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In my game, I'm creating it in "Chapters" with each chapter being a different AGSGame executable. Some characters and items and their current states carry over from game to game while others are unecessary for the next chapter. Therefore, I'm using "names" for characters and items. This way, when I load up character "BOB" he doesn't need to always be "character[3]" in every game. If I was forced to store these by the index number, it would get very convoluted down the road since that character ID (3) is useless in any game chapter that Bob isn't in. By addressing characters (and inventory items) by their unique names, I can reuse unused character and item indexes for new things.

Views need to be worked the same way. In chapter one and chapter three, Bob might have a pair of overalls to wear and the view for that might be called "BOBSOVERALLS". If I have to reserve VIEW1 as "BOBSOVERALLS" in chapter 2 (so I can have it back in chapter 3) then, again, I'm wasting resources.

There's no real way for me to make my game without being able to access everything in the game by either name or index. As far as I have seen, everything else besides views works this way.

Hiya Everyone...

I've been searching and searching and have also not been able to find a specific answer to this question in the documentation. So, I'm hoping that someone can give me some insight and save me a few days of complicated testing and experimenting to figure it all out.

BACKGROUND

I'm working on a fairly complicated game that will have a series of "Episodes" or "Missions" that will be released over a period of time. There will be one "BASE GAME" (Game.exe) that controls everything, and then each "Mission" will have it's own Mission000.exe. Since I would like to have the events of one mission affect another, I need to carry over a lot of variables.

My problem is that I'm not exactly sure just WHAT carries over when I run the game. The documentation doesn't seem to include some of the changes made in the "Game Variables" thread. And the docs also have the cryptic "and so forth" which doesn't really explain what is shared all that well.

THE SITUATION

I've got, for example, 5 characters with a Trait called "Resistance".  It's in an array as CHRResistance[X] where X is the ID of that character. I've made a Module for this that has all of these array variables available throughout the game. This module is included in each of the mission games, as well as the base game.

So now, in Mission 1, Character 2 gets their resistance lowered to 20 (from the original 50). If I now run "Mission2.exe, 1, 0" (The 1 keeps the "GlobalInt" values according to the docs) - will the CHRResistance[2] variable be 20? or would it not be initialized at all and be "null" - or exactly what would happen?

If it doesn't carry over, then I suppose it's possible to dump all my arrays into a file and then read that file in the new mission game - but it seems like a lot of work and makes it difficult to adapt and add to the concept as things go on.

I have some other workaround ideas, but they vary depending upon the answers I get here, so I will hold off on them until I get a response - and then we can look deeper, if necessary.

Thanks in advance for any help you may be able to offer.

Doc