Suggestion for a rule

mshuraih

Hey GS team .. any chance you may consider adding a rule to destroy actors that works the same way when spawning them .( like you have drop down menu to chose which actor to kill ) this way we can use rules to destroy actors rather than going into each individual actor to add destroy when attribute is change. thats just a suggestion it might be too technically difficult to achieve
thanks for all ur work!

gyroscope

Hi, nice idea. I can't see there being much technical difficulty to achieve .... but whether or not the GS team will ever implement it I really can't say...

Still, a suggestion - to get their attention better, contact them directly with your idea...

http://gamesalad.com/support

tatiang

You do realize that your drop-down menu would have to contain every instance of every actor on the scene? So if you had an actor called enemy and had ten copies that had spawned, you'd have "enemy" listed ten times and not know which instance to destroy.

There have been suggestions to allow retrieving or changing of actors' attributes from within another actor (currently, the only way to do this is to unlock one of the actors and access the attributes through the Current Scene in the Attribute Browser), which I think would make coding a lot easier but I'm not sure about your suggestion.

gyroscope

@tatiang said:
You do realize that your drop-down menu would have to contain every instance of every actor on the scene? So if you had an actor called enemy and had ten copies that had spawned, you'd have "enemy" listed ten times and not know which instance to destroy.

There have been suggestions to allow retrieving or changing of actors' attributes from within another actor (currently, the only way to do this is to unlock one of the actors and access the attributes through the Current Scene in the Attribute Browser), which I think would make coding a lot easier but I'm not sure about your suggestion.

Oh of course, Tatian; well thought out.

(Still no coding in GameSalad tho'... )

Armelline

It could work if it was a case of "destroy all instances of this actor". Would be less helpful, but helpful nonetheless. To be honest, though, there are 1,000,000 things I would like to see the GS implement first.

tatiang

Still no coding in GameSalad tho'

Er, @gyroscope, then what to call it?

gyroscope

@tatiang

Hi Tatian,

Well, as one of GameSalad's main selling points is "Drag & Drop, No Code" I call it programming!

It really is "no skin off my nose" that a few people still call it "coding" it just always brings up a Spock moment in me...in a non-arrogant way... "Illogical, Captain" (because it's such a strong selling point for GameSalad that the Creator doesn't involve coding as such, I can't understand why people appear to not support this positive feature for selling it; or seemingly to ignore it...)

mshuraih

tatiang you are right .. when u have multiple copies that rule is not helpful .. but it will not be designed to work for that purpose .. as multiple copies of the same actor they will have their own rule to when to destroy .. i think having this properties will be very useful to kill different actors with simple one rule save lot of time .. like for example when u r making the controllers and the menue buttons ..again its easy to ask for adjustments when not actually involved in the making process .. its just suggestion

tatiang

@gyroscope Okay, then programming. I tend to stay away from that term because when I was studying programming as an undergrad, all we did was coding... oh wait! Hmm. I guess I shouldn't be using coding to describe it then. Programming is accurate, of course, but I think I might prefer something like algorithming or logicing.

gyroscope

@tatiang

All sounding good! Whatever floats your boat, as they say...

Though personally, in future when I read the word "coding" instead of "programming" –with reference to putting together the ready-made "lumps" of code in GSC – from the few who refuse to change, for me it'll always be:

wirelesstkd

I just wish actors could reference each other's attributes without passing it through a gamewide attribute

gyroscope

@wirelesstkd said:
I just wish actors could reference each other's attributes without passing it through a gamewide attribute

For the record for newer users of GSC, you can reference other on-screen actors' attributes if the on-screen actor trying to reference them has been made an instance, i.e is unlocked.

Then in the Attribute Browser, click on Current Scene > layers > Background > the actor you want > its attribute

wirelesstkd

@Gyroscope, I'm not sure what you mean... do you mean in the behaviors tab? Is this just a Mac thing, or a part of the release candidate? I'm using the stable version of Windows and I can't find that...

gyroscope

Hi @wirelesskd I seem to be mentioning a lot lately that I've no experience of Windows GSC so....

If you've an actor on-stage (that you've just dragged out of the Inspector) and go into it's Rules section, is there a lock symbol, which you can press to unlock the prototype, in the Windows version of GSC?

If so, by doing that, this prototype unlocked becomes an instance (of its prototype) and then you're able to access another on-stage actor's attributes as I described above...

tatiang

@gyroscope As an aside, I'm impatiently waiting to get VMWare and Windows 8 so that I can learn how to use Windows Creator to better help people.

gyroscope

@tatiang

Excellent stuff, Tatian. (Personally, I've never owned a PC and I doubt I ever will.... not counting an Atari 1024ST (still got it!) and a Commodore 64 I once owned ... (f.y.i I've been using Mac computers since 1982/3 or possibly '84, can't remember exactly - that was when I was with a graphic design company and had a very far-seeing boss who brought them in - I think we were the only about the 2nd or 3rd company in London at that time to be using computers for DTP then) .

wirelesstkd

Unlocking instances works the same on Windows... I'm not sure what the attribute browser is, though. If that's where the behaviors are to be dragged out, then maybe that's different. Scenes, layers and behaviors are all their own tabs.

tatiang

The Attribute Browser is the drop-down menu that appears when you click on the attribute field (i.e. the first field of a Change Attribute behavior). It lists "Game," "Devices," and the actor's name. If you unlock the actor, then it also lists "Current Scene" which allows you to find other actors' attributes. Here's how it looks on a Mac:

mshuraih

@tatiang said:
The Attribute Browser is the drop-down menu that appears when you click on the attribute field (i.e. the first field of a Change Attribute behavior). It lists "Game," "Devices," and the actor's name. If you unlock the actor, then it also lists "Current Scene" which allows you to find other actors' attributes. Here's how it looks on a Mac:

great hint!