Action button features request

I think the Action button is a real boon for my students. It makes thing accessible that otherwise would only be there for programmers. That being said, there are a few real omissions.

a. Play sound. Lots of ways to do this anyway, but a Play Sound action would be super.

b. Play script. Would it not be cool if an Action could call a script?

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Hello @donnav

Would be awesome if actions could call one or more functions! :smiley:

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For sure! Can I also add

  1. An Action that pauses for a set amount of time
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Hi @donnav,

It’s great to hear that Actions are helping to open up Studio to everyone :smiley:

The ability to control an audio file is a good suggestion, I’ll pass this on to the team.

Calling a script from an Action however seems like it would conflict with the intended purpose of Actions i.e. allowing users to perform functionality without the need to write any code. Your suggestion would mean a user would have to write some code in a script, before being able to call it from an Action.

To better illustrate this, we can use the examples below. Currently, Actions are compiled to script when the experience is previewed/published meaning this:

image

…does the same as this:

image

Using the suggested method would result in something like this:

image

…where the On Tap Action would call the function from a script node:

image

As you can probably tell, it makes things a bit more complicated than it needs to be as it separates the functionality and would require simultaneously managing the Actions on your node, and the code within your attached script to avoid conflicts.

You would also have to write the function manually, at which point it might make more sense to also manually wrap it in a relevant event handler.

For these reasons, this isn’t something we’re currently looking to implement, but rest assured we are definitely working on expanding our Actions functionality! :smiley:

Thanks again for your suggestions @donnav & @higor, we really appreciate your enthusiasm for ZapWorks!

Any other questions feel free to let me know, and keep us posted on how your projects are coming along.

All the best,
Seb

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Fair enough.

The pause would be valuable though.

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