Hi Mike,

I'm having a play with digScatter and am not having any luck with the scatter settings, in particular the custom scatter area.

It seems that no matter what settings I apply, the scatter is pretty much the same... just random across the full stage.

Some settings cause the whole module to not display anything, but that seems to be just with very low stage sizes.

In any case.. I have a stage of 800x200 pixels, and I want to display half a dozen 90x70 thumbs along the upper right edge of the stage. First I played for an hour trying to make it work until I read the guide and saw where it says that the settings don't apply to the Wall method... there's a tip for the help icon.

So back to the module I went and changed to scatter mode. I'm assuming that zero X is the left edge of the stage and I'm guessing that zero Y is either the top left or bottom left corner - I can't tell which, but I'll just say it's bottom left.

So, wouldn't that mean that I can create a 400x100 scatter area, placed top-right of the stage, by specifying X=400 and Y=100 ?

I would think so, and it doesn't matter if Y is top or bottom, because 100 is half-way up or down the 200 high stage regardless.

But when I apply the settings, the 6 thumbs still get spread randomly across the entire stage... it never changes.

Any advice on getting this working is appreciated.

Rob

P.s. I was really wanting the wall effect for this, but the scatter would be ok, if I could reduce the degree of rotation. I thought that might be the jitter setting, but I've tried widely varying values in there and not spotted any difference. What does that do and what values work?

Hi Rob,
Glad to hear you are using digScatter. Sorry your are having so much difficulty. The x and y coordinates start in the upper left hand corner. Jitter is the random variable used for the "scatter" effect. The higher the jitter the less items appear in rows or columns, but appear to be on top of one another. If you want a scatter area at the top right of your stage you leave the y at 0 and set the x to where you want the scatter box to start. Then set the width and height of the scatter box. Make sure "Use customer scatter area" is selected. I would be happy to take a look at your settings for you. Just send us a log in through the contact us section of the site.

Thanks,
Emit

Hi Emit,
Thanks for the reply.

It's working now. It turns out that some jitter values break the custom area. For example, if i put 500 in the box, the thumbs don't land anywhere near it. This is why I thought it wasn't working.

Can you let me know what the intended range of jitter values is?
Thanks heaps
Rob

Hi Rob,
Jitter is just a way of randomizing the placement of your items on stage. You will want to make sure "Keep objects on stage" is selected. This makes sure items stay inside the viewable area, be it a custom square or whole stage. Give that a try and let me know if you still have problems. I would be glad to take a look if needs be.

Thanks,
Emit