Linking Events

When designing levels with multiple moving events (clouds, platforms, pink rings, swinging grapes), you may need to synchronize their movement by linking the events in the Events Editor. When an linked event starts to function, the other events linked with it will also begin at the same time. This will synchronize the events. This concept will become clearer as you read through the examples below.

The screen snap to the right is a section of a Jungle World level as seen in the Events Editor. There are three Horizontal Water Lilies which we would like to have move in the step pattern that you see here.

This is what happens during game play - the water lilies are started at different times and their movement is not synchronized.

We need to link the water lilies together in the Events Editor so that their movement is started at the same time and their relative positions will remain synchronized.

In the Events Editor we changed to the Events Editor's Link Mode by pressing the 'I' key. It may be difficult to see in the screen snap to the right, but each event now has a maroon (sometimes green) line coming from it, ending in a small square.

First we clicked with the left mouse button on the leftmost water lily, dragged its square to a central location, and released the mouse button. Next we left clicked on the middle water lily, dragged its square on top of the first square, and released the mouse button. We did the same with the third water lily.

Finally we clicked with the right mouse button on top of the leftmost water lily to activate the links and change the lines to yellow.

To leave the Events Editor's Link Mode, we pressed the 'I' key again.

The yellow lines are not visible in the normal Events Editor mode.

These are the water lilies now during game play (they are moving from right to left in the screen snap). The movement of the water lilies remains synchronized.

The screen snap to the left shows a grid of 10 vertically moving pink rings. To synchronize all of their movements, they were linked together. Since they all start their animated movement at the same time, all of the rings maintain the original grid spacing as they move.

In the Image World pencils can be linked to create a "wave of pencils". First select the pencil called "Pencil Wall Going Up - First". Next place the desired number of pencils called "Pencil Wall Going Up - Suite" around the "First" pencil. Then link the the pencils together in the Events Editor as described above.