On Thu, 22 Jul 1999, Karl Becker wrote:
> This is my first posting to the list here, and I think it's of interest
> to many people.
>
> The problem I'm experiencing is with the Mouse() function. When I put
> the following line into a repeating loop:
>
> wait until the mouse is down
>
> or
>
> if the mouse is down then ...
>
> it only works some times. On the first time through the loop, it will
> correctly tell me the current state of the mouse button (I'm on a Mac,
> and using a one-button mouse, but a multiple button mouse should work
> with this, too) . However, when it loops around and comes to one of
> those two lines, it cannot tell if the mouse is pressed. The only
> message it gets (for some unknown reason) is that the mouse is up, even
> when I'm pressing and holding it down. (I've checked this by making a
> repeat loop which puts the result of Mouse() into msg box)
>
> Here's part of a script I'm talking about:
>
>
> repeat until givenTheSign is "stay"
> wait until the mouse is down --**Also could be "wait until Mouse() is
> down"
> put the mouseLoc into someVariable
> doOtherStuff
> end repeat
>
>
> The first time through the repeat, it keeps checking to see if the mouse
> is down and, when it's depressed, it moves on to the next line (put the
> mouseLoc into someVariable) .
> However, the next time through the loop, it just gets stuck on "wait
> until the mouse is down". This is quite important for a few games I'm
> working on, including a basketball and casino game. What could I do
> about this peculiarity?
I'm not sure what the problem is here (and suspect that it has a lot
to do with what happens in "doOtherStuff"), but as a general rule in
MetaCard, *never* use "wait until X" or "repeat until Y" where Y is
any user-initiated change. It's a horribly inefficient way to things
(the technical term is polling, which is the antithesis of the
event-driven model all GUIs and multi-tasking OSs are built on).
You'll get much smoother response and consume a fraction of the CPU
time if you use the mouseDown/mouseUp/mouseRelease/mouseMove messages,
possibly in combination with "send .. in" for things that need to be
done periodically (e.g., making flashing buttons, or changing the
frame in a GIF at a non-standard rate). It's harder to develop this
way because the important routines end up getting scattered over
several handlers, but is the only way to go, especially for
time-critical applications like games.
Regards,
Scott
> Thanks for your time!
>
> --------------------------------
> Karl Becker, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.btigate.com/~funkboy/
> Featuring: Tiger's Eye Casino,
> MacBasketball, and The Fishin' Hole!
>
********************************************************
Scott Raney [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.metacard.com
MetaCard: You know, there's an easier way to do that...
