Less taxing way of creating Rules?

TouchTiltGames

I'm wondering if there's any way of avoiding having a ton of Rules on an actor that collides with any one of a number of other actors.

For example: You have 10 different objects each of which do different things/have different behaviors when you drop them on 15+ other actors. So instead of creating 10 rules for each 15 actors that could all be spawned on the screen at once, I wondered if there was a less taxing way of doing the same thing? I would use tags but each object is different and I want each Actor that its dropped on to do different things.

Thanks in advance,
shane

chosenonestudios

just add actor tags for all the actors you want it to collide with...

so for main actor collides with tags "collide" etc.

beefy_clyro

Yup, gotta use tags dude. If you're unsure where this is, go to your home screen, click actors and you'll see tags. There will currently be one that says 'All', add a new one called 'Collide' or something and drag in the actors you want to collide. Then when you're creating your rule on the actor, just say, when actor x overlaps or collides with (change to tags) 'collide' then do ....

AfterBurnett

He mentioned he can't use tags... sheesh :P

beefy_clyro

ah yeh, sorry, missed that bit. if everything is individual i cant see how you would do it other than create a seperate rule based upon that actors behaviours

chosenonestudios

beefy_clyro said:
ah yeh, sorry, missed that bit. if everything is individual i cant see how you would do it other than create a seperate rule based upon that actors behaviours

Yeah oops, sorry...
/agrees with beefy

TouchTiltGames

Ok so based on your guys' experience, is having around 12 rules per actor with 15-20 actors on screen at once too much? I don't want to go ahead and do this and find that GS can't handle it..

Thanks!

quantumsheep

One way of quickly testing it is making one player actor, then an 'enemy' actor with 12 rules on it.

Then copy and paste the enemy actor 15-20 times and put them all on the screen

Hope that helps,

QS

Photics

Shizane said:
Ok so based on your guys' experience, is having around 12 rules per actor with 15-20 actors on screen at once too much? I don't want to go ahead and do this and find that GS can't handle it..

In my game... which still hasn't been approved by Apple yet... has over 50 actors on the screen, with about 4 rules each. 4*50=100 rules... and I think that's really pushing it. I had to simply things for the iPod Touch version of my game. 12*20=240 rules... it seems doubtful to me.

Keep in mind... many of my actors have physics (and even visibility) turned off. That's how I was able to get decent performance.

I also think that actors with lots of rules don't perform well. I try to break up rules. Once a scroll bar appears in the actor editor, that's when I start to wonder if there are too many behaviors.

BarkBarkCo

Photics said:...Once a scroll bar appears in the actor editor, that's when I start to wonder if there are too many behaviors.

Is that with all the items minimized or not?

Rattlehead

I think the other thing that I am not really seeing mentioned is how verbose each of those rules are. Actors with fewer rules that are extremely verbose (a lot of constrains and timers - i.e. read, complex) are probably going to have a bigger impact on performance than a lot of rules with simple Change Attributes in them.

reddotinc

Photics said:
has over 50 actors on the screen, with about 4 rules each. 4*50=100 rules...

did GS "lose" half of your rules? :P

Photics

barkbark00 said:
Is that with all the items minimized or not?

Not minimized, 1280x1024 screen.

swiftmedia said:
did GS "lose" half of your rules? :P

HA, that is 200, isn't it?!

...so maybe it's possible... but most of my actors don't move at the same time... if at all.