Construct 3 Manual PDF

View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct-3 Welcome to the official Construct 3 manual! Construct 3 allows you to quickly and easily develop games directly in your browser. This manual provides a comprehensive reference of all of Construct 3's features. The manual starts by covering the interface of Construct and how to get basic tasks done. Later on it provides a detailed reference of all plugins and behaviors, including the System object. Remember if you get stuck or run in to an issue, it's always worth checking the relevant manual entry in case it includes information that will help you solve your problem. Construct also has links to the manual in various dialogs and menus to help you jump directly to the relevant manual page for that part of the software. Finally, dedicated users may want to read the manual to learn about all the possible features you can take advantage of. There may be many hidden gems you didn't know about, but are documented here in the manual. If you find a mistake or omission in the documentation, please file an issue on the Construct issue tracker with a link to the relevant manual entry and an explanation of what you think is wrong. We'll take a look and make any necessary updates. The Construct 3 manual is licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0. You are free to copy, re-publish, adapt, modify or otherwise use the material in the manual, providing you correctly attribute its source. Revision 483 Page 1/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct-3/getting-started/get- construct-3 Construct 3 runs right in your browser. There's nothing to download or install! Just visit editor.construct.net in your browser on any modern browser and Construct 3 will start. This makes it easy to switch between devices, use public computer terminals (even with strictly limited access), or painlessly deploy Construct 3 across a computer lab or office. You can add Construct 3 to your desktop or home screen (on mobile devices). This creates an icon on your device to launch Construct 3 like an app. This is a great way to reach Construct 3 more easily, and also saves space on your screen since it hides the browser address bar and tabs. Sometimes an Install as app option will appear in the main menu when this option is available. Click this menu option to install Construct as an app on your device. Sometimes an Install icon will also appear in the address bar. Alternatively you can usually find an option to install Construct in the browser menu in Chrome and Edge, possibly under the Save and share or Apps submenu. In Safari, you can find Add to home screen on iOS or Add to dock on macOS by pressing the Share button. Construct project files typically use the.c3p file extension. Once you have installed Construct as an app, you can then double-click a.c3p file to open it directly in Construct. The first time you do this, you may see a prompt asking you to confirm this is what you want to do. There should also be a checkbox to remember your decision so you won't be prompted again. If you use Windows 10+, you can also find Construct 3 in the Microsoft Store and install it from there if you prefer. Construct works offline! You don't have to always have an active Internet connection. You only need to be online the first time you load Construct. After Construct first starts, after a while you should see a notification in the corner indicating Construct is ready to work offline. Make sure you wait until you see that notification. Then Construct will Revision 483 Page 2/1802 continue to work even if you go offline. It's more convenient to use Construct offline if you use the Add to desktop/shelf/homescreen feature to create an icon on your device to run Construct, as described in the previous section. We also recommend previewing a project while online to ensure the preview window is also fully saved for use offline. While the Construct editor does attempt to save the preview window for use offline when it starts up, some browser's rules about storage may block Construct from saving it this way, and only allow it when directly accessing the preview window. Construct automatically stays up-to-date. It will notify you when there's a new version available, and when it's updated. Our website also provides a list of all releases with detailed information about changes in each update, and also provides links to run older versions in case there's a problem with an update. You can check which version of Construct you're currently using by opening Construct's main menu and selecting About. You can opt in to email notifications when updates become available in your subscription preferences. We also post news about updates on our Facebook page and Twitter account. Revision 483 Page 3/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct-3/getting- started/using-an-account When you first start Construct, you'll use it as a Guest. This means you are not logged in to an account. Construct shows your account status near the top-right corner. You can click this "badge" to show a menu with some account options. The Account menu Until you purchase a subscription, Construct works in a limited Free edition mode, as indicated by the "Free edition" label on the account badge. The limitations of the Free edition are listed on the Construct 3 plans comparison page, where you can also purchase a subscription to remove the limits. Guests have lower limits in the Free edition than registered users. Guests may only use up to 25 events in a project. Registering an account and logging in to Construct allows you to use up to 40 events, and then verifying your email address allows you to use up to 50 events. If you purchase Construct, you must be logged in with the same account you purchased with to make use of the full features of Construct. The Free edition label next to your account will disappear to indicate you have an active subscription and no longer have the Free edition limits imposed. At any time you can click the View details option in the Account menu to open a dialog displaying more information about your account. If you purchase a subscription and work offline, you must start Construct while connected to the Internet at least once every 7 days to re-validate your subscription. However if you have not purchased a subscription, you can use Construct offline permanently. Revision 483 Page 4/1802 If you have an Education subscription, you can create a time-limited access code in the subscriptions section of your profile. This allows students to use a licensed version of Construct for a period of time. The access code can be used for simultaneous users, up to the number of seats your subscription includes. Once you have created an access code, share the code with your class. Students can then start Construct, choose the Enter access code option in the Account menu, type in the access code, and click OK. This will grant them access to the full version of Construct. This can also be done with a Guest account, so students do not need to register their own accounts. Once the access code expires, Construct will notify the user and revert back to the Free edition. Access codes are designed for a classroom environment. Users with a Personal or Business subscription don't need to use access codes. Revision 483 Page 5/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct-3/getting-started/on- mobile Construct works on mobile devices like phones and tablets. (See System requirements for supported devices.) These devices typically use touch input, and often have small screens. While Construct can be used on a phone, it is much more comfortable to use a tablet device with a larger screen if you have one available. Not all features of Construct are available on mobile. It's intended for light usage, such as reviewing and tweaking projects, rather than your main development work. For that we recommend using a device with a keyboard and mouse. Construct adapts its appearance to better suit these devices. On mobile it will look something like this. Construct mobile interface This manual is written primarily for desktop devices, since that is what most people will use for best productivity. However you can use touch equivalents to mouse clicks on mobile: Where the manual says to click or select an item, simply tap on it. Where the manual says to double-click, double-tap instead. Where the manual says to right-click, or open a context menu, tap and hold on the item. After a moment a menu will appear. Revision 483 Page 6/1802 Since most mobile devices have small screens, Construct hides bars by default. To access these bars, swipe in from the side and the bar will slide in. Since there are a number of bars and only two sides, you can access the other bars by repeatedly swiping in from the side again. As you do this the previous bar will slide out and the next bar will slide in. On the left side the sequence of bars is: 1 Properties Bar 2 Bookmarks Bar 3 Find Results bars 4 Z Order Bar On the right side the sequence of bars is: 1 Project Bar 2 Layers Bar 3 Tilemap Bar If you reach the end, the sequence will start again, cycling through the set of bars for that side of the screen. Bars can be closed by swiping them back the other way. The next time you swipe in from the side of the screen, you'll always get back the last bar you used that side. That helps you keep using the same bar for a while, and you can still keep swiping to switch between bars at any time. When using the Animations Editor on mobile, the same approach of swiping in from the sides can be used to access the Animation Editor's bars. This includes features like the color picker and animation properties. It's possible to connect up a mouse and keyboard to some mobile devices. If it has a large screen, this lets you effectively use a tablet like a small laptop. If you do this, Construct may still use the mobile UI intended for touchscreens. You can make Construct switch in to desktop mode by opening Menu►Settings and changing the UI mode to Desktop. This will always load Construct using the full desktop UI. If you disconnect your mouse and keyboard and go back to using the touchscreen, you may want to switch the UI mode back to Automatic or Mobile to restore the touchscreen UI. Revision 483 Page 7/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct-3/getting- started/system-requirements These are the minimum system requirements for Construct to