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Hey i wanted to ask this to anyone that playes this tutorial am i the only one that stencyl wont let me place the otherwise or otherwize if blocks under if in the middle of the tutorial?
Those can be finicky, especially if you don’t know the trick. To place in an “otherwise if” below an “if” when there’s other code below it, you have two options: 1. Move the old code below out of the way, drag in the “otherwise if”, then replace the old code (always works but tedious) or 2. When you drag in the “otherwise if”, pretend you are placing it over the “if”, so that the top of the “otherwise if” just barely covers the “if” writing in the original “if” statement; there’s only a few pixels of error to make it work, but it will snap into place correctly if done right (do not ask me why this works and the “normal” idea of placing it under doesn’t… it doesn’t make sense to me either).
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Sorry for the triple post, but when I test the game it spawns only one enemy.
I put something like this: [when Created:] Trigger event create
[every 6 seconds:] trigger event create. And for the spawn enemy thing I did the exact same thing but except it says [when "create" happens:]
(whole enemy spawn thing)
Hmm... that's strange. Can I see screenshots of the coding? (BTW, PM is a faster way to reach me than comments; I don't check all tutorials every day).
That is in the Behavior palette. All you do is type in the name of the event you wish to trigger for the actor (use the same name as the receiver from Add Event -> Advanced -> Custom Event).
I will be working on it as soon as I can... I'm hoping to have it up within 2 weeks time. I have a lot of things I am doing at once. I am curious as to why this is on the first tutorial set comments instead of the second set though :P.
Are you sure you used the same name for the score code as the name for Kongregate? Also, if you want to actually "see" the score, be sure to check the "display in leaderboards" when submitting the score to Kongregate.
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I am having a few issues after finishing with the tutorial...The first is that my character is constantly moving right without any button presses, and enemies are only spawning in the original corner. It appears that I made no changes. Thanks in advance!
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A difference between the first second version of the game in the tutorial is that, if the player leaves the screen, the game restarts on the second, instead of simply vanishing like on the first. I don't think you mentioned it during the tutorial or I failed to notice that part. What should I do in order to make that part? thanks
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Once, I made Pong using Flash. Then I was kind of demotivated to try other stuff because the collision was really hard to get right using it. But now that I've discovered stencyl and with the help of these tutorials, I guess I'll have no more excuses to delay my game designing learning and development, even though I'm using the 2.0 version , which makes it harder to find the right block, sometimes. xD
Thanks a lot for your help and keep going :)
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Hey Abi! You are doing an amazing job with this tutorials! I thank you a lot!
Since the tutorial are made with a old version of Stencyl, I can't find the receiver code in Stencyl 2.0. There are other way to make a method now? Again, thanks for your help and sorry about my english, I'm a brazillian and I am just start playing around with Stencyl!!
On the left, use "Add Event", then go down to "Advanced" to "Custom Event". As soon as I finish my Mr. Goldfish Reboot, I plan on making a second tutorial set just for 2.0 :)
In the Game Center, go to Collision Groups, and make sure the collision for your enemy group (actors, if following the tutorial) to itself is BLUE not GREEN. That will make sure they don't hit each other :)
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Thanks for the tutorial. I liked it very much and it works almost completely. My problem is that my enemies collide among each other and that makes the game really hard to play... Did I miss something in the tutorials?
Petterr, go into your collision groups, click on "actor" on the right side (or whatever you are using for your enemies) and make sure the "actor" button for it is BLUE, not GREEN. What is likely going on is that you have your enemy group to hit itself instead of just lining up on top of one another. I can try to show via livestream if it doesn't make sense.
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I hope to be updating this tutorial soon with changing the old messaging coding with the new "behavior" coding. I appreciate your patience in the waiting.
UPDATE: The game now has "photoshopped" in of the current version which shows the "behavior" category instead of messaging so hopefully there will be less confusion. I only did it for the actual scenes that use it though since it's a bit of a hassle to redo each scene individually for a non-artist like me :P.
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I haven't done any programming on stencyl or scratch or any of these programs, but i have done some on littlebigplanet for the ps3 where the programming is slightly less complex and can be used for beginners who have that game.
It's now called "Behavior", but all of the pieces work the same. Many of us who use Stencyl hate that change, but SW2 is almost out, which overhauls the messaging completely.
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Just wanted to thank you for your tutorials. And a quick note: I'm using StencylWorks 1.4.1 and apparently there is no messaging anymore. I don't know if that has been mentioned already.
For all those people wondering:
Instead of the "Messaging" Button there is now the "Behavior" button. Click it.
For actors (like the player) you have to use the stuff located under "Trigger", for scenes (e.g. when spawning enemies) you have to use the stuff under "Attributes". Other than that it's pretty much the same for actors and scenes:
1. Put "Enable behavior for this actor/scene" at the top of "when created" and name it.
2. Instead of "when this hears " use "when happens".
3. Instead of ""tell this to " use "trigger event ".
Great comment. I rated it up so hopefully others see it too. I would go back through and change the pictures to match the current changes, but when SW2 comes out (which is soon), the entire system is revamped, so I will need an entire new series for it.
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The only fault I find with these tutorials (so far) is that there is no reminder to comment your code. I always thought that was essential when I was learning programming.
If you are making a large game, then comments indeed can help out. Personally, I always found commenting annoying (I minored in computer programming in college) since I used names that allowed me to simply remember what each behavior did. It IS essential though for collaboration projects (so that your partner quickly knows what each part does).
