Highlight a specific part of a counter ...

Module Design
1

Suppose you have a typical game counter. You have along the bottom three numbers or letters, something like … A, B, and C … or any three numbers or letters for that matter, I’m using that as a typical example. At the beginning of the game I’d like the first number/letter (“A”, in my example) to be highlighted in some manner … maybe with a green square key line around it.

In the middle of the game, the user then needs to be able to right-click the counter (or, obviously, a key combination) and select “B”, at which time B now has the green square key line around it. Same thing for the last turn(s) … the user selects the counter and chooses “C” to be highlighted with a green square key line around it.

I’d like to know if there’s some way of accomplishing this with layers/highlighting, without having to make three graphics of every single counter in the game showing each of the states (tripling my graphics output workload).

Thoughts? Thanks!

2

You can make the highlight a separate layer that appears on top of the base counter. Have a level each for off/A/B/C and have it follow a property, then have your keyboard or menu actions adjust that property.

3

Precisely. Assuming all counters that need these overlays are the same size and shape, you need just 3 additional images as Layers–each will be the same pixel dimensions as the counters and totally transparent except for the green outline. One image will have this outline in the lower left, one in the lower middle, one in the lower right.

They’d go in a prototype that all counters use (thus, you’ve added just 3 total new images, and all counters reference them), along with a Dynamic Property and the layer simply follows the property value to determine if it’s visible or not.

4

Thanks all, that solves it.