Some questions, total newbie

Hey guys! I'm making my first game, a generic SHMUP, and I have some questions.

1- Can I make a "sprite" object, when spawned, select a random animation frame and stay static? I tried doing it, but it kept cycling trough the frames.

2- If I use a downloaded font, does the player need the font installed to play the game properly?

3- How to store variables in a text file? And like in Tower Climb, how to make the game detect if the file was altered?

Thank you in advance and sorry for my craptastic English.

1 - Sprite > Set animation to random(5)

Sprite > Pause animation

2 - Yes

3 - You can use the INI or the Array object. The INI is more simple and easy to group information, and the array is better if you want to store a lot of numbers

Thank you so much, 7Soul! I'll leave this open in case I have any more issues.

Edit: Alright, I have a 8-frame animation, each frame being a ship. I used the solution you gave, but it just worked for the original "enemy" object that was outside the layout. The other enemies are generated in the template, and they all seem to pick frame one. How do I solve this? I tried setting the event to "Is on-screen" and "Is visible", but these don't seem to work.

Edit: Solved! If anyone is wondering, I just made the enemies generate a little bit above the layout.

Ok, new question. Can a text object display a global variable? All I could get was for it to display a private one.

Set text to: global('variable')

Found in the expressions for the system object.

one is still left unasweared

[quote:1ml2wky2]how to make the game detect if the file was altered?

one is still left unasweared

[quote:3kkrgohi]how to make the game detect if the file was altered?

The most straightforward way would be to retrieve a checksum, like CRC32, store it and compare it every time the game runs.