At 7:44 -0400 2001_07_04, Al Hospers wrote:
>another possibility is to have the sprites all register themselves in
>a list as they come alive & then only send stuff to members of this
>list.
Given that you have a manager-behavior and managed element-behaviors:
I prefer never to use hardcoded spriteNumbers, just as I prefer not
to use hardcoded memberNumbers.
Therefore I usually let my manager-behavior collect elements by
sendAllSprites with a list as a parameter, in which the elements
register themselves.
Letting the manager manage the collection of the group, has the
advantage, that "he" then knows when all elements have been
collected, and therefore is able to continue onto performing the
collective initialization of the complete cluster.
If the manager is in the lowest channel, the elements are not yet
born on beginSprite.
I often defer the managers "collect" call to the prepareFrame-event,
when all behaviors have been instantiated, but the stage is still not
drawn.
Alternatives:
-1: Implement the prepareFrame handler in the manager and use a
flag-property to control that the managers initiation is only done
once.
-2: Implement the prepareFrame handler in the
scriptChannelBehavior, and let it broadcast a "begunFrame" event to
all sprites. Managers can use this event for initialization, knowing
that all sprites are ready.
-3 on beginSprite, instantiate a helperObject, which starts a
timeOutObject, receives the prepareFrame event, kills the
timeOutObject and initializes the manager (or the scriptChannel).
This avoids the perceived overhead of repeatedly checking flags.
-4 Simply place the manager in the highest channel. I mostly
find this counterintuitive to the initialization sequence of the
cluster.
Methods two and three, has the weakness, that the cluster is not
selfServiced, but relies on the services of a custom framework.
Jakob
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