Automatic report of State switch

[rrTea]

Whenever I switch the main State, I like to print it in console too, just for confirmation, something simple like OnStart of a state:

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trace(NL + "...entering state_BattleG");

and OnLeave:

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trace("...leaving state_Report");

So this works perfectly but is a bit troublesome to maintain (for example if I change the name of the state I have to go to two different ZExpressions placed in two different nodes in the Project Tree and update it there too) and has some other drawbacks… Can this be automated to at least some extent? For example if I could make a component like this

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trace(NL + "...entering: " + StateSwitch.State);

and call this whenever needed (but obviously I can't get the string / name of the state like this) it'd be easier… But then again I would not be able to use this for leaving a State anyway, because I have to set the StateSwitch.State to "StateSwitch.State = null;" after each switch (so I can't know where it came from and I can't have the "now leaving" part).

So I don't have any better ideas how'd I set this up without overcomplicating such a simple task Is there some obvious way to go about it that I'm missing

[VilleK]

I thought you could use the IDE functions for this but seems I forgot to add "get" functions. I now added "getStringProperty" function. Please download again and the try attached script.

[rrTea]

Aha! So that's how it's done! Excellent, thanks!

[rrTea]

I'm trying to use this to get the string property of a SetAppState named "setState_Branching".

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if	(DEBUG)
	{
	string s = getStringProperty(setState_Branching,"State");
	trace("Entering state: " + s);
  	}

But this gives me an error, "GetStringProperty called with prop of unsupported type: State". Am I doing something wrong or is this not meant to work to begin with?

[VilleK]

I think you want to read the "Name" property, like this:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>
<ZApplication Name="App" Caption="ZGameEditor application" FileVersion="2">
  <OnLoaded>
    <AppState Name="AppState1"/>
    <SetAppState Name="SetAppState1" State="AppState1"/>
    <ZExpression>
      <Expression>
<![CDATA[if(DEBUG)	{
	string s = getStringProperty(SetAppState1.State,"Name");
	trace("Entering state: " + s);
}]]>
      </Expression>
    </ZExpression>
  </OnLoaded>
</ZApplication>

[rrTea]

I see, I was using it wrongly! Thanks, this works!