Newbie needs some help and advice

[firemystery]

Hi everyone,

I tested the mmf2 developer demo for about 1 week now, so I tried some tutorials and found some pretty good example files and so on... I do have a little programming background regarding php, mysql, and flash+actionscript and I'm really impressed by mmf2. My first goal is to make a hidden objects game, so I tried to open the Mystery - tutorial, but unfortunately you can't install Extensions in the demo version and the Lens Extension was missing, so I tried to build it on my own and it went ok. But before I make the final step to purchase it I have some questions:

1. (How) Is it possible to "automatically" fill an array with for example all 'Alterable Strings A' from all the objects which have the "Collectibles" qualifier?
2. Is it then possible to "dynamically" create strings for each of the objects and set them up in a gridlike way, if you remove one of the strings it would be great if the others move to the now empty spot and maybe a "new" string appears at the end
3. How could I store the position of the dynamically created string, so that I can scratch it out like in the tutorial? Can I somehow "make a connection" between the Collectible Item on Screen and the text shown in the menubar

I tried some of this stuff in this file here: http://tpg.i24.cc/upload/mystery8.mfa (I have to select "Save target as..." or my quicktime plugin will be played ;-()
I don't really understand, why the first item of the Array isn't displayed and why the background of the text disappears after scrolling and I can draw it back with the mouse but not as transparent as it was and the text will be overdrawn ;-(


The other thing which I didn't try because I couldn't find a tutorial is, that for some items, let's call them friends, I would like to move them along a path into the inventory. I don't really know how the path movement with the nodes works - but maybe I should be using the extension advanced path finding anyway ?!?
Well some of these friends consist of several parts and can only be used when all the parts are found, maybe some of you have an idea on how to solve this?

What is the best guidance way? Would you recommend this book: MMF 2 Game Creation from HobbyPress? Do the extensions offer a help guide once they are installed? Where can I find a good explanation of the expressions editor?

Thank you already for your answers.

Cheers

Annika ;-)

[LB]

Glad you like MMF2!

1. Well, of course there is no automatic way, for how would anyone know exactly what you wish to do? You can easily do it though with some fastloops and object selection.

2. Do you mean dynamically create alterable strings or dynamically display strings onscreen? Foralterable strings, you would need the ValueAdd object once you purchase MMF2. For strings displayed onscreen, you can just create and destroy regular "String" objects.

3. Strings have a strikethrough option so you don't need to do it manually (unless you are planning to use HWA)

For the friends, why not just check if the player has all of them? It's just a few conditions, right? Maybe I am misunderstanding.

The expression editor just lets you put in expressions, think of it as similar to in PHP where a $Variable = EXPRESSION; the expression editor lets you edit the expression part. Most functions from other objects can be accessed from the button that says "Retrieve Data from Another Object"

MMF2 also has a help file, both with the installation and the forums themselves.

[firemystery]

Hello again,

I was pretty stuck on a complete different project. But thank you for your quick answer.

So for the first point. I would like to fill an array by "iterating" through all the items, which have the same Collectibles qualifier. It would be great if I could get a multidimensional array kind of like this:
[item 1] => [
[name] = "Item1"
[text_pos_x] = 12
[text_pos_y] = 45
]
[item 2] => [
[name] = "Item2"
[text_pos_x] = 123
[text_pos_y] = 456
]
[item 3] => [
[name] = "Item3"
[text_pos_x] = 1234
[text_pos_y] = 4567
]

I know how to get the values from the Alterable Strings and Values... but how can I access one item after the other from the ones I want?? I think I need the Foreach object set on the collectibles... but then what?? Do you have a good example for me?

Thank you ;-)

[LB]

From your array, it looks more like you want an INI object. For example:

[item 1]
name=Item1
text pos x=12
text pos y=45

[item 2]
name=Item2
text pos x=123
text pos y=456

[item 3]
name=Item3
text pos x=1234
text pos y=4567

There are two INI objects, the INI object, and the INI++ 1.5 object. Choose whichever floats your boat

The Foreach object has examples that come with it.

[firemystery]

Thanks again, but since I would like to use the game as an swf i don't think I'm going to use INI objects.

I think I understood the foreach object and I tried implementing it... I wanted to create a string object foreach of the collectibles... I know that the right amount of string objects are created, but just the last one is displayed - why???
The other problem I have, that if you scroll to the right, the background of the string "goes blank"...

Maybe someone could download my file and help me find the errors???

Thank you so much!!!

View MFA

[LB]

The plain old INI object works in flash...it's even one of the few objects in flash currently that can save data in the form of cookies.

[firemystery]

ok... that sounds cool... could you still do me the favour and have a look into the file???

That would be awesome ;-))

[LB]

You should always uncheck "Display as background" for every object that has this property. I honestly do not know why it isn't turned off by default, as it causes so many issues.

[Popcorn]

Since you are familiar with using arrays, I would start by learning how to do that in MMF2 as well.

You could use the Array object along with a fastloop.

Make sure the array is set to 2D, and then run two fastloops:

* Start of frame
- Start loop "fill x"

* On loop "fill x"
+ Start loop "fill y"

Then, make a on loop "fill y" event and do the insertion there.

I don't have MMF2 in front of me, but in the event editor you can set value or string of an array item, and from the expression editor select the cellnumber by retrieving the "fill x" and "fill y" loop indexes:

x position = loopindex("fill x")
y position = loopindex("fill y")

So your example will look like this in the array:

0,0: "Item1"
0,1: 12
0,2: 45
1,0: "Item2"
1,1: 123
1,2: 456

etc...

[method72]

not going to go into a lot of detail here, but you can look at the LIST object, it is very powerful. you can select random objects from the scene and given they each have a alterable string, you can populate that into the list, and then feed it to a string object etc. I personally stay away from .INI files and write all my data into arrays, but that is personal preference.