Hey 99instancs2go! you're and absolute legend mate! this is extremely comprehensive and must have taken a long time to write up so thank you very much for putting the effort in, the construct community always delivers.
While this has some information in here that I still don't quite understand fully just yet, I got so far down and it started to not be applicable to what my specific game framework is, however, i did manage to use this information to achieve my desired effect. Mainly that you can take a global variable and drag it into a condition to convert it to a local variable!
using this local variable (as a substitute for the "this group name" from my OP) I can now repeat my symbol conditions and change only the local variable in each condition and not have to go into each sub event and change their individual conditions. PERFECT!
____if array at position 0,0 = symbol < --- the local variable
____if array at position 1,0 = symbol
____if array at position 2,0 = symbol
So if any of the other newbies out there read this, then that's a quick way to not have to change all your sub events with the same conditions when you copy/paste.
I actually haven't needed to use the rest of the post, just yet. As my code is working as intended just from this local variable.
so I have,
Set [local variable text] to symbol which = "symbol_01"
if array value at 0,0 = symbol <local variable
--then if array value at 1,0 = symbol <local variable
----then if array value at 2,0 = symbol <local variable
-------then system [add coins] only trigger once.
*[add coins] i have another array that stores the win values for each symbol.
then all i do is paste. and change local variable to "symbol_02"
Set [local variable text] to symbol which = "symbol_02"
if array value at 0,0 = symbol <local variable
--then if array value at 1,0 = symbol <local variable
----then if array value at 2,0 = symbol <local variable
-------then system [add coins] only trigger once.
SO long story short you can use a local variable to the same effect as a "this block(group) of conditions name" expression.
All the information about parameters and return values is going over my head atm but is on my list to wrap my head around, i need to do some further personal research into those! again, thank you!