GM lite, c_white and 64digits collective knowledge

Posted by Pirate-rob on Aug. 16, 2012, 9:05 a.m.

While programming my game I have come into a problem that I hope will be solved by the collective programming knowledge of 64digits. Or in other words I need help.

Now as you have guessed I have GM lite. Now this isn't so bad but I have finally found a pro function I need to make a game. I need to be able to tint sprites. However all sprite tinting via draw_sprite methods is only available in pro edition. I tried using draw_sprite_ext as it is no a pro edition method and it allows tinting. But you are only allowed to have the variable c_white in the colour argument.

However I have found I can draw shapes of different colours and alphas. However if I just draw a square of slightly transparent colour over my sprite then I will get and overlapping of tinting on other sprites. But if I program a set of coloured shapes that match my sprites shape then I will have to do it for every sprite.

I cannot see any way to fix my problem, so I was wondering if anyone here knew how to?

Comments

Acid 12 years, 4 months ago

Get a crack for GM Pro.

Rolf_Soldaat 12 years, 4 months ago

Or buy it.

Then again he IS called Pirate-rob.

poultry 12 years, 4 months ago

Don't pay for it, crack it. YYG deserves nothing

JuurianChi 12 years, 4 months ago

Using the collective logic I have compiled from the previous comments I have surmised that you should wait for GM:Studio to become…cheaper.

flashback 12 years, 4 months ago

Pick up something like Unity instead? Or Sparrow with FlashDevelop?

death 12 years, 4 months ago

You don't need Pro to do this… seriously it's sad that the only comments point to Pro but as a long time Lite user for many years i worked around these problems all the time.

Also don't get a cracked version, much less stable and can potentially harm your computer. also you won't get updates either. (stay away from those crack sites, they're swarming with viruses)

Anyway onto the point. There are a few ways you can do it and which one you need depends on what you want to do:

- lower the alpha of the sprite, it will blend in with the background. depending on how the background is this can be useful, say if it's all black than it will make the character sprite seem darker, a cheap lighting gimmick.

- change c_white to any other color. to make it darker use c_gray. the default blendmode is tough to use with colors though, so if you use say c_red and your character is made up of all greens and blues, than it will just turn the sprite black. not very helpful. you would need to change the blend mode to ADD red to the sprite. however as you know, you cannot change this in Lite. you can still make use of changing c_white to other colors but to do this, you will need to make a grayscale version of your sprite, that way colors blend much easier into the grays, although keep in mind that they won't be very vibrant in color.

- As you mentioned in your blog, creating separate sprites or overlays would be the most rewarding method but would cost more time and memory.

there are probably even more ways of doing it, i've seen people do some crazy things in Lite, you will just have to think things over much more than usual. try looking around on google or the GMC.

Pirate-rob 12 years, 4 months ago

K thanks Death.

To the rest of you: If I was willing to buy/crack gm I would have done so already.

firestormx 12 years, 4 months ago

Do it man. Just do it. Be cool like the other cool kids.

Astryl 12 years, 4 months ago

Go one step better: Flash development.

But as far as your problem goes… I can't remember if the Lite version of GM allows you to use the draw_set_blend functions, but using those along with some basic rectangular color overlays works quite well.

Just realized I haven't used GM in months, and I'm already forgetting things ^^'

firestormx 12 years, 4 months ago

But Flash is so much more expensive than GM. :(