Digital Workshop

Is there a way to make the objects in a dropzone 'stick' to it when you animate the drozone?

I know if you make the dropzone itself draggable then any objects dropped on it go with it when you move it.
But if you move it using the animation actions, the dropzone moves but the objects stay behind.

I'm trying to create a little number pairs game involving a seesaw. The aim is to drop numbers that add up to the same on each side. The seesaw will stay balanced is they add up to the same or dip to the'heavier' side if not.

I can make it work with text input boxes for the number as shown in the first page of the attached pub.

But I'd like to be able to drop the number on instead but then the seesaw rotates but the numbers stay behind which looks silly. (See second page of attached pub.

While I'd still like to know if the above method could be made to work, I did continue fiddling and found a workaround for this particular case.

Since the text box method worked fine I used text boxes as dropzones.

I set up a drop action to set the variable shown in the text box to be the same as the number on the object being dropped.

I set the properties of the dropzone text boxes to be identical to the draggable numbers. FOnt, size, border etc.

I then used the transparency effect for the various states.

The draggable text objects 'dropped' state I set to 100% transparent.

The dropzone text objects I set to have a normal state of 100% transparent and a 'dropzone full' state of 0% transparent.

Therefore when an object is dropped the dropped object becomes invisible and the dropzone becomes visible and displays the value of the number just dropped.

It quite effectively fakes the impression that the draggable boxes are being dropped into place.

See attached for how it worked.

Hi Leiafee,

Well done on what you have produced. It looks effective!

<< I know if you make the dropzone itself draggable then any objects dropped on it go with it when
you move it. But if you move it using the animation actions, the dropzone moves but the objects stay behind. >>

The drop zone and the object WILL animate together, but not if the drop zone is within a Frame, and you apply the animation to the Frame. (which is what has happened in your case)

If you place the draggable object/s within the same Frame, then they will animate together. Then you would not need the transparency settings, nor the background/border attributes on the drop zone text boxes. The only problem is, when you "animate" the seesaw Frame, all objects in that Frame also animate -- which is not what you want in your case.

So I think what you have done is probably the only solution, due to the layout you have. It works well.

Bear in mind though if you're doing a similar concept, that all objects in the Frame will animate together. This might give you another idea or technique you can apply.

Well done!

I couldn't get it to work with just vectors either, I did try that initially.

The dropped objects still get left behind.

Just out of interest now really.