Ever wonder how some builders make those cool things like doors that open, fireplaces that start with a click, things that jump out at you with a sound, etc? Well, I'm going to try and explain that concept starting with the basic command(s) that are used.

Cascading animations involve strings of "astart", "adone" and "animate" commands that set off a chain reaction that cascades through them to control various actions in a build. It involves a primary "trigger" that starts it all (usually a "bump" or "activate") and when that animate timing is complete in the 1st trigger, it then activates another & so on. Start with deciding just what you want to happen in sequence 1st, maybe a ball rises in the air with a sound then a sign appears then it all resets. Below is a picture of that example:

There's 2 types of objects involved here, the 1st type are the "working" objects, the ones that are or will be visible in the animation. Then there's the "trigger" objects that apply the animation commands to the "working" objects. Each one of both types of objects must have a unique name applied to it with "create name". The objects in this picture are named (using "create name ____" in each:

wo1: (working object 1), the ball

wo2: the sign under the floor

to1: (trigger object 1), the bottom Doritos bag

to2: the top Doritos bag

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activate astart to1

This means click (activate) animation start (astart) object to1 (to1).

The picture below shows what happens when you click the primary trigger:

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create name to1,animate me x 1 1 0;adone noise boing.wav,move 0 1 0 time=1 wait=6 name=wo1,astart to2

You'll notice the old reliable "animate me" command there. It's not, however, being used to texture that object, it's simply there to count down time in milliseconds (the 3rd number after the "x") after it's been astarted. Then when that time has expired, it will initiate the commands listed after "adone" (animation done) which in this case is doing 3 things: Starting the 'boing' wav, moving wo1 (the ball) 1 meter up and astarting to2 (top Doritos bag).

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create name to2,animate me x 1 1 1000;adone move 0 1.5 0 time=1 wait=4 name=wo2

Following the sequence: astarting to2 moves wo2 (the "BOO" sign) up 1 meter but because the 3rd number in this animate me is 1000 (1,000 milliseconds or 1 second), the sign rises 1 second after the ball rises. This is how you can time events to happen when you want until you want the next action that's triggered at "adone" to occur. There're 3 total triggers in this demo but you can see how many more can be strung along with other trigger objects being added with their own "adones". Feel free to copy the programming here as a start then experiment with the numbers and actions (solid off and visible off also are cool to use).

~Ewasx~