I went through the variable section of the tutorial today and now they make sense to me. I was having to use objects and making things active/inactive in order to get the desired action. This will make coding so much easier for me. I probably gave up on variables too early before I was really following the logic arguments that cause the action to succeed or fail.

I also hadn't realized you could drag the commands to where you wanted them. That's going to be a great time saver as well.

Two questions for you.

1. When I edit a command, say changing it from text to display picture, the edited line will show both the picture and the text command. (You may have already fixed this in an update as I'm using 0.9.9.0).

2. I don't see an option to rename a condition. I changed my mind about how to solve a puzzle but now I'm stuck with the old condition name. Maybe my best course would be to create a new condition and drag all the associated commands to the new condition with the right condition name.

I really appreciate the tutorial and believe it's going to do wonders for my coding skills. And thanks again for a great product.

You can rename conditions in the latest version of rags...the condition name doesn't really mean anything except to the developer, so I wouldn't worry too much about renaming them unless you really want to.


I'm not sure what's happening when you change your commands from one command to another. It shouldn't hurt you as long as all entries are filled out correctly for your new command.

One other thing that may help you out...when you want to use a variable, for example in a status bar display, or description text, you can hit Alt-V and it will bring up a list of variables you can use and automatically insert your selected variable in the text....just a little tip that may speed up your development too.

And you're welcome! I'm glad you're enjoying RAGS!

Steve

I have a timer that I use to play a basketball my game. Two contestants play the game. I used variable display to show the scores at the end of each use of the timer. But this only shows the scores in the text area. I didn't see how to show the contestant names along with the scores. I have set up the names as variables so it's probably just a command I'll need. Any hints on what I'm missing?

Thanks for your reply email on my basketball test. I don't know if you received my return email saying that I was unable to view your coding for the game as it was a newer version than the 0.9.9.0 that I have. Would it be possible to put the test on a version that I could read?

if you want to display variables in a text area you can use the Alt-V command to show available text replacements. That may speed up your development a bit...

here's an example
Variables:
Player1 contains "Joe"
Player2 contains "Bob"
Player1Score contains 10
Player2Score contains 12

So to display those variables in a display text command it would look something like this:

[V: Player1] has scored [v: Player1Score] points and [v: player2] has scored [v: player2score] points!!!

Is that more or less what you were asking?

Thanks,
Steve

Thanks. That was what I was looking for. I was thinking only of commands since I was in the midst of timer/variable actions. I had only used the variable coding for to put values into the status bar before and didn't think to use them here. Totally overlooked that one. Makes sense now that you point it out.

You had mentioned the following in your email regarding my basketball test that had made me interested in seeing your coding: "I also added a debug message at the end of each loop because I've noticed that the variables in the debug form do not update correctly while looping through this timer. It's a bug in my system I should try to correct." I'm curious if this would be helpful to see how you did this. I was unable to view the coding since the game version was too new for my designer version.

There is a command you can use called Debug Text that will only display in the player while you're running in debug mode. I was basically displaying the variables as I described in the above statement with that command so you could see all the results of your random number generation and player scores, etc..

Hope that helps!

Steve

I have another question for you but didn't want to start up a new folder just for it. I did a search and didn't find a match for the question. I was trying to look up my first game on the designer to recall how I coded something and couldn't recall the password I used. I'm still on the 0.0.9.2 version. I don't suppose there is a way to reset the password or anything like that? I imagine I'm stuck unless the mental block I'm having passes.

Well, thanks in advance, even if you don't have good news for me.

If you send me a copy I can unlock the game again for you...or with 0.9.9.2 versions I can get you the password. The newer versions of the designer have improved the password protection and I can only unlock those games, but I can never tell what the password was.

Thanks,
Steve