Distinctive initial variable values

Often one finds that a variable that should have acquired a certain value has not yet done so. Or a condition depends upon a value that has been erroneously set.

A useful ploy to help you see these kinds of problems is to use something like -99 as your default value, which is unlikely to occur normally in your pie. Then if you see -99 in your running pie, you can much more quickly see what is going on.

Likewise, especially when getting text from an API, or by string manipulation, having “” as. the default text value for a variable is easily overlooked as a problem. Using “Null” as your default value – which will again not be likely to occur in your pie anywhere else will help you distinguish between something not having been done and having been done with an empty string.

Keep trigger and response names visible

It is very important to annotate your code with what it is actually doing, but keeping the trigger and response names helps someone new to the project (or you in three month's time.

Arrays and multiple parameters

Protopie seems limited since a message can be sent using only one value as a parameter. However, arrays (written as text strings and manipulated by parseJson) can be used for contexts where multiple parameters need to be passed.

How to inspect variables inside a component

Even all-Scenes variables are not accessible inside a component. And this can lead to hard to find errors when a variable with the same name is used in a component, but its value is not sync'd with the scenes.

Use Components

It will often seem as though it will be faster to use individual elements than to use components, but in the end the time saving almost always goes the other way.

Put code inside components

Protopie code can get complex and hard to follow surprisingly quickly. Putting as much code as possible within your components can keep your main scenes simpler and cleaner.

Playing with time

A message sent to the current scene will be received by the object that sent it. But a message sent to Protopie Studio (Connect) will not be received by the pie that sent it. B ut what if there is nothing out there to respond to it?

Receive and Assign hazard

Receiving a message, and then assigning a value and then writing a conditional based on that value is that something that is quite a normal, conceptual pattern – but in Protopie it will often not work as expected. This is because responses to Protopie triggers all happen simultaneously and not in the order written.

Viewing variables within Components

The variable debugger doesn't work when the variable that needs to be viewed is inside a component. There are two relatively easy ways to deal with this.

Arrays and multiple parameters

Receive and Assign hazard

Distinctive initial variable values

How to inspect variables inside a component

Check if Protopie Connect is present

The wrong variable type