Counter Objects

I'd like to have an object similar to the counter object from the Clcikteam products. You can make it a horizontal bar, a vertical bar, or a number counter, or a picture counter. For bars you can make them solid colors or gradients. For numbers you can set the font, font size, and font color or edit the individual number animation frames. This would save soooooooooooooo much time for making HUDs.

You can make them with existing objects and a private variable that you change depending on circumstances (such as health). Text object to display number, sprite (with different animations) to display a changeable sprite or tiled background to display a bar etc.

This would save soooooooooooooo much time for making HUDs.

Not really :/

The Counter object in MMF is basically a text object with a private variable to store the amount. It's just as fast and easy to set up a custom one in Construct.

Plus the Counter object has a much more limited use than the text object... why make a more limited version of a more advanced object? As an analogy, that's like saying "I want a simpler spite object for when I don't need animation." Well, that's easy... just make a single-frame sprite with no animation.

And if you wanted a health bar instead of text, that's just as easy to set up. Make a Tiled Background, or a Gradient, or a Box, whatever you want, and use a private variable for the health amount. The code to control the size would be something like "Always -> Set width to (health * barIncrement)"

For a picture (like hearts in Zelda) you just make your Tiled Background a heart (say, 32x32 px). Then the code to control it is "Always -> set width to (health * 32)"

Easy.

We get a lot of MMF users asking about Counter objects. They're just so used to having to use them in MMF they don't see that Counter objects are completely unnecessary.

Thanks deadeye & mipey. I was not aware of that.

yea counter objects are really unnessesary. Plus, having them would ruin swimbas fun. We would'nt want that to happen now, would we?

Yeah, but what if someone uses special text? Like Bitmap fonts.

That would require the equivalent of a Text Blitter object... which Construct doesn't have. Yet.

Yeah, the only advantage of Clickteam's counter object is that it uses sprite frames for custom number images. That is one feature I would love to see in Construct, because my current fan game project that is being converted from MMF 2 requires this. But yes, a text blitter object would solve this problem.