How do I assemble world bits

I want to add a look of the path in front of the player "assembling" out of small components. The ground coming to meet the players footsteps. And then either falling away behind them or remaining permanent.

I sort of imagine one way would be to create a thing like a spotlight, a radius from the player that triggers the flying in or fading in of the bits. But I have no idea how approach a system like this.

yes you are on the right track...

I would use an invisible sprite object field radius that is pinned to the players pos..

Then detect overlap with ground objects with the 'field' or 'zone' and raise the objects when they are overlapping.

or you could just use

System --> for each (ground Object) or use 'families'

System --> compare two values -->distance (player x,y, ground object x,y) is less than or equal to (your preferred distance)

action --> raise ground object

and of course copy paste all that and invert the events

if you follow me

hope that helps somewhat

happy to look over events if you get stuck