Display Text randomly sorts BEHIND some Actors' Images
spatns
Member, PRO Posts: 10
in Tech Support
I am spawning a series of actors (cards). Each card actor reads its data from a table, and the populates its Display Text calls.
Most of the time (90%?) the Display Text appears on top of the actor's image, as expected. However, randomly, on some instances the actor's Display Text appears sorted BEHIND the actor's image. Anyone know what's going on?
Screenshot:
First actor is as expected, second actor shows weird sorting.
Thanks!
SP
Comments
'populates its Display Text calls' ?
I am spawning a series of cards, each one displays a value read from a table ?
Projects in GameSalad are like a calculations, in fact they are calculations, when using GameSalad you are saying . . . 'take a look at all these rules and conditions and values . . . and show me the result'.
So, describing the (unexpected) outcome (the result) of a calculation without showing the calculation itself (the rules and conditions and values) turns often simple questions into intractable guessing games.
The usual approach to a question like yours would be for someone to try and mentally imagine the code that might have produced the result you describe, of course there may well be thousands of different routes to arrive at one particular result, so the chances of someone reverse engineering your actual code from the clues given and getting the right one are pretty low, but people will try nonetheless, often wasting their own time and sending the OP in the wrong direction.
Which is (to me at least) odd given that all the rules and conditions and behaviours and attributes and values and so on, are sat on the screen in front of the OP !
Think of it like this . . . which of the following two questions are you more easily able to answer:
I am doing a calculation. However, the result appears to be wrong, I get 250, when I expect to get 35. Anyone know what's going on?
. . . or . . .
I am doing a calculation. Which is 25 +10. However, the result appears to be wrong, I get 250, when I expect to get 35. Anyone know what's going on?
. . . I think most people could make a reasonable guess with the second version of the question, which is that the problem is probably that the OP has a multiply sign where he thinks he has a plus sign (25 *10=250) but without that crucial part (sharing the calculation . . 'Which is 25 +10') what can you really say about the question (the first version) other than to make some random suggestions ?
Sorry about the rant, lol, it's one I do at least once every week otherwise I don't feel I have imposed my will on the forum, lol
Basically . . . can we see what is causing this behaviour? Standing around a box and hypothesising about what might be making the noise coming from inside is fun, but you'll find opening the box and looking inside is a lot quicker.
. . . or it could be a new never before seen bug (unlikely), in which case there is a similar need for information, is this bug occurring in Creator's Preview on an iMac running Yosemite with GS 12.10 . . or maybe this is a PC project running on an Amazon Fire tablet . . . (etc) ?
Yeah... thanks for the rant.
My assumption was that getting text sorting behind an actor's image wasn't possible in GS, assuming that same actor is making the call to Display Text.
If it is something you CAN do in GameSalad, then it was something I might have set inadvertently... I figured someone could point out a sorting checkbox I didn't know about (although a forum search yielded nothing).
I did try to set up a test case project that could reproduce the issue in the most simple possible terms, but in every test case I tried, the text was always in front of the actor.
Back in my original project I slightly moved a "Change Attribute self.Graphics.Visible = true" and suddenly the problem went away... Now the text is displayed on top of the actor every time. Before moving it, the self.Graphics.Visible call was definitely prior to the Display Text call, but the funny thing is that trying to put it back how it was, to reproduce the problem again, doesn't work! I can't make the issue reoccur... And unfortunately I overwrote my save so I can't get back to the non working version.
So end of story - if I can't reliably repro the problem, then there's really nothing to do. Although in the future I will be looking at self.Graphics.Visible calls in close proximity to complex Display Text calls if I see the behavior again, and will try to isolate and reproduce the issue.
(FWIW the issue was visible in Preview mode in Mac Creator 13.36 on Yosemite 10.10.5, and also visible in Preview on an Iphone 6.0 using GS Viewer).
Sorry about that !
Thanks for the response.
Glad the problem got resolved, sounds mysterious !