Change Density seems not to work...

homelesswombat

So I have an actor whose density I need to change but it seems not to work. Even when I display the density it reports that the density has indeed changed, but the physics does not agree (the actor is extremely light when it should be heavy). Is this a bug? Can anyone try this out and confirm?

firemaplegames

You cannot change Density at runtime. (you might be able to "change" it, but it won't have any effect)

I'm pretty sure that you cannot change visible as well, or any of the other physics attributes at runtime.

homelesswombat

Damn. That sucks. I'm trying to make an actor transform from a small light actor to a dense heavy one. I was using two different actors with spawn/destroy, but that's really processor intensive so I'm trying to combine them into one. Is there another way to fake it without using spawn?

adado

Have them both spawned already, keeping the heavy one off screen until the moment the heaviness is to set it, then swap them real quick (or destroy the light and swap the heavy in)? Or something along those lines.

homelesswombat

Good idea adado, but unfortunately it won't work. I have multiple instances of this actor in a rather complex runtime environment keeping track of them all would be nuts.The transformation has multiple trigger collision events and the heavy actor also needs to transform back into the lighter version.

I may have to live without the density attribute change if I want this game to be on 3G. Gamesalad just doesn't seem to have the solution available without over taxing the processor. If only there were a way to pre-load what you're planning to spawn, like if I could tell GS that I'm going to need 20 heavy actors pre-loaded so the CPU doesn't have to load them all into RAM on the fly. Much like your good idea adado. I just don't know how each actor would keep track of it's "mate" in the case of say, 30 actors on the scene.