- depth variable - how to draw with parallax
- you cannot summon hitboxes from update.gml
- you also cannot use match_end from update.gml
- how to refer to the variables in init.gml or "main stage" from stage articles
-- depth variable
"depth" is a gamemaker/GML default variable and are available for all objects.
This variable controls the order of which the object is drawn in.
For example, the higher the "depth" value is, the more it is drawn earlier. And being drawn early means other things will be drawn over it, effectvely making it "drawn behind".
In short, high depth = drawn behind, low depth = drawn in front.
You can change this value for your hit effects, type-2 hitboxes, and especially in this context, stage articles.
stages depths
around 35 - behind most bg layers
around 30 - stage ground layer
around 0 - players
negative values - in front of most things
-- how to draw with parallax
You may have noticed while you are messing around with stage article draw scripts - While your object sprite itself's location reflects its parallax values, the sprites you draw in the draw scripts doesn't seem to be affected by parallax.
There is actually a special temporary variable made for this purpose - in place of x and y, you can use temp_x and temp_y.
They are only available for stage article draw scripts, but the game properly calculates the parallaxed coordinates and sets it to these variables.
This feature is undocumented in the official documentation as of the time of writing.
Another thing I've figured out, you can use the stage editor's background parallax percentage by doing something like this: