By Brad Wardell

Today I'm going to create a set of objects that allow you to control the position of another object. In essence, I am going to make 4 objects that will act as up, down, left, and right and then the cursor object that will be what is being controlled by the others.

Step 1: Create the first object.

Step 2: Go to its properties.

Step 3: Change its image to be an arrow.

Step 4: Create the target object and give it an image too.

Step 5: Give this object a name.

Step 6: Go back to your original object and create new script for it.

Step 7: Using the Scripting Guide (Adobe Acrobat PDF, right-click here & Save As to download or left-click to open) have this object take over the mouse button down message.

You will find that the what you want to add is something like this:

Function Object_OnLButtonDown(x, y)
    DesktopX.Object("TargetObject").bottom = DesktopX.Object("TargetObject").bottom - 10
End Function

Step 8: Clone your control object 3 more times and make a couple tweaks so that they are down, left and right buttons.

For example, I want to use the same up arrow graphic but I need it to point right. So I rotate it 90 degrees. For the down one I would rotate it 180 degrees and the one pointing left I would rotate is 270 degrees..

Sub Object_OnScriptEnter
    Object.Rotation = 90
End Sub

Then I change what is being done to the target object based on which button. For example, the button moving it to the right would have this code:

You're done!

And voila. There you go. I'll now export it and upload it for yourself. If you have DesktopX Pro, you could export it as a stand-alone program to send to anyone whether they have DesktopX or not.

Download sample here.