Moho Forum

Thanks to all of you. Game creation with Construct would be a big step up from this little project, but I'll look into it. Victor Paredes always comes up with new possibilities.

The main question seems to be how to export to a cross-platform format. Either something kids can download as an exe file or play online. The web option with much smaller video files might be the best option - I'm still considering.

exile wrote:Thanks to all of you. Game creation with Construct would be a big step up from this little project, but I'll look into it. Victor Paredes always comes up with new possibilities.

The main question seems to be how to export to a cross-platform format. Either something kids can download as an exe file or play online. The web option with much smaller video files might be the best option - I'm still considering.

It can be as simple as you want with Construct 2.
If all you need to do is to have different pages which show an animation and have forward/back buttons to go to the next/previous page, no problem.

Bossco wrote: It can be as simple as you want with Construct 2.
If all you need to do is to have different pages which show an animation and have forward/back buttons to go to the next/previous page, no problem.

I wouldn't say it was no problem, but this may really be the way to go. I've done a primitive prototype just using a few features of Construct 2 - the easiest part was importing Anime Studio frames exported as png into the program as sprites. The free version allows 100 events, some can be copied to other pages so they don't count double.

I only have two pages, termed "layouts" in Construct. Here's the address: http://www.singadream.com/constructexport/index.html

Thanks to all for your kind help. This forum is the place to go.

Steve

I lashed together a simple (and crudely constructed!) quiz for you in Flash 8. It's in my dropbox account:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/r2hxskkh8g04y ... b.exe?dl=0
It'll show you what's possible, anyway.
...hope the link is OK...

jahnocli wrote:I lashed together a simple (and crudely constructed!) quiz for you in Flash 8. It's in my dropbox account:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/r2hxskkh8g04y ... b.exe?dl=0
It'll show you what's possible, anyway.
...hope the link is OK...

Ha, ha! It works! The link is fine, I didn't even have to register with Dropbox. I could have sent you the anime studio files, that must have been quite a bit of work to redo the whole thing from scratch. Thanks for all your trouble. It's obviously possible to do everything in Flash, but there is a free version of Construct 2 with 100 events, they demand $99 for the full version. There's also an open source Construct Classic, the predecessor program, which has unlimited events and is free. But so far Construct 2 is fine except for the nag screens every time you open and close it. It wasn't designed for my purposes, but so far it seems to be a good option.

(Edit and PS) There is a functioning test version at http://www.singadream.com/constructexport/index.html The only hassle now is finding a way to customize the buttons so they are large enough for mobile phone users. That's been driving me crazy for the last two days - hopefully the construct 2 forum will be half as good as this one.

My project is in a presentable form (with improved animation sequences and a 'play music' option of an original composition) at this address: http://www.singadream.com/constructexport2/index.html Seems to work with all browsers and even with my mobile phone. I'll leave the other prototypes up for a while in case anyone is interested in comparing.

Impressions of Construct 2, the program used to put the material together and export to html 5:
+ Great compatibility with Anime Studio, just export your animation in png format. I did that with half size and half as many frames. To save on kilobytes, I exported the background as a single frame, then the animation separately with no background. Using the batch cropping function (shift plus crop) there are no bloated animation files. The animation frames can be imported by drag and drop or through the sprite editor.
+ It's not too difficult to program different animations in the same area of the layout - you can have several actions at the click of one button: one each to stop the other animations and another one to start the one you intended (all on the same click and the same event).
+ Export to HTML 5 fulfills the dream of near universal compatibility with different devices and browsers.
+ There's an active forum and lots of tutorials.

- Some quirky functions poorly explained in the manual, stringing together events is not much easier than learning code.
- Layout is tedious, either you follow a super-complicated method of formatting css functions (more than 15 steps!) or you format each text item separately. No way to change the format for your entire text in the project.

Please note: I can't say much about actual game-making because my project is closer to a power point presentation with some extras. The full version (allowing more than 100 events) costs 99 Euros here, but it's a lifetime license, by which you're sort of betting that the developers will continue to improve the software for years to come. If you earn zillions with it, you have to get a more expensive license (still under 500). I haven't tried exporting to Facebook or to a commercial game site, all of which is supposed to be possible (as well as desktop versions of the game and special mobile phone editions). If the Adventure Game Studio had these export options, I would definitely have tried my luck with it.