run. Construct can work offline. However you must be online to load Construct for the first time. When you load Construct for the first time, wait until you see a notification in the corner indicating Construct is ready to work offline. Then you can use Construct without an Internet connection. Note that if you purchase a subscription and work offline, you must start Construct while connected to the Internet at least once every 7 days to re-validate your subscription. However if you have not purchased a subscription, you can use Construct offline permanently. Construct should run in any modern browser. This includes: Google Chrome 87+ Microsoft Edge 87+ Other browsers that use the Chrome browser engine (Chromium), such as Opera and Yandex, providing they are updated to Chromium 87+ Firefox 125+ Safari 15.4+ While these are the minimum supported versions, we strongly recommend ensuring your browser is up-to-date with the latest version. Construct does not support Internet Explorer, which was retired by Microsoft in June 2022. However in Windows 10 Microsoft replaced Internet Explorer with the Edge browser, which is supported from version 87+. (Note the modern Chromium-based Microsoft Edge is supported, but the legacy Edge is not supported.) Construct should run on any modern, supported system with an up-to-date browser. This includes: Windows 10, 11 or newer Mac: OS X / macOS 10.13 or newer Revision 483 Page 8/1802 Linux: 64-bit Ubuntu 18.04+, Debian 10+, openSUSE 15.2+, or Fedora Linux 32+ Chrome OS: Any Chrome OS device updated to v87+ Android: Any Android 8.0+ device with at least 1GB RAM iOS: Any iOS 15.4+ device Some browsers still support older operating systems such as Windows 7. However these are no longer officially supported and you may experience limited features if you continue to use them. Construct requires the browser to support WebGL, which is a modern high- performance graphics technology for browsers. Almost all modern devices support WebGL. However if you see a message about WebGL not being supported, try installing any available system updates, and check your graphics drivers are up-to- date. Revision 483 Page 9/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct-3/overview/start-page When you first start Construct, it shows the Start Page. Note the appearance of the Start Page changes depending on the size of the window or screen. It will look something like this on a desktop display. The Start Page in Construct The Start Page gives you a useful starting point whenever you launch Construct. It provides shortcuts for tasks like creating a new project, opening an existing project including recent projects, and a set of useful links. The Start Page initially fills the whole window. When you create or open a project, the rest of Construct's interface will appear. Click New to create a new empty project. You'll be prompted for some basic details about the project to create. You don't need to enter anything though, just click Create and you'll get a new empty project with default settings. You can open projects from several sources: Cloud (projects saved to a cloud storage service like Google Drive), local files and folders (depending on browser support), or local browser storage. You can also find previously saved projects in the Recent projects section. For more information about saving and loading projects, see Saving projects. Revision 483 Page 10/1802 Construct comes packed with hundreds of example projects for you to learn from, or just try out for fun. Three randomly-picked recommended example projects appear along the bottom of the Start Page. Click the Browse examples button to open the Example Browser. You can learn more about it in the Example Browser manual entry. There are lots of links on the Start Page to other resources to help you get started and find out more about Construct. You can find links to community resources like the forums, social media accounts for Construct where you can follow news and updates, and other learning resources like tutorials. Revision 483 Page 11/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct-3/overview/example- browser Construct comes with hundreds of example projects to help you learn about it, as well as demonstrate the range of creative possibilities with Construct. Note the appearance of the Example Browser changes depending on the size of the window or screen. It will look something like this on a desktop display. The Example Browser in Construct There are several ways to open the Example Browser. The main ways are: Click Browse examples on the Start Page Click one of the three recommended examples on the Start Page to open it in the Example Browser Select Menu►View►Example browser When no project is open, the Example Browser fills the whole window, like the Start Page. This makes it easier to browse the content. When you open a project, the rest of Construct's will appear. Construct comes with hundreds of examples, so the Example Browser has lots of tags to help organise them. These are broadly organised like so: Levels: tags that indicate the approximate difficultly level to understand a project, covering Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. Categories: tags describing broad categories of example projects. These include: New: example projects added since the last stable release Revision 483 Page 12/1802 Recommended: a hand-picked selection of the best or most interesting example projects Demo game: complete games, covering title screens, multiple levels, and an ending Guided tour: step-by-step interactive guides that show you how to get started with using various features of Construct. These are great for beginners or quick introductions to other features of Construct you might not have used before. Game template: projects with a single level demonstrating a game concept Barebones template: minimal projects with placeholder graphics demonstrating a game concept Gameplay mechanic: projects demonstrating a specific mechanic of a game, such as a type of movement or special effect Feature example: projects demonstrating some of Construct's features, showing how they work and what they can do Scripting: projects making use of JavaScript coding Tech demo: performance benchmarks and other demonstrations of the capabilities of Construct's engine Genres: tags indicating the game genre of the example (if applicable) Tags: some other miscellaneous tags. These include: 3D: projects making use of Construct's various 3D features Mesh distortion: projects making use of Construct's mesh distortion feature Mobile: projects designed to work well on a mobile device with touch input Performance: benchmarks or demonstrations of the performance of Construct's engine Scene graph: projects making use of Construct's scene graph (aka hierarchies) feature Timeline: projects making use of Construct's Timelines animation feature Plugins: projects sorted by which plugins they use Behaviors: projects sorted by which behaviors they use Effects: projects sorted by which effects they use Click a tag to toggle whether the list is filtering with that tag. A list of all filter tags appears in the Filters section. Only projects matching all tags will be listed. By default the Recommended tag is selected to show only the recommended example projects, but you can click the tag to remove it and filter the list another way. You can also enter search terms in the search box. The list will further be filtered down to those matching both all tags and all the entered search terms. Revision 483 Page 13/1802 Click a project's card to expand it and see more details about it. You can quickly preview a project by clicking its Preview button. To open the project so you can see how it works, click its card to expand it, then click the thumbnail image or the Open button. Once open you can then also try it out by pressing the Preview button in the main toolbar, or by pressing F5. Once you're done, close the project by selecting Menu►Project►Close project. When the project closes, you'll see the Example Browser again where you can choose another example project to preview or open. You can get a direct link to an example by right-clicking a card in the Example Project and selecting Copy direct link. This will copy a link with the example embedded, such as https://editor.construct.net/#open=kiwi-story. When visiting this link, Construct will load and automatically open that project. This is a useful way to share examples. Revision 483 Page 14/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct-3/overview/the- interface The following image highlights the important parts of the Construct 3 user interface (UI) with numbers. Click the image to enlarge it. An overview of each part is provided below, and later the manual goes in to each section in more detail. Note that initially only the Start Page is visible. Much of the interface will not appear until you create or open a project. Also note the exact appearance of Construct can depend on which theme you have selected. The Construct user interface 1 Main menu button: Click this to open the main menu. This provides options for basic tasks like opening and closing projects, exporting, changing settings and so on. 2 Main toolbar: This provides shortcuts to the most commonly-used features: save, undo, redo and preview. Note the arrows next to some buttons which provide a dropdown menu with more options. 