Copy/Paste tricks I don't know about?

TouchTiltGames

Ok is there a trick to copying 5 actors in each level in the scene, each of which have a different interger value in its attribute and pasting them into the next level's scene? I have 20+ levels and I'm bummed that I have to drag, position, open each actor change its value 5 times per level. GS is getting pretty slow at this stage in the 'game' heh.

aalzanki

no

TouchTiltGames

Blaaaarghhh lol.

JackBQuick

netdzynr found a way to do what you want:

Minor Victory

(If you try this, please please please remember to back up your file!)

TouchTiltGames

Thanks, Jack. I already finished what I had to do but I'll give this a read for the future!

netdzynr

Yeah, one way to get around GS Creator's limitations is to edit the XML in a gameproj file, but it's not easy. You need to be comfortable locating the extents of XML nodes, but even before doing that, you need to be able to open the XML in the first place. Creator seems to reject XML that contains return characters beyond the first line, and because most gameproj files contain dozens if not hundreds of nodes without return characters, most text editors won't open gameproj XML, or will simply stop displaying all the characters in the file. In my case, I wound up using a dedicated programming tool (Revolution and a special XML library) to get at the XML and write it back out to a format that Creator would accept. I don't much about XML editors -- there might be one out there that's capable of handling GS files.

JackBQuick

@netdzynr - I use:

1) Textwrangler (freeware) - I use this because it allows the user to create scripts.

2) Smultron or Fraise (freeware)

3) Espresso ($85.55 CAD) - A beautiful program that has a nice Navigator which shows the hierarchical structure of the document. It's expensive now but I got it as part of the MacHeist 3 bundle in 2009.

I haven't used these to open very large XML files yet, though.

netdzynr

TextWrangler won't work (tried it early on).
Smultron takes forever to open a file, and once it does, it's completely unusable (can't scroll or search).
Fraise is based on Smultron so same problems.
I have v1 of Espresso, and it will open a GS XML file (nice) but it doesn't seem capable of displaying the XML in human readable form. That said, it is possible to run find and replace which is obviously the key feature needed for editing.

To be of real use, a tool needs to be able to display the XML in readable form (formatted with returns). Otherwise it's difficult (but not impossible) to find what you want. This is why most text editors won't cut it. But Espresso seems somewhat workable.

Rob2

Dashcode opens the xml files happily ...

netdzynr

It does!
Weird, I have a GS scene file on my desktop that opens up under DashCode in two (long) lines, but when trying several other XML files from a current gameproj file, they open up wrapped to the editor window (which is better)...

So DashCode seems to be another viable editing option.

firemaplegames

BBEdit works as well.