Super Mario World clone, need a lotta help

First of all: I've been using Construct for all of, oh, a day at most. The past week has seen me bouncing between game creators trying to find the perfect one to help me achieve my goal: at the moment, a humble SMW clone.

After a day of toiling away, I've managed to get most of Mario's movements down, but there's a handful of aggravating things I just can't seem to figure out. Hopefully some of you can help me with these.

1. Turning animation. When the real Mario's walking/running in one direction and quickly switches to the next, he does this little turning thing that I can't replicate for the life of me. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, or even how to approach the problem -- I'm simply baffled!

2. Crouching. When the real Mario crouches, he slides for a little bit before coming to a complete stop, and I can't find a way to do that. The only way to keep him from moving seems to be to set horizontal movement to 0, but then he doesn't slide, he just crouches and stops immediately. If I REALLY have to do that, it isn't horrible, but it looks pretty jarring.

3. Varying jump heights. Mario's supposed to be able to cut his jump short if you release the jump button before he reaches his maximum height, but I'm not sure how to get that working. I see it probably has to do with jump sustain and things like that, but even so, I got nothing.

I think that's it... I'd include the .cap file, but I honestly don't know how. Just point me to the right place if you need the file, though. Thanks SO much in advance to anyone willing to help!

EDIT: Here's the file -- http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19702035/mariosonic2.cap

For sharing files, Dropbox is quite popular nowadays

http://db.tt/disf1X1

If you use that link to sign up you'll start with 2.25GB's rather than just 2GB, plus I get an extra 250MB, so it's all good.

But yeah, 2.25GB and no upload limit, that's the way to go, plus once it's installed, all you need to do to share something quick is drag and drop the file into your public dropbox folder, then right click, hit dropbox then copy public link.

EDIT: In other words, it'd be a lot easier to help if I can see what you're doing then direct from there.

Thanks for the link! Here's the file, hopefully it works:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19702035/mariosonic2.cap

Like I said, I'm new to this, so my events aren't well organized at all. It makes sense to me, but sorry in advance if your head starts spinning looking at that big old mess.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16909290/mariosonic2.cap

Basically I just created a new event sheet, and used some of your code in that, and organized it a bit. A few other things that I did was I got rid of your RunLeft/Right variables (I left them there, in case you wanted to compare) and replaced them with the [platform].VectorX command, which is essentially the same (below 0 for left, above 0 for right). The other command I put in for general speed was [platform].speed, for running.

You had a few bits of redundant code that I cleaned up a bit too, no sense having extra commands that do the same thing, but it's cool, you're learning.

for the turning, basically it says if the player's speed is going towards the left or right and the player is holding the opposite direction, it will play the turning animation.

For the duck, you had it right, just say when you are ducking "ignore movement" and on one of your always events throw in the "stop ignoring movement".

For the jumps, basically a sub event in the "when player is jumping" is "when space is not held - set vertical speed to 0". It feels a bit triangular, but I'll let you play around with it so you can get it to feel right.

Hope this helps! If you need me to explain any further, let me know.

Wow, you cleared up almost everything... That's really impressive, thanks! I don't have time to look too closely at it and see what you changed tonight, but I'll definitely make sure to do that tomorrow. I'll get back to you with any further questions. Thanks again.

Alrighty, just about everything you did works out perfectly. There's only one somewhat unrelated thing I wanted to ask you about.

EDIT: Never mind. Got it!

That's great man, hope everything goes well.

<a rel="nofollow" href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16909290/mariosonic2.cap">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16909290/mariosonic2.cap</a>

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Would you mind renewing that link? I've encountered a similar issue with the jumping mechanics and have spent quite awhile trying to get it to work. The link to platform school is dead and this is one of the few things I can't figure out on my own. :P