Posts by The_Owl

(post removed)

Quote from Volnaiskra

Actually, I think (I'm not sure) that my enemy system might be an example of your finite state machine: a singular but multifaceted chunk of code where all the bits are switched on or off as needed, according to the current states of the entity.

I was actually thinking similar lines? In my mind it was more of an individual thing for each character/enemy in a game, a piece of code perhaps tricky to build initially, but once it's working as needed it would become a simple task to switch bits on and off when required in order to make them perform individual actions like movements and attacks, or work together like a grapple where attacker and receiver have to sync up.

Basically, the end result would feel more like the creation options in an existing game where game elements can be easily tailored to the player's liking, and it sounds like with your own approach to the Spryke AI you've done something similar to this, as you mentioned you're not 100% on how the whole thing works all the time, but you've gotten it to the stage where you can turn things on and off and get the results you're looking for with anything new you wish to add?

It sounds like you've refined your enemy AI to such a degree that it's almost like the Tyranid Hive Mind (and I'm sure you get the reference), a singular entity doing all the enemy thinking as one, then distributing it around them as appropriate for their environment and the players actions?

It's a great idea, but a long way off for a guy at my level. I imagine that the knowledge and understanding to create such a thing takes thousands upon thousands of hours of experience, trial and error across many projects before you finally 'get it', but that's where I want to be one day as it sounds like it has huge potential and all manner of gaming applications

Quote from Volnaiskra

I hear ya

Please login to see this picture.

Ha! I suppose colour coding is just one of those natural approaches which is so easy to recognise?

I do have 2.5, but I'm not very forum savvy so it doesn't surprise me that my icons aren't up to date. The extra variables are definitely a boon, though the perfectionist in me is always second guessing myself wondering if I need so many? In the scrolling brawler I'm working on some characters have over 40, which as you can guess does get pretty spaghetti-fied, especially when you're doing the more complex stuff like performing a grapple.

Thankyou so much for the deep and detailed post Volk I've already bookmarked it, it'll make a great resource to check back to

It's fascinating reading your thoughts on your own coding journey, and how similar they sound to my own? I'm sure it's the same story for many others reading, how we arrive at our own ways to get around problems and start structuring things in ways we can understand more quickly and clearly, like what you mentioned about using colours and symbols to represent different areas of code being much easier to recognise than letters and numbers?

I do similar things in my notes, anything referring to an upward movement/top colliders/jumping and hitting a ceiling etc being sky blue, downward stuff being brown like earth, left is represented by Lime green and right is Red. It really does make things much simpler to recognise and work with, it's just a pity that - to my knowledge at least - we can't change the colour of the groups themselves which are always grey?

Anyway, it sounds like you made a similar journey to me, and having been at it so much longer you've gradually been able to develop and refine a precise and effective style which works for you, hopefully this will be the case for me in time, and I can escape my own 'labyrinth of lost belongings and mysterious smells'

I really appreciate you and Semar taking the time to offer me your advice, it's been a great help

Thanks for all the advice folks, I've actually clocked over 3000 hours practice in Fusion over the last few years (yes I log it) so there's a fair bit I can do now, but I'm getting to the stage where I'm trying to tie it altogether into a properly thought out and structured approach rather than just hot shotting ideas when they come to me.

I'm feeling like effective coding doesn't come down to being able to do loads of fancy clever tricks, but rather how good you are at pulling together the basics in a consistent, disciplined, logical fashion?

Thanks for the suggestion Semar, I get the general idea of what you're describing even if I still don't really understand it, but I'll do a test and see if it makes more sense to me that way.

About overcomplicating things you're probably right, but I am still very new to coding. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and perhaps handicap myself by always trying to find the best way to do something, when I should simply be looking for *a* way at this point in my journey?

I don't know specifically but that would make sense, say if your character had some sort of move which required them to be running + jumping, the input you'd use to initiate it wouldn't activate it unless they were in that state.

I'm just not sure how you'd go about setting one up? As you can see from my example with the stopped/moving, ground/air and running variables, there can be times when multiple states are true at once, would I have to figure out a separate state number to accommodate every possible combination?

For example:

0 = Not Moving

1 = Jumping, Not Moving

2 = Moving

3 = Moving and Jumping

etc

This *could* work but seems very fussy, and the list could become HUGE as more player actions are added, and the possible combinations increasing exponentially?

I'm pleased that it sounded like gibberish to you too, I was thinking this might be something most would understand and I was just behind.

Please login to see this attachment.

I threw this together as an example of how I'd like to set up a player character, the flashing lights showing when an action is taking place, the idea being that they're not all able to switch on at once, with some states able to switch off others , such as the player getting hurt will cancel their Moving and Running variables.

Obviously this is very quick and simple and a fully developed character will have many more states than this, what I wanted to know was how have others created their own similar systems, and which approaches do they find are most effective and reliable, especially for accommodating a larger number of player states?

I appreciate your feedback Semar, but what you're suggesting I've tried many variations of myself ie a handful of different variables leading to different paths but can never quite seem to get them right?

I appreciate my issue here may simply come down to the need for further trial and error on my part until I find what works for me, but if anyone does know of a better method/set up, something tried, true and time tested then I'd love to hear about it, it'd really help cut down my journey?

