The Actor Control Panel

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The Actor Control Panel

The Actor Control Panel gives you the ability to create uniqueness in your Actor's behavior. The Actor Control Panel is accessed by right mouse clicking on an Actor and selecting Actor Control from the pop up Actor Menu:

The Actor Control Panel is where your Actor can be directed to display text or Animations, to follow a certain path, and/or to react in a specific way when it is assigned an Event or Action. The Actor Control Panel is a powerful feature. If you want to build successful games, it is critical that you become familiar with all of its options .

The Actor Control Panel provides you with a myriad of useful features. The following discussion deals with what each feature has to offer and how it is used.

Name:

This drop down box displays the name that you have given to your Actor. Click in this box pops up a list that displays all of the Actors in your game. You can select any Actor and modify or edit its behavior using the Name box.

Transparency:

Transparency sets the visibility of your Actor. An Actor that has 50% transparency will show some of the background that is behind itself. An Actor with the Transparency set to 0% (default) will appear as solid.
Child Actors inherit the parent's transparency.

Z Depth:

This option sets the order or depth of an Actor in the game. For Example, if your game includes a tree (Actor) and a rabbit (Actor), you would set the tree Actor Zdepth behind the rabbit Actor Zdepth so that the rabbit would appear to hop in front of the tree.

Create at startup:

Actors can be created immediately upon game start up or later in the game. This option specifies whether the Actor will be created when game begins. If you set this option to No, you can create the actor by using the Create Actor action.

Clone:

Create an Actor's clone. Cloned Actors share the same Actions and Animations.

Single: Select this option to make a single clone of your current actor.

Array: Create a rectangular array of actors. Change the parameters to see the changes in real time.

- Horizontal count: specifies the number of clones in a line.
- Vertical count: specifies the number of clones in a column.
- Distance between clones: select Automatic to get the distance from the actor's width and height.
- Horizontal distance: choose Manual in the list above to specify the horizontal distance between actors.
- Vertical distance: choose Manual in the list above to specify the vertical distance between actors.

Along path : Create the clones following a selected path. Change the parameters to see the changes in real time.

- Path: select a previously created path from the drop down box.
- Count: specify the number of clones in the selected path.

Remove:

Remove the selected Actor from the game

Move and Stop:

Specify if the selected Actor will move along a path and show the animations while in Game Editor mode.

Tile:

Draw tiles in an actor.

Animation: Select the Animation (graphic) file from this drop down box.



The Tile Animation (graphic) must contain 15 squared frames that form an illustration as shown above.
- Use <RIGHT SHIFT> to erase tiles.
- Use <RIGHT CTRL> to hide the tile cursor.
- Use ESC to end the "Draw Tile" mode.

Single tile: Create a Single Tile.



Draw a single tile.
Use the <right> and <left> keys to change the animation frame.

Text:

Specify the Actor Text and Font. (Actor Text can't receive collision events)

 

Text: Type your text here. If you enter nothing, any previous entered Actor text will be removed from your actor.
Font: Select the font that was previously created using the New Font button.
New font: Specify a "From Image File" or a "True Type" Font to attach a font to your text.
File: Load text from a file or save text to a file.

Image font: Create a font from an image file.

File: Load an image file (jpeg, gif, png, bmp, pcx, tga, xpm, xcf, lbm and tif). The image file must contain all of the image characters in one line (ASCII sequence).
Initial font char: Set the initial image character in the loaded file.
Numbers of font chars: Set the number of characters in the loaded file.

True Type font:

You can load any True Type font (.ttf files) and set the size, color, style (Normal, Bold, Italic and Underline) and soft (Anti Alias).

Text Input:

Select "Yes" to configure a text input Actor to receive text entered by the user.
The text entered by the user can be retrieved in the "text" or "textNumber" actor variables.
You can set the input length by entering some text or just by inserting blank space characters .
If you enter more than one text line, your input will automatically become multi-lined.

The maximum length of the input text is 255 characters .
On the Pocket PC only, open the Soft Input Panel in a non rotated resolution.

Text Input Configuration:

Get input focus: Select "Yes" to get the input focus for this actor
Draw border: Select "Yes" to draw a border around the text input box using the selected color . Left mouse click the color box to select a color.
Draw background: Select "Yes" to draw a background behind the text input. Left mouse click the color box to select a background color.
Cursor color: Left mouse click the color box to select a cursor color.

Known Text Input bugs: If your text uses a True Type Font and the user enters text that is beyond the input limit, some of the characters may be lost.

Normal or Infinite:

Animation:

Add, edit or remove animations and sequences in a Actor.

- Specify the animation name.
- Select the animation file (jpeg, gif, png, bmp, pcx, tga, xpm, xcf, lbm and tif).
- Specify if the animation is contained in a single file or multiple files.
- If the animation is contained in a single file, specify the number of horizontal and vertical frames.
- Specify the animation frame rate.

Notes:
- If the image file has a color depth lower than 32 bits, Game Editor understands that the color of the first pixel (upper left corner) is the color that should become totally transparent in the image.
- If your image has 32 bits color depth, Game Editor will consider the alpha channel (transparency channel) of the image.
- If your image is a gif, Game Editor will consider the gif transparent color.
- If all pixels in the image have the same color (solid image) the image will be consider solid.

- Select an animation.
- Specify a sequence name.
- Specify a sequence frame rate.
- Enter the frame sequence (Ex.: 14;2;9;10;22;2;3;4...).

Edit: Edit an existing sequence or replace an animation file.

- Enter a new Frame Sequence.
- Specify a new sequence Frame Rate.

Use the Edit button to open the image editor.
The image editor defined in the Preferences panel will be open with the selected animation frame.
After save the frame in the image editor, the frame will be updated in Game Editor.

Notes:

- The image editor need to handle transparent PNG image files.
- Before edit, the game must be saved.

Parent:

Set the Actor's Parent (the Parent can be any Actor in the game, including the " view" Actor, or "no parent"). When an Actor has a parent, when the parent is moved the child actor will be moved too.

Path:

Set the Actor's path (the path can be a created path, a "random path", or "no path").

Events:

Events happen when something occurs on an actor. For example, a user  mouse clicks on an Actor or an Actor collides with another Actor.
Events and Actions work together to breathe life into your Actors.

Actions occur as a follow up to an Event. For example, after a user mouse clicks on an Actor(Event), the Actor animation changes(Action) or after one Actor collides with Another Actor(Event), the Actor colliding is destroyed(Action) Envision a space ship being hit by or colliding with a bullet.

It is critical that you understand Events and Actions in order to get the most out of Game Editor.

Click here to read more detailed information on Actor Events.
Click here to read more detailed information on Actor Actions.

Events >>

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