Passing a String to image widget as filename

[Ultimariolator]

I would like to make a player variable dependant image show. image widget says that it expects a string as the image name. But it will not accept a string from variable.
Here is the example extracted where I would like to show the image named "picture". It works when I type directly the picture:

player_vars:
name:
initial_value: 'picture'
value_type: str

slides:
event:
widgets:
- type: image
image: (name)

So is this how it is or am I perhaps missing something? Is there any way to get the image defined other than directly specifying?

[atummons]

https://docs.missionpinball.org/en/stable/displays/widgets/reusable_widgets.html#dynamically-choosing-a-widget-based-on-variables

Look at this section. You are missing the syntax (current_player.name).

You have to tell it what name is, as that could exist multiple places. This tells it to look at the player variables for the current player to return name. Then it can pass through.

[atummons]

So I guess that's your answer. Since you're trying to add the image straight, it needs to be the name of the image itself.

You could follow the example and create a widget for each example. Create widget A tied to image a.png, B tied to image b.png, etc.

Then instead of image in your slide reference the widget, which will then call an image by its file name. What you have now is looking for a file called (name), which doesn't exist.

[Ultimariolator]

Any alternative suggestions? Could I use tokens or something similar for the image widget. Thing is I am aiming to have over 100 different images, so naturally 100 different dynamically chosen widgets still results in 300 config rows compared to somehow being able to directly pass the variable to the image name.
But I guess I will brute force it if there is no other way.
In any case, thanks for the help.

[Stefku]

Hi @Ultimariolator, I have a quite similar problem with the image name. I took another approach though: see #59 . There I tried the same as you but with tokens.
Interestingly: I am able to parameterize the text of an text widget, but not the image of an image widget.

I got kind of similar error message like you: Cannot add Image widget. Image '(image_name)' is not a valid image name.. For me it looks as the placeholder inside of parenthesis is ignored for the image widget. I also tried to debug the MC but I don't know how (see #58)

[Ultimariolator]

Yep, so it appears to be set in stone that an image widget can't be parametrised.
I also had no problem to use a string variable with a text widget.

[atummons]

Yeah, I got that far in code review the other day. I will look at adding placeholders to images. I'll see what I can do and report back.