Familiy Ideas

So... I never noticed this before, but I now see that Families are Object specific. (A family can consist of Sprites only, or Background Tiles only, or Particles only, ect.) Is that by design?

Are there plans to extend this so that I can have sprites, and particles in one family.

Question two. I looked up and down the manual for the Family Information section but could not find it. Am I blind? Can someone point me in the right direction, or is it still in progress?    

(I know it is still very new, and I am not trying to be a pain.) I was going to use one family to grab all my sprites and particles and backgrounds and destroy them. But I cant put the three different objects into one family <img src="smileys/smiley19.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

They might do something eventually, but obviously you can't do something like family set animation to animation 1, if one of those objects is say a tiledbg.

Ah... Yes.   I see the issue now. I guess I can use THREE Families... <img src="smileys/smiley9.gif" border="0" align="middle" /> One for each Object Type. I guess changing that at this point would be some major programing magic.

Thanks for quick reply newt, KEEP IT UP!

A family can consist of Sprites only, or Background Tiles only, or Particles only, ect. Is that by design?

Yes.

re there plans to extend this so that I can have sprites, and particles in one family.

No, this isn't really possible if you get in to the engine internals. For example, what actions, conditions and expressions do you display for a family with both Particles and Sprites? The ACEs just in common, or all for both? If just those in common, it would remove most of the ACEs making families not very useful. If both, then you end up with weird situations in the event system - if a family has one Sprite picked only, and you run a Particles condition, action or expression on it, what should happen? It's not clear, so it's simply not allowed.

uestion two. I looked up and down the manual for the Family Information section but could not find it.

Families aren't in the manual yet because it's not actually a finished feature yet - we still want to add Family Behaviors, and then write up all the documentation in one go.

(A workaround to 3 objects in 1 family is just have 3 different families for each plugin type, then you at least only need 3x duplication instead of more.)

Thanks Bunches Ashley. I get what your saying. Now I know what I need to do to make it work.

BTW - C2 is still the best bang for my buck, and I am having lots of fun with it. Keep it up mate!

Containers will help with this quite a bit once we get them.

Ashley any hint on how soon for those?

Yes. I am waiting patiently for those containers.   <img src="smileys/smiley41.gif" border="0" align="middle" />