3 View tabs: These tabs let you switch the main view between different layouts (where you place objects) and event sheets (where you define logic using the event system). You can customise the color of these by right-clicking them and using the Colors menu. 4 Account badge: This shows your account status. Click it to show the Account menu. 5 Main view: This is where the currently selected Layout View or Event Sheet View appears. The view tabs select which is visible. In this picture, it's showing an empty Layout View. 6 Properties bar: This lists all the properties for the selected item, allowing you to change settings for it. 7 Project bar: This lists everything in your project. It gives you an overview of what you've added, and lets you navigate around the project as well, such as by opening layouts or event sheets to view them. 8 Layers bar: When a Layout View is open, this shows the layers on the layout. Revision 483 Page 15/1802 9 Tabs: By default the Layers bar and Tilemap bar are docked together. You can use these tabs to switch between the bars. You can drag and drop bars around to rearrange them. You can dock or tab together any combination of bars you want to customise the interface. You can choose a different theme to alter the appearance of Construct's interface, such as by choosing a dark theme. The current theme can be changed from Settings. Third-party themes can also be installed as addons. Note that the precise appearance of the interface depends on which theme you are using. The manual uses images based on the Default (no theme) style for a neutral appearance. If you change the theme, note the interface may look different to images in the manual. Revision 483 Page 16/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct-3/overview/project- structure Construct projects consist of the following elements. These can be accessed via the Project Bar, which contains a tree of all the elements in the project. Items in the Project Bar can also be organised in to subfolders Paid plans only which is very useful for medium to large projects. For more information, see the manual section on Project primitives. Layouts are levels, menus, title screens and other pre-arranged layouts of objects. In other tools Layouts may be referred to as scenes, rooms, frames or stages. See the section on Layouts for more information. Layouts also consist of multiple Layers, which can be used to arrange objects in to background and foreground layers. These are managed with the Layers Bar. Event Sheets are a list of Events defining the game logic. In Construct, Events are the alternative to programming or scripting. Layouts have an associated Event Sheet for their logic. Event sheets can be re-used between different layouts with event sheet includes. Event sheets are edited in the Event Sheet View. For more information on events, see the manual section on Events, especially the page on How events work. An Object Type defines a 'class' of object. For example, TrollEnemy and OgreEnemy could be different object types. Multiple instances of an object type can be created. For example there could be three instances of the TrollEnemy object type, and five instances of the OgreEnemy object type. It is important to be clear on the difference between object types and instances: they will be referred to as different things throughout the manual. For more information, see the manual entries for Plugins, Object Types and Instances. Object Types can also be grouped in to Families Paid plans only. The System object represents built-in functionality in Construct. It is the only object an Revision 483 Page 17/1802 empty project contains. It cannot be added again or removed from a project. There are no instances of the System object: it is simply always present and provides access to the built-in aspects of Construct's engine. Its conditions, actions and expressions are documented in the System reference. Note the System object does not appear in the Project Bar, but it is still an important part of the project. These are audio files used for sound effects and music in the game. Sounds should be used for short-duration sound effects that are played when events like collisions and explosions happen. Music should be used for the longer musical tracks. It is important to organise audio files appropriately, because Sounds are loaded completely before playing, but Music is streamed. This means if a Music track is accidentally put in the Sounds folder, it would have to completely loaded before it started playing. However, audio in the Music folder can start playing immediately since it is streamed. For more information see Sounds & Music. Timelines are pre-designed sequences of changes over time. They often cover movement, such as changing an object's position, angle and size over time, but can affect many other kinds of properties too. To learn more about creating timelines, see the section on the Timeline Bar. Eases are animation functions that determine how changes happen over time. There are a number of built-in eases in Construct, but custom ones can be designed in the editor too. Construct also supports JavaScript and TypeScript coding in the editor. Event sheets can be combined with code, or code can be written in separate files. When using script files, they are added in the Scripts section of the Project Bar. For more information see the dedicated manual section on Scripting. Additional files can be imported to or created in the project. These can then be loaded and used in your project. This also covers using a variety of media files in your project, such as videos and web fonts. For more information, see Project Files. Construct also provides some file editors Paid plans only for conveniently editing data files. Revision 483 Page 18/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct-3/overview/saving- projects In Construct, there are several ways you can save your work. By default pressing Save on a new project will save with Cloud Save. You can select a different option, as well as change the save option at any time, in the Menu►Project►Save as menu. You can save your work to a cloud storage services, allowing you to access your work wherever you go. Since Construct runs in the browser and can be used on any device, this is a great way to ensure you can carry on from where you left off no matter which device you end up using. Many cloud storage services also provide built-in backups and file histories, helping ensure your work is safe even in the face of disaster. Construct currently supports Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and Dropbox. The first time you select Menu►Project►Save as►Cloud save, a dialog will appear asking you to choose one of the supported services. When you choose one, you'll be prompted to log in to your cloud storage account, so Construct has permission to save and open files from your account. Once you've entered your details they will be remembered, so you can keep using Cloud Save without having to keep entering your details. Remember that your Cloud Save login is separate to your Construct login. The fact you are signed in to one does not automatically mean you are signed in to the other. When you press Save with a Cloud Save project, Construct will save your project and upload it to your cloud storage account. The upload will continue in the background showing the upload status in the corner of the window, allowing you to continue working on your project. Note you cannot save again until the upload completes. Next time you use Construct, you can choose Menu►Project►Cloud open to find your project again. It'll also appear in the Recent projects section of the Start Page. Select Menu►Project►Save as►Download a copy to download your project as a local file. Construct will ask if you want to change the downloaded filename; you can leave it empty to use the default. Construct projects use the.c3p file extension. Normally the file will go to your Downloads folder, but you may also be prompted to save to a different location depending on the browser. Alternatively you can usually drag-and-drop the resulting file directly out of the browser, such as from Google Chrome's downloads footer section. Revision 483 Page 19/1802 Note that despite the name, this does not actually download a file from the Internet. All the project data is stored locally. The term Download refers to invoking the browser's download UI to save your project to a local file. Currently some browsers such as Chrome support saving files directly to your system. This means you can use the Menu►Project►Save as►Save as single file... option to save your project as a local file anywhere on your system. To open a local file, choose the Menu►Project►Open local file option. Then when you make changes and click the Save button, it will write back over the file you originally opened. You may see a permission prompt from the browser asking if you want to allow access to the file; be sure to allow permission to ensure your save works correctly. When saving to local files, be sure to set up backups to help avoid the risk of losing your work in the event of disaster. You can enable automatic backups in Construct's settings. See best practices for more information. Where browsers support local files, they also allow the option to use project folders. These work similarly to saving local files, but instead of choosing a file, you select a folder to save to. Construct then saves the entire project as separate files within this folder. Be sure to choose an empty folder to avoid ending up with a confusing mix of files. This option is good for very large projects, since saves are faster, as it only has to update the changed files in the folder, rather than generate an entire new.c3p file. It is also a good option to use with source control tools like GitHub, since you can track changes to individual text-based files - for a guide on that see the tutorial How to collaborate on Construct projects with GitHub. This option can also be useful if you work with lots of JavaScript files in a Construct project and want to use an external editor with them. When saving as a folder project, new options will appear in the menu when right-clicking the script folder in the Project Bar. These options allow you to reload all script files from the project folder again either as a one off (also by pressing F9), or automatically every time the project is previewed. Note this reloading cannot be undone, so make sure you always make edits in the same place, as alterations within Construct will be overwritten when reloading. A similar approach is also used for using TypeScript in Construct. Construct's.c3p files are actually just a zipped folder project, with the extension.zip replaced with.c3p. You can convert a.c3p file to a folder project by renaming.c3p to.zip and extracting it. Similarly you can convert a folder project to a.c3p by zipping it, and renaming.zip to.c3p. Revision 483 Page 20/1802 When saving to local folders, be sure to set up backups to help avoid the risk of losing your work in the event of disaster. You can enable automatic backups in Construct's settings. See best practices for more information. If saving local files is not supported, Construct provides an option to save projects to the local browser's storage instead. This storage is unique to both the specific device and browser. So for example if you save a project to browser storage on a specific laptop with Chrome, you can only find it again by using the same browser (Chrome) on the same device (that specific laptop). Construct will ask for permission to use persistent storage the first time you use this option, to ensure the browser won't automatically delete your data. Note browsers sometimes also have storage limits. You can also check the status of the persistent storage permission, as well as how much space the browser is allowed to use and how much it is using, in the About dialog. If you use this option, be very careful about clearing your browser data. If you choose the wrong option while clearing browser data, you could still erase all your projects saved to browser storage. For this reason, using a different save option where possible is recommended. Revision 483 Page 21/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct-3/overview/sharing- projects The easiest and quickest way to share your project so someone else can run it is using Remote Preview Paid plans only. For more information see Testing projects. If you want people to play your finished project, you should Export it. This produces a playable game ready for publishing. See the section on publishing projects. You can also save as a single file, or use the Download a copy option, to get a single.c3p file representing your entire project. Then you can share that file using other tools and services, such as by attaching it to an email, or uploading it to a storage service. If you want to share your Construct 3 project itself, shared folders that you have access to also appear in Cloud Save when using Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive. This can be useful for conveniently sharing your project files. For example in a classroom, all the students could save their work to a shared folder that the teacher has access to. Then the teacher has an easy way to access all the student's work. All cloud save services also provide their own sharing options via their websites, e.g. for sharing a file on your account with someone else. For education accounts, there is also a Share with admin option that appears in the Project menu. This only appears for two kinds of accounts: When using access codes When using an account created for a seat as part of an education subscription In both cases, choosing Share with admin will upload the project to a server operated by Scirra. It will then be made available to the administrator who created the access code or seat account. The administrator can find it by visiting the Your subscriptions section of their account, and clicking the N shared projects link next to the relevant education subscription (e.g. 10 shared projects if ten projects had been uploaded this way). This approach is pseudonymous - only the access code or account username, plus the student-entered filename, are provided. Further the project files are automatically deleted after a couple of days. Therefore no information is permanently stored when Revision 483 Page 22/1802 using this option. Revision 483 Page 23/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct- 3/overview/collaborating-projects Currently Construct does not support any real-time online collaboration, due to the extreme technical complexity of the feature. However you can use existing source control tools like Git and SVN to manage collaborative changes by a team working on the same project. Source control tools were designed for programmers, but they work well with Construct as well. Make sure you use a folder-based project (see Saving projects) in a browser that supports it, e.g. Chrome. This saves your project as a series of individual files within a folder. Then when you make changes, these will appear in source control tools as a series of smaller changes to individual files. Construct's main project data files are in the text-based JSON format, which works well for identifying and merging changes. Each team member can then submit their changes, and these will all be merged in to a single folder-based project. If team members submit contradictory changes, these tools also provide options to resolve the conflict. When using source control, be sure to configure the tool to ignore.uistate.json files. These are only used to restore the user interface (UI) state for individual team members, and aren't meant to be shared. These files are also optional and can be deleted at any time (although Construct's user interface will revert to defaults in places). Leaving these files out of source control will make sure each team member's user interface remains as they prefer, and avoids having to submit unnecessary changes. It's also advisable to change the UID numbering project property to Random when collaborating on projects. This changes UIDs assigned in the editor from incrementing (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4...) to random (e.g. 582953, 295630...). This helps avoid potential problems that may arise when two people working on the same project create two different instances which each get assigned the same UID. Web services like GitHub also exist to simplify setting up and running source control, and these too can be used with Construct folder projects. For a guide on how to set up working on a Construct project on GitHub, see the tutorial How to collaborate on Construct projects with GitHub. Revision 483 Page 24/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct-3/overview/testing- projects To test your project during development, you can preview it by clicking the "play" icon in the main toolbar, by selecting Menu►Project►Preview, by right-clicking a layout in the Project Bar and selecting Preview, or by pressing F5. This will start your game from the current layout. By default, starting a preview opens a popup window. You may see a message that the popup was blocked. Clicking Try again normally works, but to permanently prevent the message appearing you may need to change your browser's settings. Usually an icon or message will appear somewhere in the browser interface indicating a popup was blocked; clicking this usually provides a way to always allow popups for the current website. In Menu►Settings, you can choose different preview modes. The three options are: Popup window: as described above, opens a popup window to run the project in. Browser tab: opens a new browser tab to run the project in. Dialog: opens a dialog inside the Construct interface to run the project in. This does not use a new browser window so is not subject to popup blockers, and does not include other browser interface items like the address bar. However it cannot appear larger than, or outside of, the Construct window. If you select Preview again with a preview already running, the existing preview window or dialog will restart and begin previewing the latest version of your project. Sometimes it's useful to have multiple simultaneous preview windows open, such as for testing multiplayer games. To open an additional preview window, hold Alt while clicking the preview button, or use the Alt + 4 or Alt + 5 keyboard shortcuts to start an additional preview of the project or layout, respectively. In the main toolbar, there is a dropdown arrow next to the Preview button that shows a menu with more preview options. These can also be found in the Menu►Project submenu, or by right-clicking the project name in the Project Bar. This runs the current layout in a special debug mode. The debugger is a special development tool which helps you inspect the state of the project (such as the value of Revision 483 Page 25/1802 expressions and variables). It also provides diagnostic tools such as advancing the game frame-by-frame, changing values, destroying objects, setting breakpoints in events, and more. This can bring invaluable insight to how your project is working, particularly if you run in to a problem. For more information see the manual section on the Debugger. This starts a preview from the first layout in the project. This is either the first layout that appears in the Project Bar, or whichever layout is set in the First layout project property. Paid plans only This allows you to preview your project on a different device. It is also useful for testing different browsers on the same device. Starting a Remote Preview does not actually directly run your game. It will open a dialog that provides a special URL you can use to load the game, or a QR code to scan. All you need to do is open the URL on another browser or device, or share the URL with someone else, or scan the QR code, and the project will start to load and run in the browser. The project is loaded directly from your device using a peer-to-peer connection; it is not uploaded anywhere else, but is still accessible from anywhere on the Internet. The game is no longer available from the provided URL as soon as you close the Remote Preview dialog. You can open the Remote Preview dialog to its own window to help keep it out of the way, by right-clicking on its caption and selecting Open to popup window. Once the project starts running, they appear in the Remote Preview dialog as a connected client. You can have multiple copies of the project running simultaneously. You can view some basic system details and real-time performance information for connected clients, including their browser & OS, which layout they are on, the framerate and approximate CPU usage (and approximate GPU usage if available), and their graphics hardware. You can also click Request video to see a video stream of Revision 483 Page 26/1802 what that client can see. There is also a dropdown to choose a different first layout in case you want to test a specific layout with Remote Preview. Like with a normal preview, you can update a remote preview by selecting the Remote preview option again. This updates the version of the project available at the same URL. Existing clients will be notified of an update and will see the update if they manually reload. Alternatively clicking the Reload all button will force all clients to reload. Clients who are viewing your project via Remote Preview will see notifications in the following situations: When the host updates the project, clients will see a notification indicating an update is available. They must reload their browser to load the new version. When the host closes the Remote Preview dialog, the remote preview ends. Clients will see a notification that the host disconnected. Clients can continue to run the project (they are not cut off), but if they reload the project will no longer