Forum Discussion
State-change-based interactions breaking
Hello! My team has built interactions that are coded as Complete when all states have changed to "visited." Unfortunately, these are very unstable when played in our own proprietary LMS. We have had no such problem with variables -- these work fine. Is there a way we can build these state-based interactions so they're more stable?
For reference, the types of interactions that are breaking look like this:
Whereas these types of interactions are working:
Hi Kate,
Here's some text from another post some of us replied to:
- Walt Hamilton
- Hero
States are mostly reliable as long as you stay on the same slide. Still, as Kendal says, initiating a trigger using "State is..." for the When part is sometimes questionable. Variables always are reliable.
Hi Kate,
Sorry to hear about the State woes.
I used to steer clear of triggers like this and always use variables...however, since Storyline refined how it handles the "When State...." part of a trigger I so far have found it bulletproof!
One thing I noticed on your screenshot that I would consider might be the culprit is that your variable trigger actually specifically identifies the two assets.
But the State trigger simple says "all rectangles"
I've never seen a trigger like that for State checks, and mine always list out each asset specifically.
So perhaps that's where the problem lies.
One reason to try to get the State solution working is that States are saved as part of the RESUME option for learners, whereas variables sometimes are not (eg. scorm 1.2)
I've never had a problem with triggering an action based on objects being in the Visited state—as long as the entire interaction takes place on one slide (as Walt referred to).
If the user leaves the slide (e.g., a custom menu slide), I use variables to track what they complete elsewhere. And I use a custom state to indicate a given interaction is done.
- I typically avoid Visited in these cases, because it's a built-in state. An object will automatically change to Visited when clicked. The change is not based on the user completing something elsewhere.
Thank you all so much! This is incredibly helpful.
I believe I have helped a couple of people on this forum who have had things not work right when using the "visited" state. I am not sure I trust Storyline to always accurately read when something has been visited. I can't say definitively, but I think Storyline may have a bug in it regarding "Visited". When a separate state or variable is used, things seem to work.
I recommend using separate variables.