Thanks for the ideas Semar, I get how you could navigate through a game that was, but what I'm looking for is something more character specific - and I apologise to the forum for not knowing the proper terminology for these things I'm inquiring about.

Something like how to effectively set up characters/enemies so they can transition reliably through their various states, for example, something which would clearly tell the game when a character should be standing still, jumping, attacking, running, running and jumping whilst attacking etc, and have some sort of reset which will switch all of these things off when they take damage.

Just a method of keeping everything organised and easy to follow when coding, avoid animation lock ups and bugs, things like that?

Okay, I'm looking for some sort of guide on how to best set up my code in a way which allows me to gradually build it in a fashion which is organised and simple.

Rather like in this video

Please login to see this media element.

But tailored more specifically toward Fusion.

I'm sure some would watch it and ask 'can't you apply these lessons to your own code?' and my answer would be no, because although I can understand the basic idea of what's being said, my mind struggles to break it all down effectively and translate it into the more visual format of Fusion.

And so I was wondering if there were any guides or tutorials people had seen which could take me through the process in a steady, step by step fashion?

Can anyone direct me toward some tutorials/guides covering this topic as pertains to Fusion?

I've found a few offering instructions for other programming languages, but find them difficult to follow.

Much better, thanks again for the help Phi

Hello again folks, once more I've run into an issue I need help with.

When I'm trying to build my project, I'm going through the usual File > Build > Application menus then choosing a location, but upon doing so and naming my project, I get this

Please login to see this attachment.

How might I go about fixing this?

Quote from Phi

Inside the Effects folder, he said. Not next to it.

I was confused, thinking he was referring to the part where you would select an effect for the Active?

Anyway, I've now moved the files into the correct folder and can access them. I suppose this sort of thing is common knowledge for most here, but I've little experience so far with updating and adding to my Fusion so it's all still new to me.

Thankyou to the forum for helping me once more

I've set my folder up this way and restarted, but no additional effects are showing?

Please login to see this attachment.

Thanks for the links guys, I've downloaded them but can't access them? I've placed them in the same folder as the Clickteam Startup, which I believe is the usual method, but nothing's showing in my edittor?

Please login to see this attachment.

For further information, I was using an active covering the full screen to zoom in, set up using the tutorial from Almightyzentaco

Sigh, sorry folks I'm guessing this is another of those obvious issues, but I've recently had to start using Fusion via another PC and don't have access to my old effects, most notably the Lens I was using for zoom ins.

Can someone point me to where I can download them? I've already tried the extension manager but the Lens effect there isn't the same as the one I was using, which was an effect which could be applied directly to an active object (like monochrome, invert colour, transparency etc)

Thanks in advance

That's an interesting idea, setting a flag/variable when an enemy is deactivated, then running a loop after to deal with them, I'd previously tried doing it with a loop running on each enemy individually, which didn't seem to work (I'm a few years into learning coding and sadly scoping through loops still causes me a lot of problems).

I've spent a few more hours working on this problem since posting this thread, and the approach I arrived at seems to work quite well, I'll try to explain it as simply as I can.

1. I have a camera object in the centre of each screen, which the game camera is focused on. When the player leaves the room via the Top, Bottom, Left or Right doors, the camera then jumps the required number of pixels in each direction in order to centre it in the next room

2. On top of this camera I have a 'Spawner Activator' object, which is the same size as each room. When it overlaps the enemy spawners, it triggers the loops which spawn the corresponding enemies and sets their ID value to that of the spawner, and then sets a variable in each spawner to 1 afterwards so the enemy only spawns once. The enemies themselves only exist as long as they're overlapped by the Room Spawner.

3. If the player kills an enemy whilst it's overlapped as per the above, the enemy's ID value is then stored in another object, which is always running a loop for every spawner. If the value matches the spawner's Fixed Value, the spawner is then destroyed.

4. If the player leaves the room without killing the enemy however, so the Room Spawner object is no longer overlapping them, the enemy is immediately destroyed and the spawner variable is reset to 0.

There is however a bug with my approach:

If you leave an enemy room and go into one with no enemies the above approach works fine, it'll turn the enemies on and off without trouble. If however the next room also has enemies in it, the ones in the previous room won't be switched off, probably because the Room Spawner object doesn't know which enemies it's overlapping and which it isn't?

I've fixed this by setting a delay variable on the Room Spawner - any time it's lower than 5, it'll add 1 until 5 is reached. Every time the player leaves a room, this variable is reset to 0.

I then tweaked all the overlapping events to that they only occur when the variable is set to 5, this way the code has a 5 frame delay to destroy any enemies which aren't being overlapped and establish which ones are, and the whole process seems to work pretty smoothly?

It also makes me think about old games like the original Zelda and Golden Axe Warrior, how whenever you enter a new room/screen the enemies aren't present immediately, and arrive a second later in a puff of smoke - it makes me wonder if they were using the same sort of approach, driven by similar issues?

A bit wordy I know, but I wanted to explain my process as thoroughly as possible for others who may be having a similar issue, and for more experienced coders to scrutinise and improve upon if they have any advice.