Author Topic: Theories and hopes for Platform Builder 7.0  (Read 1015 times)

CGM

  • Christian, 3D artist, former Platform Builder gamdev
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Theories and hopes for Platform Builder 7.0
« on: June 25, 2019, 02:42:33 PM »
7.0 is supposed to be a big update, with lots of suggestions taken. A couple of suggestions I have theories for. When custom menus for 6.x whatever the update was were announced, I hit the roof. Menus was something I really REALLY wanted! But wait, then I saw the screenshots. A basic menu. Black background, with a very basic up-n-down selector. No custom sprites, no way to check for variables to hide certain options, nothing. I was still super excited. Hoping it would grow into one of the highlights of PB. Well, that's not what happened. Menus haven't been touched since they got added. That is, until I recently made a few suggestions.

Suggestion#1
Allow enemies to get command prompts that play commands when clicked on.

Suggestion#2
Allow for sprites and enemies to be spawned, and aligned to the view using x and y positioning commands

Suggestion#3
Allow a new text command where it can be aligned anywhere on the screen in, and out of the view. Only as large as the HUD text font. And allow it to show variable numbers.

What do you get when you put all 3 suggestions together?

You get...A custom menu. How?

#1. You create enemies that act as buttons and spawn them onto the view, in the position you want them to be.

#2. You can also freeze the game to make this seem more like a menu.

#3. You simply use the keyboard mouse to click on those enemy buttons to do what you want them to do, and boom!

You now have a basic menu with custom graphics. You could spawn a transparent grey sprite to act as the background, or something entirely black. Or whatever color, or background. And, you can add conditionals the instant the menu is spawned to remove certain "buttons" (which are actually enemies) that check to see if a variable is a certain number, and if that number isn't met, then it doesn't spawn the button. Of course, o exit this menu, we'll have to un-freeze the game, and delete each button, background, etc.

This is a theory, where if TingThing takes these suggestions, the need for the custom menus section of game setup can be for quick-n-easy menu creating. But if you're trying to re-create stickmans bad luck, (TingThing's first game project) then these 3 suggestions are quite useful. But these 3 suggestions can be used for an infinite amount of things. The possibilities are endless! So, TingThing, please consider adding these 3 suggestions. They are already suggested in the suggestions board. :)