Understanding Families / Groups before buying

I am very close to making my C2 purchase. I want to ask a few questions about how families work.

I am currently using the same block sprite with different skins I need these blocks to have the same set of behaviors and actions I want to confirm that I can do that with families. Thanks

I really don't want to talk you out of buying it, but you could probably do that by just using animation frames.

Yes.

Basically families are like groups of same objects type (families of sprites, families of text objects etc).

If you create a family for sprite objects (not sure if there's a limit of attached objects) you can then set a variable for your family (not sprite but family itself) and all members of that family will inherit this variables.

For example

Create Family - "my_objects" with family members: sprite1, sprite2, sprite3, sprite4

Set family number variable "health" = 0

this means that every member of family "my_object" will have number variable called "health" = 0.

And here comes the best part. You can set this variable independently for each member and they will keep track of it's own value.

Sprite1.health = 2

Sprite3.health = 4

etc

If you set your actions to something like:

+On left mouse button clicked on "my_objects" - > subtract 1 from "health"

then if you clicked on Sprite1, -1 will be subtracted only from this object.

Same goes with behaviors.

Families, containers and functions are your best friends :D

gazoogle I am talking about having thousands of objects, so I really can't do it with animation frames.

shinkan thats EXACTLY what I was wondering. Appreciate everyones feedback!