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let me follow the tutorial again and see if i can correct it I'll start from the beginning, i fixed it somewhat it still crashes but it waits till all the enemies are loaded i can get to about 2500 points then it crashes i'll start from tutorial one and try again
That's strange... it's still working fine for me. Do other tutorials of mine crash too or just this one? If you can send the error message, it would be very helpful.
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Okay after the second wave comes out it seems to me they come out very very thick. and after a few seconds before the third spot has enemies, flash seems to crash it tells me An ActionScript error has occurred but it doesn't say what line and i don't understand the error, it doesn't seem to be very straight forward like java is. Any ideas?
Is this in your own game or in the in-tutorial game? If it is your game, it would greatly help to see your scene behavior that creates the enemies as well as a screenshot of the error message (I have had to become good at decoding them due to the number of errors I get in my own games).
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Abigayl, you mentioned sticking with Photoshop to Chad. I think that's a great idea as I've had much more expierence with Photoshop and it seems a little more user friendly than Pencyl. I don't know if importing of .psd simply doesn't work or if I'm too impatient to wait it out. At any rate, you can maintain the "free space" around circular objects by saving them as GIFs and then simply opening directly with Stencyl instead of trying (waiting?) to import them as a .psd. I've noticed the "click on the image to choose its transparent color" is useless in Stencyl so Jpegs simply won't work. Might be something worth sticking in a tutorial if you plan on covering inserting images. :) My apologies if you've already covered this in a tutorial4+, 3 is as far as I've gotten so far and these are great. Three "5"s so far, keep it up!
You have some good points there... might be worthwhile for me to make a tutorial about images in the future (haven't done it yet). Thanks for the 5s! :)
Mine actually do when colliding (you will see it in tutorial 4). Make sure the enemies can't collide with each other in the collision groups in the game center (unless you want them to hit each other). To stop rotating on collisions though, in the enemy actor tab (the actor itself, not the behavior), in physics, turn off the rotating freely option.
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i literally shouted "YES!!!" when you went into 8-way movement. Again, this stuff should come in handy regarding me doing an RPG (or at least a top-down game). My only problem was the x/y coords. But that was because i had a different resolution setting for my game. A little tinkering and adjusting later i got what i wanted.
So far i think the greater challenge once im done with all this is making all the sprites in Pencyl..unless i stick with photoshop/fireworks and import from there. Though, that's something to worry about later...
Agreed, 8-way is so much better than 4-way. The X/Y coordinates indeed can take some finesse to get correct since actors are different sizes. If you have Photoshop, I'd advise sticking with that over Pencyl, but I will admit that I haven't fully explored Pencyl myself.
Can you screenshot the code and send it to me? From the error message, I am guessing you don't have the "if/otherwise if" chain properly placed. They have to go right after each other with nothing in between (and not inside of each other).
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Behavior: Design_0_0_Motion at line 80
Syntax error: else is unexpected.
else
Behavior: Design_0_0_Motion at line 87
Syntax error: else is unexpected.
else if((isKeyDown("left") || isKeyDown("A")))
Behavior: Design_0_0_Motion at line 94
Syntax error: else is unexpected.
else if((isKeyDown("up") || isKeyDown("W")))
That keeps appearing whenever I try to test what I have so far and I just reached the end of this tutorial... the error thing will probably get messed up when I post comment though and you probably wouldn't be able to tell me what the problem is and I can't find it.
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Please Note: Due to an update in Stencyl, the comparisons are now found in the Flow -> Conditional tab. Since my version is one that has been updated over time, it works differently with mine, so I cannot show this updated scene... :(
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This has been a really fantastic series. I've been wanting to dig into Stencyl, and this has been a really great introduction. I'll definitely be keeping my eye out for more from you.
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LOL I was supposed to say "change the smiley into something else" last tutorial. I guess it happened already. xD Could your next tutorial be about adding an HP bar and actions? Thanks. :D
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I am getting reports of a bug where the tutorial jumps back to the beginning. If this is happening to you, please send me a detailed message as to what/where/etc. it is happening. I have tried it both on Chrome and IE and I cannot recreate this error.
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One of the most common problems I see on the Stencyl forums is misuse of the time blocks, particularly when using them in the "always" wrapper or when referring to an actor after it has been killed (both game-breaking issues). I think that could use a good tutorial.
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LIke always a great job. I liked this tutorial more than the others though, since it went deeper into programming concepts. I think that you should move away from the avoider game, but perhaps try a patformer, since up until now, none of your games have had any physics. Something I'd like is how to have moused based shooting. Also, perhaps you should make a separate tutorial just for how stencyl is like programming - how the or is like the ||, and is like the &&, show some code-mode of stencyl and explain it. If I get any more ideas, I will share them with you. I liked the improvements you made from the other version as well. But who's the drawing on the bottom left of? It kind of reminds me of RPG Shooter Starwish.
Wow... let me take these one at a time... Platformer is tutorial 6; Mouse-Based shooting is tutorial 4 (next tutorial); Stencyl as programming/sitelock/music/other random tidbits is tutorial 5; thus, you have actually hit on all of the next tutorials :P. The drawing is a unique character that Ilolamai is making just for me :)
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Please rate this comment up so that I can see if you want to see even more tutorials, going more in depth or into other concepts. (Also, please let me know what other concepts you would like to see covered.) Thanks!