be available. When the host starts or stops video the client will be notified. Remote Preview allows you to instantly share your project to anyone in the world with an Internet connection. This is particularly useful if you have remote testers or reviewers. On the other hand you can use the remote preview URL on the same device for cross-browser testing, such as using Remote Preview to test your project in Firefox while Construct runs in Chrome. In this case data is not sent over the Internet and is only transferred across the local system. Similarly if you Remote Preview to a device on the same local area network (LAN), such as a mobile device, most browsers will try to establish a local connection for data transfer ensuring the project can load at a much faster LAN speed rather than transferring via the Internet. Revision 483 Page 27/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct-3/overview/publishing- projects To publish a project, use the Menu►Project►Export option. Construct allows you to export to a range of platforms, such as the web (HTML5), Android and iOS (via Cordova), and desktop apps (via Windows/macOS wrappers or NW.js). Each platform has an accompanying tutorial to guide you through how the exporter works and covering any exporter-specific settings. Note in some cases fees may be involved, such as for developer subscriptions to allow uploading to app stores, or for hosting web content if you don't already have a server. Every kind of export has the following common settings: Deduplicate images will search the entire project for identical images and remove the duplicates. This helps save memory and reduce the download size by removing redundant images. Lossless format lets you choose what format to export images in your project set to use lossless quality (i.e. perfect). Lossy format lets you choose what format to export images in your project set to use lossy quality (i.e. allowing some reduction in quality in order to allow a greater reduction in the file size). Optimize images will optimize all the lossless images in the project with enhanced compression. This spends longer trying to compress images to an even smaller size. This can make exporting take longer but sometimes significantly reduces the download size of the exported project. This process is lossless, so is guaranteed to preserve the quality of all your artwork. Minify script will obfuscate and compress the main JavaScript file for your exported project. This also helps reduce the download size, improves load time, and makes it significantly more difficult to reverse-engineer the project. Normally Advanced mode is safe to use, but if you use the scripting feature you may want to switch to Simple mode or adjust how you write your code - see Exporting with Advanced minification in the scripting section for more details. Minifying script uses a cloud service, so you must be connected to the Internet for it to work. Debug advanced mode is only intended for diagnosing possible problems with Advanced mode - don't use it when publishing your finished project. Each option helps optimise the exported project, but can make the export take longer. It is recommended to enable deduplication, image optimization and script minification Revision 483 Page 28/1802 when exporting the final finished project for publishing. However if you are simply doing a trial export, you may wish to disable them to speed up the process. Web-based export options also have a checkbox to enable Offline support. This is enabled by default and allows all exported projects to continue to work offline after the first time they are loaded (see Offline games in Construct for more details). However this can sometimes interfere with testing if you are regularly updating a web-hosted project, so it can be disabled, but it is recommended to leave it enabled when publishing for release. Most export options will prompt you for additional settings specific to that exporter. For example the Android exporter has a setting for the minimum supported Android version. When the export finishes, you will be provided with a link to download a zip file containing the final exported project. You can also view some statistics about the export, such as how much download size was saved by image optimization (if it was enabled). The Export Manager can also be used to find the last few exported projects and download them again. The publishing process is different depending on the chosen export option. The Tutorials section has guides to help you export to each platform. Here are some to get you started: Publishing to the web Publishing to the Scirra Arcade How to publish mobile apps Exporting to Windows Exporting to macOS Revision 483 Page 29/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct-3/interface/main-menu Click the Menu button next to the main toolbar to access the main menu. Note the exact options which appear in the menu depend on whether you have a project open, and whether you are logged in. The menu structure, as a guest with a project open (which shows most options), is as follows: Project Save: save the current project to its last saved location. If it has not been saved before, this will use the Default save location in Settings. Save As (see Saving projects for more information) Cloud save: save to a cloud storage service. Save as single file (where supported by the browser): save to a local.c3p file representing the entire project. Save as project folder (where supported by the browser): save as multiple files in a local folder, which is more suitable for large projects. Save to local browser (where file/folder options are not supported): save to the browser's storage on the device. Download a copy: save a copy of the current project by downloading a file. Preview: run a preview of the current layout. Remote Preview: start a Remote Preview of the current project. See Testing projects. Debug: run a preview of the current layout with the debugger. Export: export the current project for publishing. See Publishing projects. Revision 483 Page 30/1802 Close project: close the current project, prompting to save if there are any changes. New: create a new empty project. Open: open a previously saved project from the cloud, local browser, or a local file. See Saving & sharing projects. Guided tours: these are a series of interactive, step-by-step tutorials shown within the editor itself. They're a great way to learn about the basics of Construct. View Bars: in this submenu, you can hide and show any of the bars visible in the interface. If a bar is missing, use this menu to bring it back. Start page: show or hide the Start Page. Addon manager: open the Addon Manager to view and manage addons. See Installing third-party addons. Export manager: open the Export Manager dialog, which lists the last few exports and allows you to download them again. Account (see Using an account) Register...: register a new account to use with Construct. Log in: log in to an existing account. Enter access code: enter an access code to allow temporary use of the full version of Construct. This is typically used by educational institutions only. View details: open a dialog displaying more information about the current account. Get addons: visit the Addon exchange on the Construct website where you can find new plugins, behaviors, effects and themes for Construct. Asset Store: visit the Asset Store on the Construct website to find art assets, sounds/music, templates, other software and much more. Settings: customise Construct's settings to work the way you prefer. See Settings for more information. Help: opens this manual. About: open a dialog displaying information about this version of Construct, as well as credits, storage information and diagnostic details. Revision 483 Page 31/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct-3/interface/main- toolbar The main toolbar provides quick access to a few of the most commonly-used options in Construct. It appears next to the main menu button. The main toolbar The main toolbar has the following buttons: Save: save the current project to its last saved location. If the project has not been saved yet, this defaults to Cloud Save. For more information see Saving & sharing projects. Undo and Redo: undo the last performed action in the editor. After pressing undo, you can then redo the action again. Click the dropdown arrow next to the button to see a list of the undo or redo actions. Selecting an item from the list will undo or redo all the actions up to the chosen item. Preview: run a preview of the current layout. By default this opens a popup window; you may be prompted to allow popups. Click the dropdown arrow next to the button to see a list of other kinds of preview. For more information see Testing projects. The dropdown arrow menu also allows changing the function of the button to one of the other options, such as Debug layout. Revision 483 Page 32/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct-3/interface/bars In Construct, many features appear in Bars. These are the panes that appear at the sides of the window by default. Note that bars work differently on mobile devices. See Construct on mobile for more information. Bars can be rearranged in the interface to suit your tastes. Drag-and-drop a bar by its caption to move it. They can be left "floating" (appearing on their own anywhere in the Construct window), or "docked" to a side of the window, or with another bar. When you are dragging a bar, indicators will appear on screen as you move it around, showing where you can dock it. Move the mouse over one of the indicators and release the mouse button to dock the bar at that location. You can dock bars over other bars, which creates a split view, or directly on top to create a tabbed view of multiple bars. You can reset the layout of the bars by clicking the Reset bars & dialogs button in Settings and then reloading Construct. You can open bars in to a separate window and use them outside of the main window. This is especially useful on multi-monitor displays, allowing you to move editors to other monitors. To open a popup window, undock a bar so that it is floating. Then right-click in the bar's caption at the top, and select Open to popup window. When you close the popup window, the bar will automatically re-appear as floating in the main window. Revision 483 Page 33/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct- 3/interface/bars/project-bar The Project