It can't be that much of a pain to copy and paste, can it? If, as you say, you develop from a conceptual point of view, you're likely organized and put things in groups. Just copy-paste the group! If you're developing a "larger scale project" likely each level takes awhile anyway, so what's ten seconds of copy-paste? I don't understand why such a trivial thing is such a big deal.
Because one of the principles of good software design is cutting down on Code Re-use. I have been doing that and it's just irritating to keep everything updated. I need level specific events as well as global events, and often seperating the two in this manner is difficult. I need to copy and paste the global events every time I switch to a different level. It's aggrivating.
Check out my Telekinesis'em'up Thread and the ALICE Machines -
Roseweave is right, although it is more commonly referred to as Object Oriented programming. If you need to change code used in every level, would you rather change it just once, or once for every level?
- Ok, you must admit that was the most creative cussing this site have ever seen -
What I do is put all new stuff into my test level. From there, I refine the code in the frame editor as I need and keep it all nicely grouped so I can just disable all duplicated code. After refining the code as needed, I copy it, and then add it to that object's behaviors. This effectively makes my test level an internal library; I don't need to put the objects there in any other frame. All I have to do then is have an event that spawns the object.
This way, I can use the frame editor for making events that relate to the actual frame.
What's best about this method is that all the references to qualifiers stay intact, so they basically become global qualifiers. The most work that's required, from what I know, is maintaining the list of qualifiers so you don't accidentally have elevators being death zones.
Originally Posted by OldManClayton It can't be that much of a pain to copy and paste, can it? If, as you say, you develop from a conceptual point of view, you're likely organized and put things in groups. Just copy-paste the group! If you're developing a "larger scale project" likely each level takes awhile anyway, so what's ten seconds of copy-paste? I don't understand why such a trivial thing is such a big deal.
That's exactly what I'm doing. I have about 150 level frames now and 1 giant Global group (thanks subgroups too) with a version number attached to it, and with specific level-only events underneath. It's not hard to use really. I'd like Global Qualifiers but editing the current Global events takes a very long time and makes fluid coding in there impossible. However it only takes me around 2 minutes of Del, CTRL+V, Right arrow key to upgrade the engine to all frames. If I update the engine every week then it's only 2 minutes out of 10,080.
Workaround for Global Qualifiers:
-Make an Active Object
-Give it a behavior. It can have qualifiers.
-Make the object global so when you change its behavior it will be automatically updated in all frames.
-Add this object to any frame you wish.
The problem is that I'm bad at keeping track of every change I make. Everytime you switch levels, you need to copy and paste. I guess it depends on how you make your game - if you're more focused you can stay in the same level and keep track of every change you've made. For me I'll forgot what events I've shoved in global and which in the level events, etc., and get generally confused. There was one other issue with this I forget.
Check out my Telekinesis'em'up Thread and the ALICE Machines -
Workaround for Global Qualifiers:
-Make an Active Object
-Give it a behavior. It can have qualifiers.
-Make the object global so when you change its behavior it will be automatically updated in all frames.
-Add this object to any frame you wish.
"Cannot paste the vents: the origin events contain references to a qualifier."
I'm using build 241 though I think, has this been changed in a later build? Or are you using MMF 1.5?
Edited by the Author.
Check out my Telekinesis'em'up Thread and the ALICE Machines -
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Edited by the Author.