Areas

An area is a rectangle of floor, a patch of your world you can name and watch. Areas are how you build trigger zones: a doormat that greets people, a finish line, a danger pit, a stage that lights up when someone steps on it. Draw the rectangle once, then ask "is anyone inside?" or "did someone just walk in?".

What an area actually is

An area is the simplest possible shape: an axis-aligned rectangle. That's a fancy way of saying a box with flat sides, no tilting, no rotation. Picture drawing a selection box on graph paper.

You don't describe the whole rectangle tile by tile. You just give it two opposite corners, and Hideout fills in the rest:

  (2, 2) ●────────────┐
         │            │
         │   AREA     │
         │            │
         └────────────● (8, 8)

Give it the top-left and bottom-right corners (or any two opposite ones), and that's the box. Every tile from one corner to the other is "inside."

Two opposite corners define the whole rectangle. Corners are included, so remember the +1.

Areas live on the floor

Areas are flat. Their corners are Vector2s, across-and-down only, no height. So an area covers a patch of ground, not a 3D box in the air.

Making an area

You build one with the Area block. It has two corner slots (a "from" corner and a "to" corner) and a picker button so you can draw the rectangle by hand.

An Area block: a rectangle drawn from two corner coordinates.

1. Drop in an Area block

   Grab the Area block wherever a block asks for an area.

2. Draw it with the picker

   Click the area's picker button. The overlay opens over your live room in Area mode. Click and drag across the floor to draw your rectangle. The readout shows its size, like "7 by 7 tiles."

3. Or type the corners

   Prefer numbers? Type the two corner coordinates straight into the block's slots, e.g. from (2, 2) to (8, 8).

Corner order doesn't matter

"From (8, 2) to (2, 8)" makes the exact same rectangle as "from (2, 8) to (8, 2)." Hideout sorts the corners out for you, so just give it any two opposite corners and you're done.

How big is my area?

The corners are included in the area, so the size counts both ends. The width is (bigger X − smaller X) + 1 tiles, and the height is the same for Y.

From	To	Size
(0, 0)	(0, 0)	1 × 1 tile
(0, 0)	(2, 2)	3 × 3 tiles
(2, 2)	(8, 8)	7 × 7 tiles

That "+1" is the easy thing to forget: an area from (0, 0) to (2, 2) is 3 tiles wide, not 2, because tiles 0, 1, and 2 are all inside.

Using an area: the three jobs

Once you have an area, there are three things you'll want to do with it.

1. React the moment someone steps in (or out)

These are events: hat blocks that fire on their own when a player crosses the boundary.

Runs the moment a player steps into the area.

There's a matching one for leaving, When Player Leaves Area. Together they're perfect for trigger zones:

A doormat that says hi

When Player Enters Area (the doormat) → show that player a toast saying "Welcome!" Anyone who steps onto the mat gets greeted; nobody else does.

Under the hood: enter vs leave

"Enter" fires when a player was not inside a moment ago and now is. "Leave" fires the other way round: they were inside and now aren't. So crossing the edge once gives you exactly one event, not a stream of them while standing still.

The player who triggered the event is available as the triggering player, so you can act on exactly the right person.

2. Check if a specific player is inside

Sometimes you don't want to wait for an event. You want to ask, right now, "is this player standing in that area?" That's the Is Player In Area block. It gives back true or false.

True if the given player is currently inside the area.

Drop it inside an If block to make decisions:

A door that only opens on the mat

If Is Player In Area (the doormat) → open the door. The door only reacts while the player is actually standing on the spot.

3. Get everyone inside at once

Want to act on the whole crowd in a zone, not just one person? The Players In Area block hands you a player group: every player currently inside.

Players In Area: a group of everyone currently inside.

Reward the finish zone

Get Players In Area (the finish line), then for each player in that group, show "You win!" Every player standing there gets the message; if nobody's there, the group is simply empty and nothing happens.

Good to know

The edges count as "inside"

The boundary is inclusive. A player standing exactly on the edge of the rectangle counts as inside, not out. So you don't get a one-tile gap around the rim; the whole rectangle, edges included, is the zone.

Areas check the floor

Because areas sit at ground level, the "inside" check expects players to be on the ground (height 0), which they almost always are. You'll only ever notice this if you're doing something fancy with floating players up in the air.

Name an area to reuse it

You can save an area with a name (up to 64 characters), like "lobby" or "arena," and refer to it by name across your behaviours instead of re-drawing the same corners every time.

What's next?

Players

Areas hand you players. Learn what a player handle actually is.

Player Groups

"Players in area" gives you a group. Here's how to use a whole crowd at once.

The Grid & Positions

Corners are coordinates. Brush up on X, Y, and the grid.

Block Reference

Every block with a picture and a plain-English explanation.