ENIGMA Development Environment

Ok now I understand all about variable types and how one must declare variables and the different ways to do so.
I also know that variables take memory and by declaring them it reserves memory for them at runtime right ?

Example

int a[100]

Would initialize an array of a with 99 blocks contiguous memory allocations right?

My questions are as follows.
Now this would be a static array if not mistaken.

1. What if I don't know in advance the size of my array and would like to leave it dynamic how would I go about?

2. Let's say I do not need the array anymore but want to free the memory used of a[0] to a[99]  (the array I declared), how would I do this ?

3. IS it necessary to manually free all variable and arrays before my program exits or is it done automatically ?

Very interesting thanks

Yes indeed placing it in create worked.

BTW, what function do I use to find out the length
of an array?

example

{
i=0;
word=0;
for (i=0; i < 10; i++)
{
word[i]="Count: "+string(i);
}
}

This is in create event.

Let's say I want to find length of the array word,
in this example it should return me a 9.

array_length_1d compiles with error function not found, even though the command is highlighted and documented.

Lol, I was thinking of a snake/dragon penis.

LOL.

Guess now we have clues as to what his new game will be !

BTW TKG, the removing textures I do a lot, using highlight and shadow tools in photoshop

However, I've never done the shading thing, I really like the adding textury look to the design as opposed to flat colors, which most people do in GM games

Nice.

So what's going to be your next game ?

Revenge of Snake Penises ?


I totally suck balls at making sprite characters for my games, would you mind helping me with sprites for my future platform games ?

Yes now that I see it visually it makes sense that the FOR would execute completely each step as opposed to incrementally.  Understood, so in this case I should increment the value of variables myself outside of a loop.  So in which cases then would a for loop be properly used in a step event ?  Also I can't get while, do until to work at all.  Even without for / loops. and most of the code in games are done in step events.
So it's hard for me.  I'd have to create tons of control objects to do individual tasks instead of being able to put every thing inside a step event in my main controller.

Here is an example experiment, let's say I want to check if key up is PRESSED, if it is then object's x
and y positions would change to a random value 10 times and then wait.  Whilst this is happening, having  the feature of ignoring the key check since it is being processed ......

This would obviously not work and I know why:

if keyboard_check_pressed(vk_up)
   {
   key = 1;
   }
   
if (key = 1)
   {
        repeat (10); {
   x=random(room_width);
   y=random(room_height); }
   }
key=0


So how would I be able to make this work ?

Refer to post below this one, I figured it out.

An alternative would be to set a controller object
and increment a variable manually with an if
and create instance of other object and destroying itself.  and calling this controller through instance create.   that's why I was wondering I can do all this in a single step event of the instance object.

Use event_user(NUMBER); to call the user event. Just tested and it works calling it this way.

ok will do thanks It's also documented in GMS.

BTW, just to make it clear, I am just experimenting with things, want to cover different features.  I understand about the steps, and repeat / for / while ,etc not being incremental every step but executing the bulk each step and so I have to use variables and do things manually for them to be processed each step. 

Now as far as user events where you could place actions inside them.  Is it best practice to create controller objects instead and and call them through instance create or use user events ?

Quote from: time-killer-games link=topic=1919.msg18713#msg18713
date=1399497426

Three words...

GOOGLE DRIVE

But I'm only seeing two!

LOL!

It's not odd at all. A for loop repeats the code inside it until a condition is met (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_loop). In this case that means drawing 100 times (numbers from 0 to 99) in one step.

But the reason for the loop in my example was
to repeat code until the condition of i=100 is met.
I have seen maybe print counter examples done with for/loop this way, that's why I am confused.

I think you don't really understand how cycles work. Or how steps work. The code you put in events like draw or step are executed once every frame (called step in GM).

I knew that and understand how it works and am aware 1 frame = 1 step, and the draw/step is executed at room speed, by default 30 steps per second.

And I know what create events are, I use those to initialize variables and set my object's settings upon create. 

codes you posted work just fine. They would work like that in GM, ENIGMA, C++, Basic, Python or anywhere else.

You are wrong about BASIC Harri   You have no idea how much I used loops when I used BASICS,
it was abused lol and I already gave you an example of a BASIC loop.  But in BASIC there are no draw events, create events, step, begin and end step events   shit works differently now apparently
and I am seriously fucked, unless I know how things are to be done now.

It works just like you coded it. There are no bugs or problems with while, for or repeat cycles.

If it worked I would not be posting this.  I am working based on the logic of what I need done.
perhaps a better way for me is to simply say what I need done and then someone recommends me code on how to do it   I am pretty sure some of the stuff is broken in ENIGMA, because I don't always get the same outcome when running / compiling games ...

here is an example, let's say I want to read from
a file, start pos to end pos, i BASIC I used for loop for that and used the loop's for variable in the code between the for and next.  I saw some C++ programs do this, so why can't I do it here?

No it shouldn't. As I mentioned before Draw event (the one actually drawing to the screen) is executed once per frame. While the for(){} you have created here executes 100 times per frame. So when using that loop you should see the object at x=100 in every frame.

Understood.  So, in this example, how can I make an object move 100 pixels (1 pixel at a time) using a for / loop then ? 

I thought that in each step the i would increment 1.  I could have sworn seeing for loops in step events before, how can that be then ?

Read up on loops. You said you used Basic before, I think they had loops too.

On an expert level yes I used BASIC and I can swear on my life that it worked differently.

execute it every step from the beginning. You cannot have one script execute spanning multiple steps. Like this is impossible:

So what is the alternative then, incrementing the value of i myself, but then I would have to use do until or while, and that does not work either...

When reading docs in enigma and GMS I see for loops being used, when I apply the examples they don't work.