Tricky Drag/Drop Interaction

Jun 14, 2013

Okay all you hardcore Storyliners...This one has me stumped so I'm looking for ideas.

I'm trying to build a voltmeter interaction entirely in Storyline. The learner will need to drag two meter probes (black and red) and drop them on the correct terminals. After that, they click a button to get the meter reading. Credit should only be given when the TIPS of the probes are on the correct terminals. In an attempt to do this, I've created a grouped object (probe plus a triangle shape for the tip). I've set up the triggers so that if the tip is dropped on the correct terminal, a variable is set to true. If that tip is not on the correct terminal, the variable should be set to false.

I tried all of this using Storyline's Freeform drag & drop quiz too, but it appears Storyline doesn't support draggable objects in a Freeform when those objects live inside a group.

As it is right now, in my custom drag/drop interaction, it kind of works. However, when a probe is dropped, it snaps up to the top the screen. If the tip is over the correct terminal when I drop the probe, the correct variable is set. However, the snapping to the top thing isn't good.

Any way to do this in Storyline or do you think I'll have to build it in Flash?

Thanks! I've attached my prototype file.

2 Replies
PJ Babcock

hi Doug,

I don't have your answer, but look forward to hearing from those 'in the know." I did want to point out that on the .story posted, it does not allow me to provide an incorrect response.  Any time that I try to move the probe to an incorrect area, it just bounces back to its original position.

The concept is great and I'm confident someone here knows the fix.

PJ

Doug Rice

Seems I just answered my own question about the snapping issue. Try it again, PJ. Should work better now. I had the drop targets set to "Snap to center". I changed those to "Free" and it works much better. Looks like this is very doable in Storyline.

By the way, the reason for the dummy variable is that, in order to make the grouped probe draggable, I had to assign some sort of drag/drop trigger to it. Those triggers and that dummy variable don't serve any other purpose.

Here's the updated prototype:

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