Fixed Container Size

[JackParke]

I have a PIXI Container with several enemies inside it. Like space invaders the enemies move as a whole and I position the container to move them

The problem is: as enemies inside the container "die", the parent container is changing shape and position. It seems to be resizing itself to fit how many children it has. I do not want this to happen.

I've tried:

1) destroy()

2) alpha = 0

3) visible = false

The alpha solution is the only one where the container does not resize but it only works sporadically. What I mean is sometimes I set alpha=0 and an enemy is still displayed.

So we start out like this with the container at x=180:

As soon as the left most enemy dies the container resizes and the other enemies appear to jump to the left.

[ivan.popelyshev]

In that case, dont modify container position based on its children, use it only to group elements together. If you want to separate width/height, make your own variables with different names in it, like "myWidth" and "myHeight" and use them. Calculate initial values based on initial getBounds().

I think its time to read Container's code: https://github.com/pixijs/pixi.js/blob/dev/src/core/display/Container.js#L16 Its not universal container, it only works for a simple cases, there is no magic inside. You have to code your own, extend this class and do whatever you want with it.

[JackParke]

Good point! I was calculating the position based on the width of the container and that was "shrinking" as the children "died".

The problem is: containers have no anchors so I can only position them based on the top left corner by doing:

container.x = container.myX - container.width/2;

And as width shrinks this shifts the entire container to the left. I could work around it but it's quite complicated with scaling and sprites of different widths.

Seems to me it would be nice to have a fixed width "matrix" container which did not resize and reshape itself.

[ivan.popelyshev]

That's just general container with your own Width and Height, just make names of variables different.