If Collision Point

This action is used to check and see if there is a collision with one or more instances of the given object(s) at a specific point in the room and will evaluate to true if a collision is detected, or false otherwise. You give the object to check for and the position to check at - which can be an absolute position in the room or a position relative to the instance - and you can also check the Not flag to check if there is not a collision at the given position, meaning that the action will then only evaluate as true if no collisions are found, otherwise it will evaluate as false. You can also set the Exclude Self option to exclude the calling instance from the collision check.

Next you can check/uncheck the option to Return List. Checking this means the action will create and populate a list data structure with all instances in collision with the point and set the Target variable to the DS list ID. When unchecked, it will only set the Target variable to a value less than 0 when no collision is detected, or the unique ID value of one of the instances in the collision (note that if multiple instances are in collision then you have no way of knowing which instance ID will be returned when not using a list).

If you have selected to return a list - and the Target variable is not set to Temp - then you can also select the Free Target option. When set to true, then the list contained in the target variable will be destroyed and a new list created (and returned to the target variable) each time you call the action. In this way you can re-use the same variable without worrying about memory leaks, as, if you do not check Free Target option, you become responsible for destroying the list before using the variable again in the action. Note that regardless of whether this option is checked or not, if you have set the action to Return List, then the target variable will always contain a list ID, and as such, this will need to be freed when the instance is destroyed or the room ends (you can use the Clean Up event for this, for example, along with the Free Data Structure action). It is worth noting that you can set the Free Target option to use a pre-defined variable or an expression and so control when the list data structure is freed by setting the variable elsewhere (or having different outcomes for the expression) as long as it evaluates to true/false.

Finally, you supply the Target variable that you want to hold the returned value or list ID. If you flag the Target variable to hold the returned value as being a Temp (local) variable, then the action will create this variable to hold the return value only until the end of the event, in this case the Free Target option does nothing and you will be responsible for destroying the DS list if that option has been checked. If no target variable is supplied and the Return List option is checked, no list will be created.

IMPORTANT! Collisions will only register for those instances that have a valid collision mask, ie: they have a sprite assigned to the sprite_index, or a sprite assigned to the mask_index. If the instances of the object being checked for in this action have no collision mask then the collision will not be detected, regardless of what the instance is drawing at the time.

Note that to add actions into an "if" block, they should be dropped to the side of the action, as shown in the image below:

Action Syntax:

Arguments:

Argument	Description
Object	The object or instance to check for collisions. You can click the  icon to add multiple objects to check collisions with.
x	The x position to check
y	The y position to check
Exclude Self	Whether the collision checker should ignore the current instance or not
Not	Used to invert the condition; only satisfies if a collision is not found
Return List	Whether a list of collisions should be returned in Target, or only the first collision
Free Target	Can be set to a variable or expression, or set to true/false to control freeing of the list memory when re-using a list variable
Target	The variable to target for the return value of the action

Example:

The above action block code checks for a collision at the mouse x/y position with an instance of the object "obj_Enemy". If one (or more) collisions is found, an effect is created and at the position of the instance with the ID stored in the Target variable, and then the instance is destroyed. If no collision is found, a different effect is created at the mouse position.