Question

I want to put an array of objects into a grid. I know the code is simple but somehow I’m not getting what I want.

Code:

const PADDING:Number = 10:

const COL:Number = Math.floor(Math.sqrt(tiles.length);
const ROW:Number = Math.floor(Math.sqrt(tiles.length);

for(var i:int = 0; i< COL; i++)
{
  var tile:TileSprite = tiles[i];
  tile.x = i * tile.width + PADDING;

  for(var j:int = 0; j < ROW; j++)
  {
     tile.y = j * tile.height + PADDING;
  }
}

Notes:

– The array is declared else where as a public variable

– This is to be part of a game engine I’m building so I want it as flexible as possible

– The tiles as reading their properties for an XML file. But I don’t want to use the XML to hard code the tiles’ positions.

Thanks in advance for your help. Let me know if you need any more clarification.

Answer 1

I would suggest looking into the modulus operator rather than nesting loops.

This blog post outlines how to do just that:

http://www.davidpett.com/actionscript-3-dynamic-rows-and-columns/

Using David’s example as a starting point, your code would then look like this:

var COLUMNS:int = int(Math.sqrt(tiles.length));
var PADDING:Number = 10;

for(var i:int; i < tiles.length; i++)
{
    var tile:TileSprite = tiles[i];
    tile.x = (i % COLUMNS) * (tile.width + PADDING);
    tile.y = int(i / COLUMNS) * (tile.height + PADDING);
}