Programmatic Image Reference

netdzynr

Maybe this is old news, but after spending a fair amount of time searching for a way to randomly display images without using a bunch of tedious rules and actors, I came across one way to accomplish programmatic image reference.

Say you have 5 images named display1.png, display2.png, display3.png, etc that you want to display in one actor.
- Create a text attribute ImgName, set this to "display" (no quotes)
- Create a text attribute ImgType, set this to ".png" (no quotes)
- Create an empty text attribute ImgPath
- Create an empty integer attribute ImgNum

To assign a random image to an actor while running your game:
- set the value of ImgNum to your random number: game.ImgNum = random(1,5)
- set the value of ImgPath to game.ImgName..game.ImgNum..game.ImgType (note the double dots)
- set the self.Image of your actor to game.ImgPath

You actor should now be able to randomly display any imported image without having to use separate actors and rules for each image. If anyone knows a better way to do this, I would love to know how.

scorelessmusic

Thanks! This will help me much.

xarmian

This is an old post but I was needing to do this and this helped a lot. I found an easier way though using the same concept as the OP (I'm new to GS, so maybe this has been around a while).. Essentially the steps netdzynr mentions have you create a prefix and postfix for the image names, then a number to assign the image.

So lets say you want to select a random image out of 5 when an object is spawned. Make sure all the images are named in a sequence (ex. myImage-1-name.png, myImage-2-name.png). Now add a Change Attribute rule to your actor and change self.Image to the following expression, including quotes):

"myImage-"..random(1,5).."name.png"

Now when the actor is created, one of the five images will be randomly chosen. I hope this helps someone to simplify the process.

xyloFUN

xarmian,
YES, that helps and I will try this right now!

If it doesn't .... I'll be back!

xyloFUN

OK, no quick success there ....

What is the simplest way to call a random image onto a scene? To trigger the event, one would click a button!

thanks