Is there a time when you prefer using a Group over a Table?
Also, I notice I can control the x,y location of a Group quite easily. I have not found a way to control a whole Table location.
I’ve looked up Tables in general on this site as well as the Intro to Lua and Jonathan Beebe’s article on “Understanding Lua Tables” but I can’t seem to find this info.
So, is it possible to control the location of a Table? If so, how?
tables are a means of storing the memory location of objects. groups are use for controlling several objects at the same time. you can use tables and groups together
and yes you can setup a x,y location in a table but your only storing a value. to have all your object in the table follow the x,y values your would need to setup an enterFrame event and loop through all objects in table adjusting their values so in the end it’s not worth it to try and Use a table to move objects.
Lua tables are not display objects and they themselves cannot be drawn on the screen. As @jstrahan said, it’s a data structure. A group uses a table as it’s data structure as do all Lua objects, but it has specific attributes and methods that allow the display system to treat it as a display object that can be moved around on the screen.
Now there is a concept called a “tableView” which is a one column multi-row data store, kind of like the mail app on an iPhone where you have rows of data. This is a special object in the “widget.*” group of API’s known as widget.newTableView(). This object is a displayable object that you can move around on the screen (though most of the time it’s a full screen object).
Thanks for the replies. This makes sense why I haven’t been able to move a Table around like a Group with simple x/y coordinates. And as such, I will be using a Group for certain things where I just want to be able to move 30 objects around maintaining their positions in relation to each other.
Thanks again for the clarification!
tables are a means of storing the memory location of objects. groups are use for controlling several objects at the same time. you can use tables and groups together
and yes you can setup a x,y location in a table but your only storing a value. to have all your object in the table follow the x,y values your would need to setup an enterFrame event and loop through all objects in table adjusting their values so in the end it’s not worth it to try and Use a table to move objects.
Lua tables are not display objects and they themselves cannot be drawn on the screen. As @jstrahan said, it’s a data structure. A group uses a table as it’s data structure as do all Lua objects, but it has specific attributes and methods that allow the display system to treat it as a display object that can be moved around on the screen.
Now there is a concept called a “tableView” which is a one column multi-row data store, kind of like the mail app on an iPhone where you have rows of data. This is a special object in the “widget.*” group of API’s known as widget.newTableView(). This object is a displayable object that you can move around on the screen (though most of the time it’s a full screen object).
Thanks for the replies. This makes sense why I haven’t been able to move a Table around like a Group with simple x/y coordinates. And as such, I will be using a Group for certain things where I just want to be able to move 30 objects around maintaining their positions in relation to each other.
Thanks again for the clarification!