Fastloops / Platform Tutorial

I found two other posts related to this but it is still not clear to me.

Code:

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Start loop "gravity" ABS(Grav("Player")) times

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Can someone walk me though adding this line - do you just add it through the expression editor when you select Special Conditions>Fast loops > Start Loop?

I don't see ABS in the expression editor and am not sure how this expression is constructed (the actual 'click in this column, select this option...')

Sorry, greenie here - jumping straight from Chocobreak to Fastloops so I'm sure it is basic stuff. I appreciate your help.

1: Inside the expression editor, click the Retrieve Data from an object button
2: Right click the icon labeled Special
3: Select Calculations and then Absolute value
4: You'll now see this: Abs (>Enter number<)

Any negative number you enter in here will be converted to its positive value. -5 will be converted to 5.

Ah PERFECT! Thank you.

You're welcome :)

I am still crawling through this tutorial. I am unsure of where these next lines in red go or exactly what the purpose is yet since I haven't beeen able to run them. Sorry still taking baby steps. Thanks.

Code:

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+ Repeat while player presses Right
-> Set Horiz("Player") to 3

+ Repeat while player presses Left
-> Set Horiz("Player") to -3


X Repeat while player presses Left
X Repeat while player presses Right
-> Set Horiz("Player") to 0


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The X here means NEGATE. It tells MMF that the condition is negated. You can negate a condition by right-clicking it and select Negate.
[NEGATE] Repeat while player pressed Left means that the condition will be true while the player is not pressing left.
Conditions that happens in an instant, such as Upon pressing a key, or start of frame, cannot be negated.

Holy smokes. That's how to do a traditional NOT operator, if I understand this correctly. Good stuff

Yes, that is correct :)

I don't think I would have figured that out on my own any time soon. I am at work, so don't have the program in front of me to play with this, but I am not 100% sure I understand the need to Negate. Doesn't the action "+ Repeat while player presses Right" already involve checking to see if Right is being pressed? This seems to imply that there is already a check being made ie "do this only while this condition (right key is being pressed) is true" why the need to also negate?

I want to be sure I fully understand everything -especially were it relates to loops- which is why I am working through this slowly line by line. Thank you for your response and tutorials.

The reason is that you want the event to run when the player is NOT pressing that key. If you check and see that they are, then you would not want to run the event - Negate does this, it makes conditions behave the opposite way.

Thanks, home and finally got it. Those negative conditions are counter intuitive at first.

[EDIT: Think I'll come back to this tutorial. I have learned a few things but I'm at the point where I am typing in code I don't understand so that means it's time to go back to a more basic one. Thanks for all the help will revisit this as soon as I get one or two more under my built.]