I'm having a little issue here. I have an object with Private Variable "Health" on the layout I want to take damage, then to be destroyed, THEN immediately respawn outside the screen after it is destroyed.

Works fine with groups of objects, works fine by themselves when they're destroyed individually, but say two (or more) happen to get destroyed at the same time, it only registers one object as being destroyed, despite the fact that two have been destroyed. Thus in my scenario, where I want a new object to be created when another object is destroyed, I only have one new respawned object, despite the fact two have been destroyed.

For instance, if I systematically destroy two objects at a time (on purpose), I can slowly dwindle the respawning objects to 1 object on screen, despite the fact that I may require 20 enemies on the screen at once. Of course, once I'm down to 1 enemy left you can't kill two at a time, so, at that point the private variable thing isn't really an issue. haha.

It's not a big deal, but it is something I've run into. I'm experimenting with different applications of weapons that a player can upgrade to, and it seems like occasionally I'll start with a group of 8 or 9 enemies, and after a little bit of playing I'm down to 3 or 4. I want to start using larger projectiles and beams that can destroy a couple of enemies at a time, but if they're destroying all at once and not all performing the same actions I want then I may have to rethink how to do this by hiding, say, 20 projectiles at a time, behind a dummy "laser beam" graphic.

Anyway to get around this?

It won't take up any more resources than cutting the image up into several chunks, and it's much less a pain in the butt.

Oh wow, really? I wasn't aware of that. So is that also true of 3D boxes or are they handled differently?

Create a new event for "ALWAYS". For the conditions, first choose the object. In the position area there is an option for "Set position to object" or something along those lines. Then you just pick the object from the list at the top, pick the layer and the image point you want it bound to.

Easy.

Make sure that you don't have any copies of that event bound to other objects though. You will need a new hitbox in that case, for each different object. If you're making multiple hitboxes on one object, then you'll have to make them individually.

hmm.

So for parallaxing, you just set a couple different backgrounds, throw in a background image, then set the scroll number accordingly? Is there any way to do make that image loop in the window without quite literally making the entire landscape? Haha, I'm trying really hard to conserve resources.

In one of your other posts you said that scrollable tiled background are coming soon, but aren't yet implemented, but is there a way to have, say, only a 800 pixel wide window and just have the parallaxing stuff wrap to the window, thus looping? I've been trying it out for a while, and I can't seem to get any kind of tiles to match up adequately and stay in sync.

This possible yet? I was especially trying this with the Street Fighter style skewed floors, which really have a cool effect. Kind of an infinite loop of floor space, you know? That was tough, if not impossible, because of the weird skew effects going on.

The more I mess around with the background images ,the more I'm really looking forward to the scrollable tiled background.

Does typing in the names actually work?

I can't get it to

either its a bug or im an idiot

also, when find and replace is made propperly, it should be capable of changing the layer numbers to layer names in seconds

I didn't take a look at the cap file, but you need to put the layer name within quotation marks.

"MyLayer"

why not just use the layer name as the default value, that way shifting layers doesn't matter?

Alright, well, sorry for the quadruple post, this is the last one I swear, but I went ahead and tried my idea above, and it just didn't work since I apparently overlooked the concept that private variables are highly object specific.

So I either need a way to give private variables to objects already in a family, OR a way to link various object variables to specific objects so that their private variables can be called up.

Maybe the addition of a checkbox in the Private Variable section to say whether a partcular private variable is assigned to the rest of the family IF AND ONLY IF that variable is different from the list of variables in the Manage Families window, for a specific family?

Thoughts? Is there a more efficient/better/actual way to do this? It would make my life infinitely easier especially since I want to add 4+ different types of projectiles, along with a whole slew of different kinds of enemies.

in a game I'm working on, I have essentially a light that is fading in really fast then fading out slowly. To get it to stay, I assigned it's position to always be on another object, and when it fades out all the way, spawn a new object right where it was. Works like a charm.

REVISION!!!

After playing around with it, I had to remove the entire "Enemies" family first, remove the private variables that were still assigned to the bad guy in question, re-add the family and the family variables and re-assign that family to the bad guy.

This made them act individually. For my case, each could take two hits before destroying itself.

SO HERE IS MY NEXT QUESTION! Is it possible to have a private variable for an object that is still in a family? I know the entire point of a family is to share variables, but a few variables I need individualized on a per object basis.

What I want to do is assign levels of health (HP) to different objects. When someone from family "enemies" is hit by a projectile (which has variable "Damage_dealt" set to 2), it will calculate HP-damage_dealt. When HP=0, it would then go back and destroy the object from the "enemy" family. Is this possible, or is it a no-go from the individualized private variables, yet still in the family issue?

I guess what I want to do is modularize EVERYTHING, so I can throw in a new enemy, set it to family enemy, set how much health it has, and be good to go.

Is there a way to have Family Private Variables while at the same time having Object Private Variables?

One idea I was throwing around to see if it was viable, was to remove the bad guy from the "Enemies" family to give me individualized private variables again, create an invisible, essentially hit box, and assign THAT to the "enemies" family. Then I would make that box in the same container as the bad guy and tell it to always use the same position as the bad guy sprite so it would follow it around. When that box collides with a projectile, it takes the bad guys's HP variable and subtracts the "damage_dealt" variable. When HP=0 it's destroyed.

Would that work, or would that just destroy all enemies once the condition for destroying is met?

I want a laser blast to hit a someone from the family "Enemies" and give a set number of damage. I want multiple enemies on the screen at once as well. The reason being so that I can set varied levels of health for different types of enemies, and additionally set different kind of damage dealt by projectiles of varying sorts (when I add more; for instance a laser might do 2 damage, while a bullet does 5).

When I implement this, however, as soon as the laser hits the person from the "Enemies" family, everyone in the "enemies" family destroys... which I don't want to happen. I just want it to affect individual enemy units. I understand how to do this with private variables. I'm not sure if I should redefine all of my family variables or what.

Setting all enemies into a family would prevent me from defining EVERY event for all of my enemies in the event that I would have to use object specific private variables. I'm new to this, so I apologize if I'm wasting space with newb questions.

_<

I could do that, but ... I would prefer not to... I guess heightmaps it is.

I'm working on a horizontal sidescrolling shooter. Everything looks so flat, except for the background which is using 3D boxes, particle smoke effects, and the explosions. That leaves the actual sprites that represent vehicles in the game's world which the player looks at the most...

What can I do to give them a more dynamic look? I can't tell if a subtle skew addition would help anything, but it seems the most promising. I'm kind of avoiding bump/height mapping, for one reason or another, partially because I can't get the lighting to cast quite right. Lighting would sure make things better, I bet, but how does one go about adding a light that can cast on to the bump map? The lighting object?

Anyway, I want to know your mimicry of 3D secrets.