Bar shows an overview of everything in your project. See Project Structure for a summary of the different elements that make up a project, or the manual section on Project Primitives for more detail. The Project Bar If something in the project has changed, it is displayed in italics. When you save the project, everything reverts to normal text, indicating nothing has changed since the last save. To view the project properties, select the project item. This is the item at the top of the Project Bar with the name of the project. When you select it, the Properties Bar displays properties affecting the whole project. You can also right-click the project item to show a list of options, particularly the Tools submenu. The Project Bar can be used to arrange your project in to subfolders Paid plans only. Subfolders can be added by right-clicking a folder and selecting Add subfolder. Then, you can drag and drop folders and items to organise them in to folders. You can hold Control or Shift to select multiple items and drag them in to a folder at the same time. However you can only organise items in to folders of the same type, e.g. you can't drag an event sheet in to a layout folder. Right-click any item in the Project Bar to show a list of options. Most items can be renamed and deleted. Right-clicking a folder also has the option to add a new item to that folder, such as a new layout or event sheet. Objects are more commonly added in the Layout View, but you can still add them from the Project Bar too. Revision 483 Page 34/1802 Deleting from the Layout View will not remove an object from the project completely. The only way to fully remove an entire object type from the project is to delete it from the Project Bar. To search the Project Bar, simply type in the search field at the top of the bar. The contents of the Project Bar will filter down to matching items as you type, helping you quickly find things in your project. Once you're done simply press Escape to clear the search and revert to the normal view of the Project Bar. Right-click either the Sound or Music folders and select Import sounds or Import music to open the Import Audio dialog. This allows you to pick audio files from your computer and import them to the project. Construct will convert them to the necessary format to support all browsers. To play back audio in your game, make sure you add the Audio object to the project. For more information see Sounds & Music. You can import additional external files to the project, including web fonts. These can be categorised in to Videos, Fonts, Icons or the general-purpose Files folder. For more information, see Project Files and Icons & splash. From the Project Bar, you can preview several kinds of files added to the project. Audio and video files can be played back. Web fonts can be previewed with a dialog showing some text using the font. SVG files can also be previewed. Other kinds of file can be viewed and edited using the file editors Paid plans only. Revision 483 Page 35/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct- 3/interface/bars/properties-bar The Properties Bar is an essential of the interface. It displays a list of all the settings you can change on whatever is selected. The picture below shows the Properties Bar displaying a project's properties. The Properties Bar There are too many properties in Construct to list here. Instead, properties for different parts of the project are documented in the relevant manual section. For example, layout properties are described in the manual entry Layouts. Properties are organised in to categories which can be expanded and collapsed. There are many kinds of properties, including number fields, text fields, dropdown lists and clickable links. The property name appears in the left column, and the editable value appears in the right column. Whenever something in the project is clicked or selected, its properties display in the Properties Bar. For example, selecting objects in the Layout View or clicking items in the Project Bar shows the relevant properties in the Properties Bar. Some of the most important parts of the project with properties that you'll regularly modify are: Projects Layouts Layers Object instances Many plugins, behaviors and effects have their own properties as well. See the Revision 483 Page 36/1802 Reference section of the manual for information on those. There is also a Help link displayed at the end of every property list. Click that to open the relevant manual section for those properties. All properties also have a description which provide additional information about what the property is used for. This is displayed in a panel at the bottom of the Properties Bar. It is worth keeping an eye on this since it can contain useful hints and tips. An example is shown below. In number values, you can type calculations like 1920 / 2 and press enter to set the value to the result of the calculation (960). The syntax used is the same as expressions used in events. You can also use some basic system expressions like sqrt(64). Number values can also be smoothly dragged with instant feedback in the Layout View. This is useful to try out a range of values and easily see which is best. To do this, click and drag vertically inside the number value cell. You can also hold Control or Shift while dragging to increase or decrease the rate of change. If you have trouble getting this to work, try first clicking inside the cell (which should select the text in the cell), and then click on the selected text and drag vertically. Revision 483 Page 37/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct-3/interface/bars/layers- bar The Layers Bar is used to add, edit and remove layers in a layout. A layer is like a sheet of glass objects are painted on to. This allows easy arrangement of which objects display in front of other objects, for example showing foreground objects in front of the background sprites. It also allows for interesting depth effects like Z elevation or parallax, and layers can be individually scaled and rotated as well. Layers can be dragged and dropped in the Layers Bar to change their order. Layers at the bottom of the list are displayed at the back (e.g. background objects), and layers at the top of the list are displayed at the front (e.g. HUD objects). Selecting a layer displays its properties in the Properties Bar and also sets it as the active layer which new objects are inserted in to. The Layers Bar Each layer in the list has the following: A checkbox to toggle whether the layer is visible in the editor (this does not affect the game when previewing or exporting) A padlock icon. Clicking this toggles the layer's locked status. If a layer is locked, objects on that layer cannot be selected in the editor. This is useful to prevent accidental selections on rarely-used layers like backgrounds. An optional globe icon to denote global layers. An optional tag icon to denote HTML layers. A number to the right. This is a zero based index of the layer (the first layer is number 0, not 1). If you need to enter a layer number in the event system, this is the corresponding number. You can also enter layer names in the event system, which is often more convenient since unlike the numbers, the names don't change if you reorder layers. Revision 483 Page 38/1802 You can right click a layer to see a menu of additional options, such as to add a new layer, rename or delete layers, or shortcuts to show, hide, lock or unlock all layers (or all but the selected one). Layers which are showing content from a global layer will show a context menu option to go to the layout where the original global layer is in. Layers can also be added as sub-layers of another layer. They can be added as sub- layers or moved to be sub-layers via drag-and-drop. Sub-layers appear indented in the Layers Bar to show they come under another layer, and the layer they belong to can be expanded or collapsed to show or hide all its sub-layers. Sub-layers can be used solely to help organize long layer lists, acting like layer folders. However applying an effect to a layer will also affect all its sub-layers. This allows for more efficiently processing effects (instead of having to add the same effect repeatedly to several layers), as well as more advanced effect composition across different groups of layers. To modify the Z order (front-to-back order) of individual objects on a layer, use the Z Order Bar Paid plans only. Revision 483 Page 39/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct- 3/interface/bars/tilemap-bar The Tilemap Bar allows editing tilemaps in the Tilemap object from the Layout View. It provides a toolbar with various tools and options, and a view of the current tileset image. The Tilemap Bar To add a tilemap and start editing it, follow these steps: 1 Add a Tilemap object to the layout and make sure it is selected 2 Choose the Pencil or Rectangle tool from the Tilemap bar's toolbar 3 Select a tile in the tileset showing in the Tilemap bar 4 Click inside the Tilemap object to start drawing the selected tile You can hold shift and right-click a tile in the Layout View to pick that tile to draw with. You can also hold shift and drag the right mouse button over a range of tiles to select that range of tiles as a patch you can stamp out. To stop editing the tilemap's tiles and return to normal layout editing, click the mouse cursor on the Tilemap bar's toolbar to restore normal layout view selection. This also allows you to move and resize the entire tilemap object. If you have multiple tilemap objects, only the selected tilemap is edited. It is often useful to layer tilemap objects directly on top of each other, in which case the tilemap to edit can be most easily selected using the Z Order Bar Paid plans only or hiding/locking layers with the Layers Bar. If you are dealing with small tiles, you can also zoom the tileset image using the toolbar buttons. You can also access some of these options via a menu when right-clicking inside the Tilemap Bar. There are a range of keyboard shortcuts that can be used when editing tilemaps. For Revision 483 Page 40/1802 more information, see the manual entry on Keyboard shortcuts. If the bar is not visible anywhere in the UI, it can be opened by doing either of these: 1 In the main menu button make sure the View►Bars►Tilemap Bar option is ticked 2 Right-click on a tilemap instance in the Layout View and choose the option Tilemap►Open Tilemap