Actions

A library for self-contained, time-aware action functions in your Gamemaker instances.

See the example project, or the read below for more information on how to use it.

Features

Self-contained, time-aware action loops for instances - create modular behaviours or animations easily.
Useful helper methods like at(), between(), before(), after(), steps() and every() to handle many use cases.
Simple and fluent interface.
Out-of-the-box "fire and forget" handling - Actions run once, and won't run again while playing.
Straightforward scope handling - the instance that creates the Action is self, or you can rebind it with the bind() method.

Upcoming

Arguments for play()/execute().
Hooks for advanced behaviour; onStopped(), onPlayed, onPaused, etc.

Concept

As the name would suggest, this Library sets out to create a simple way to have your instances perform repeatable, time-aware actions.

Each action is a constructor that wraps a time source, and contains a number of helpful functions to track and modify its behaviour.

As an example, let's say you want your instance to flash red a few times whenever it's damaged:

Create Event

actionDamaged = new Action( function( a ) {
    var flashTime = 5;

    image_blend = c_white;

    // Every 10 frames, flash red for 5 frames, but only if we haven't been running for more than 60 frames
    if ( a.every( 10, 5 ) && a.before( 60 ) ) {
        image_blend = c_red;
    }

    // Just after we stop flashing, reset our image_blend and stop the action
    if ( a.at( 70 ) ) {
        image_blend = c_white;
        a.stop();
    }
} );

When we receive damage:

actionDamaged.play();

Note that the function you pass to the action is scoped to the instance creating it - we're accessing the Action itself through our function's first argument.

Check out the repo's example project for more like this.

Functions

Action( ) constructor

Actions starts with the Action() constructor.

You can access the struct within your action function with its first argument (in this example, we've called it a).

myAction = new Action( function( a ) ) {
    // do stuff
}

Methods

execute( )

Description: Executes the Action, starting the time source.

Returns: {Struct.Action}

bind( )

Description: Rebinds the method passed to the Action - by default, it's bound to the instance creating the Action.