MMO-style button with cooldown

Hi,
I've created some MMO-style buttons with cooldowns. The cooldowns work fine with counters.

The problem I'm running into is that the Active objects I'm using as buttons continually respond.

I've tried using Player Control > Ignore Control as well as making the object invisible, to force the cooldown on the user. Neither of these work -- in fact, you can click the area where the invisible button is and still get it to respond.

Is there a better way for changing an active object/button so the user can initially click on it but not be able to click on it during the cooldown?

Thanks,
JJ

What you probably need is the "only once when condition loops" condition (found in system object>limit conditions).

Or, you could possibly add another condition to the event where the user clicks. This is may be even more straightforward.

Something like:

-When user clicks
-counter = 0
set counter to 100
activate your button

Always
sub 1 from counter.



This way, the clicking won't do anything until the counter is at 0 again

Thank you so much for the ideas, I'll give those a try. :)

I would use a flag and a value instead of a counter. See example.

You can also use Flags and a Timer value.
It's probably similar to KLiK-iT's approach, but with less events.
Cooldown can be adjusted with Alterable Value 'Duration'.

Very nice Wodjanoi. Darn,.yours has one less event than mine!! Show off...LOL.:)

Thank you both for your help and examples!! I'm learning a lot from them. :) Also, I had no idea you could create behaviors with embedded code. Wow!! Thanks again!

Just to update, spent the afternoon fighting with this some more. The problem I had run into using the timer object initially was that I had different buttons with different times, but each would reset based off the relationship of the button with the quickest timer relationship -- ie. (If Timer >= 180 then call animation) would force all buttons to reset at 180, hence my shift to counters to force each button to be independent.

The buttons each affect the animation of another object (like an MMO button would affect the character in a game) so each button must have a full count and cooldown. Each animation must be both interrupt-able by the user but otherwise play to completion without canceling out another animation accidentally.

With multiple buttons affecting an object's multiple animations, there does not appear to be a direct way to stop or ignore mouse input on those buttons.

Looking at the examples above, I'm seeing it works without same problem as before except for the timer object. The timed buttons will force a reset to the affected animated object based strictly on the time and not on the individual button playing out the full animation length.

Mouse input (i.e. Left Click) is always allowed and supersedes all other commands. I have not found a way to negate it directly.

I did find a way to work around the issue -- by swapping the position of the clickable button out of the frame so the user is no longer able to access it. This will allow me to create a separate animation for the underlying graphic to make it look like the button is animated and still present. Pretty inelegant and cludgy, but it works.

I did some more digging and found "Click Blocker" but from a post in 2007 it appears that it only affects windows that are not the main application window and that Yves had said making it affect the main window was something they would add in. Looks like that never happened. It would be nice to have that implemented for the main window as a toggle-able option for various active objects -- that or some kind of "Wait" command that will affect user input on individual active objects.

Having no way to directly affect the ability of a user to left click an object seems to be a large flaw that ought to be addressed by the development team.

*edit* Oh, and by the way, layers do not affect the power of the mighty left mouse click from clicking an active object. Tried that.

I'm having trouble understanding what you mean here (though maybe someone who does will chime in), though I have a hunch that you're overthinking something. I'm not sure what you mean by this:

Quote:

---

Mouse input (i.e. Left Click) is always allowed and supersedes all other commands. I have not found a way to negate it directly.

---

Isn't that exactly what KliK-it has done here?

http://i.imgur.com/a9x5dCh.png

Or is the problem perhaps that you are using "buttons", like this (instead of actives):

http://i.imgur.com/hYUtnPv.png


I also don't see why this would need to be the case:

Quote:

---

The timed buttons will force a reset to the affected animated object based strictly on the time and not on the individual button playing out the full animation length.

---

Can you upload an MFA showing the problem you're having?

Thanks Vol.

Well, I'm using active objects as the buttons. I'm probably overthinking things like you said, and I should try that other solution again.

Here's my test file, the counters indicate the cooldowns, the swap targets are implemented on just the red button, the other buttons are not swapping back and forth at this point.

Each button causes the diamond in the center to change to a corresponding color.

The Red button is working as I'd like it to. Right now, the Yellow button has a different cooldown so runs a bit longer than the rest.

If you click the Yellow button, then swap between the Blue and Green and Yellow, you'll see the animation of the Diamond object changes whenever the mouse clicks the button.

I don't want the Diamond to change until either:
1. user selects a different button that is not on cooldown
2. cooldown has expired annd the button is available again.

This works with the Red object with the location swap, but not with the others.

Hope that makes sense.

Is this functionality what you were after ( see attached mfa)?

I've basically just added an extra condition (highlighted in pink). The actions in that event won't fire unless both conditions are true, so it will effectively ignore any mouseclicks on that button until that button's flag 1 =off.

For tidyness, I've also changed all the flags across all the buttons to flag 1. Just to clarify: this wasn't actually necessary, but it will make it a bit simpler to copy/paste flags between buttons. Remember that each button's flags are unique to it, so whether red's flag 1 is on or off doesn't affect the flag 1 of any other button.

http://i.imgur.com/lFXX4wt.png

Yes, that looks more like it. Thank you for your help.

I guess I don't really understand how flags work -- I thought they were global on/off switches, but I see I was wrong (surprise! not!). :)

I still am not sure I understand how the flag forces the left-click to not register when it is flipped. Is it because the flag shares the same entry on line 8 as the "User clicks with left button on Square" or something else?

I was working on the other model that KLiK-iT provided, attached that as well. Not sure if it's really any different but it does seem a bit easier to look at.
I keep wishing there was a way to create If/Then/Else statements in this app but maybe with knowing how flags work, it will get easier.

Thanks again!

http://i.imgur.com/1jxwMdt.png

This is kind of like an if/else statement. Well, an IF statement without the ELSE, really. It reads as follows:

If the user left-clicks on the red button (but only if, also, the red button's first flag is off!), then:
----> switch to walking animation, and set the red button's first flag to on

Whenever the red button's first flag is on, then:
----> switch to disappearing animation, and increase the red counter by 1



However, I never would have used flags myself, because they're inherently confusing, since you can't name them (so are alterable values if you leave them unnamed). As a general rule, unless you're gifted with autistic savant mental capabilities, you should always give your objects and variables (a.k.a. alterable values) helpful names. The below reads much better, in my opinion.

Though personally, I never use counters either because, although you can name them, their name doesn't appear when looking at the code (unless you hover over them one by one, which is tedious, and forces you to waste mental energy remembering the names once the tooltip disappears). If I were doing this myself from scratch, I would also use Alterable Values instead of counters. At any rate, even with the counters, I think this is already a bit clearer to read:

http://i.imgur.com/KWKuxNl.png

I've uploaded a new version that uses Alterable Values instead of flags, as shown above

Thank you so much, Vol, for your time and help. This really clarifies a lot for me. I had no idea I could rename Alterables to other things.

No sweat!

The cool thing about Fusion's Alterable Values is that you be pretty liberal with their names, unlike most other programming environments. I usually use camel case nowadays (camelCaseLooksLikeThis), but it's good to know that you can use words separated by spaces if you want.