Use overridable variables in components

Sending messages to two places

Whilst it is important to be careful in sending messages to the right places, it is also very powerful to send a message to two different places at the same time (or maybe with a small delay).

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?

Using the wrong mental model for Protopie

Most prototyping tools for designers use the frame-by-frame, or multiple dartboards model. But Protopie is much closer to a developer's object-oriented model of an application UI.

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.

Check if your other pie is present

When building a connected system it can be valuable to know if the other pies are loaded into Connect or not – for examples so you don't get stuck waiting for a message that will never be sent.

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.

Rough, Rapid, Right

Use Variables

Variables are very powerful simplifying tool and they do not seem to have any impact on Protopie's performance.

Sending messages to two places

Arrays and multiple parameters

How to inspect variables inside a component

Sending a message to another scene

Viewing variables within Components

Distinctive initial variable values