Populating duplicate active objects from an array

[mobichan]

Hi All,

I think I may have just been staring at this problem too long and I can't tell why it isn't working. So I thought I would ask if anyone has a simple solution. I have a shop with 7 slots, each slot is a duplicate of a "slot" active object that has an AltVar "SlotIndex" to be able to identify them individually. Slot 0 and 6 (the first and last slots) are reserved as buttons. Slot 5 is an "exit" button. So I populate slots 1 through 4 with data (cost, etc) in each slot's AltVars from an array.

mockup.png

The tricky thing I have run into is how to have more than one "page" of items that you can cycle through and repopulate the slots with. The array has 15 unique X Dim entries, with Y Dim used for the cost, etc. Since each page of the shop shows 4 items at a time, I need to read only 4 entries from the array at a time. I can get the first page to show up properly (the array populates the AltVars of each "slot" active obj correctly) but once I start reading the array for the other pages, the slots stop behaving properly.

I'm pretty sure this is an object selection issue (since slot0 is actually ignored), but I have seen some array coding in MMF that confuses me because I have no idea how objects are selected differently when dealing with arrays.

Can anyone provide an example of how I would read the array for each page and repopulate the slots?

Cheers,

Reg

[gkinfinity]

Hi Mobichan, I'm pretty sure I can help you with this if you haven't found a solution yet but I'm kind of confused about what you're trying to achieve. I don't know what kind of GUI you're using and how you want the information displayed. I'll make a quick mfa later when I have more time that will hopefully help though.

[SolarB]

I don't know if I understand you correctly but are you setting each slot's 'SlotIndex' to the next/previous 4 when a page is 'turned'? If that's the case are you then doing valueatxy = slotindex then altvar 'slotindex' = value in array? also setting the animation frame/direction to the number of each slot? In theory this should work but an example mfa would definitely help.

[mobichan]

So, the GUI looks like the image I attached to my original post. The idea is to show the items in pages of 4 at a time. When you cycle to the next page, the "slots" (which are active objects with different images in the animation frames for each shop item) a value is set in the active object that is used to set the animation frame of that active object. So, I was trying to populate each slot with array entries 0 - 3 for page 01, array entries 4 - 7 for page 02, etc. I can get page one to work, but I seem to be unable to get page 2+ working. I was running a fastloop to repopulate the slotindex var, but for some reason, the code that works fine on page 01 doesn't work on the other pages. I think it is probably something simple, but I have stared at this so long that it isn't making sense why it doesn't work.

Any example would be very helpful, since dealing with arrays always trips me up.

[SolarB]

I hope this is what you mean!

slotvalues.mfa

To explain:

The "Always" condition 'populates' each duplicate slot in reference to it's index value and the Y value of the array, for which I've used a reference active with values numbered 0, 1,X for each item. However, this is just for ease of inputting stuff because I find using a reference active makes things easier when working with arrays, that way you can remember what Y value holds which item. You could just as easily use numbers, eg:

+always:
--> set 'weapon' to StrAtXY(array): Slotindex(slots), 1

instead of

--> set 'weapon' to StrAtXY(array): Slotindex(slots), Weapon(Vals)

come to think of it, you don't even need to set each slot's values as you could read these directly from the array so instead of 'populating' the slots you could just do whatever else you wanted to do with the fetched strings.

[mobichan]

SolarB: This is dead on to what I am attempting. Since this is for iOS and PC, I needed to modify the Always condition to only load when the arrow is pressed, so the slots are refreshed only once. I was running a loop before to refresh the slot index, but I really was overcomplicating it. ^_^' This stuff always looks so obvious when other people do it. Thanks so much for the help.

Cheers,

Reg

[SolarB]

No probs, and if you REALLY want to save yourself some extra nanoseconds of calculation you could read directly from the array instead of populating the slots, ie:

+ on right/left arrow
+ slot selected = slotindex(slots)
--> change (moneystring) to valueatXY(array): Slotindex(slots), Cost(vals)

and even:

+ user clicks/presses enter:
--> subtract [valueatXY(array): Slotindex(slots), Cost(vals)] from [money]

that way your slot actives wouldn't need any vars except for their index.