bar... The Tilemap Bar's toolbar has the following options: Normal layout view selection: stop editing tiles and select the Tilemap object like any other object. Pencil tile tool: draw tiles with the mouse. You can also select an area of tiles by dragging across several tiles in the displayed tileset, and then use this tool to stamp that region of tiles in to the tilemap. You can also hold shift and right-click to drag an area over the Tilemap object to select a region of tiles to copy, or use the selection tool to do the same. Erase tile tool: erase tiles from the tilemap so they appear as transparent space. Larger areas can be erased by selecting a larger area of tiles in the tileset. A shortcut for erasing single tiles is to right-click while another tool is selected. Rectangle tile tool: draw a rectangular area of tiles by clicking and dragging in the Tilemap object. You can also select a 3x3 area of tiles in the displayed tileset, and the tool will automatically nine-patch the tiles. This also works for drawing single rows or columns with smaller selections such as 1x3 or 3x1, where the first and last tile are the first and last in the selection, and the rest are the middle tile repeated. Fill tool: much like using a fill tool in an image editor, this allows filling a continuous area with a new kind of tile. If multiple tiles are selected in the tileset, they are repeated over the fill area. Select tool: click and drag to select a range of tiles to use in the Tilemap object. Then switch to another tool to use that selection. For example switching to the Pencil tool allows you to stamp out copies of the selected range. A shortcut for this is to hold shift and right click and drag an area while the Pencil tool is selected. The individual tiles in the selection will be highlighted in the Tilemap bar Auto tile tool: this tool uses predefined brushes to automatically place the correct tile as you draw. Just pick the brush from the dropdown menu next to the tool's button and start using it. The brushes that are created by default are configured to work properly with the default tileset image. To create or modify brushes for use with different tilesets use the Tilemap Brush Editor. Mirror: when using the Pencil tool, tiles will be placed flipped horizontally. This can also apply to an entire patch of tiles. Flip: when using the Pencil tool, tiles will be placed flipped vertically. This can also apply to an entire patch of tiles. Revision 483 Page 41/1802 Rotate anti-clockwise: when using the Pencil tool, tiles will be rotated 90° anti- clockwise. This can also apply to an entire patch of tiles. Click repeatedly to keep rotating tiles another 90°. Rotate clockwise: when using the Pencil tool, tiles will be rotated 90° clockwise. This can also apply to an entire patch of tiles. Click repeatedly to keep rotating tiles another 90°. Reset transformation: restores tiles to no mirror, no flip and no rotation. Zoom in, Zoom out, Reset zoom: adjust the zoom of the source tileset image displayed in the Tilemap Bar. This is useful if you are dealing with particularly small tiles. Save to TMX: export a zip with the current tileset image and the current tiles as a.tmx file (as used by the Tiled editor). Note that Construct does not support all of Tiled's features, so importing then exporting a TMX may lose some data, such as terrain definitions. Also since in Construct a Tilemap object represents a single layer of tiles, the exported TMX file will also only ever have one layer. Load TMX: import a.tmx tilemap as used by Tiled. All the tiles in the object are replaced with tile data from the TMX file. In Construct a Tilemap object represents a single layer of tiles, so if the TMX file has multiple layers you will be asked which layer to import. To import all layers, create a different tilemap object for each layer and import them separately. The tileset image can also be replaced by choosing a new image file. Note you can also drag-and-drop individual.tmx files, image files, and.zip files of both, in to the Tilemap Bar. This opens the load TMX dialog with all relevant fields already filled in, so you only need to press OK. Each tile can have an individual collision polygon which is used when testing for collisions with the tilemap object. To edit a tile's collision polygon, double-click the tile in the Tilemap Bar. The Animations Editor will open to edit that tile. You can use the collision polygon tool to edit the tile's collision polygon. While the tool is active, you can also right-click and choose Toggle collision polygon to disable collisions for that tile entirely, such as if it is for decorative purposes only. You can also use the image editing features of the Animations Editor to alter the image of the tile. When hovering the mouse over a tile in the Tilemap Bar, its collision polygon is shown as an outline, if it has one. This helps you to quickly review the collision polygon set for each tile. There are four context menu options to toggle the state of multiple collision polygons at the same time, they are the following: Enable selected tile collisions: enable the collision polygon of all the tiles highlighted Revision 483 Page 42/1802 in the Tilemap bar. Disable selected tile collisions: disable the collision polygon of all the tiles highlighted in the Tilemap bar. Enable all tile collisions: enable all the collision polygons of the tilemap. Disable all tile collisions: disable all the collision polygons of the tilemap. Using the Select tool will highlight the individual tiles in the Tilemap Bar, so it is easy to toggle the collision polygon state of a group of related tiles after making a selection in the tilemap instance. For more information on how to use tilemaps, see the manual entry on the Tilemap object. Revision 483 Page 43/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct- 3/interface/bars/tilemap-bar/tilemap-brush-editor This editor is used to create, edit and delete auto-tiling brushes for use with the Tilemap Bar. Currently there are two types of brushes supported and they both work with the auto tiling tool: a 16 tile brush and a 47 tile brush. One of each of these brushes is created by default with each instance of the Tilemap plugin. The default brushes are setup to work correctly with the default tilemap image. Here is a short summary on how to create, edit and use an auto tiling brush. Click the Edit brushes option from the dropdown menu of the auto tiling tool button in the Tilemap Bar toolbar. Click the Add option from the editor's toolbar. Revision 483 Page 44/1802 If you don't need to create a new brush, one of the existing ones can be picked from the first dropdown in the editor's toolbar. In order to properly set up an auto tiling brush, you will need to choose which tiles of the tileset will go in each position of the template. To do that, click on the tile you want to change in the template (left pane). If this is a new brush it's best to start with the top left tile. After clicking the template tile, it will become highlighted. Then choose the tile from the tileset (right pane) that will go in that position. After doing that, the selected tile will be assigned to that position and the next tile in the template will be highlighted. From here, all that needs to be done is to repeat the process until all the tiles in the template have a value assigned to them. After you are done you can use the "Toggle tiles" button in the toolbar to quickly review what tiles have been assigned to each position of the template. Toogle tiles button Neutral Template Tiles Assigned Template Tiles Click the brush you want to use from the dropdown menu of the auto tiling tool button in the Tilemap Bar toolbar. Revision 483 Page 45/1802 Make sure the auto tiling tool is activated (by clicking the main part of the button) and start drawing on the tilemap instance as you would with any other tilemap tool. This dialog is separated into 5 different panes which are described below. Template: located in the top left, this pane shows the template of the brush being edited. Its purpose is to select the tile of the template to be modified. Clicking on a template tile will update the Current tile, Assigned tiles and Tile properties panes. The template shown will change depending on the type of the current brush.. Tileset: located in the top right, this pane shows the tiles being used by the tilemap object type. Its purpose is to select tiles to assign to the currently selected template tile. Just selecting a tile from here will assign it to the current template tile and move to the next. If you bring up the context menu of a tile (e.g. by right-clicking), it is possible to assign multiple tiles to the same template tile. The use of this feature is discussed later. Current tile: located in the bottom left, this pane shows the current template tile. It is only a visual aid and serves no other purpose. Assigned tiles: located in between the Current tile and Tile properties panes, this pane shows all the tiles assigned to a template tile. Selecting a tile from the list will update the Tile properties panes with the appropriate values. From this pane it is possible to remove an assigned tile using a context menu option. Tile properties: located in the bottom right, this pane shows the properties of the currently selected tile in the Assigned tiles pane. Tile properties are the following: Probability: in the case there is more than one tile assigned to a template position, the auto tiling tool will pick one of the available tiles at random. This value dictates the probability of a tile being picked over the others. Revision 483 Page 46/1802 From left to right these are all the tools in the main toolbar. Brush: dropdown to select a brush to edit from the existing ones. Options: the button next to the brush dropdown, has three basic options to manage brushes: Add, Rename and Delete. Type: change the type of the current brush. Currently two types are supported: Auto 16 and Auto 47. Changing this setting will update the contents of the Template pane. Tiles toggle: this is a visual aid to quickly see the first tile assigned to each template tile. If a template tile has nothing assigned, the toggle will make no changes. Background toggle: change the background color of the Template and Tileset panes between a light and dark color. Zoom in: zoom in the Template and Tileset panes. Zoom out: zoom out the Template and Tileset panes. Zoom reset: reset the zoom of