Tags

Tags are names, labels or keywords that group game objects, such as enemies, friends, trees, etc. They are useful for classifying different types of objects.

Using tags

Tags can be added on the add([]) function array as a string.

const ghost = add([
    sprite("ghosty"),
    "enemy",
]);

This makes it so ghosty has a tag, enemy, and there’s many operations you can do with it.

Tag operations

How to add a tag

// Add a tag on creation
const ghosty = add([
    sprite("ghosty"),
    "enemy",
]);

// Add 1 tag or many tags!
ghosty.tag("friend"); // now is a friend :D
ghosty.tag(["friend", "invisible"]); // invisible forever

How to remove a tag

ghosty.untag("friend"); // D:

How to know if a tag exists in a game object

ghosty.is("enemy"); // true if tag is there, otherwise false

How to get a list of all tags

ghosty.tags; // read-only array with all tags.
// result: ["enemy"]

Using tags in events and methods

A large number of methods and functions work using tags.

obj.get("enemy"); // returns an array with all enemy game objects

Special tag: *

All game objects have the * tag by default. This can be useful for example to get all game objects

get("*"); // list of all game objects

Components as tags

In v3001, KAPLAY by default will take component IDs as tags:

// this means if your object have a sprite() component, it also have a "sprite" tag
const tga = add([
    sprite("tga"),
]);

tga.is("sprite"); // true

In next versions this is disabled by default, but if you want to enable it or disable it in v3001 version, you can use the tagsAsComponents option:

kaplay({
    tagsAsComponents: false,
});

tga.is("sprite"); // false