Dynamic Z ordering

Construct needs to have something to sort your sprites by .

So you need to assign an instance variable to your sprites like "ZPosition"

then you have other events that will assign values to the Zposition variables for those sprites based on whatever is determining your z position.

Then at the end you call the Sort Z Order (by instance variable)

ascending descending would be handy but you can just do this yourself easily when calling by multiplying the variable by -1 if you want to swap it around.

I only kinda follow.

...I've created an instance variable for my object in question (GhostHunter).

So far I have a no-condition event line with the two actions:

(1) GhostHunter set instance variable ZOrder to round(Self.Y)

(2) System Sort GhostHunter Z Order by GhostHunter.ZOrder

Similar to the illustrations shared earlier on this thread, my GhostHunter character needs to appear behind other GhostHunters when it is "farther away" from the player (given the top-down/angled behind camera assumption). Thus, any GhostHunter that is lower on the Y-axis needs to appear "behind" other GhostHunter instances.

If using a For Loop is inefficient (and so far ineffective per my efforts), I'm failing to understand how to make the Sort Z Order action useful. What do I do next or change given what I have so far??

Rhindon, it sounds like you have the needed steps, although you'll want to run that sort only every 0.1 seconds, and not on every tick. But is it not working for you?

I only kinda follow.

...I've created an instance variable for my object in question (GhostHunter).

So far I have a no-condition event line with the two actions:

(1) GhostHunter set instance variable ZOrder to round(Self.Y)

(2) System Sort GhostHunter Z Order by GhostHunter.ZOrder

that sounds like it should work the only thing I can think of is maybe you need a "for each" ghost hunter at (1)

So, watching those two ghost hunters in the red test area, I can see them properly sort sometimes, but not always. I wonder if it's related to the pinning and/or the body and hunter being separate sprites.

What I did, that worked, was create a GhostHunter family, to contain the GhostHunter and GhostHunterBody, with a family instance variable for the z order. Sorting on that family instance variable seems to give a reliable visual.

AH! Okie dokey, then. I'll give that a shot and report my findings. Thanks for all your help, both of you!

*sighs* I don't know what's wrong, but even with a family, it's still not working. It occasionally sorts them correctly, but in the end, whichever GhostHunter is on the top of the layer stays on the top... It won't sort to the bottom, or rather below another GhostHunter, when it's at a lower Y-axis value than the others.

Rhindon

HI mate I just had a look. I didnt solve your issue but I did find a way to make your game crash the C3 editor when swapping objects. So I am going to use it to raise a bug. I will try to have a look at the z sorting on the weekend, though it is hard to understand what you are doing with the different ghost bodies.

NetOne - Oh man, bugs always bugging ya. Such is the life of a programmer. Heh.

Sorry for any confusion... I'll try to explain again with more clarity. Bear with me...

As you see, there are multiple instances of the GhostHunter(Body) objects. (GhostHunter is the visual object that the player will see and GhostHunterBody is intended to be the object that does all the moving about and contains (most of) the behaviors, variables, and other stuff.)

Taking into account that the "camera" angle (based on how things are drawn and now the actual camera/ScrollTo behavior), the visuals are that of top-down + slightly behind. Much like how Zelda: A Link To The Past was drawn on the SNES. With that visual angle, objects that are higher up on the Y-axis are technically "behind" or "farther away" (from the player's visual reference) than that of objects lower on the Y-axis. Assuming they're all on the same layer (they should be), objects that are "farther away" need to be drawn on the bottom of the layer or at least below objects that are "closer" to the player.

So when one GhostHunter instance moves down on the Y-axis (closer to the player) they need to be redrawn on the top of the layer when "passing through" other instances of the same GhostHunter object. The current problem most of the time is that it looks as if certain instances on the top of the layer are literally on top of the other instances even though they should be behind them because they're higher up on the Y-axis.

Further, the problem I'm having with the Z-order action line is that I don't know what the assumed sorting process is. Does it sort ascending or descending? I looked into the manual and couldn't find a clear answer. Is there a way to affect the sorting order? I'm guessing that the variable it's calling upon is used to calculate how it should sort or what it should sort, but again, I'm not finding a clear answer.

Thanks for your time to help me work this out, too!

I was not aware of that demo. I'll surely have a look! Thank you for the suggestion.