Make an actor flash on & off ?

InvisibleHam

Hello all, hope everyone is doing great!

I was wondering if it's possible for an actor to be off screen but appear on screen for .1 seconds every 1 second?

Kind of like a flash that you see every second?

Hope this makes sense & thanks for any advice

Cheers

AfterBurnett

Yup You could use timers to change the self.alpha attribute.Not in front of GS right now (at work) and I'm so tired I couldn't tell you how to do it without looking inside GS but at least it's a place to start

AfterBurnett

Ooh! Ooh! You could also do what I did with a massive laser in my game. If the actor doesn't need different animation frames, you could use the animation behaviour to flash between the actor's image file and a blank .png file... that way you can adjust the frame rate depending on how fast you want it to "flash"

InvisibleHam

Thanks,

Would that be a 'Change Attribute' inside of a 'Timer' behavior?

I'm still feeling my way around, trying to learn what everything does.

InvisibleHam

Well maybe it will help if I explain a bit more what I'm trying to achieve:

I basically have a guy that I want the user to tap to defeat. Only, the user needs to tap at precise intervals (to a beat) so I was thinking of having a transparent actor 'appear' on top of the guy every 1 second (to the beat) and if the user taps on the transparent actor, they get +100 points, but if they tap the guy (while the transparent actor isn't on top of him) they get -100

does that make sense?

Thanks again!

AfterBurnett

Yeah, use a timer - "EVERY 1 second, FOR 1 second, CHANGE ATTRIBUTE self.alpha to 0". Or something like that... not sure if that would work... brain is a little fried right now... 4:08am and I'm still at work. lol.

InvisibleHam

Hahah, no worries, I'll give that a shot and see how it works out.

Thanks and get some rest!

AfterBurnett

Or: "Every 1 sec, if alpha=0, change to 1, otherwise if alpha =1, change to 0"

InvisibleHam

Doesn't seem to work, every combination I'm trying just either has it invisible or solid, no flashing.

AfterBurnett

Use two rules (otherwise can be a bit iffy):

WHEN alpha=0, AFTER 1 sec, Change Attribute self.alpha to 1

WHEN alpha=1, AFTER 1 sec, Change Attribute self.alpha to 0

That should work.

AfterBurnett

Also, instead of using an invisible actor for detection, you could have an attribute named "Detectable" and have it to switch on and off. When it's on, the player's touch counts, when off, it doesn't. Be less processor intensive than a whole other actor ;-)

expired_012

First make a fade in boolean attribute in your actor that you want to flash. Name it "fadein"

Rule:

When self.color.alpha=1
-change attribute (self.fadein) to false

New rule:

When attribute (self.fadein) is false
-Interpolate self.color.alpha TO: 0
DURATION: 1
FUNCTION: LINEAR

New rule:

When attibute (self.color.alpha)=0
-change attribute (self.fadein) to true

New rule:

when attribute (Self.fadein) is true
Interpolate self.color.alpha to 1
DURATION: 1
fUNCTION: LINEAR

AfterBurnett

That'd fade it, though. I think he wants it to flash. For fading, could also use the method I put up there and swap out CHANGE ATTRIBUTE for INTERPOLATE, the less rules and attributes, the better.

expired_012

Oh i see now, i didn't know what he meant by flash but now i get it

You could just use the same thing i posted but set the duration to to 0.1 or 0.001, etc depending on how fast you want the flash to be. It'll be going so fast that you cant notice its a fade, it would create a flashing effect

AfterBurnett

That's the cool thing about GS, many ways to do things

InvisibleHam

"Also, instead of using an invisible actor for detection, you could have an attribute named "Detectable" and have it to switch on and off. When it's on, the player's touch counts, when off, it doesn't. Be less processor intensive than a whole other actor ;-)"

Could you tell me how to create attributes?

Also I'm totally open to any better ways to do this. Just think of a rhythm game: I need hits to land on beats and when a user taps off-beat they lose points.

The invisible actor flashing on and off was the first thing I thought of, since there obviously isn't any way for Gamesalad to recognize music files and detect rhythms :P

Thanks again I am away from GS for now but I will try these out soon & report back

Cheers!

AfterBurnett

Click on attributes in the scene editor and hit the little "+" button

A rythym game could be tough in GS... the timers aren't perfectly accurate and GS tends to stutter every now and then for no apparent reason.