First thought (not tested)

spawn a "target sprite" (invisible) on the imagepoint you want and pin it - then use this target sprite for the turrets to aim at ?

...

Perhaps you can have some sort of combos for multiple balloons hit at one time. Make it similar to a casino game where certain sequences (3 of one color, one of three colors) give bonus points. Since the king's pleasure is important, maybe a graphic of the king that progressively smiles as non-red balloons are hit and progressively frowns as red balloons are hit.

...

I like the idea of combos and will definitely add it to the list. I also like the idea of the graphic representing the kings smile/frown - my (lack of) skill with graphics could be a bit of a problem here....

Thanks for the comments.

and a very quick edit later I get.

(note this uses "families" which is only available in the non-free versions of C2)

This is probably a better method - and just taking this a few steps further it would be a good way to add joints....)

While waiting for "She who must be Obeyed " to get ready...

Using idea 1 I get ...

One {untested} idea.

Place an invisible box pinned to the player but covering the area the other boxes can stack up. Then every x seconds just count the boxes in this area.

And as I was typing another (untested) idea fizzeled across my brain cells

How about giving each dropped box an instance variable (ivStacked ?) And then every now and again you could step through each box an set this ivStacked if it is "overlapping at offset" (positive y) and then count up these ? In fact you could probably do this offset method without the need for the ivStacked....

Bit busy today but I will try to test this out later and post the capx.

...Only issue I ran into was that some balloons go so high even if you don't throw the blade the red balloons can still hit the blade and hurt your scorel.....

Thanks for the comment. For now I will just limit the height of the balloons and add it to the "needs more thought" list.

here is your capx altered

your version says

if key "X" pressed and mode="anim2" then ... and set mode to equal "anim1"

if key "X" pressed and mode="anim1" then ... and set mode to equal "anim2"

so it does the first line and finds "X" pressed and mode="anim2" so changes (animation) and sets mode to "anim1"

it goes on to now find that "X" is still pressed and mode is now="anim1" (because we have just made it ="anim1" in the last line so it changes the animation and makes modebact to"anim2" again ....

edit (3rd April,2014) to add picture of events

choose(1,4,5,8,10) will pick one of the given numbers

how about something like this ?

Well I couldn't see anything wrong with the bit of code you have posted so I gave it a try and it appears to work OK (see attached capx - also there is a second method in it that you might prefer - to try it deactivate the group "method1" and activate "method2")

So, I guess, there is something else in your capx that is causing you problems ?

It's certainly different! sure if I was king it would be easier to behead the peasants and ban all but red balloons, but anyways, trusty royal yo yo it is...

Sorry, I forgot to mention My thoughts on the game...

After another blast, to be honest I'm struggling to enjoy it, even with Nena as backing track!

It's extremely difficult not to catch a red balloon on the back swing negating Your perfect "pop" shot...probably be a good name for the game thinking about it...

Maybe drop the yo yo in favour of a golden, jewel encrusted pea shooter...

Thanks for the comments.

But would I need to get the pea from under all the mattresses?

I think the earlier levels would have slower moving and better spaced balloons and ,er , other, er , improvement which I can't go into now because of ... yes, a non-disclosure agreement and also because I have no clues yet.

Wasn't the yo-yo originally a weapon - or am I getting confused with learning History from James Bond films ?

I do like the name pop shot

(I lied about the non-disclosure agreement)

Blacksmith - thanks for the comments. This is very much a test of the basic idea - and it certainly need more thinking about, I might go with some levels where the player has aim control - in theory it should be easy to add (famous last words

Concerning the song - it's 30 years old !