the mighty group...

[mobichan]

The more I work with groups, the more I am inclined to believe their contents are treated differently by the main game loop. So far, I have tried to keep parts of my code organized with groups, but sometimes my code works only if I keep certain lines outside of the group that handles related events. This is especially evident if I run a fastloop in a group and then put a couple non-fastloop conditions (that apply to the results of the fastloop events) immediately after the fastloop code (inside the group). These conditions either don't work or behave oddly. But if I move these conditions outside of the group (into the main game loop), then they work.

This probably sounds a little vague, but can anyone tell me what MMF2 is doing when it sees a group? Does it process it in a different order than the rest of the code? I have been told they are just for organizing, but I can't beleive this is entirely the case.

Mobichan

[Game_Master]

Have you got an example of this?

[Werbad]

You have to retrieve the fast loop result the line after the loop is Started, not after the actual loop events. When you start a loop MMF will jump to your loop events, go through them and then return to the action where the loop was started and continue from there. Object picking might get messed up in this process, so don't modify multi-instance objects directly after a loop has been started.

[Crash86]

You're not wrong - it's true what you say.
I've found that certain things fail to work and when those events are moved outside of a group they work perfectly.

[mobichan]

Can anyone on the MMF2 programming staff shed some light on this please?

[Francois]

There is absolutely no difference within or out of a group! I see no reason why you should see one.
If you have a precise example, please send it to me, I would love to see it!

[Corentin]

The only thing that could be confusing with groups and fastloops that I know of is this one :

When you use the "close group Action", all the actions in the same event will be processed correctly (just like if this close group action was the last), but the group will be considered as closed if you launch a loop that is inside the same group :

start of Group
-On Key pressed ("spacebar") : Close group, and launch loop "test" 1 time, and end frame

-On loop "test" : play sound
end of group

the on loop "test" event won't be triggered,but the frame will be ended.

[mobichan]

ARG! I just tried setting up my file the way it was when I experienced this problem before, but now it seems to work. I will look for an old rev to see if I can reproduce it again, but at least it works now. Sorry for the bother. Sigh...

[Brandon]

I think I may understand what the problem is. This is just a guess, but when you are moving the event outside the group, are you placing it after another event or group? If so, that would be changing the order of events which can have a major impact on how the game runs. If not, then I have no idea, and even Francois said that there is no difference in code execution between groups.

[mobichan]

Initially, I had the events immediately after the group. Then I eventually moved them into another group that was before the group with the fastloop. So the order was changed in that case. But now that I move the events to being just after the fastloop group again, they still function properly. That is kind of why this is frustrating me, since I feel like moving an event to such a dramatically different position in the code "should" break things.

I can't reproduce the old problem, but I haven't found an old rev that still has the problem. I'll keep searching. And thanks for all the great ideas on what it could be. MMF is certainly a learning experience, but I haven't lost any enthusiam yet.