In 1.0.1
For example, what if you want to hide an upgrade? You don't want great big flashing upgrade markers giving it away.
Or, what if you want to use the actual upgrade sprite in a level, but not as an upgrade? See the attached screenshot for an example of this, and note that the super wave sprite got markers but the wave sprite did not. I would love to remove the markers from the super wave but can't figure out how.
markers.jpg (97.33K)It's very simple. If one of the upgrade sprites has a solid type of Pickup, it will have a marker rectangle. Otherwise, it will not. For hiding it, the best I can come up with right off-hand is a "background" sprite placed at a higher layer than the flashing square (which unfortunately I suspect exists in Layer 7). However, I've only had the new version for about 15 minutes, so I may come up with a better method.
Edwards
@edwards, on Mar 6 2007, 07:35 PM, said in Can you control when an upgrade gets markers?:
It's very simple. If one of the upgrade sprites has a solid type of Pickup, it will have a marker rectangle. Otherwise, it will not. For hiding it, the best I can come up with right off-hand is a "background" sprite placed at a higher layer than the flashing square (which unfortunately I suspect exists in Layer 7). However, I've only had the new version for about 15 minutes, so I may come up with a better method.
Edwards
I wish it were that simple. Unfortunately, all of those sprites have solid type 1 (solid). Their extra1 and 2 are all both 0. They are named Sprite, placed in layer 4, have a color assigned (obviously) and a script of ENV: Light Pulse. The color, script, and (of course) the sprite itself are the only diferences between the super and non-super wave upgrade sprites in the shot.
BLEEP.
It's a replicable bug. Apparently the rules for which solid types get auto-markers are different for different pickups, and I only tested one of the ones that behaves rationally. I guess I'll go make a 5-by-15 matrix of pickups, see which ones do what, and put that into the (in)Complete Guide.
Edwards
At least for the super wave, it does not seem to mater what solid type they are. Crappity crap.
I'll try the moving them to layer 9 and putting a "hider" sprite in layer 8, like you suggested.
EDIT: That worked. At least there's a workaround! Woohoo!
This post has been edited by cheleball : 06 March 2007 - 10:26 PM
Interesting...
I noticed the same thing with the Red gun I had placed in a working progress. I wanted it invisible and stretched across the passageway so that you automatically get it when passing, but now it's got the pickup pulse at it's center point, and it looks rather silly to see a pickup pulse with no pickup. 
For pickups always having markers around them, that's because they are automatically given an Extra2 value if they don't already have one, this is in order to support custom level saving because what the game remembers after a save/die/reload cycle are (among a few other things) the Extra2 value, this way the player can't accumulate a pickup by having it reappear after a save/die/reload cycle. However, there is a workaround I found accidentally: if the pickup has any child, the game won't add any pickup marker on top of that, so you can just give a pickup an invisible, not solid child to avoid any pickup marker around the pickup.
It's a bit strange that the behavior is inconsistent between different upgrades and solidities, guess that will have to be fixed.
Quote
For pickups always having markers around them, that's because they are automatically given an Extra2 value if they don't already have one...
What extra2 range does the game use for this? What happens if you use up all the extra2 flags elsewhere in your level? Or, if you just happen to have placed over 200 super upgrade sprites as solid walls (not that I have or anything), what happens? Does the game choke? I'll have to try that when I get home from school.
I have no idea, I suppose it uses a spare, unique, unused Extra2 value, possibly from a private range.
As for this inconsistent marker behavior, that may be explained by the fact compressed beam sprites are traditionally used for many things in the main game (even though the Tank Boss megashots could be used just as well, since they share the same graphic), with something else than pickup solidity of course, so Lars might have thought to disable this behavior for some pickups but not others when they aren't of pickup solidity.
