curius, does this shader layer images together?
If so, does that mean it would be possible to do this with a shader and if so how fast would it be compared to an...

You will need to use Lua im affraid. I have played with something similar before and its certainly possible, but be prepared to do some work and lots of testing/debugging :P

If you are having...

It depends on what game you are making, you need to be more informative.

you can use the Advanced Pathhfinding Object if you have a grid based bap or Advanced Path Object if you have nodes.

Thanks for explaining this LB.
I have always wondered how that worked and never quite understood it.

But what I would much prefer is rather than saving the binary data in the exe file, would it...

I wouldn't mind this, although its limited to simple things that only require the one line of code for the event.

do it with events?

Well then go play solitaire instead.

Hacking on online games is stupid and is one of the reason why PC games are least popular. It's not fun to just walk around headshotting anyone without doing...

Isn't there a length limiting feature (len() or something?)

Interesting thought. Couldn't you just read the weather from some sort of online database instead though?

Haxing is bad guys. How about you all get some skill and play the game properly.

framerate is accurate. I use it all the time

I doubt Nifflas would answer you question 1. I dont think many developers would. he wouldn't even tell me how many copies he sold on steam :(

Raycasting extension is your only hope of doing somethign like this in MMF fast enough

Since when did TGF2 get given away in a magazine?

oops quoted wrong person...

I could be wrong but I think one has already been used for some games before, although I think it not released publicly (again I could be wrong). Would be good if one went public, even if it is for...

Wow. Please use paragraphs. All that text is hard to read.

Im sorry but I dont want to try to make sense of all that text, please break it up and i will try to help.

I have tried this but MMF is just way too slow for this. If you have direct access to DX then it would be MUCH faster but unfortunately we don't. You can do basic versions such as the example posted...

Cool I didn't know about this either...

Hi I looked at the example breifly and dont really see what your problem is. You will have to explain it better.
Is it that the object doesn't snap to the grid when you are dragging it with the...

I think you are misinformed there mate. All DX versions have support for older versions. DX10/11 dont really offer any benefit to 2D applications I dont think anyway, except for maybe a few extra...

DX 10/11 would not offer very much additional benefits over DX9 i dont think... Time would be better of spent on other runtimes or perhaps MMF3

rar is an archive format like zip. You need to open it using winrar (google and its first result). Then all you need to do is copy the files into the MMF directories.

Wow... I thought they were goig to find a way around it not drop it all together. Imagine the $$$ they wasted developing the exporter...
I hope CT don't have any trouble with thiers.

1/ Extract it wherever you like
2/ Objects should not be used with the SDK unless you have the source. Objects go in your extension folder in MMF directory
3/ Same thing as above?
4/ What else do...

Cool Redhades is still around!

Any yes, you should use LUA. I have done a lot of experimenting with iso and LUA and you can get things done a lot faster than MMF if you have many loops and stuff

you should upload it so others can test it also.
Sounds interesting

Get the latest version here: http://www.clickteam.com/epicenter/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=71684#Post71684
(I posted a link to that in my original example I posted). Note that it is not HWA...

I will go even one better, im working on an extension that does this for you automatically ;)
I will post a public beta in a few weeks once I am ready to release...

No you will need to render the images at the isometric perspective you want to use. The iso grid object only handles the maths side of things, thats why you use the background images object like the...

Mike beat me to it! Oh well, as long as you keep it safe somewhere so other people can download it, its a great example

Use Iso-grid object to make it work. If you are displaying a large scrollable background, also use the background images object.
I will try to find an example I posted a while ago

here it is:...

How to do that? [/quote]

Using an array and events. You would need to program it yourself using MMF events, store the data you want of which objects you want, when you want.
An extension would...

distance = abs(y object 1 - y object 2)

or you could just make it yourself using a 3d array. Then you have full control over what you want to store...

This tutorial was excellent. I think I have it at home, I will look for it later and upload it if I find it

xyzzy I like your idea but woudn't there be problems with extensions and other things that the replay extension wouldn't know about

Yeh you are probably right, im sure he know's how MMF works by now as he is an active community member. Thought I would answer anyway for the newbies reading :)

LB is right, this is how pretty much all replays work. All you need is an array which takes a new input each time an object moves or updates and then you simply recreate that by reading back the...

