a good explanation of event flow - how to control it - tutorials?

Hi everyone. sorry for the dumb question. I am a new user to this wonderful software and come from scirra construct2. As you might imagine this engine seems similar in some ways to me, but also totally different and confusing in other ways.

What I mean to ask is - is there a video or a tutorial that has a very clear explanation of how to control events in this engine? So far I can't find any good videos. All they do is apply the knowledge they already have- but they dont stop to explain anything. How to organize event flow efficiently, what are good and bad practices? Similar to this tutorial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EvwN-TZ14s

is there anything like this done for clickteam mmf25 users?

Thank you in advance. I guess I have no desire to hit my head in a wall for several days and find out myself why things are not working out, but rather like to watch a video course explaining coding 101 in this engine. I do not care about the interface or the buttons or stuff like that. Only how to code in it efficiently.

Hi blurymind

At times members share general event-flow ideas in videos, but the best source is this forum.
From what I've seen in the scirra video you linked to, the developer struggled with applying data from mouse input in correct order (for example).

One can accidentally get the same effect in Fusion, but the "Event list editor" (ctrl-L) brings up the precise order of any event. In it it's easy to just swap around actions until you get the logic and the coveted event functionality.


I wouldn't worry to much about wall-hitting. Unless your into heuristics, physics, calculus, pseudo-3D or anything procedural. Still, there are 3-4 guys here that have time to help you with that as well :)

What do you mean by, 'event flow'? The main thing to remember that it is read, top to bottom. If you want to know about optimization, there are some good links I can show you.

One thing to get used to is creating groups in the event editor, to keep things tidy. If you right click on one of the numbers on the far left of the event editor, and you get the little window that comes up that says "Add a new Condition, Insert, etc" Go to Insert > A group of events.

Groups of events are useful for keeping things tidy, but you will also notice that when you first create a group, a box comes up to name the group, but also down the bottom of the dialogue box is an option that says "Active when frame starts". If you untick that box, then it won't be active when the frame starts, which means whatever code that is inside the group won't be read at runtime until the group becomes activated. This is useful for optimization, as well as compartmentalizing code and switching things off that you either don't need or don't want the player to have access to yet, like a weapons upgrade.

Hope that helps a bit.

Oh, and if you double click on a tick, it will open the "Event List Editor", which will show you which conditions / events will run first on that particular line of code. So if you have several things running on a single event, eg, start of frame, do this and do that, by double clicking on the little tick icon, it will open up the event list editor and tell you which of those actions will be performed first. Sometimes it's important which one happens first.

Hi
Thank you all for the replies. I guess that as a non experienced programmer, I am mostly interested in how to use the special case events- the loops and the while condition for example.What are the best cases to use them in general game design terms.

I guess i pointed out the video as an example, because he explains the difference between a state and a change- how the engine treats it.
When is an action repeated and when executed only once.

Another hot topic for me is picking objects. How do you do AI that can interact with other instances of itself, check their state and change accordingly?
To do it in construct2, you use object families. So you pick an object and make it talk to it's family.

How do you do object families or something similar in this engine?

with qualifiers

You can create object groups or families by clicking on the object, going to its properties and looking under the "Events" heading, then choosing a Qualifier. These create groups.

To reference individual objects, you can use spread value ID's or get an object's fixed value. To learn about spreading ID's, you can look at this tutorial about how to use Fastloops: http://www.clickteam.com/tutorials - go to Intermediate, then scroll down to the Clicker's guide to fastloops. That link also has tons of free tutorials to help you get started. Also, if you go to videos, Danny has a good course in creating games in MMF2 to help you get started, but it's not free.

In terms of when actions are repeated, the event editor list is read top to bottom as many times per second as your frame rate is set to, so 60 fps would mean it gets read 60 times a second - unless you have conditions that prevent that. It could be something like "Only do this action if there are more than 0 objects on stage", but more towards what I think you are looking for, if you create a new event in the event editor, right click on the cogs in the dialogue box, then go down to "limit conditions", there you can find some conditions to restrict how often you want actions to loop - or if you just want them to run once.

Also, conditions like "Start of Frame" found under the storyboard controls, or chessboard, will set events that only run once at the start of a frame.

Hi, thank you for the explanation.
This is really helpful!!!

On Qualifiers: why is there a list of preexisting ones and does it matter which you pick? I thought it would let me create my own qualifiers.

The existing ones don't matter. You can use them for whatever you want. They don't have any special code or anything. They are just there to make things quicker.

ok so how about when you have two instances of the same enemy. and that enemy is even in a group (so you can reuse the code on other enemies).

How do you test player.X to enemiA.x and enemyB.x and make both enemy A and B face the player when the player is between them.

What happens to me is they both face the right or both face the left when I am between them. Can someone link me to an example file?

The only way I can do it is to put the code in a "behavior". How do you it in the global event sheet?
Also can you toggle on/off behaviors?

look I am having the exact same problem as this man, with qualifiers
http://mongmaster.wordpress.com/2011...ht-on-my-tits/

Its getting on my nerves. :(
Nevermind, one of the comments at the link answers it. The solution is simple but not apparent