Sequencer woes

[Crowdpleaser]

Hello Everybody As you know i am enjoying this Game very very much. However, i have an issue with the Seqencer. Well actually a few.

1. Cumbersome usage: While i am really happy that we got a Sequencer, i have to say that the usage is quite frustrating at times. Especially when you try to crontrol a lot of things. For example, i have built a Ride Skin for the Genie Ride. The basic idea is that ambient light changes during the different Sequences of the Ride. So i hooked up a bunch of Area Lights to a Sequencer Box. I told it to activate at the start of a given Sequence and to change colour too. So what happened was that the Sequencer Box changed Colour... This means that i have to MANUALLY tell every light to change colour with specific Seconds. Since i don't know how long each Sequence is, this results in Hours (i am not joking) of tweaking. But i am not done yet... So i activated the lights with the sequencer box. But when it came to the action do Deactivate the lights nothing happened. The Sequencer just doesn't deactivate when i ask it to. It activates fine, but deactivating... no dice.

2. The Control of Objects and Lights.

Only one Change would make the Usage of the Sequencer so much more Userfriendly and efficient. A Timeline. Give us a Visual Time Line to see when a Event starts, and how long it will take. And not only that, if the Sequencer is hooked to a Flatride, can we actually see how long a Seqence is, so the hours of tweaking disappear? As a Sidenote: Flatrides take a while to get started, which is fine and dandy, nothing against that. But we can't trigger ANYTHING in that startup time. We don't want to change the startup animation of the Ride, but PLEASE let us access this as Starting point for Triggered Events. The Music starts fine as soon as the Ride Moves, but the Triggers wait for however long it takes for the Ride to actually get going.

I enjoy your Game very much, it is the best on the Market of its kind, and i think these changes will boost it up even more Thank you for listening

 

[LN]

I don't use the sequencers, just because of the fact they are nearly impossible to use and learn.

It takes waaaaaaay to much time and effort to accomplish a good end result. This is one feature that definitely needs upgrading to a more user friendly interface.

 

[redrum]

So what happened was that the Sequencer Box changed Colour.

That's actually funny. You wanted the lights to change colour but instead the sequencer itself changed colour. See, this is why I like the sequencers. They faithfully execute logical commands and don't judge the usefulness of those commands!

This means that i have to MANUALLY tell every light to change colour with specific Seconds.

So your suggestion for the game might be that sequencer display groups could act as a parent control for the properties of the child objects inside the group. I'd like that feature too, but it does present challenges. It would only work if all objects inside the display group were the same type, since different objects have different changeable properties. That presents more complexity, if you try to add different object types inside a group which is this "global control" type. I guess the geniuses could work it out, but I can see how it opens a can of worms if you decide you want something inside the display group to be independent of the other items.

The Sequencer just doesn't deactivate when i ask it to

It does though. Similar to how it changed colour because you literally asked it to. You have deactivated the sequencer forgetting that the sequencer contains lights which in turn need individual attention before they will change state.

If a timeline feature ever comes it should be its own thing, maybe a new type of "timeline box" or something. The current sequencers are okay, a bit quirky but they're cool. If you want to do complex stuff with sequencers, always plan ahead and create a smaller test before scaling up to ambitious trigger arrays. Sounds like you jumped right in with all those lights, and got burned!

 

[Crowdpleaser]

If you want to do complex stuff with sequencers, always plan ahead and create a smaller test before scaling up to ambitious trigger arrays. Sounds like you jumped right in with all those lights, and got burned!

No actually i wanted to update an old Sequence, with the new colour changing command. But i realised that it is maybe quicker to just do it all over again with a fresh plate. But in turn this means i need to hunt down buried lights in rocks and construct a new sequence from scratch. I was a bit miffed that day and needed to get it all out I was just trying my darnedest to avoid starting all over again.

 

[redrum]

...hunt down buried lights in rocks and construct a new sequence from scratch.

Thankfully we have scenery groups now, so no more hunting if you planned ahead and put everything in scenery groups. I know sometimes easily forgotten when building.

The suggestion for multiple lights to be activated or colour-changed at once with sequencer is a good one though, it should be added to the suggestion box. Perhaps we could have the choice of adding a scenery group to the display group in sequencer, instead of only individual objects. If the scenery group contains identical light type, then sequencer could treat it as one object.