Hey Wiz kid! Thanks for taking on the world of gamesalad. I was about to switch engines but your post made me want to stay. I was wondering will their be anyway for us to code a little into the game instead of having it all drag and drop with the lua free engine?
@Socks, try not to scare away the new guy or he may not stick around to do awesome things. I've been at GameSalad for over 5 years. If anything, I would have gotten fatter from the sodas.
@Socks, try not to scare away the new guy or he may not stick around to do awesome things. I've been at GameSalad for over 5 years. If anything, I would have gotten fatter from the sodas.
@CodeWizard I have a question for you Mr.Wizard. Would it be possible to make the "Spawn Actor" action able to spawn actors in different layers? It would help out my game sooo much. Thats ahead of time for any reply!
@CodeWizard I have a question for you Mr.Wizard. Would it be possible to make the "Spawn Actor" action able to spawn actors in different layers? It would help out my game sooo much. Thats ahead of time for any reply!
I'm not CodeWizard, but hopefully the answer is still good enough. While theoretically you can spawn an actor in different layers with some code changes, it is not as simple as just adding an attribute selection in the spawn actor behavior. Since scenes have different attributes than other scenes, we have locked off access to scene attributes from prototype actors and thus couldn't accurately let the Spawn Actor behavior specify which layer to spawn to. We would need to do a larger overhaul to the engine to do what you're asking. That would require a larger design to make sure everything would still work without crashing other things. I could possibly think of a solution of referencing a layer by index, with 'current layer' as an option. But you'd also need to make sure if the index is invalid then the behavior gracefully fails to work.
With the current functionality I use one of 2 methods: 1) Your layers are just one layer and you treat top of layer, bottom of layer, in front of actor, and behind actor as "layers". 2) You have the same actor prototype in different layers and depending on which layer you need, you call that actor via game attribute to spawn an actor defined by another game attribute.
@CodeMonkey - While we both know that your two options are not always optimal, I understand why it is difficult to implement this. Thank you for answering. - Thomas
@CodeMonkey Thanks for the answer! I'm just going to spit out another idea that will probably have a good reason for not being implemented, but what about using a change attribute to change the layer? Like this: Inside the scene attributes accessed when double clicking an actor use change attribute: actor.layer to (insert layer name here)
@Utveckla_Games - I'm pretty sure that would have the same exact issues that he described. That's basically what your suggestion would do. (But yes, the feature would be nice) - Thomas
@Utveckla_Games that would probably be a new attribute type needed. Layers don't have unique names so passing in a layer name wouldn't work so easily without breaking someone's project. There's also the case where some layers are scrollable and some are not. That would also affect where actors are drawn when you switch between layers.
Comments
Sounds like you're pretty qualified; GS has made a very nice hire
Chakku
Scripting the engine? I'd say that's a great idea!
- Thomas
See:
http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/55041/gamesalad-pro#latest
Needless to say, it'd be great.
Of course he is qualified. He worked at Microsoft and a few other companies. =D> ^:)^ ^:)^
CodeWizard in 6 months:
- Thomas
"Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time...
a long long time."
Just for you (file attached):
Too much ?
@Photics, you must not have been looking at the same threads I've been commenting on.
@Socks - Yes! That's awesome.
- Thomas
It wasn't the encephalitis that did it, it was the enchiladas.
While theoretically you can spawn an actor in different layers with some code changes, it is not as simple as just adding an attribute selection in the spawn actor behavior.
Since scenes have different attributes than other scenes, we have locked off access to scene attributes from prototype actors and thus couldn't accurately let the Spawn Actor behavior specify which layer to spawn to. We would need to do a larger overhaul to the engine to do what you're asking. That would require a larger design to make sure everything would still work without crashing other things.
I could possibly think of a solution of referencing a layer by index, with 'current layer' as an option. But you'd also need to make sure if the index is invalid then the behavior gracefully fails to work.
With the current functionality I use one of 2 methods:
1) Your layers are just one layer and you treat top of layer, bottom of layer, in front of actor, and behind actor as "layers".
2) You have the same actor prototype in different layers and depending on which layer you need, you call that actor via game attribute to spawn an actor defined by another game attribute.
- Thomas
Inside the scene attributes accessed when double clicking an actor use change attribute: actor.layer to (insert layer name here)
- Thomas
There's also the case where some layers are scrollable and some are not. That would also affect where actors are drawn when you switch between layers.