Table Help, Please

zolbag

So I'm fairly new to GameSalad as a user, but my dad used it when it was still a fairly new program. He built a game out of it three, four years ago, and hasn't touched it much since then except to add the occasional uber minor edit. Right now I'm trying to streamline it and make it more modern before he releases it in it's entirety, because it's a pretty clunky game as is, really big, with quite a few bugs. Most of this is because he has a ridiculous number of game attributes (this was before tables were out there, mind you).
The reason I say "Table Help" is because I have no idea how the heck to work tables, really, and the majority of tutorials for working with them are either really old (so I don't know if they're outdated or not), or too specific and not applicable (such as their consistent usage in games for text-based deals), and so I'm still not sure how to use them. I'm curious as to what their limits are, and what their real powers are, because I see a lot of people say online that tables are incredibly powerful... Only they don't go into their powers
(It's kind of disappointing, and a little frustrating, but hey, what can you do? Not everyone has the time to waste hours of their day making videos or posts for people they will probably never meet or make contact with, so it makes sense you don't see many detailed explanations )
If there are videos and things out there that give general explanations, I'm sorry. All the videos I can find that aren't videos promoting the sale of a game or template are three or more years old, and I know they've done changes to them since then because I watched a video that at least explained that, before they tried to sell me a game so that I could know everything else
Anyone who has the time, would you please help me out? It's make my life a lot easier than failing with the tables repeatedly like I keep on doing

Braydon_SFX

I don't think any of the table videos are outdated - Tables are essentially attributes that you can use to organize or sort through. A great example of the power of tables is level locking and unlocking, searching through a piece of text to locate a certain key, creating an 'instant replay' of a level or action and many many other things. While none of the table tutorial may fit your circumstances, you have to learn how to use them in order to apply that knowledge to your project. There are many videos on YouTube - I suggest starting there.

The_Gamesalad_Guru

@zolbag said:
If there are videos and things out there that give general explanations, I'm sorry. All the videos I can find that aren't videos promoting the sale of a game or template are three or more years old, and I know they've done changes to them since then because I watched a video that at least explained that, before they tried to sell me a game so that I could know everything else

I'm no fan of that either.

jamie_c

@zolbag, I think the reason tables seem so confusing is precisely because they can be used for so many different things. At their simplest form tables are used to store data, but the real question becomes what do you want to do with that data. Do you have a specific question? Are you trying to use tables for a specific reason?

A very simple use of a table would be to store and save data for game attributes like score, lives, health etc. You can store that in a table and recall it later as needed in a game.

zolbag

@jamie_c said:
zolbag, I think the reason tables seem so confusing is precisely because they can be used for so many different things. At their simplest form tables are used to store data, but the real question becomes what do you want to do with that data. Do you have a specific question? Are you trying to use tables for a specific reason?

A very simple use of a table would be to store and save data for game attributes like score, lives, health etc. You can store that in a table and recall it later as needed in a game.

Well, the game itself is a sticker book-style game, so I'm trying to pin all the attributes into a table instead of making them game attributes, but I can't seem to get any of the things I'm using that call on the variables inside the tables to actually work like I want them to... So far I've resorted to only calling on text-based tables and totally ignoring all the other types (boolean, integer, etc.) because I can't figure out how to call on them. Are there any ways you suggest to getting around that? That's really my biggest issue is figuring out how to call on the specific value in the table and have it not crash my game

zolbag

@Braydon_SFX said:
I don't think any of the table videos are outdated - Tables are essentially attributes that you can use to organize or sort through. A great example of the power of tables is level locking and unlocking, searching through a piece of text to locate a certain key, creating an 'instant replay' of a level or action and many many other things. While none of the table tutorial may fit your circumstances, you have to learn how to use them in order to apply that knowledge to your project. There are many videos on YouTube - I suggest starting there.

Okay, so, just so we're clear, tables HAVE NOT changed in the past three years (or at least, not enough to cause any significant changes)? I just want to get that out of the way, because if that's true then I can go out and watch at least three more videos, I just didn't want to watch them in case they were wrong and then I'd learn it the wrong way

Braydon_SFX

@zolbag said:
Okay, so, just so we're clear, tables HAVE NOT changed in the past three years (or at least, not enough to cause any significant changes)? I just want to get that out of the way, because if that's true then I can go out and watch at least three more videos, I just didn't want to watch them in case they were wrong and then I'd learn it the wrong way

No, they really haven't changed.

3 videos? There's more than that.
Be sure to follow along with the video inside GameSalad so you grasp the basics. Once you know how to use tables, the possibilities are endless - really!

jamie_c

@zolbag, I've attached a little project that has a simple table with each data type in it. If you preview the scene you'll see there is an actor for each type on the stage that displays data from the table. Each actor uses a Display Text Behavior to display the data on screen. You could use this same format to read data from the table and do anything with you like, this demo just displays it on-screen so you can see it.

Oddly enough the Real data in the table is 99.55 but displays as 99.550003. I'm sure I've read about a rounding bug in the forums before but I'm not sure of the specifics.

Hope this helps some.

zolbag

@Braydon_SFX said:
No, they really haven't changed.

>

3 videos? There's more than that.
Be sure to follow along with the video inside GameSalad so you grasp the basics. Once you know how to use tables, the possibilities are endless - really!

Haha, sorry, I mean three videos that I haven't watched from back then that fully apply to what I need, I understand that there are a ton of others Thanks much for the update of info, that will help me out quite a bit.

zolbag

@jamie_c said:
zolbag, I've attached a little project that has a simple table with each data type in it. If you preview the scene you'll see there is an actor for each type on the stage that displays data from the table. Each actor uses a Display Text Behavior to display the data on screen. You could use this same format to read data from the table and do anything with you like, this demo just displays it on-screen so you can see it.

Oddly enough the Real data in the table is 99.55 but displays as 99.550003. I'm sure I've read about a rounding bug in the forums before but I'm not sure of the specifics.

Hope this helps some.

Holy yes, thank you a ton!

jamie_c

Glad it helped!