Change the hotspot of a string object?

[ChrisBurrows]

Hello,

Has anybody figured a way to change the "hotspot" position of a string object?

For example, say you have a string object, 100 pixels wide and with centred horizontal alignment. You want this string object to be positioned above your player. So you set the X position of your string to the X position of your player. The problem is, even though your string has centre alignment, it will not appear at the centre of your player because the hotspot of string objects is at their top left corner. This is not the centre of your text.

[oruga]

You can't, but you don't have to align it exactly to the object's hotspot. Adjust it to be centered. if your string object is 100 pixels wide just set its x position to the x position of your player - 50. That works just fine.

[ChrisBurrows]

Not if you don't know long your string is going to be because you are allowing your player to pick their own name of whatever length they please...

[KLiK-iT]

Chris,.I don't use string objects much,.but is there a way that MMF can detect the character length of a string? If so you could move it according to length. Or maybe use detectors and set them above the character and if the string is over lapping the detectors move the string left or right.

[ChrisBurrows]

You can retrieve the character length easily. But not the length in pixels. Characters like "m" are much bigger than a "." or a space. Collision detectors don't work because the collision mask is the area of the total string object, not the text of the object.

Anybody?

[oruga]

O_O geez, just try what I told ya, it works good. You don't know the length but you set the width limit on the frame, when you set a string to be 100 pixels wide it means it cannot go beyond that if it is less it works just fine. If you are afraid it won't be enough you can set it to a crazy width like 800 or whatever, still works, try it.

[DistantJ]

You can find the width in pixels.

"X co-ordinate of right edge" - "X co-ordinate of left edge"

[Shawn]

O_O geez, just try what I told ya, it works good. You don't know the length but you set the width limit on the frame, when you set a string to be 100 pixels wide it means it cannot go beyond that if it is less it works just fine. If you are afraid it won't be enough you can set it to a crazy width like 800 or whatever, still works, try it.

This would work. If the string text is set to centered it won't matter how long or short it is. If you have it left aligned well then yeah you might have inconsistencies.

[ChrisBurrows]

You can find the width in pixels.

"X co-ordinate of right edge" - "X co-ordinate of left edge"

That just finds the edge co-ordinates of the objects collision mask, not from the first character to the last.

You can find the width in pixels.

" O_O geez, just try what I told ya, it works good. You don't know the length but you set the width limit on the frame, when you set a string to be 100 pixels wide it means it cannot go beyond that if it is less it works just fine. If you are afraid it won't be enough you can set it to a crazy width like 800 or whatever, still works, try it."

I know what you mean and it does work in that situation but that isn't actually what I'm trying to do. I am creating a spreadsheet style array editor. The columns have adjustable widths. The column headings (1, 2 ,3 etc) are centred and it works fine. But.... I can either have it so it is centred for columns 1-9 and then 10 and above looks weird, or 1-9 look weird and 10 and above is centred correctly. At first, I thought being able to alter the strings hotspots would fix it, but now I think about it, I doubt it.

But, this off centre centred text is only noticeable when you resize a column to its minimum width of 30 pixels and maybe I'll just have to live with that.

http://www.whenthereisnoroominhellth...arrayordie.mfa (work in progress. glitchy as all hell.)

Maybe you can think of something?

I appreciate your help, both of you!