Expresso Improvements (X-Post from 'Technical Discussion')

[mwillson]

Hi there, just wondering if anyone knows if there are planned additions to Expresso in the near (or any) future? I'm particularly interested in being able to reference Articy data, such as properties of entities and flow fragments, etc.. as variables in Expresso for conditions and instructions. To be able to reference a project's data within the project itself I would think is a very high priority feature, but IDK how technically feasible it is. I'm really not keen on the idea of creating tons of global variables for each specific condition I want to test. Seems redundant (not to mention difficult to parse through), when the data is already right there. Curious if anyone here can speak on this. Thanks!

-Mark Willson

[[Nevigo] Nikolas Koop]

Hey Mark,

if I understand you correctly, you asked for a possibility to access Feature Properties by instruction nodes? So I am able to answere your request with a simple "yes".
There are plans for the near future to enable "Object Property Access" in instruction nodes and output pins. There will be buildIn functions to get an object and to get a property value by a given technical-name or ID. And to make it even better, the near future is the release of articy:draft 3.0. Currently, it is part of the beta version.

Hope this is an answer for your question.
- Niko

[mwillson]

Hey there, thanks for the response!

How do I access feature properties via instruction nodes, as you say? Can not find any info about this anywhere.

And do you happen to know when the official 3.0 is scheduled for release? That sounds wonderful and just what I am looking for. I am going to apply for the beta for now though

[[Nevigo] Nikolas Koop]

Hey Mark,

newExpresso.png (167.83 KiB) Viewed 21999 times

I made a screenshot for you, which shows some of the new buildIn-functions. To access the object properties, articy have three new functions:
-> getObj(String/ID) = String is for technical Name, otherwise you can use the object ID; returns an object-reference
-> getProp(Object, String) = Object is the object-reference, from which object you want to access the object properties; String is a combination of the technical names (e.g. you have a template called "Player" with a property called "health", you have to write "Player.health" to access these property); returns nothing
-> setProp(Object, String, Value) = same as getProp, the only difference is Value, for the value you want to set the property with

for debug functions in articy, you can use the function print

Hope you like the changes and yes I encourage you to apply for the beta.
- Niko

[nikolaskoop]

Hey Mark,

as you may know, articy 3 is coming in february this year.

Take a look at the official Twitter account:
https://twitter.com/articydraft/status/ ... 32?lang=de

Yours
- Niko
(Same Person, private Account)

[mwillson]

Hi Niko,

Thanks for the heads up, very much looking forward to it!

So, using the current Expresso functions could i do something like this?

getProp(getObj("player"),"PlayerCharacter.StatPoints.Fighting")

What I am trying to do is access a property that belongs to a feature that belongs to a template. The property being "Fighting", the feature being "StatPoints", the template being "PlayerCharacter". obviously, "player" is the technical name of my entity using the PlayerCharacter template.

I've tried this exact code out in a journey and the error that comes up is "the function getObj() can not be evaluated. please choose an expected return value."

Not sure if I understood that these functions are only in the Beta and NOT in 2.2?

Thanks again for the help.

Regards,
Mark Willson

[[Nevigo] Nikolas Koop]

Hey Mark,

sorry my fault!! The second value of "getProp" is not "Template.Feature.Property". Instead it should be "Feature.Property". In my post from 4.1. I wrote:

[...] String is a combination of the technical names (e.g. you have a template called "Player" with a property called "health", you have to write "Player.health" to access these property); [...]

This is wrong! So in your case the function call looks like "getProp(getObj("player"),"StatPoints.Fighting")"

To answer your question, yes these functions are articy 3 only!

Quick question in return, are you trying to use these functions in Articy 2.2 with Articy:Access?

Yours
- Niko

[mwillson]

Thanks for the clarification!

To answer your question: No, I am not using Articy:Access. I may look into it in the near future though.

Regards,
Mark Willson - Lost Generation Games

[[Nevigo] Nikolas Koop]

Hey Mark,

which game-engine do you use for your project?
Because, if you use Unity3D for your projects, we highly recommend you to use our unity plugin instead.
You can download the plugin beta from the beta download page

Cheers,
-Niko