playMaker

Author Topic: ArrayMaker is now available [April 2021]  (Read 176952 times)

jeanfabre

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Re: ArrayMaker is now available [NEW VERSION]
« Reply #75 on: May 21, 2013, 02:30:54 AM »
Hi,

 Thanks :) you are welcome!

Bye,

 Jean

jeanfabre

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Re: ArrayMaker is now available [JUNE 2013 NEW VERSION]
« Reply #76 on: June 03, 2013, 07:11:44 AM »
Hi Everyone,

 Major new release of PlayMaker today :)

-- more goodies like ArrayListGetPrevious and HashTableGetNext
-- finally, a better support for Vector2 all around ( especially in the prefill inspector)
-- better handling of null values display

and now, ArrayMaker can be save and loaded at runtime!! Thanks for EasySave2. You can now download this as an add on form the usual wiki page:

https://hutonggames.fogbugz.com/default.asp?W715

it's not 100% ideal, I fail miserably to serialize data as bytes... so right now I simply serialize as strings, so not the most efficient in terms of space, but that will do just fine for now. I also support upload and download from servers using also easySave features and ready made php/msql system.

 Also, I wanted to make a note on something I discover lately, utomate, from the asset store, it's a automationg system for all the common tasks for project management, I am using this now to build all the various packages, it's SO MUCH BETTER than unity export option!! incredibly powerful! and very much inspired by PlayMaker, it features actions, a graph view, and lots of similar goodies, So if you are doing lots of painful repeatitive tasks with your project, I encourage you to check it out ( it's not a runtime system, it only works in Unity Editor).

Bye,

 Jean

ps: If I forgot to do something I promised for this update, shame on me, simply bump the related post, and I'll look it up :) thanks


Flying Robot

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Re: ArrayMaker is now available [JUNE 2013 NEW VERSION]
« Reply #77 on: June 04, 2013, 03:21:18 AM »
I've been using the ArrayMaker from the early version.

Jean, I just want to say, without your extension a range of games wouldn't be possible.

I'd happily buy this if you release a paid version of this someday.

jeanfabre

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Re: ArrayMaker is now available [JUNE 2013 NEW VERSION]
« Reply #78 on: June 04, 2013, 04:12:51 AM »
Hi,

 Thanks :)

 I am slowly getting my head around providing this on the assets store with the following plan in mind:

 I want to still keep ArrayMaker free, BUT on the asset store I would charge for it, and the free version would always be like 1 or 2 iteration behind, and available to download on the wiki as usual. so if I make something new, you would get it first on the assets store, and eventually the wiki version would catch up like 2 3 month down the line.

 So in practice, it's free if you want it, knowing this always behind the asset version.

 Essentially, users who would purchase it on the asset store would very much sponsor the development and thus get that edge over free users, which I think is fair. If I simply make a "donate" button, I don't think it works very well.

What do you say? I am making now a poll to see how much users would be ready to pay for such version on the asset store.

bye,

 Jean

jeanfabre

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Re: ArrayMaker is now available [JUNE 2013 NEW VERSION]
« Reply #79 on: June 05, 2013, 08:57:53 AM »
Hi,

 Small update, with a new sample "Three in a row", showing how to check for winning combinations out of 9 cubes, basically checking for 3 matching colors.

bye,

 Jean

Pawel

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Re: ArrayMaker is now available [JUNE 2013 NEW VERSION]
« Reply #80 on: June 10, 2013, 09:20:21 AM »
Jean,

Do you have any suggestions on how to learn what ArrayMaker is capable of? I would imagine that just as with PlayMaker, your main audience will be artists with very limited (or non-existent) knowledge of programming and understanding of arrays.

It seems to me that this would be a perfect tool to develop a game like Sudoku (I am sort of contemplating doing this...) -- Do you think this would be possible with just ArrayMaker, or it is beyond it's scope and you would need some hard core programming to make it work?

jeanfabre

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Re: ArrayMaker is now available [JUNE 2013 NEW VERSION]
« Reply #81 on: June 11, 2013, 01:18:10 AM »
Hi,

 Sudoku is very easy to do, and I actually don't really need ArrayMaker I would say.

 the difficulty comes into defining the grid in the first place, and for this I would suggest you find pre made grids, cause the logic to create a grid is for sure way above beginners levels,

When you have the grid, you simply hide few, and the user is responsible for working it out, not you, you simply match his guess with the grid you have internally. you don't need much here.

Have you already started with this?

