Grouped Objects Tip

Clouds

This might be some use to someone somewhere out there . . . . .

When you group together a bunch of objects (using constrain) some elements can be 'laggy'' - so that when you drag your monster around his hat (a separate but constrained object) can lag behind.

What I have noticed is that if a 'child' object (one that is following a 'parent' object) is brought forwards in the layers it really helps keep the connection tight, send it right to the back and you can see it is more laggy.

Try it with this, click on the red 'handle' and send it to the back of the layers (Shift+Command+minus) - and preview - now move the red handle right to the top layer (Shift+Command+plus) and you can see the slight sloppiness of the connection to the white square has disappeared.

http://www.mediafire.com/?agxufjdnz3qn3ji

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POM

That is correct , its very important to understand how the order of the rules execute when you build your project.
The way GameSalad execute rules is :
It starts from the bottom layer - bottom actor, and goes up (actor by actor) , and in each actor it execute the "in actor rules" from top to bottom .

So to your example , logically , we first need to know where the "parent" position is , and THEN constrain the "child" to this position , meaning , the "parent" needs to be UNDER the "child" actor in the layer's order .

Now lets see what happens if we revers it (in logical terms) , the engine start the process and the first thing he "see" is that the "child" needs to be constrained to the parent position , BUT the engine still don't have those values , cause the "parent" actor is above it(in the layer) , and by the time the engine got to the "parent" actor , the "parent" has already moved from its previous position , and thats what causing the lag .

Hope that make any sense ..

Roy.

Clouds

Brilliant explanation Roy, yes that makes a lot of sense - and well worth knowing.

gyroscope

Good observation, Tynan, and great clarification, P-O-M; thank you, useful to know. :-)

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