Suggestion: "Check Value Range" Option

humaldo

Hi Chris!

In my current project I'd like to check not only single variables, but a lot of different variable ranges. Managing this via actions is a bit cumbersome at the moment and I get easily lost in too many confusing "Variable - Check" actions (see screenshot, left part). 

A "Variable - Check - Compare with: Value Range" option would be extremely helpful (see mockup in screenshot, right part). 

What do you say, would this be a possible feature in future AC releases?

Thanks!

ChrisIceBox

Nice suggestion (and mockup!)

You can do operations like this, and more, by using parameters.  Parameterised ActionLists are great for grouping multiple Actions together like this.

If you create an ActionList asset that has the two Actions on the left, and parameterise the variable, the "less than" value, the "more than" value, and the ActionLists to run if it's correct / not correct, then you can call the ActionList whenever you need to compare a variable in this way.

humaldo

Ah, thx! Then I'll finally start digging into parameters. Didn't know they can do such things

humaldo

Hey there! I'm referring to this problem here.

As I mentioned above, defining variable-ranges using the Variable:Check actions is extremely cumbersome and confusing. I have a lot of game-progress related texts to be shown in various states of the game. It would be SO helpful if there would be s simple "var range" option like in my mockup above. 

Instead i followed your advice and tried to handle it with parameters. I made CustomActions with paramters to being able to have only one Action which displays the text if the variable range is right. It worked quite well in game, but i used Strings to show the text, and those can't be translated to other languages. 

so, my question: If i want to make a Parameter-CustomAction which checks variables and then runs actions afterwards, who are they to set up?? I really put a lot of thought in it, but without results

Thanks for help!

PS: I just saw that the "more than" parameter is not set. This screenshot is only for demonstrating you the problem, so never mind

PS: Check Variable Range option in Variable:Check FTW!

ChrisIceBox

This is rather a nightmare to put into practice, as it turns out.  I'd rather not touch this out of fear of breaking it.  The whole point of parameters, however, is to enable functionality like this without modifying the Actions this way.

The safer way to do it, I think, would be to have the parameterised ActionList set it's result to a special Global Variable that can be checked by the original ActionList.

So in your example above, you'd have a new bool var called "Within range", that's set to true if your two Variable: Check Actions result in "condition is met".  You'd then follow up the ActionList: Run call with a Variable: Check Action to check the state of the bool.  You could re-use the same bool for any other checks like this.

humaldo

Just tried it out and it works. But it somehow misses the point why I'd like to use parameters for this at all: I want to be able to create lots of different responses and interactions to different game states quickly and without losing the overview. Using a parameter action list like you suggested means that i again need 2 actions (Actionlist: Run with the paramter action list included, and Check the within range Variable) before every play: speech action. It feels saver for me to use 2 check:variable actions (check more than and check less than) instead. The great thing about a "check variable range" option would be that it's super slick and i only need one action to do the same

But thanks anyway!

ChrisIceBox

I can do one better: to parameterise the "Action to skip to" field of the "ActionList: Run" Action.  So the original ActionList: Run Action (top-right of your shot) would Stop after running - but the Actions beneath it would be skipped to by the ActionList with the parameters.

VarSimpleTest:


Check_VarSimple: