meanderingleaf

Ouch, that is killer. And here I thought the goal was to free up that step. Never considered that just letting the GC do its work might be a good way to go as well.

So, as far as I can tell, the typical way to do an object pool is to create a bunch of objects ahead of time, and reuse them throughout the rest of the game, reviving dead ones as needed. Of course, this means that enough objects need to be made ahead of time so that when a new one is needed, there is a dead one to be revived. I've done a pool before where I will revive if there is a dead object, and make a new one if not. Perhaps its my laziness kicking in here, because I don't really want to estimate at how many objects I will need in a particular game. I can see some drawbacks in extra code in an update function that looks odd, and also the impact on gameplay of making a new object at runtime. Should I be sticking with only the prefilled pools, or is the 'elastic' approach acceptable too?

EDIT -- Never mind. I had already used just what I needed before - the ArraySet! Okay, just a minor thing that I understand I could make myself, but I would like to have part of the Phaser 'toolkit', if you will. A second collection type of display objects with an API similar to groups. This collection type is not linked to the display list, but only for storing references of objects that one wants to collide with other things. The reasoning for this - whenever I'm making a game with depth sorting, I still may want to collide the players against enemies, bullets, what have you. But all of the display objects have to be on the same layer for the depth sorting to work, and I need to manage the collision groups elsewhere. This could be useful for other games that need to do some advanced sorting. Perhaps I haven't dug too deep into the docs and code - maybe the collection type exists already..

Now that the semester is over, I can list my plans. They are as such: 1. Finish this book, which is coming along nicely. Hopefully my prose isn't meandering.. too much. 2. Art! I've done so much on the code side that I'm starting to feel a bit stagnant. Want to take a year to focus on the visual side of things.

Unity is pretty grand, really. But there is a crazy learning curve to overcome, and if you want to put anything out without a splash screen its going to cost you at least a bit. That said, there's just something about having an visual editor when it comes to code, and Unity will force you into some 'best practices' without you being able to shoot yourself in the foot.. too much. If its strictly HTML5 games though, stay away from Unity for a little while and go with Construct or Phaser. You're going to get better performance for a while as they iron out their few last issues with the compilation to asm.js. Plus, MUCH smaller download sizes, which is king when it comes to games distributed via the net.

Hello everyone. I'm working with a group in Indianapolis, Indiana to put on a developer's conference, and I would really like to see someone (or someones) present on HTML5 games. Here's the location and information about the conference: http://conf.devworkshop.org/call-for-papers/ The conference is a bit unique, as it has a focus on workshops (3 hour long presentations where you present and the attendees build along with you). They are a bit harder to do, but generally are quite a bit more rewarding. We'd love to see your proposals! Thanks, Travis

Just a quick update - I tested this further this morning, and it doesn't seem to be an issue with colliding empty groups, but rather the states I was in. I'll try to look into it more later.

Am I doing something wrong, or do I always need both groups to have something in them before trying to collide them?

Thanks rich, taking a look at that now!

Ah, here we are, assuming that the game starts out at 400x300, this will double its size: this.game.stage.scale.minWidth = 800;this.game.stage.scale.minHeight = 600;this.game.stage.scale.setSize();

Okay, this might be asking a wild question: Is it possible to scale the entire game up? I'm looking to create art assets in a 16x16 ratio, and scale the entire game up so it looks like they take up 32x32 (in a method similar to Flixel). Thanks all.

Ah, my apologies for the bump here, but for posterity (and for me, in case this happens to me again): The with and height on the game must be the same as the width an height of the tilemap layer ( I know.. that doesn't make sense to me, but there it is). In other words, your game setup and layer setup lines originally looked like this: var game = new Phaser.Game(640, 480, Phaser.CANVAS, null, { layer = game.add.tilemapLayer(0, 0, 720, 720, tiles, map, 0); And one needs to change the 720,720 to match the Phaser.Game values like so: layer = game.add.tilemapLayer(0, 0, 640, 480, tiles, map, 0); Worked for me, at least...

This was a neat little game. An interesting note for anyone who makes 'local', keyboard multiplayer. You can hook up multiple keyboards to a computer to give players more space. Did it for a recent project of mine, makes quite the spectacle, but its worth it.

Well, dang. I will take a look later... worked on the few computers here. In the middle of another game 'jam' right now. We've been hacking with phaser for about 22 hours now.

Wanted to share my game from the zero hour game jam. Its a simple dual-stick shooter... so you'll need a gamepad to properly use it. http://dustytome.net/projects/zhgj13/ It was a blast... phaser makes quick prototyping almost too easy.