SCANNING ACTOR REQUEST

blob

I’d like to have an option to switch the order GS scans actors from top to bottom instead of being stuck with only bottom to top scanning.

Why the rabbit might ask?……

Many reasons. It would simplify many situations.
For example:
Imagine an hero actor with cut out eye sockets.
the layer right underneath would be the eye texture actor. (scanned first)
The eyes layer would follow touch while also constrained to the hero actor X/Y position.

So for this to work the eyes actor needs to be directly underneath the hero actor (to hide the extra eye texture used for eye motions) yet constrained to X/Y position of the actor right above.
Since the scanning is from bottom to top This positional constraint will take a full cycle
This would create lag when hero actor is moving fast in scenes populated with many actors to cycle thru.
Unless we can only change the scanning direction.

i don’t imagine it being so hard and time consuming to implement..

Armelline

Almost all such issues can be resolved by adding an extra actor to the mix. Control all the movement with an invisible actor, and constrain the hero image to that just like the eyes.

jamie_c

No offense to you @blob, but this kills me whenever something like it is said (and it's often) when we users have to no real idea how the software is written and what it would really to take to make such a change. I can only imagine GS is thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of lines of code.

"i don’t imagine it being so hard and time consuming to implement."

RThurman

@jamie_c said:
No offense to you @blob, but this kills me whenever something like it is said (and it's often) when we users have to no real idea how the software is written and what it would really to take to make such a change. I can only imagine GS is thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of lines of code.

"i don’t imagine it being so hard and time consuming to implement."

GameSalad Creator consists of nearly 7 million lines of code. The code is spread across 41 thousand separate files.

blob

@RThurman said:
GameSalad Creator consists of nearly 7 million lines of code. The code is spread across 41 thousand separate files.

I would hope the actor scan order code would not be spread thru 41 thousand files.

@jamie_c said:
No offense to you @blob, but this kills me whenever something like it is said (and it's often) when we users have to no real idea how the software is written and what it would really to take to make such a change. I can only imagine GS is thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of lines of code.

7 million lines of code, not hundreds of thousand. No offense taken.
I do imagine it being very large but that does not mean scanning code and related bits have 7 millions dependencies and 41 000 pages needing editing. etc..

@Armelline said:
Almost all such issues can be resolved by adding an extra actor to the mix. Control all the movement with an invisible actor, and constrain the hero image to that just like the eyes.

Yes second best choice. yet still it makes things heavier, slower and more complicated than a scan switch especially with many actors.
I do think actor hiding others in layer order should scan first.
Seems more logical to me in most cases.

jamie_c

@RThurman said:

@jamie_c said:
No offense to you @blob, but this kills me whenever something like it is said (and it's often) when we users have to no real idea how the software is written and what it would really to take to make such a change. I can only imagine GS is thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of lines of code.

"i don’t imagine it being so hard and time consuming to implement."

GameSalad Creator consists of nearly 7 million lines of code. The code is spread across 41 thousand separate files.

Ouch! I can't imagine what that would be like to work with. Thanks for the info.

blob

@jamie_c said:

@RThurman said:

@jamie_c said:
No offense to you @blob, but this kills me whenever something like it is said (and it's often) when we users have to no real idea how the software is written and what it would really to take to make such a change. I can only imagine GS is thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of lines of code.

"i don’t imagine it being so hard and time consuming to implement."

GameSalad Creator consists of nearly 7 million lines of code. The code is spread across 41 thousand separate files.

Ouch! I can't imagine what that would be like to work with. Thanks for the info.

Especially with just 1 part time guy... (let's not start his again..):)

However If they need more help with these 7 million lines:
I could recode GameSalad's 41 000 files using GS creator with just about a few 1000 timers, change attribute, constraints and the oh so important buzz actor.

then i would speed it alt up with the Accelerate Toward actor.

AlchimiaStudios

@Armelline said:
Almost all such issues can be resolved by adding an extra actor to the mix. Control all the movement with an invisible actor, and constrain the hero image to that just like the eyes.

Yep, I find this to really be the best workflow. Even in other engines it's a good idea a lot of the time to move the graphics portions of an object to a separate object then what handles movement. Same with camera controls. This also allows you to swap any other actor to be constrained to the movement control actor in it's place and the camera can float freely for cutscenes or to other actors positions if needed more easily.