Adventures in Object Selection Issues [MFA INCLUDED]

[pikzilla]

Hi, all.

So here's a bug that's had me puzzled for an hour and a half straight: I have a simple little example here where I'm trying to make strings of letters move across the screen in a sinewave. I have more than one of these strings onscreen at a time, so I've arranged things such that each assembly of letters is controlled by a single "Daddy" object, using a timer value. In order to properly select my objects, I use fastloops and spread values; Each Daddy is given an ID, which it shares with each of the ten letter's it's responsible for.

My "move" loop goes something like this:

Always:
-Add 1 to Timer("Daddy")
-Start loop "move" [# of Daddy objects] times

On loop "move":
+If ID("Daddy") = loopindex("move")
+If DaddyID("Letter") = loopindex("move")
-set X("Letter") to Timer("Daddy") - 20*[String index of the Letter]
-set Y("Letter") to sin(10*Timer("Daddy") - 20* [String index of the Letter]

So long story short, my setup works fine with one or two assemblies: my events seem to successfully distinguish between the two strings, and each one will move independently. But when a third assembly is created, the second one will stop moving, leaving only the first and third in motion. Basically, at any given time, all but the newest and oldest of the assemblies are motionless.

I've hypothesized that this might just be an issue with how my IDs are set up, but I've looked that over and its pretty standard stuff. Do you suppose that I'm not using the MMF2 object selection system quite right?

Here's the file: I'd be much obliged if somebody could shed light on my conundrum.
http://www.mediafire.com/?v51t0t55th15van

[AyreGuitar]

pikzilla - Had a look at your file and it seems like the problem is in line 21. You add 1 to Tim and then start a fastloop. By putting these on separate lines it works on my PC. As a general rule, don't place other actions in the same event as a fastloop as they don't always work like you think they will (weird I know!)

[pikzilla]

Hey, thanks a bunch for the tip, man- it seems to have fixed the problem!

Is there any general lesson to learn from this about the way MMF2 handles the order of actions?

[AyreGuitar]

pikzilla - Glad I could help. The general lesson is to always place Start Fastloop actions on their own.

[Chaos]

You should also be able to use the event list editor, to make sure the fastloop is the last thing to trigger on a single line of code. I don't know if it will fix your exact problem but I haven't encountered any issues if I put the fastloop call last.