the Template and Tileset panes. Template pane Zoom in Zoom out Zoom reset Help Tileset pane Add tile: Add an additional tile to be used in a template position in addition to the first one. Multiple tiles might be added and will be visible in the Assigned tiles pane Zoom in Zoom out Zoom reset Help Assigned tiles pane Remove Tile: Remove the selected tile from the list of tiles available to the corresponding template tile. Help Revision 483 Page 47/1802 As mentioned earlier, it is possible to assign multiple tiles to a template position. The result of this is that for the positions where multiple tiles have been chosen, the auto tiling tool will pick one of them at random when needed. This is useful to create more varied tilemap layouts without having to manually edit tiles one at a time. The following image shows how would you add an additional tile to the selected template position. Next you can see how the editor would look like after adding multiple tiles to the same template position. Using the Probability property of each tile, found in the Tile properties pane, it is possible to adjust which of the tiles is more or less likely to be chosen by the tool. Keep in mind that all tiles with the same probability value will have the same chance of being chosen. For example, two tiles with 100% probability results in each tile having 50% chance of being chosen when using the auto tiling tool. Revision 483 Page 48/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct-3/interface/bars/z- order-bar Paid plans only The Z Order Bar allows precise control over which objects appear in front of others. Although Construct is a 2D engine, the term Z order is used to refer to the display order of each individual object. The Z Order Bar To open the Z Order Bar, either right click in the Layout View and select Z Order►Open Z Order bar..., or tick the check at Menu►View►Bars►Z Order. Instances are listed in the Z Order bar in front-to-back order, i.e. instances at the top of the list appear at the front, and instances at the bottom of the list appear at the back. Instances are grouped by the layer they belong to. If no objects are selected, the Z Order Bar displays all instances in the layout. If some instances are selected in the Layout View, the list is filtered down to only those instances and any other instances overlapping them. This makes it convenient to see the relative Z order of a small area without having to take in to account the rest of the layout. With lots of the same instances in the list, it can sometimes be difficult to tell precisely where a particular instance occurs in the list. To help identify each instance, its UID (unique identifier) appears after its name, e.g. Player 41 (meaning a Player instance with UID 41). Instances in the list which were selected in the Layout View are also selected in the Z Order bar. Selecting instances from the Z Order Bar itself will also select objects in the Layout View and show their properties, but will not affect the filtering of the list. Sprite objects which have a different initial image set by changing the Initial frame or Revision 483 Page 49/1802 Initial animation properties also display an icon for that initial image in the Z Order list. Instances can be double-clicked to make them flash briefly in the Layout View. Alternatively an instance can be right-clicked and then Flash this instance selected. This helps visually identify the instance in the layout. The context menu also has the option Scroll selection into view, which will make the Layout View change it's scrolling to show all the selected instances. To move an object in the Z Order - adjusting which other objects it appears in front or behind - drag and drop it in the list. You can also move objects to other layers this way. You can also select multiple objects by holding Control or Shift and drag them all as a block to another layer or location in the Z Order. When doing this, the relative order of the selection is also preserved. If you want to add, remove or reorder layers themselves, use the Layers Bar instead. You can right-click the Z Order Bar and select Show active layer only. This further filters down the list to only display objects on the current active layer (the selected layer in the Layers Bar), which can be useful when working with a single layer. Revision 483 Page 50/1802 View online: https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct- 3/interface/bars/timeline-bar The Timeline Bar shows the currently active timeline. Through this control you can add and remove instances and other types of tracks to a timeline, and edit its properties. Here's a summary of how to use the Timeline Bar. A project can have multiple timelines, each timeline can have multiple instances, and each instance can have multiple property tracks. Tracks then use keyframes to mark points in a timeline. Timelines can also have nested timelines to produce more complex structures. Other types of tracks that do not directly reference instances are supported, those are not covered in this quick start guide. With the Timeline Bar open, you can create a timeline with any of the following methods: Right-click Timelines folder in the Project Bar and select Add timeline Right-click in the Layout View and select Timeline►Add timeline Project Bar context menu Layout View context menu Revision 483 Page 51/1802 Once you have a timeline, add an instance to it with any of these methods: Use the add + button in the toolbar to bring up a dialog from which to choose instances to add Drag & drop instances from the Layout View into the bar Right click selected instances in the Layout View and select Timeline►Add to timeline Use the Track►Add instances option in the + split button Add instances split button Layout View context menu Adding an instance adds property tracks for the position (X and Y co-ordinates). The next step is to add some keyframes, which you can do by following these steps: 1 Turn on Edit Mode by pressing the pencil button in the toolbar 2 Move the current time marker to the position in the timeline where you want to create keyframes. This can be done by either clicking on the time ruler or by dragging the red line marker. 3 Make changes to the instances you want to animate 4 Use the Set keyframes toolbar button, the S keyboard shortcut or right click in the Layout View and select Timeline►Set keyframes Edit mode button Set keyframes button Current Time Following those steps you should be able to setup the most basic timeline. Revision 483 Page 52/1802 The timeline can be previewed in the editor by pressing the Play button in the toolbar or by scrubbing the current time marker (press and hold Ctrl or Cmd while scrubbing to move the marker without previewing the timeline). Playback Controls You can control the timeline in your events using the Timeline Controller plugin. Timeline Controller Plugin Timeline Events Revision 483 Page 53/1802 When edit mode is turned on with the edit toolbar button, the selection boxes in the Layout View change color and the properties which can be animated with the timeline are highlighted in the Properties Bar. The highlighting only happens for instances which are part of the current timeline. Properties which are not highlighted in edit mode cannot be animated with a timeline. After finishing editing a timeline remember to turn the mode off as changes made in this mode are only relevant to the active timeline, rather than the whole project. Highlighted Properties Highlighted Selection To update keyframes, place the current time marker on top of the keyframes you want to update, make the necessary changes, and set the keyframe again, either by the toolbar button, keyboard shortcut or by the Layout View menu option. Right-click master keyframes to update all the corresponding property keyframes with the current instance values. Right-click property keyframes to individually update them with the current instance values. Additionally, the X and Y properties of any instance can also be updated directly from the Layout View by dragging the handles for the keyframe. There are various places in which it is possible to use a drag and drop workflow when using the Timeline Bar. To add new instances directly to the timeline from the current active layout. Drag the Revision 483 Page 54/1802 instances from the Layout View and drop them on a Timeline. To sort the different elements of the timeline that are represented by a row, such as a track. To add a nested timeline in the current timeline by dragging it from the Project bar. To update the starting offset of a nested timeline. To update the position of master keyframes and property keyframes. Notes on dragging keyframes: Dragging a master keyframe updates it's position and the position of all related property keyframes. Dragging a property keyframe by itself creates a new one at the new position, along with a corresponding master keyframe. Since property keyframes do not exist by themselves there is no notion of just moving them by themselves. The only way to move a property keyframe is to move the corresponding master. Holding Shift while dragging a master keyframe will duplicate them and all related property keyframes in the new position. By toggling auto keyframes, keyframes will be added to the timeline at the position of the current time marker, as soon as changes are made in either the Properties bar or the Layout view. It is possible to animate the current frame of a Sprite plugin instance by animating it's initial frame property. When animating in this way make sure that the Sprite's normal animation is stopped as it would interfere with the changes made by a timeline. Likewise if you are just using a Sprite's regular animations, playing a timeline that changes the initial frame will cause un-expected results. The two methods of animation can not coexist, you have to choose one over the other. It is also possible to change the current animation a Sprite plugin instance will show at runtime by animating the initial animation property. For more details on a timeline's capabilities, properties and related objects see the Revision 483 Page 55/1802 Project Primitives section on timelines. See the Timeline Controller plugin manual entry for more information on the actions, conditions and expressions available for controlling timelines. The Timeline Bar has various keyboard shortcuts which are listed in the manual

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