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Novice Joined: 21 Mar 2009 Posts: 35

Am I mistaken or is the statusbar and status window supposed to contantly be up to date with variables?

I have in my statusbar

@timeleft

And @timeleft is

#IF (@resting) {Ticks Remaining: %eval(5-@ticks) }

and my tick timer updates @ticks. It works, except it's not updating on the ticks when @ticks is changed....

Novice Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 40 Location: Aardwolf

I'm having the same problem with %roomname, %zonename, and %roomnum in my statusbar. They don't stay updated when I move, which worked fine in Zmud.

Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 9:47 am

Firstly, variables can't contain code like what you've posted here. To do so, it'd need to be a function, which won't display properly on the status bar. Well, no, that's not quite accurate - let me explain how the status bar works.

The status bar monitors any variables that're in it. It watches for when the value of those variables change, and repaints the status line when any changes occur. In this case, your variable contains "#IF (@resting) {Ticks Remaining: %eval(5-@ticks) }", which if you think about it never actually changes - the contents of the variables in it might change, but the actual variable references don't change, so the status bar will never update.

So basically, if you want the statusbar to monitor a variable, that variable needs to be inside the actual text of the status window. If you put %if(@resting,Ticks Remaining: %eval(5-@ticks)) directly into the status bar, it'll hopefully start working.

If your @timeleft() is actually a function that's supposed to #return the string "Time Remaining: %eval(5-@ticks)" - so you meant the code to be #IF (@resting) {#return Ticks Remaining: %eval(5-@ticks) } - then it's pretty easy to trick the status bar into updating the function. All you need to do is put the variables you want to monitor into the actual text of the status bar, changing your function call from @timeleft() to @timeleft(@resting,@ticks). The variables won't be displayed because they're passed to the function, but because they're in the status bar, they'll be monitored for updates.

Similarly, Obyron, your trouble is caused by there being no variable to check. There're a few ways of tricking the status bar into refreshing those functions - I think the easiest would be to have a variable that you flip between 0 and 1 every time the OnRoomEnter event is issued. The generally-accepted way of fooling the status bar into watching a variable you don't care about is to put it in an %if with no other arguments, like %if(@RoomChange). This will check the variable, but the %if will always return nothing whether it's false or true.

Enchanter Joined: 09 Sep 2007 Posts: 605

"Add this to documentation"! Excellent explanation, Fang!

And for the lazy ones the new command #UPDATE status-element-id has been introduced several versions ago. :)

Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2009 9:02 pm

Enchanter Joined: 11 Feb 2003 Posts: 511 Location: USA

Wizard Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 2320

None of the new commands added in 3.xx have documentation in the help library. This makes sense, since it avoids confusing the majority of users who are using the public version.

Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 3:07 pm

Enchanter Joined: 09 Sep 2007 Posts: 605