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This post is part of a series in learning how to make games with PuzzleScript. If you haven’t read my previous tutorials, I recommend you do so here, as that is assumed knowledge for this post.

The Action Command

By now we know how to walk around, push and pull blocks, but what if we wanted something to only occur when we press a specific key like spacebar?

PuzzleScript is a bit limited in what it allows for input, mainly being the arrow keys, Z for Undo, R for Restart, and we can’t change those, but it does also give us an extra key for Actions – either pressing spacebar or the X key.

I experimented with this a bit for Puzzledorf, for example, walking up to bombs and pressing a button to make them explode, but didn’t end up using it for that project. It can, however, make for some interesting gameplay for other projects.

Using the Action command follows a similar format to before. We’re used to the basic format of PuzzleScript coding:

[ Condition ] -> [ Event ]

If the condition is true, we do the event. We use the action command the same way, but it has it’s own rules. It looks like this:

[ Action Extra Conditions ] -> [ Event ]

An example of using the Action command would be this:

[ Action Player ] -> [ Crate ]

First, Action is always the first word you must put in the condition.

Second, if you want to affect a specific object in the game, you must mention that object in both the condition and the event ( if you mention a different object, it will delete the original and replace it, or mentioning no object will simply remove it).

Finally, you only have to mention the word Action in the Condition, however, there are times you might want to mention it in the condition and the event, which I’ll go into.

Try the above code in a game project. You can start with this sample one. You will see that what happens is, when you press spacebar or x, the player object becomes a crate.

The condition is saying, [ If you press the Action key and if there is a Player object in the level ] -> then [ replace the player object with a crate ]

Now in your sample project, try the following code:

[ Action Player | Crate ] -> [ Player | > Crate ]

Make sure you’re surrounded by crates as in the above image. You’ll notice that it only affects one crate at a time. I’m not sure what the reason is, but if you want to affect multiple objects with the Action command, you need to put it in both the condition and the event.

Replace the code with this updated version:

[ Action Player | Crate ] -> [ Action Player | > Crate ]

Now you’ll see that you push all of the crates at once. If you need to apply the action to multiple objects, make sure you put Action in both the condition and the event.

The next tutorial is on How To Check For Multiple Conditions.