Looking for help creating a widget that can modify object key values in an array

Authoring Twine
1

Hello! I have a question about how to write a widget that can dynamically modify the value of an object key. Say I have an array of “players” and they all have the same general template that looks like this.

<<set $players to []>>
<<run $players.push({

        head : {
            health : 100,
            conditions : []
        },

        torso : {
            health :100,
            conditions : []
        },

        leftArm : {
            health :100,
            conditions : []
        },

        rightArm : {
            health :100,
            conditions : []
        },

        leftLeg : {
            health :100,
            conditions : []
        },

        rightLeg : {
            health :100,
            conditions : []
        },


    })>>

Now I want to create a widget, something like “playerAttackTest” that has two arguments, args[0] being the index number of the player being attacked, and _args[1] being the region that will be damaged.
I could do something like this

<<switch _args[1]>>
    <<case "head">>
        <<set $players[_args[0]].head.condition -= 1>>

    <<case "torso">>
        <<set $players[_args[0]].torso.condition -= 1>>

    <<case "leftArm">>
        <<set $players[_arg[0]].leftArm.condition -= 1>>

    <<case "rightArm">>
        <<set $players[_args[0]].rightArm.condition -= 1>>

    <<case "leftLeg">>
        <<set $players[_args[0]].leftLeg.condition -= 1>>

    <<case "rightLeg">>
        <<set $players[_args[0]].rightLeg.condition -= 1>>

<</switch>>

But this feels sort of cumbersome and rigid. I am wondering if there is something that could just take _args[1], use it to look for the object key in the specified object, and then modify its corresponding value. Thank you for any help you can provide!

2

Yeah, the .leftLeg syntax is just a shortcut: anything you write that way, you can also write as ["head"] (or [_arg[1]]) instead. You can only write it with the dot syntax if the name fits the rules for a JavaScript name (letters, underscores, dollar signs for some reason, numbers after the first character).

So this should do you:

<<set $players [_arg[0]] [_arg[1]] -= 1>>

I put some spaces in there to make it clearer that there’s two groups of brackets one after the other: normally a programmer would leave out the spaces but… IIRC having extra spaces shouldn’t break anything.

2 Likes
3

Just as a minor point, it’s $args[0] ([1], etc.), with an “s” and with the permanent-variable rather than the temporary-variable sigil. (It used to be _args but that’s deprecated now.)

3 Likes
4

Thank you so much!