It's just a library which c/c++ devs can use to handle most of the drawing and inputs etc. Its also cross platform so you can build apps that work on windows, *nix and mac

The maximum alterable values for objects is 26, but global values I have no idea

Heaps of actives will cause slowdown, even in HWA, although it can handle many more objects.
not much you can do after using HWA, its MMF drawing routines that can't really do any better

You are probably doing too many processes per loop.
Perhaps you can look into LUA and try coding some stuff in there if you want, or ease off on the calculations. I have played with RTS stuff in MMF...

It depends if every MMF app has some runtime code embedded into it. If it does, then Apple just needs to search through all apps for that code...

You would have to look in the Active Picture Object if there is a function allowing you to do that. If APO doesnt support it then no

Personally I would use advanced pathfinding object as the pathfind extension is pretty basic and if I remember it only works for one path so you cannot control multiple objects without storing in...

Yes please!

Personally I use the 'Popup Message Box 2' object for basic dialogue boxes.

Yes its possible. You would be best to do it with fastloops and loop through each variable in the calculation.

plus a locked up machine :D

I think there is a simulator you can use for testing on a dev machine without the need to buy the actual device (i could be wrong though)

LOL MW2, I think you meant MMF2 :D

For big backgrounds made from tiles, I would suggest you use the "background image object" extension. It will only display the tiles that are on the screen which...

I think the "Key Object" extension allows you to check for key states too

Wow Jason, your book sure has been popular this week!

Wrong. You still need a mac to compile. All other game engines do too.
Even Francois has said so (in a different thread)

If thats the cause, I doubt it will. Its to do with how MMF draws the layers. It has to draw everything on the bottom layer before it can move onto higher layers and can't paste over object that...

yes of course it will. Plus you will need an apple developer license and a mac

Also regarding your first post, paste a backdrop only works on the lowest layer if I remember correctly. On other layers it acts as 'add backdrop' instead. I could be wrong though...

I meant in reply to this:



I didn't think that much else could be done apart from effects, which is what I was asking

Man I need to get a mac, i really wanna make some cool games for iphone

yes, yes i did /embarrased

I like your game lost_Child, looks interesting :)

Cool, glad to hear. It's good to have lots of features for an extension like this, but splitting them up into seperate modules would be great.
Out of interest, what would HWA allow us to do through...

Drawing routines need to be faster too IMO.
Any tile based game with 1000 tile on screen lags way too much. I've tried with different extensions and even writing my own but it's still slow for...

as i said, personal preference. if you were calling that function many times throughout your scripts, I find it easier to simply call the lua function that wraps it, as its easier to read (imo) and...

Can't you just use some sort of c-module library that does that? I dont want to see so much bloated stuff integrated into xlua if its not a necessity

Load string = "test" displays nothing for me.
It doesnt work if I load any type of string wether I type it in, load from a string object or RTF object

Load string doesn't work, and I dont want to load from an external file. Thanks anyway.

I agree this would be a good feature. Each object can be assigned a parent object, which would group them together automatically and link them whenever the parent is moved.

oh, i know about that object, it doesnt work. I cant get any text to appear what so ever. I was looking for an object called 'Rich Text Object' cause thats what you called it

I dont have it... Alll I can see is Rich Edit Object. Are you sure its not a dev only extension? I am using MMF standard

It works without it. I wanted the colour to stay indefinately until another colour is picked.
Plus I dont get how you are calling the parseendword loop and using its index as a reference. Because...

LB - Would that keep the colours carried over from the parsing? Ill give it a shot thanks. Need to download qwerdy again :)

EDIT: Hmm there is a rich text object? Where can I download that?

Personally I just use DoCall in my lua scripts as I find it easier to differenciate between MMf functions and lua functions.
But, I always put them in a wrapper function so make it easier to keep...

OK thanks stephen I will take a look. Its not too important, im working on a dialogue engine, like RPG text boxes and it looks better semi-transparent but its not a biggie if it doesnt work

Now I got another question, is it possible to make the background of the Rich Edit object transparent? I want to be able to place the text over an semi-transparent image, and I can only select a...

LB Thanks! I got it working.
I was over complicating it by using the string parser object. I had never used the MMF string functions before so didn't realise you could do it this way.

BTW what...

Thanks I will check it out. Im doing some stuff with LUA with this, so hopefully it should get me on my way thanks.

lol busted

This isn;t for flash. Can someone make an example please? I was playing with it yesterday and couldn't even get the Formatted Text Object to display anything...

Is it possible to display certain words in a string a different colour than the rest? I am hopign that its possible with the string parser and rich edit object, but I cant get it working...
For...

