How do I set a sequence set of 5 animations/ how can group move letter tiles in game play?

I would appreciate some help with the development of a current project. This is the link to the Work in Progress in the Arcade.

construct.net/en/free-online-games/syntax-board-anagrams-30129/play

This is a two part question.

I'ts a simple game/board app for the use to form anagrams using tiled letters. There is no winning or losing. Just a means to have access to lettered tiles digitally and move them around. The titled letters have 3 behaviors Bound to Layout, 8 direction and Drag and Drop.

First Question.

Once the letters I need are dragged out from their position to spell out a word, I can rearrange them to form other words to form anagrams and jot them down on on paper or in a file. The movement of the letters is fine, but I would like to be able to grab a group of letters so that I could move the group else where on the board. Can this be done? See image below to see what I mean.

Second Question

I would like to add an animated owl sitting on a branch to site above the title of the game in the right hand bottom corner. I have 5 separate animations for this Owl sprite---idle, sleep, rotate, sleepy and flap.

I would like to have all these animations happen while me, or other user, is using the mouse or finger to move around the letters.

"idle" when the game loads

"flap" when a letter tile is being moved from its original position to the board for

play and revert back to "idle" once the mouse lets it go on the board.

"rotate" once the letter tile is on the board and is moved once again to another position as the anagram is being worked, so each lettered tile on the board will have several positions. And,

"rotate" when a letter on the board is moved around while working the anagram, And,

"sleepy" when there is a pause in the movement of letters on the board.

My work around to this ---just to have a bit more animation of the owl was going to be to include all 5 animations in one animation and let them loop. Something I'm going to try at the moment, but was hoping someone would be kind enough to walk me through giving my game a little more 'sparkle'.

Thanks

I created an RTS game where you hold the mouse and drag over an area, it creates a box sprite that stretches and when you release mouse anything overlapping the area you can pin to the sprite and drag them as one.

I don't see how looping the animations can achieve what you want, you have the conditions as listed so you should be able to set the owl animations based on them.

Wow! Thanks, Lionz ... I appreciate the prompt reply, glad to find it can be done.

Can you step me through it? I actually had to look up RTS game---LOL!

I'm really new to this. Would gladly pay or buy something from you for the step by step walk through...I've failed at all my attempts to figure it out.

Thinking your method thru, I'm thinking I have to tell the event sheet that a sprite object (dotted box) I create and imported gets pinned to the mouse point somehow?

similar to the pin of a box to a player. Again, would gladly love a walk through that I don't mind nourishing you for your time.

Thanks again!

I'll go check out your profile and see if this Real Time Strategy game is there for me to look at.

I just used something like this to select squad members in an RTS, it might not be what you want for this game. But if you want to create a box to cover some tiles, create a sprite on mouse click then in a separate event every tick set width to mouse.x-sprite.x and set height to mouse.y-sprite.y.

Thanks, I was just thinking it through--do I even have to create a box? Can I do it they way you did it for your RTS game? Sorry to be a pain, but again---new at this.

I did it with a box in my game. Have you heard of Command and Conquer or games like this? You click and hold and drag a box around units to mass select them. That's what I was thinking of when I saw the question. If you have your own idea on how to group the letters then let me know.

I don't have any idea how to do it...hence my original question if it could be done. Your way sounds right to what I want to do, I just don't know how to fully execute it.

Thanks for your time. I'll have a look around to see if I can find a step by step guide.