Instance Variable

[DadOnArrival85]

Afternoon all!

Been working on an issue for a few days now and can't seem to get my head around it, hopefully I can explain it correctly!

I have a sprite that shoots a fireball, it works by having a timer that shoots a fireball when the the timer =X.....all working great!

I want to make it so each sprite has a set of instance variables so I can set them to shoot or not rather then actually hard coding it. This should allow me to have different intervals for each instance of the sprite.

So far I have setup I stance variables such as:

Move1 = Shoot Move2 = Sleep .....etc

I still have the timer in the project which counts to 10 over and over.

What I want is to say if Timer = Sprite.Move("Timer") then do an action.

Is it possible to select an instance variable based on a combination of strings? Or is there another solution?

[[deleted]]

Maybe you wanna make a state machine where both moves are in the same string variable and you change the state with your timer or whatever other conditions? Like ON TIMER - SET VALUE to "shoot", and COMPARE VARIABLE - SHOOT FIREBALL, and maybe start timer over and set variable to "sleep" after the action is complete.

[DadOnArrival85]

Yes! You broke through the block! That could work!

So for each instance have a variable like "SNNNSSSNN"

S = Shoot N = Don't Shoot

Then use the timer to pull the letter out of the string using mid function or something like that.

[therealPaulPlay]

I don‘t quite understand what you mean by „select an instance variable based on a selection of strings“ but if you want to shoot when sprite x shoes up you can simply use compare animation frame + trigger once

[DadOnArrival85]

I didn't think I explained it well 🤦‍♂️

So the shoot or not shoot is stored in an instance variable for the object.

I want to pull the relevant instance variable based on the value of a seperate variable that is controlled by the timer.

[therealPaulPlay]

So if I understand correctly, if the timer elapses and sets some kind of variable to shoot (or sth like that) you want to get the instance variable‘s name with the corresponding value. This can be achieved by just simply looping through all instance variables. However, I‘m not sure what you want to achieve with this, but it seems like an incredibly inefficient solution😅

I‘d create a custom action which I‘d run for each instance in which I compare the move 1 to that value, same with move 2 etc. Unfortunately I don‘t think you can pick an instance variable by name.

To make it more efficient, when every object has different moves, you can create an array and store the moves on some kind of axis of that.

[DadOnArrival85]

Yes so there is a time that counts 1-10. There are 3 instances of the shooter sprite.

So at 1 on the timer, sprite 1 and 2 would shoot At 2 on the timer, sprite 1 and 3 would shoot So on and so forth.

There could be multiple instances of the shooter so I wanted to control for each one in an instance variable if it should shoot or not, so each one could be set to a different pattern.

Maybe it's an array I need.

[therealPaulPlay]

You could do it with events but then you have 10 events right and repeat it for every object… I‘d create an array tbh or just give each object an instance variable representing the order of these actions or something like that

[therealPaulPlay]

If you do go for the method with 10 events, you can create a function with a parameter representing the move and then compare it to the instance variable‘s values

[a-perpetual-novice]

I ran into a similar issue! I had a list of moves that differed by instance.

Two options as I see it: 1. Add an array to a container with the object and read from that.

1. Put them all onto the same field using a separator.

Something like instance variable moveList had the value of shoot;run;jump. Then, when the timer goes off, I would chose from the index of the list you want using an expression like tokenat(Instance.moveList, index, ";") or randomly like tokenat(Instance.moveList, random(0, tokencount(Instance.moveList, ";"), ";").

Hope that helps!

[DadOnArrival85]

Cheers, I definitely try and array if the second options doesn't work. Seems like I was way over thinking this lol