Use the background images object

Wow this is cool!

Iphone is much more popular than android I am sure, I have never come across an Android phone in my life, but know many with an iphone/ipod.

I agree XNA will be good eventually too

I think the advanced gameboard object does what you want. Might be worth a look.

I have an iphone and would love to test the iphone exporter... but I dont have a mac :(
How good of a mac do you need? Maybe I can pick up a cheap second hand one

If your game is made from tiles and you are rotating at 90 degree angles, its easy enough. Read up on image rotation and apply the formula to your map array and viola. I did this with one of the test...

Ahh OK that explains why I can make big levels are runtime.
I do everything at runtime via events.

I can attest that he is a very good person to deal with.
Although I don't know how many extensions he can handle at the same time so don't all contact him at once lol

I had a test app using 1000x1000 isometric grid with 64x32 size tiles which is 64000 width and it worked OK, so Nifflas you must be wrong about frame size

Wow I have been away from the forum for about 2 weeks - has flash been released already? Cool! What about HWA?

Never had any issues either...
Maybe get a new computer?

Woah, I have been using click products since KnP and have never heard about that, thanks dr nebula!

put the level number in a global value, then jump to a blank frame and try

+On start on frame
- Go to level (GLOBAL VALUE)

I have never had any issues with MMF apps and I have used Avast, AVG and norton on my PC's before

Valerio, you can use LUA scripting langauge with MMF, which is good for dialogues and other things. Then you can do all graphics and toher things in MMF which would make it easier than other programs.

If you are prepared to learn than use MMF, but realise that its going to take hundreds of hours to make a good stable RPG game.

yes, and whats wrong with that? Simply think of these numbers as ID's which you can link to whatever you want. Store your objects in a list or array and use the randomly generated number to refer to...

What about the Random Pool object?

Yup, you could do it like that too. As I mentioned there are many ways to do it.
P.S Hows Dringletopia Ai project going?

post an example

I think I saw the variable in the SDK somewhere which references the object limit. I wonder if an extension could modify this or if it protected...

The way I would go about doing it is to create a number array 10 x 10 in size. By default this array will be filled with 0's when created. You fill each cell of the array with a number, which will...

Well considering your only 2 posts have been this thread, your just being silly.
MMF is already a huge step forward in making your own game, it cuts out all the graphics and input routines that you...

What do expect? Do you think that extensions do everything for you without any effort on your part?

All you would need is some triginometry.
Work out what radius the other object needs to be from your object for it to be within range.
Use an extension called Advanced Direction Calculator. It...

dude this is awesome!

RTS games are certainly possible, the biggest limitation is pathfinding and the object count. All the units and background tiles take too long to draw and lag too much.

Keep an eye out though, im...

lol how old are you? Not everything on the internet has a virus.

or you can just do xmouse - left of screen, and ymouse - top of screen

Really? Thanks! Noone needs Direct X now. :crazy:

I like it :blush:

Namida if you are making a large tile based game, use the background image object to display your background :)

What Shawn said is the best. Create a level editor and save each level in your own level format. You could use an array or ini for example and then load through the file at start of frame and...

hmm you are right I never even seen that before. Ill try that but want to avoid saving a file and loading rotating, saving then loading again if I can.
If anyone else has other suggestions also I...

Never heard of this object. LinK?

There is no way CT would do this. Why would they? A mac version would be more important than this. Remember they are already working on HWA/Java/Flash/iphone/unicode/whatever else

Hi, whats the easiest way to rotate an overlay redux?
I dont want to loop through each pixel and redraw it, i simply want to be able to do a quick 90degree rotation in either direction.

The only...

Sure. Im a big RTS fan myself and made plenty of RTS engines in MMF.
If you want a simply linear movement from point A to B, set unit to ball movement and store the destination x/y position in its...

wow i thought 500 x 500 x 10 was big lol.
The way I do it is 'share' the values with an MMF array.
Which means when you want to save, loop through each index and write into an mmf array and then...

Cant you just save each tile into a different image slot in the background iages object? Then you only need 1 object and you just change slots at runtime

Can I ask why you are using an image for your collisions? Why dont you store all the data in an array file instead and encrypt it with blowfish or something? Then if you really need it as an image,...

Yes I noticed the seams in this example is not perfect either, but at least its a good start. You can probably work on it and tweak it to make it smoother.
Its very slow though. I am sure it could...

I would imagine so, you cannot scroll 0.5 of a pixel in MMF