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  • You can paste them all in whatever location, then select them all at once, and type in the xy coordinates and they will all be placed at once.

  • onion - think of the dictionary object as a dynamic variable object that can create or destroy named variables (keys) at runtime.

    I tested it with 100,000 keys and retrieving info from it didn't affect the framerate, so it seems plenty fast.

  • No. You'd have to rewrite it from scratch.

  • In the newest beta, Ajax was fixed in cocoonjs.

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  • kiyoshi - ah, cool. I hope it doesn't require any major rewrites.

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  • Drat, that's frustrating. A way to speed up JavaScript, except you can't use JavaScript to use it. Argh.

    Thanks for the explanation!

  • So there's been some news lately about this thing called asm.js. I don't entirely understand what it is, but it seems to be a way to pre-compile JavaScript so that it's even faster.

    asmjs.org

    I didn't pay that much attention to it even after Mozilla showed it off by running unreal engine 3 in web browsers using HTML5 - and unreal engine 4 will apparently export to html5 as well - because I've seen new web technologies deployed before that didn't gain any traction with other browser makers, like nacl. However, Google appears to be actually planning to support it as well as Mozilla.

    news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57576903-93/google-shows-interest-in-asm.js-mozillas-plan-for-fast-web-apps

    esterday, Mozilla held a coming-out party for ASM.js, announcing a cooperation with Epic to bring its Unreal game engine to ASM.js. The same day, Google effectively announced a plan to support it within Chrome's V8 engine that processes JavaScript.

    "Optimizations should be added to V8 to generate good code for the ASM.js subset of JavaScript," Chrome programmer Kenneth Russell said in a Chrome feature-tracking item for ASM.js. "The implementation cost should be small compared to the potential upside -- the ability to run significant existing code bases with close to the speed of C inside the JavaScript engine."

    There's no official word yet from Google, but it's sounding good.

    I don't know how it works exactly, but since it's apparently backwards compatible for non-asm.js supporting browsers it would be cool if c2 could use it.

  • Thank you for the reply. Yes I did read the section of the manual for dictionaries. But this is exactly what I am getting at in my original post. If people didn't already know what this was then they wouldn't be able to do anything with it in this software. For example it says that a dictionary is for storing strings and numbers. What kind of strings? What is a string?

    Strings are text. They and their use are described more in depth here: scirra.com/manual/78/expressions

    A basic example of use is the part about the score in the beginners tutorial: scirra.com/tutorials/37/beginners-guide-to-construct-2/page-7

    what kind of numbers would I store there? Why would I store them there? How is this function going to benefit me? What can be done with this?

    Well, it's a very open question ? it's sort of like asking what you can do with a stick. You could use it to prop something up, build something, draw something in sand? The dictionary object can similarly be used for many things, anything from simple value storage (money, points) to more advanced uses like dialogue storage for an entire RPG.

    If you're familiar with the concept of an array, it's sort of like that except instead of using numbers to retrieve a value from a grid of values, you use text (a string) to retrieve it instead. Because of this, it's very flexible and you can dynamically create keys with events in ways that would be cumbersome with an array's method of a numerical grid location. It's also easier to read, as you don't have to remember what value is stored where in the array. Compare:

    Set points to array.at(0,2)

    Set points to dictionary.get("score")

    I find the easiest way to think of it is as a dynamic variable object. You can't give a sprite new variables at run time, but you can give the dictionary new keys (keys are basically variables with a different name) at runtime.

  • Have you looked at the manual entry? It seems to cover what you want, is it not clear? scirra.com/manual/140/dictionary

    There's also going to be a free live class that might interest you. scirra.com/forum/topic65550.html

    I'm afraid there's going to be a learning process for any game creation tool, as game development, even simplified with a tool like this, remains a complex thing. If you get stuck on anything though, you can always ask here on the forums for any clarification you might need.

    Also, searching the forums and youtube, it seems there are some video tutorials already available:

    scirra.com/forum/search

    m.youtube.com/results

  • You could also use the dictionary object and store everything as keys.

    Set key npcname & conversationname & paragraph to "Hello."

    I haven't tried it though, so it might actually be cumbersome in practice, but in theory it seems like a good idea, as that way you could store it all and not have to worry about the grid of an array, and could retrieve whatever you wanted with a few variables (it would probably make branching dialogue easier as well).

  • Isn't it already? Just clicking 'add action' then typing letters works on my machine.

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