Drag Over + Variable adjustment

Feb 13, 2014

So I decided to have a go at this week's challenge and thought it would be a wheeze to create an interaction based on a downhill slalom.

My idea was to create a short PPT created video of gates zooming towards you which you would need to negotiate to score a point per gate. Video created - no problem.

I inserted the video into SL. I then wanted to have an object to represent the skier which could be manoeuvred 'through' the gates by dragging it across the screen and activating a scoring system. My idea was to have a transparent rectangle activate for a very short period. If the 'skier' was dragged across the rectangle at the correct time a variable score would be adjusted.

But I cannot get the object to adjust the variable and seek your help! I hope that a solution may help others who wish to attempt a similar interaction in the future.

The yellow circle is the 'skier' and is draggable.

The three rectangles are in the position that the gates will be as the skier goes 'through' them. They are set to an initial state of hidden.

To change the state of each rectangle to 'normal' and back to 'hidden' I have created three 'gate' objects.

The idea is for the yellow circle to add a score of 1 when it is dragged over each rectangle when it is in a 'normal' state.

I suspect my triggers are wrong - I can get the scores to adjust when the rectangles are visible continuously but everything goes awry when I adjust visibility.

4 Replies
Sam Lincoln

Brian, Thanks for your quick response and for the example; I appreciate you taking the time.

Unfortunately, it does not solve the problem.

If all of rectangles are viewable (ie 'normal' state) from the start of the slide timeline, then dragging over will adjust the variable.

However, if any of the rectangles are not viewable at the time that the mouse key is first pressed to drag the object (i.e. they appear later in the timeline) then they are not 'activated' when the object is dragged over them.

In order to adjust a variable on an object that appears later in the timeline, it is necessary to release the mouse key before dragging over the next object.

I can only conclude that it is not possible to hold down a mouse key and adjust a variable (or state) of target objects that appear/disappear at intervals ....... unless someone knows differently!!

Brian Allen

... and, Sam, looking at your screenshot I can see you were already using off stage objects to control the visibility of your gates, so I was a little late to that party.

I played around with another variation of the .story file using a "faux" hidden state, just to make sure it doesn't have anything to do with using the hidden state for an object...  Still doesn't work though

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