Bye,

 Jean

jeanfabre

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Re: ArrayMaker is now available [JUNE 2013 NEW VERSION]
« Reply #82 on: June 11, 2013, 01:21:43 AM »
Hi,

 Need to reply to your actual question :)

ArrayMaker is simply a bridge to lists and hashtable, if you want to learn about lists and hashtable, these doc will help you.

 as far as arrayMaker itself, it simply expose all the possible interaction you can have with list and hashtable, get/set, add, delete, pick a random, iterate throught them, etc etc. The difficulty when you start with all this, is not the features, but really how to apply ArrayMaker to fit your needs, and that comes more with experience then going through tutorial I think.

bye,

 Jean

Flying Robot

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Re: ArrayMaker is now available [JUNE 2013 NEW VERSION]
« Reply #83 on: June 11, 2013, 03:27:51 AM »
A quick question Jean,

Do you plan to do 2D Arrays in ArrayMaker in the future? Would certainly make life a lot easier.

jeanfabre

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Re: ArrayMaker is now available [JUNE 2013 NEW VERSION]
« Reply #84 on: June 11, 2013, 05:25:35 AM »
hi,
 
I am facing this issue right now actually. I am currently preparing Json support, and it's problematic when json features nested lists and hashtables, right now the solution I went for is to save the list or hashtable as a string if you want to store it in a string, or if you pass a gameObject, then I look for the list proxy and inject the list or hashtable in there.

Supported nested list within ArrayMaker will make things very complicated on the front side, I haven't yet found a proper nice way to present this.

This will becomes a lot easier when I will enhance arrayMaker to be able to create list and hashtable in memory, so I will be able to present an editor window to preview and edit lists, and that will be easier then to provided nested support, cause the interface will have more room to provice all the necessary navigation functionnalities.

 I am also thinking of simply use XML behind the scene to provide access to data via Xpath, this is SOOO powerful! that might be something on the side, or maybe become part of the system, I am not sure yet.

It will become also a lot easier when creating custom Fsm Variable types will become available.

bye,

 Jean

Pawel

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Re: ArrayMaker is now available [JUNE 2013 NEW VERSION]
« Reply #85 on: June 11, 2013, 10:33:33 AM »
Thanks Jean for your suggestions,

I've been going through and analyzing many Sudoku scripts in various programming languages that can find on the web. From what I can see they are using arrays... I've also bought the sudoku generating script from the asset store. (I knew is not very good as it repeats the same numbers over and over... I've wanted to know how the guy has approached the project).

Yes, I did consider doing what you suggest, as a last resort simply hiding and exposing field numbers of pre-made games. Of course this is not really the best solution -- you would only have the levels you manually input...

A real Sudoku game app would have to self-generate levels, so the sudoku addicts never run out of the juice. I suppose I will develop it manually and test it in the marketplace with pre-loaded games. If it generates enough money, I will hire someone to create a real game engine.

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/23206/Sudoku-Algorithm-Generates-a-Valid-Sudoku-in-0-018
http://www.websudoku.com/

Pawel

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Re: ArrayMaker is now available [JUNE 2013 NEW VERSION]
« Reply #86 on: June 13, 2013, 10:14:49 AM »
I have a question regarding Sudoku type of logic: Suppose I have 3 INT arrays setup and I need to pick a random number that is present in all 3 of those arrays... How do I accomplish that? The only thing I see is the "Array List Contains" action, but this seems such a long way to go to check individually every possibility -- Is there a faster way?


I wish there was an option to save only the items common to all arrays when merging into one using Arrays Concatenate... Would it be hard to add this kind of functionality?

Or perhaps expanding the "Array List Contain" to "Multiple Array Lists Contain" where you could specify the number of the arrays you want to check for an item...
« Last Edit: June 13, 2013, 05:06:36 PM by Pawel »

Flying Robot

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Re: ArrayMaker is now available [JUNE 2013 NEW VERSION]
« Reply #87 on: June 18, 2013, 04:56:14 AM »
I am also thinking of simply use XML behind the scene to provide access to data via Xpath, this is SOOO powerful! that might be something on the side, or maybe become part of the system, I am not sure yet.

It will become also a lot easier when creating custom Fsm Variable types will become available.

bye,

 Jean


Xpath sounds exciting. Will it be too much to ask for a system to call xquery on the xml from Playmaker.

jeanfabre

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Re: ArrayMaker is now available [JUNE 2013 NEW VERSION]
« Reply #88 on: June 18, 2013, 05:25:55 AM »
Hi,

 I have an alpha version of xPath, that I posted some time ago. I am currently giving it a second pass. More on this soon, meanwhile, get the alpha version here:

http://hutonggames.com/playmakerforum/index.php?topic=2583.msg11611#msg11611

bye,

 Jean

cosmigo

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Re: ArrayMaker is now available [JUNE 2013 NEW VERSION]
« Reply #89 on: June 26, 2013, 02:21:24 PM »
ArrayMaker is of great help. However, I ran into some problem with "Array List Get Next" and possible bug. Iterating through an ArrayMaker List with GameObjects (set at Reference 1) seems to stop short of 1 before the end index. So a list of 9 Objects in my example seems to finish at 8. When I use the iterate function with the same start/end and use manual "Array List Get" it works fine. When I use a higher end index it seems to crash Unity (3.5). I would expect to user "Array List Get Next" in the same way as Iterate?

A minor typo is also in the ArrayMaker Inspector dialog "PLayMaker events" instead of "PlayMaker events" (cap "L"). Thanks for ArrayMaker!