Arcade Tool for people who want to mess with it

Super super early build of arcade tool.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lopfuezqaewaq4j/arcade_tool_not_even_alpha_version.zip?dl=0
mirror: http://www.towerunite.com/downloads/arcade_tool_not_even_alpha_version.zip

Check the README.txt to figure out how to use it.
Nothing is final, Lua API is subject to change as well as all the formats and junk.
Also none of the UI is done yet, so ignore all the buttons that do nothing.

Feel free to mess around with the ‘shooter’ project.
Also feel free to ask questions in here about the Lua API and stuff.
I’ll answer questions when I have time to do so.

EDIT:
Some documentation of Lua stuff: https://pastebin.com/t2YCDiV9

Have fun,
-Zak

P.S.
Yes the shooter project code is a huge mess, it’s very much slapped together.

psst:
http://www.towerunite.com/downloads/metacade-latest-020cb6e.zip
this one has a few new features, most notably; support for javascript

28 Likes

Oooh so good.

Love to see it @Zak! Feeling better?

hmm, is it just to show that it can render sprites? So far i can’t play the game from the looks of it.
https://f.lewd.se/KTriHK_cmd_2017-08-24_13-30-09.png

Still very apprechiated for the work you put in though! I can’t wait to use it in full capability

From the looks of it, the button inputs are from the english keyboard layout
Edit: You can play the game by pressing Z (or Y key if your keyboard is from german)

Couldn’t quite get it to run. Tried compatibility settings, running as admin, etc. Ah well. :frowning:
Glad to see there’s some prototyping going on though. I’m sure it’s gonna be great! :smile:

1 Like

If I knew more LUA, I would be tinkering with this right now. I’m happy that we’re now at a point where this can be tinkered with others!

Haha got it running

niceeee
also @Davidn64 I had that aswell. Just press Z and it should begin running correctly.

Edit: Better Image :^)
Edit2: Man the commandline is funny to look at whilst playing.
“DOWN is down”
“DOWN is up”
“Z is down”
“Z is up”

Edit3: Oh my god modify the config and such is amazing.
If anyone gets this working try setting your friction level in the “Main.lua” to 0
It’s a great laugh

1 Like

Can’t seem to get it working, unfortunately.

@Davidn64
Press Z to start it, forgot to mention that in the readme.

@CarbonCopyCat
Can you show me what command-line arguments you used?

@anon38270777
Did you get any sort of error?
What operating system are you running under?

1 Like

it should just be “tool shooter” if you’re using the windows powershell then use “.\tool shooter”

Turns out I mistook the <project name> part as the actual file path for the project, so I was typing tool projects/shooter/shooter.mproject instead of tool shooter.
It works fine now that I know what I was doing wrong.

1 Like

Really awesome stuff!
I made a thing, it’s super simple since I only started with Lua tonight (because of this) so I’ve had to figure things out whilst trying to decipher Zaks miracle shooter code (I still don’t get it :joy:). But I learned a lot already adapting from Shooter.
Can’t wait to see this tool progress further and for more things to be created to help everyone learn.

It’s only 35k randomly placed white squares with panning and zoom… I showed 100k too for some reason. Squares \o/ Performance is great though.

Here’s the code but honestly it will probably only teach bad things since as I said, I started Lua just tonight, I will have to discover better techniques as I go myself, most of it was written and deleted and trying out things to get used to Lua rather than create something sensibly productive;
https://pastebin.com/raw/AZhDPsZ9

6 Likes

This is so cool, I didn’t expect someone to figure it out so quick!

Quick note: there is currently an upper limit on vertices and indices inside the clip-space of the window, but it may be increased at some point.

MAX_VERTICES 65535
MAX_INDICES 200000

Each sprite is 4 vertices and 6 indices.

The _r.layer(0) call hints at one of the reasons why the performance is so good.
The arcade renderer will batch similar objects into a single draw call.

So because everything is on the same layer, all squares are sent to the GPU in a single batch to be rendered.
This only works if all objects are on the same layer and have the same texture / blending mode.

2 Likes

Decided to quickly write a little documentation on the Lua stuff…
https://pastebin.com/t2YCDiV9

3 Likes

Thank you!
This will be a great help :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

No error, it simply doesn’t start.
Also Windows 10 Home edition.

Welp i basicly just edited the ship0 and ship 1 to be blue and ship 0 has diffrent flames and Zak right now im going to try my best to learn this and make a TU like 2d game and i know it will be hard but meh i dont mind

EDIT 1:
or a virus game i dont know yet i think virus ill let you guys choose

The gifv is self explanatory;

I tried some simple platformer basics, once again code is absolutely horrible but it’s so fluid and nice. It’s not a game, what the gifv shows is literally it but if it comes in handy to someone then that’s awesome :smiley:

Arrows to move, space to jump.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3L9xzza75SqZ3d5ZEZFSFBtQ2c

14 Likes

whoa thats awesome im trying to make a platformer smash bros game for my first project and then when i am really good at this ill try making a 2d tu or virus but thats when im really good at coding for this

Thanks, I started Lua just tonight so it’s really easy to pick up, what I made isn’t that great, only on the surface, It’s fine for day one learning though.
For now though good luck! I want to see some others create things too so their ideas and examples can help me also :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like

Yo how would i make it so the catsack can stand on these two platforms

BTW all credit will go to you for making the base of it

EDIT 1: im uploading the code
EDIT 2: https://mega.nz/#!Z0IkkRgb its just the main.lua