Using variables to expand capabilities of Drag and Drop?

Hi Patricia -

I would think that the 1Item per Target option should be exactly what you need and should work fine. What happens when you try to use that option? Can you post the slide for us to take a look?

Chris

Hi Patricia

wouldn't the 'allow only one item' option work for you here?

Sorry Chris, I hadn't refreshed my screen to see you had already responded to Patricia

No, I did try it with "allow only one item in each drop target" selected but it only worked for the "correct" drop target.

In this example I've set the drop targets to become hidden when an object is dropped on top.

here is my .story file.

Hi Patricia -

I simplified your logic a bit and I think this gets to what you are after?

• I made all of the drag objects have no drop target, so they are never right or wrong.
• I made the 5 drop targets have no drag item, again so there is no right or wrong. Basically all of the drag and all of the drop items are dummy items in Storyline's eyes.
• I turned on the "Allow only 1 item in each drop target" option, so we no longer need the "hide" triggers you were using.
• I am simply setting 5 variables (mySkill1 through mySkill5) based on which object is dropped. I did this for the first two drag objects in the example file attached.

The only tricky part is the state of the drag items. Because there are no right or wrong drag and drop items, none of the drag objects will automatically change to a drop state (the yellowy state). You could add a trigger for each drag object to do that manually each time the object is dropped ("Change state of Leadership to Drop Correct when the user drops a shape on #1Skill and so on) but you would need 5 of those triggers per drag object, AND if the learner drags another item to the same spot and the originally drop item returns to its home place, then the originally dropped item will still be in its yellow dropped state and not look right over in the left-hand area. So you would have to add a lot of triggers to return the drag object to its normal state.

Could you maybe make your book bag a chalk outline of a book bag (with the nice splash of color somewhere else on the screen) so that you don't have to worry about changing the state of each object back and forth to normal and dropped each time something is moved? Then you wouldn't have to do all of the trigger logic just to return the item to its normal state. :-)

Hope this helps.

Chris

No problem Wendy. :-) The more help the merrier.

Wow - thank you Chris! That's way more simple. Unfortunately I need to keep the yellow book bag color. I understand how to add a trigger to change each item to a drop correct state but I can't figure out a way to change them back to the normal chalk board state if returned to its home place.

Glad that helped a little. Those state changes are certainly going to cause you headaches because there are no exposed events (that I know of) that you can use to know when an item has been returned to its original location. Maybe you can make the drop locations a dark area on the book bag, like little black Velcro stickers on the bag? Then the white drop item text would show up fine on the book bag too, and you would not have to change states?

Thanks again for your help! It would be awesome if storyline had a code view (like dreamweaver) so you could get in and edit the action script or java script if needed.

Or at least expose more events, like maybe "dropReturn" in this particular case. Maybe in a future release. :-)