All Purpose Status Bar

 

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I am working on a game where I want a character to have a health meter of sorts, like the ones in most fighting or RPG games. How can I set one up?

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First lets look at what a status bar does.  We have a maximum value for an "energy bar" and then a current value to compare it to. The width of the bar will be equal to the maximum width times the percentage of the max value we currently have.  Something like this... sliderWidth = maxWidth * (currentEnergy / maxEnergy) So, by using this, a few "if" statements and a little lingo, we can build an all purpose behavior that can make a status bar for virtually any value!   The first thing we need to do is set up our getPropertyDescriptionList handler so that the user can define what value to track, the maximum for that value, and the direction it should "grow".  Using the "value" command we can take this string the user inputs and compare it.  This can be a variable, property, or most anything that has a numeric value.   The next thing we will need is a handler to evaluate and move the bar to the appropriate coordinates.  First we get the current value and the max value and verify that they are both numbers.  From there we make sure that the current value is not larger than the max value and not smaller than zero. Then we divide the two to get our current percentage.  If the bar is moving up or down we change the height, and if it is left or right we modify the width.  Then using the original rectangle (which we get in the beginSprite handler) the new rectangle is set.  Take a look at the completed behavior below. --Copyright 1999 Chuck Neal --chuck@mediamacros.com --If you find this code helpful, send me an e-mail and let me know. :-) property spriteNum, monitorValue, maxValue, constant, direction, maxRect on getPropertyDescriptionList me   p_list = [:]   p_list.addProp(#monitorValue, [#format : #string, #comment : "What value to compare:", #default : "the timer / 60"])   p_list.addProp(#maxValue, [#format : #string, #comment : "Max value allowed:", #default : "500"])   p_list.addProp(#constant, [#format : #boolean, #comment : "Run automatically?", #default : true])   p_list.addProp(#direction, [#format : #symbol, #comment : "Direction to grow:", #default : #right, #range : [#right, #left, #up, #down]])   return p_list end on beginSprite me   maxRect = sprite(spriteNum).rect   calcSize() end on exitFrame me   calcSize() end on calcSize me   curValue = value(monitorValue)   topVal = value(maxValue)   if [#integer, #float].getOne(curValue.ilk) <> 0 and [#integer, #float].getOne(topVal.ilk) <> 0 then     --is a number, continue     if curValue > maxvalue then curValue = topVal     if curValue < 0 then curValue = 0     percentage = float(curValue)/float(topVal)     newRect = duplicate(maxRect)     case direction of       #right :         newRect[3] = maxRect[1] + integer(maxRect.width * percentage)       #left :         newRect[1] = maxRect[3] - integer(maxRect.width * percentage)       #up :         newRect[2] = maxRect[4] - integer(maxRect.height * percentage)       #down :         newRect[4] = maxRect[2] + integer(maxRect.height * percentage)     end case     sprite(spriteNum).rect = newRect   else     --not a number     put "Error, returned value is not a number"   end if end on getBehaviorDescription me   describe = "This is an all purpose bar slider. Drop it on the sprite that will be the indicator and assign it the values it will use to compare the current bar."   describe = describe & return & "For example, to track a sprite 5's property called life against a max of 500, the first field would be entered as ..." & return   describe = describe & "sprite(5).life and the second field would be 500."   return describe end This can be used as is with most any stored value and you can either let it run automatically or update only when you send the command to it.  Play with it and see what you come up with.