Stuff
 

• It's been suggested before - being able to assign a layer to tilelayers. This would allow you to draw a layer above or below a player. If it can't be done with the current way tiles are handled there should be a way. This is very important with tiles and layers.
• Layer support is great... sort of. I mean, we might not be able to do it but it's cool that it's there. There's a problem with that though. Even if I wanted to use layers and I make/use an online editor to use layers many people still, and I assume always will, use the external level editor. Why's that a problem? Open up a level that has layers and save it using the external editor and it removes all the layers. I know you're not going to fix the external editor but can you at least do another small release that makes it so the editor will online edit layer 0, and not delete other layers?
• I'm not sure how possible this is, but being able to assign negative layer values to images would be really cool and useful. Anything under layer 0 would display UNDER the tileset. Anything under -4 would be displayed on the screen but under the tileset. It's possible to manipulate GUI's to do this, so I know it's possible... but I'd like it to be simpler for others to do.
• Again, I ask for the possibility to apply negative values to stretchx/y so that you can horizontally/vertically flip images... either that or a flip function. Flipping is important for effects! I know this wouldn't be too hard to add, you've already got rotation!
• Would it be possible to be able to change the speed value of projectiles? Right now you can change the speed by manipulating gravity... but that's not convenient when you don't want ALL projectiles edited.
• FPS display? I dunno, thought I'd throw that in.
• Ability to change the players Z while on a terrain. It sucks that the player is locked on to the Z under the player... :/ (last I checked was in offline editor, not sure if this is the same online)
• Stretching it... but how possible would it be to get some effects like blurring? this.blur=2 would blur the object a little... especially being able to blur the screen would be cool. Not important, but I suspect it would be often used for effects.

I had a few other ideas I can't remember, but I'll post them if they ever come back to me.

Negative stretchx/y/zoom will work in the next Graal version.

You can specify the speed for projectiles when you shoot them, doesn't work for classic-like (horizontal) projectiles though.

The frame rate is always at 20 fps.

You can of course change the player.z when being on terrain.

Why not for horizontal projectiles? I think it'd be very important considering they're used for bullets.

Almost like...

Flying? What is this technology?

I agree with what Dusty said, but I think the FPS is kinda silly.

That's why I kind of just threw it in, I figured just about every graphical game has it.

I have a question -- what exactly do you mean by blur? Like motion blur when the player moves?

Or like a Gaussian blur effect?

Just blur. I guess that'd be Gaussian blur... I'm not sure of the terms though.

Blurring, at least in Photoshop, is pretty hardware intensive. I doubt there's better ways to do it - or Photoshop would probably be using them... so I wouldn't get all hot and fuss in anticipation for this on Graal.

Although Flash has some blurring tools, it could probably be run through there with <some> effects. Combined with masking (which I don't think Graal supports) it would be very nice.

I should have posted for more graphical effects instead of being so specific. Stuff like grayscaling and other effects could be used to pull off nice transitions and effects.

What you're basically asking for is blending modes, as seen in adobe products and later in others.
Adobe Flash can do it, which is supported within Graal's engine. I'm not sure if Stefan has support for blending modes yet, but you could always ask him :P

Things like blurring would need to be done by pixel shaders, which we currently don't support in 2D mode yet.

That's the idea of suggestions ...

You can't say "we don't support this, so we can't do it" everytime you get a suggestion.

I've already requested pixel shading. As far as I could understand it would take him a long time to program. I'm sure there's open source pixel shaders he could use - but I'm not sure of their stance that (for obvious legal reasons).

He also mentioned... DX9 I think? That would be nice.

I didn't say it will not be impossible to support, just saying it's not possible right now. Also the problem is not to write the pixel shaders, the problem is that we currently use an older version of directx for using less resources and better compatibility, we can make it possible in the future to enable newer versions of DirectX which would also make stuff like video recording more reliable.

I'm guessing you would need a license to develop under the DX9 API, or something like that? I'm having trouble finding the retail value of such a license - do you know off hand how much they are?

Oh, another suggestion I forgot:
The ability in a gani to setbackto a frame rather than a gani. This could be perhaps accomplished by in the setbackto box doing... @4 or so, to set the gani back to frame 4.

Developing with Window's APIs are free. Even the Xbox 360 SDK is free to make those downloadable games.

I would suggest however to move strictly away from DX and start developing wholely in OpenGL.

And why would that be?

My computer always runs terrible in OpenGL with Graal. If he moves to that I doubt I'd be able to play anymore.

That is because Graal's support for OpenGL most likely sucks. OpenGL is powerful and would be perfect for Graal, including the 3D stuff.

Do you even have any idea what you are talking about?

Both the Mac and Linux clients use OpenGL and they perform fine, and OpenGL mode also has worked pretty well for me on older Windows computers in the past. If you are experiencing problems using OpenGL mode, I suggest it is because your graphics drivers are old/broken or you have something set up wrong.

OpenGL is good because of its cross-platform ability, whilst DirectX isn't. DirectX is VERY powerful on a Windows platform, but is not supported on Mac or Linux as far as I know.

Should be possible on Apples now that they're PC based. Seems it's possible to emulate it on Linux, but I imagine it's pretty bad.

DirectX will work on a Mac that is running Windows. It is not possible to use the DirectX API natively inside Mac OS X, though, regardless of architecture.

wine sucks at directx don't even try it.

opengl is fine for me on my mac, but there is no point using proprietary directx functions when it wont port to osten or leenucks.

Yea, but now that the video cards are PC based it would be much easier to make drivers, etc which support DX in OS X. AFAIK

Well regardless of this talk about Directx/OpenGL I hope my post about setbackto isn't lost!

"PC-based"? Do you mean they use Intel instead of PPC processors?

No, I mean the video cards they're using now were previously used in PCs only. I believe they get Intel & ATi stuff?

All Macs currently use either Nvidia and ATI, but even before the Intel switch, ATI was used (I'd need to check about Nvidia, but pretty sure they were used).

PCs is a generic term anyway, but I guess you are referring to Windows or maybe Linux aswell.

But anyway, your point is valid, though I doubt Microsoft will develop DirectX for Mac.

Ah, well, I should have added that it sucks on Windows. For whatever reason. I know it runs superb on Linux and Mac.

It doesn't matter if the card supports DirectX or not, because DirectX simply doesn't exist in OS X. There's no API for it, the drivers aren't written to use it. It just simply doesn't exist.

DirectX exists in Windows only, and is pretty proprietory.