Global Events in Clickteam Fusion 2.5

Global Events in Clickteam Fusion 2.5 are just that; Events that are global to the application. This Clickteam tutorial will focus on Global Events.

In Clickteam Fusion 2.5, each frame contains its own ‘Event Sheet‘. This event sheet tells Fusion 2.5 what to do on that particular frame for those objects inside that frame. However, if you have the same objects across, say 20 frames, this would mean managing 20 event sheets that do pretty much the same thing on every frame.

Introducing… Global Events. You can download the template MFA from here to follow along.

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Global Events Tutorial

Once you have opened the template MFA, let’s go ahead first and create some Global Values. Click on the Values tab for the application. Let’s add a Global Value. Click on the NEW button and then double-click on the ‘Global Value A’ label to rename it to levelnumber. Like so…

Next, take a quick look at the Storyboard of our application. You can see there are five levels with the same object in each one (Tank) and there are some obstacles in each level. There are also two additional objects, one to go to the next level and one to go to the previous level, when the tank overlaps it.

But all the events in all the levels are empty… for a reason. All the frames contain pretty much the same objects so we can just use Global Events to control these. Click on the Events tab of the application and then click Edit…

It will open up the Global Event Editor for this application. Now if you notice, there are no objects in the Event Editor. That is because we have to import them into the Global Event Editor. So Click on New Condition as you would normally in the Event Editor…

Still no objects… Click on the Import tab in the dialog and now you will see all the objects (from every frame) contained with this application…

Now we can use some objects for reference in the Global Event Editor. So click on the tank object and select Collisions > Overlapping another object…

When the next dialog pops up to test the collision, you will notice still no other objects, you simply click on the Import tab again and this time select the Right Arrow object and click OK…

Once the event is in the Global Event Editor, it will look ‘normal’ except it has shortcut arrows on the icons. This is just to let you know the object has been imported for use in the Global Event Editor…

So go ahead and right-click under the Storyboard object and select Next Frame…

Now, repeat the check for the tank overlapping, but this time do the Left Arrow instead… Your Global Event Sheet should now look like this…

Now create a new event, this time select the Tank and select Collisions > Backdrop. When the event is in, right-click under the tank on that event line and select Movement > Stop.

At this point, you can test your application by pressing F8 on your keyboard. You should now be able to change frames by moving the tank over the arrows.

So, now you can see how Global Events work. You have to reference the objects in a condition or an action, in order for them to be imported into the Global Event Editor.

Finally, you can use Global Strings and Global Values with both the Event Editor and the Global Event Editor. So jump back into the Global Event Editor.

Create a new event (new condition) and select the Special Conditions icon then select Always.

Now in that event line, right-click under the first icon (Special Conditions) and select Global Values > Set…

When the expression dialog appears, delete the 0, then right-click on the Storyboard icon and select Current number of frame…

This event will now set the global value ‘levelnumber’ we created earlier, to the current number of the frame that is active. You can now see this in the debugger at runtime…

So what is the difference between the Event Editor and the Global Event Editor?

Nothing, mechanically. They are the same editor window except the Event Editor edits events for whatever frame you are editing. The Global Event Editor edits events for the whole application. Hopefully this tutorial has covered enough on Global Events in Clickteam Fusion 2.5 to help you along.

Just a tip: Qualifiers do not work with Global Events.