Unable to show a layer when button states have changed
Apr 13, 2016
I'm going round in circles on a very simple task but can't for the life of me see what I'm doing wrong!
I have three buttons, each of which the user may click to display more info. Each button has 'Normal' and 'Visited' states. A tick shows in the Visited states. There is audio on each of the Info layers.
I have a Trigger on the Base layer which should show a message on another layer when all three of these buttons have been Visited. It never shows this message layer. I attach a highly simplified version of the slide. Any ideas? It seems as though SL is not checking the conditions for my trigger on the Base level.
If I change each layer to NOT hide other layers then it works OK. But I DO want each layer to hide other layers so that a layer's audio automatically stops playing if another layer is clicked before the current layer stops playing. Otherwise, you get multiple audios playing.
SL is detecting that all three buttons have been Visited because I also use an identical Trigger to change the state of a Next button to 'active'.
Many thanks, Tim
3 Replies
Tim, You are so right, it is not checking, because there is no action to fire this trigger. "State is.." is not an action.
This is not your fault, it is Articulate's. This phrase should not be in the trigger wizard popup in this position. It works well as a CONDITION, but not an ACTION. You may get lucky with it sometimes, because the slide does run past it, but it only works if the states are correct at that instant, which is unpredictable. Most people think it means "When states become..." (which would be useful), but it is not programmed that way.
Put this trigger on each of your layers, and it will work.
Hi Walt,
Thanks so much for taking the time to explain this so well. I now understand what is (or is not) happening. I had been assuming (as I had done with the brilliant Macromedia Authorware for over 20 years!) that the conditions were being constantly monitored and that I could launch an action to go somewhere when they were all satisfied. Never mind, we've got what we've got ... it could just be a lot smarter.
There have been so many practical facilities that I wish had been thought about in SL but just aren't there and although I have put in numerous formal requests, none has ever appeared.
e.g.: Jump to a timeline cue point, give us variables containing the current frame number of a playing video, the time/date, let us jump to a video frame number, don't encrypt media file names - then we can easily modify/replace externally-referenced files to maintain a course, without having to always re-publish. I could go on, I have a load things but it's now sounding like a rant ...
Thanks Walt for sharing that clarification - and it's similar to the "when variable changes..." in that it's looking for that change to occur or in this case, those states already assigned and that is also dependent on the overall trigger order and how they're executed.
We certainly appreciate the feature requests Tim - and I know that our team uses those as they look to what should be included in future updates or versions, and factor in users need with our product plans and feasibility of inclusion, but I'm sorry if you feel that you haven't been heard. If there is anything else I can do to assist, please let me know.
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