This is just a vent.

Look, I've been playing around with examples and tutorials for a couple of days just to manage text input, for a simple quiz -- A simple quiz!! (too bad I don't want to destory hordes of aliens) ... All the examples for 'quiz' use a simple mouse for input, and no tracking (even the word search example burried here is only click first letter, and click last letter. No dragging across word path examples (such as in boggle or ruzzle) .... and every one uses non-beginner functions and more advanced features such as arrays or json. There are no good, simple tutorials for this, and it is not easy to understand logic flow in Construct for what I am trying to do. I'm still stuck trying to figure out the best way to assign text input to a local variable! ... (and what about timing?)

What I've discovered, is that for even something as simple as input validation, you need some understanding of functions and programming. That's certainly not 'beginner' level ... I also find the tutorials beyond the graphics games, very lacking or incomplete or requiring a 3rd party plugin (when it comes to text) ... perhaps that is the nature of 'text' but I find this a very lacking quality of this product (how many educational institutions would like to write a simple quiz?) ... and this is a product that is pitched for "beginners" ? ... and if you have a question, the tone here is 'do tons of research first and become and expert (using disorganized and incomplete examples and tutorials), and then maybe you can ask your question' ... hmph.

I don't want to give up, because I think my teenage son would really get a kick out of the graphic games that seem to be much easier to create.

My end goal is to make a boggle clone, but one that is more quiz based -- where you can pick the letters or words you want to appear in the grid and 'train' on them.... I have already developed a web site (using old school ColdFusion) to sort and parse a whole lot of word information (see bestwordplay dot com ) -- I did the code (uses jquery, datatables and database) ... but now wanting to use Construct to add a quiz -- much more challenging!!

Anyway, sorry to vent -- but I'm not even a pure beginner and am quite frustrated with this product for my personal interests. I'm not ready to give up -- I see potential... I just needed to vent. Thanks for listening.

Hello, this is my first post -- I have two days ago installed Construct to try to build myself an application to quiz myself on anagrams. I have gone through the first tutorial and have read much through the examples.

I am discovering that it is most fortunate I have at least a little programming background for what I am trying to accomplish here. Still, it has been a decade since I have done any programming, so this is very new to me. I have a database of words and their anagrams (and sub-anagrams), and will explore some of the json and ajax options with that soon, but for now, I am only trying to get the most basic of functionality.

So far, I have managed to build this quiz, which I just manually put the key word and their anagrams in two global variables, and then check for user input in the TextBox. I first have a section that does the validation that I found in another tutorial.

An event is set for when a user hits 'Return' key to check the entry, and using find() I compare and either append the guess value into a 'correct' text box object or incorrect text box object. Next, I just want to check for duplicate answers, but a question in my mind about best approach here has come up about variable use.

I do not see how to easily set local variables (and should I be using local or global?) . I created the 'guess' variable and assigned it to the textbox in my current project. Is this best practice? How can I see this variables in the Event viewer? I will want to create other variables such as timer and number of guesses. Where should I declare these? (Am I using 'or' logic correctly here? What about if/else? What is the best tutorial to understand logic flow building here?) I don't have objects colliding that cause events, just correct and uncorrect guesses that I want to time and keep track.

I hope my questions are not too vague -- I'm just trying to get a sense for building a word guessing game, and the logic seems more complex than the graphics based game tutorials -- I want to make sure it is easily managed as I continue to work on it, and thus my first question of correct variable use. Many thanks for helping me get started in the right direction.

-KB

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