I'm making a top-down shooter with scrolling, and I'm using pen to make the health and stamina bars. However, pen goes behind sprites, so the bars always go under the level. I would use stamp, but all my sprites need to move at some point and drawing the map with pen would be super laggy. Is there some way I can make pen go in front of the sprites?

StorytellerK wrote:

I'm making a top-down shooter with scrolling, and I'm using pen to make the health and stamina bars. However, pen goes behind sprites, so the bars always go under the level. I would use stamp, but all my sprites need to move at some point and drawing the map with pen would be super laggy. Is there some way I can make pen go in front of the sprites?

My suggestion would be to use these blocks for the sprites:

when green flag clicked
go back () layers

StorytellerK wrote:

I'm making a top-down shooter with scrolling, and I'm using pen to make the health and stamina bars. However, pen goes behind sprites, so the bars always go under the level. I would use stamp, but all my sprites need to move at some point and drawing the map with pen would be super laggy. Is there some way I can make pen go in front of the sprites?

idk if this will work exactly the way you would like it to do, but you could do all the normal code, just not have the scrolling ground sprite. For example, you would have all the scripts for scrolling NPCs, building, crates, guns, bullets, etc, and have the player change the scroll x/y values, but not have a sprite that goes to the values. See what I mean?

The short answer is: You cannot draw pen in front of sprites. The Pen layer is always behind all sprites.

So you will need to stamp all the sprites, then draw in front with pen.
Maybe it won't be as laggy as you think!

Make sure you stamp and draw everything in one loop or using custom blocks with “run without screen refresh”.

Bro I actually cant be bothered… I guess its the only way… I guess I just have to– BEG ON MY KNEES TO THE SCRATCH TEAM TO LET US HAVE A SETTING TO TURN PEN IN FRONT OF SPRITES ON!

StorytellerK wrote:

I'm making a top-down shooter with scrolling, and I'm using pen to make the health and stamina bars. However, pen goes behind sprites, so the bars always go under the level. I would use stamp, but all my sprites need to move at some point and drawing the map with pen would be super laggy. Is there some way I can make pen go in front of the sprites?

I just realised… If you don't have too many already, just use clones!

Yeah, you can't draw pen in front of sprites. This is why most pro scratchers who use pen usually just render the entire game in pen for more graphic control.