Cool. MMF2 is awesome. Heres a few tips:
- Download the HWA version - Hardware Accelerated. DirectX 9, more objects on screen, more loops, bigger images, higher frame rates, better compatibility on other computers, shaders (distortions,filters,colorization etc). get it here:
http://www.clickteam.com/epicenter/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=64&page=1Also grab the very exellent shader packs by Looki and Sphax. Awesome stuff. Even if your game is very simple or you do not want to use shaders your game will at least benefit from the directX 9 and better compatibility.
-Set your game to 60 fps - the default is 50fps which can sometimes make it to seem like your game is lagging. Its not. 60 is good. looks nice.
- Program everything in one frame - avoid making too many frames too quickly. Create a base engine frame that you keep coming back to when you change stuff. If you make different code changes to an object across multiple frames it can get very time consuming pulling them all back together. Feel free to make more frames and design levels but go back to your main frame when you want to make code changes to an object and then copy it back to the frame you were working on. Clone your base engine frame every so often, especially if you are about to make a major change or re-write, so you can go back if needed. When your base engine frame is done clone it out and complete the game.
- Use behaviors - This lets you put code inside of each object. Click an object and look in the 6th tab of the properties panel. Add a new behavior and then click 'edit'. Add events. Now if you move the object to a new frame it will carry all of its code with it. It saves you from having to scroll thru all the code for every object in the main event editor stack. Keep in mind its cool to put events in the main event editor too but you will save a lot of confusion this way.
-Use Event Groups - in any event editor right click on an event number on the left. Go to 'insert' and click 'A Group of Events'. Name it, hit enter to create. Put some events inside. The cool thing is you can Double Click groups to unroll and roll them back up. Many objects in your game will have a ton of events. this will let you find what your looking for quickly and save screen space.
- SWF is cool but more limited - If you decide to make it a SWF game you will only be able to use the basic object types. Loops will also kill your game so try not to use them. I had a really great engine going only to have it overload. Changing a SWF game into an EXE game is possible (but kind of a headache in some parts) but converting an EXE game to SWF is pretty much impossible. Too much code to redo. So decide before you start.
- Theres (almost) always a way - if a bug is destroying your game theres almost always a way to fix it. Whether its just a mistake or simple hole that needs to be plugged there is an answer. Check your code again. Search the forums. Someone else has had the same problem at some point and there is probably already an answer.
-Use Graphics Gale - Its much better than the drawing and animation editor in MMF2. Don't get me wrong. The Fusion editor is really good but the features of GG are too good to pass up. Just Import PNG's without alpha and define the alpha color to the background color of your animation upon import. Objects without an alpha map have per pixel collision (yay!). Also the less objects you give an alpha map the smaller your file size will be. Feel free to give choice objects an alpha map but realize that the alpha areas will also cause collisions and you will give up the very cool per pixel collision for that object. However you can just use collision based on distance to fix that.
- Check the ClickTeam forums at least once a week- Just check the most recent posts of each section. You will almost always learn something or there will be a cool update to an object or example file. Or you can help someone else.
- Save backups! - just in case. I lost a decent game to a hard drive exploding. Random, but it happens.
- Ask me - I'm not a genius. And I've got a lot of stuff to do. But I have a decent amount of experience with MMF2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBSbMyyzpIU All programming done by me. All art done by my girlfriend.
Pick and choose as you will. These aren't laws. Just tips based on my own experiences. Theres a crap load of other things to consider but these came to mind most readily as things I didn't know when I started and would have liked to know back then.
I assume you wanted art suggestions but these could also be helpful. I'll leave that to everyone else for now. Cool stuff. Make it happen. It's a really awesome program and more people should learn it.
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