SortGroup

Draws the entity and everything inside it as one thing among the rest: a pallet with a stack of crates on it, a machine with its operator, a truck with its label. The group sorts at its root’s Order and Z and, with the camera’s Camera.SortByY, at where the root stands (the bottom of its sprite, or its position if it has none), so a character walking past draws in front of the whole stack while lower down and behind all of it once above. Inside the group, its parts draw by their own Order, then in Hierarchy order, wherever they are on the screen.

Without it, each part of a tall thing sorts at its own feet, so the top of a stack sorts behind its bottom and a character can end up between them. A group inside a group sorts as part of the outer one. The root’s Order is the group’s; with nothing drawn on the root, it’s that of its first part that draws. A part being dragged (see Draggable) still draws over everything. A tilemap inside a group draws as one, its rows not sorting apart.

Works with: Sprite (on the root, whose feet the group sorts at)

Properties

Each is listed as its key in the scene file and the MCP tools, then its kind of value, its default and what it does.

• groundOffset: a number = 0. How far above the root’s feet the group sorts, in world units (below for less than 0): for a root whose picture has empty space under where it stands, or a group whose root draws nothing. Only matters with the camera’s Camera.SortByY. (Field: a number.)

Scripts use it as SortGroup: its methods, events and values that aren’t saved with the scene.