actor parenting, why doesnt this work?

[sonicfire]

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Actor *myLegL;
myLegL = CreateActor("ratLegL", "ratLegLeft", "(none)", "(none)", 0, 0, false);
ChangeParent("Event Actor", myLegL);

Illegal conversion from struct to const char! Can anybody help me here?
The deal is, when i create my rat actor it should create legs with it and move them also when the rat moves

Thanks so much in advance!!

[Kodo]

Try this instead (a slight tweak to your third line):

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Actor *myLegL;
myLegL = CreateActor("ratLegL", "ratLegLeft", "(none)", "(none)", 0, 0, false);
ChangeParent("Event Actor", myLegL->clonename);


[lcl]

Yeah, the problem was that ChangeParent(); input values are actors names, not actors themselves.

Btw, I didn't know that CreateActor(); returns the created actor, I thought it was void type function.
But thats pretty useful.

[sonicfire]

thanks so much!

i thought createactor would return a pointer??

[sonicfire]

got another little question:

in my actor´s creation event i have "Actor *theleg;" for example.
HOW can i access this pointer in the actor´s draw event?

For example:

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theleg->x = blabla;

The problem is that the variable "theleg" somehow doesn´t exist in the drawevent.
But i cant make it global using code since i need it for any actor seperately.
Hope my post makes sense. Any help / ideas ?

Thanks in advance!

[skydereign]

This can be done in several ways, but before that, your original problem can be solved by this (among others).

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CreateActor("ratLegL", "ratLegLeft", "(none)", "(none)", 0, 0, false);
ChangeParent("Event Actor", ratLegL.clonename);

Reason being while CreateActor returns the created actor (can be very useful by the way), it also sets the default actor actorName to the last created actor. So using ratLegL.clonename will guarantee that it was the actor created in the first line. That might have made less sense than I intended it to.

Anyway, moving on to your other problem, if you declare a variable in a script event, it is a local variable. That is to say, if you declare one in the Create Actor event, it won't exist in the draw. Now, if you possibly can, you want to use creator or parent, but that won't always work. Therefore you will need to use a getclone type function, and store an index. For example, if you want a leg actor, create an actor variable, legIndex.

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legIndex = CreateActor("ratLegL", "ratLegLeft", "(none)", "(none)", 0, 0, false)->cloneindex;
ChangeParent("Event Actor", ratLegL.clonename);

That way you store the cloneindex so you can use a getclone2 function to retrieve the Actor* that you were trying to use in draw.

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Actor* theleg = getCloneIdx("ratLegL", legIndex);
theleg->x= blabla;

[sonicfire]

amazing! thanks so much!