The subtleties of adding children

[puzzler]

I'm starting to use Phaser, and am mystified by the subtle complexities of how the API differs for sprites vs groups.

Let's look at the process of creating a display element, and then adding it as a child of another display element at a given x,y.

1. Creating a sprite and adding it as a child of another sprite at a given x,y

parent.addChild(game.make.sprite(x,y,"artkey"))

2. Creating a sprite and adding it as a child of a group at a given x,y

parent.add(game.make.sprite(x,y,"artkey"))

Why do we need to use add here, instead of addChild?

3. Creating a group and adding it as a child of a sprite at a given x,y

g = parent.addChild(game.make.group());

g.x = x;

g.y =y;

Why is there no way to make a group with a given x, y in one step like sprites?  Why the need to manually set position in two extra steps?

4. Creating a group and adding it as a child of a group at a given x,y

g = parent.add(game.make.group());

g.x = x;

g.y= y;

For this, we use add and then we also need the two extra steps.

 

Did I get the taxonomy correct here?

Why is every combination different?

Thanks.

[samme]

Every display object (including Group) has an addChild method.

Only Groups have an add method. It calls Group#addChild. You should always use Group#add.

2 hours ago, puzzler said:

Why is there no way to make a group with a given x, y in one step like sprites?

Because it's not a common task. You can write your own helper or overwrite Phaser's add/make.group methods and add those arguments.