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Im trying to make the enemies in my game move towards the player-character at random speeds.
All enemies are grouped, but each one of them needs to move at different speeds; say between 5-15.
Ive been trying to figure it out, but im no coder.
Ive tried this: SELECT MOVEMENT 1 > SET SPEED > "Random (5-15)" > START
Hey Andy,
If you are acquainted with fastloops you could try this method which will loop through all the objects and set a random speed:
Start of Frame: Spread Value 0 through "Active" (Alterable Value A) - This will give all the objects labelled "Active" a unique ID to reference in the next part
+User Presses SpaceBar: Start Fastloop("SetSpeed") (Amount of Times: (NObject ("Active")) - This will start a fastloop that will run x amount of times, x being the count of the Object named "Active".
Then:
+OnLoop("SetSpeed")
+Alterable Value A ("Active")=LoopIndex("SetSpeed"): Movement Set Speed (5+Random(10))
This will loop through all the objects and individually assign each one a random speed between 5 and 15.
If this is too complex then you can just do this:
Pick One of ("Active"): Movement Set Speed (5+Random(11)) - This will select objects at random and not in any kind of unique way
Thank you for the very quick answer Danny. This helped.
I am not familiar with fastloops and I honestly dont even know what they are good for. But i tried the simple example you gave me.
Thanks for the help!
Btw, im gonna need more help later on, should i post the upcoming questions in this thread or create new ones?
Just to clarify, did you do the fastloop routine or the standard Pick one of?
Posting in this thread is just fine Andy. Glad it helped!
I did the simple Pick one of. Ive never worked with fastloops before, so it was pretty confusing.
Is there a big difference between the two?
Sorry, but that's all completely wrong. MMF2 will NOT give all the objects the same speed - it will generate a different random number for each instance.
I'm guessing the problem is with the random number expression. To generate a random number from 5 to 15, you need to say: 5 + random(11)
Note that random(10) generates a random number from 0 to 9, so 5 + random(10) only gives values between 5 and 14, not 15.
eg.
+ Object: Flag 0 is OFF
-> Object: Set Speed to: 5 + random(11)
-> Object: Set Flag 0 to ON
By using a flag (which is always OFF by default), the event will automatically be applied to new instances as they are created - not just those already present at the start of the frame.
Will try this out MuddyMole!
Whoops, hands up! It's been a long day... working with MMF2, two mistakes there nearly killed my rep. It's after all this Course stuff, I don't know whether I'm coming or going... lol :D
Still rather than let it go unproductively, for clarification AndyBazooka my above method will work (it's just the more complicated way) but it's useful for learning how to iterate through objects and scoping particular objects in your conditions, something you will need to learn further down the line.
Aside of that, apologies for the confusion.
is it possible to create a sort of "laserlight" coming out from a gun that doesnt go through other objects but stops when collision with another object?
i tried resizeing the X-size of the laser-beam as long as it doesnt overlap another object, and when it does overlap something the X-size shrinks. but this made it really choppy and wierd. is it any way to get this to work smoothly and actually look good?
You'll need to use hardware acceleration (HWA) if you don't want performance to suffer - under the application's runtime options, select display mode "Direct3D 9".
the performance isnt a problem atm. already using Direct3D, its more about how to make the laser-beam look good without going through objects. any ideas on how this can be made?
example:
----------------------------------------------------------x(end of screen)
------------x[]object
----------------------------x[]object
See if this helps. It's off Marv's site. http://www.castles-of-britain.com/mmfexamples-a.htm Half way down, called "Beam Example"
There's also one on the same site called 360 Laser Examples. The effect is pretty cool. http://www.castles-of-britain.com/mmfexamples-0.htm
thanks for the tips guys. will check it out!
going to post more questions here later on
I used the 360 Laser Example file you linked to ezzypixel. kinda just ripped the code and pasted it into my game for the laser-beam. works well, and kinda exacly like in the example. but i want to change it so that the laser-beam always is horizontal (two directions: left/right. not 360degrees like in the example). what do i need to change in the code to make it so?
im not very good with this kind of stuff when coding is involved..
btw, is it possible for any moderator to change this thread-name to "Random questions about my game" ? would be greatly apprechiated if possible :)
okay, so i got the laser-beam working the way i wanted it to.
Next question: ive used the Bullet Shells Example file from http://www.castles-of-britain.com/mmfexamples-a.htm to create empty ammo shells from my character's gun when shooting. The difference is that my game is a 2.5D shooter (Double Dragon view), not 2D. Ive managed to get the shells stopping at the feet of the character and thats good.
Now, here's the problem: I want to make the shells bounce off the ground a few times before they come to a complete stop. Ive managed to get the bounce working by using pinball movement and bounce when at player's feet. But if i simoutaniously move the player up or down the screen (Y-position), the collision for the shell-bounces move aswell.
Is it possible to "lock" the bounce Y-position for the shells from where the player stood before?
Set a variable in the bullet shells that equals the player's current Y position when the shell is created. Then base the shell's position off that variable instead of continuing to base it off of the player's current position. This way the shells will move independently of the player.
Thanks for the quick anwer!
Will try this out
Hi Andy. I would be interested in seeing the improved version of my example.Quote:
Originally Posted by AndyBazooka
Thanks,
Marv
sure nivram. i can PM a downloadable link to you as soon as its playable. right now everything is just a mess.
just to be clear; there's alot of stuff in mmf2 im not good at, so what i basically do is just copy stuff i dont know how to do myself from example-files, change a few things and change it to my liking.
oh and btw, im going to give you credit for the help your examples has given me, once the game is finished. really great webpage, helps me alot! many kudos
Attachment 9360
just to show you guys how the game looks in it's current stage, so you can get a better idea of what im doing.
most graphics are just placeholders atm. been taking alot of stuff from my previous project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qya8_82psdo
Copying from example files is fine, as long as you actually learn about how the example works in the process... Otherwise you're going to end up with a big mess of code and when a single thing breaks you won't know how to fix it. :p
Your game looks fun. :) I think you should add ground shadows to everything else to help tie them down better. It's odd that the player has a shadow but none of the zombies do. Unless zombies don't have shadows or something? I dunno, I'm not totally caught up on zombie lore.
ohyeah, im def learning alot from example-files, when modifying them to my liking. mostly by trial and error.
yeah, was gonna fix shadows for the zombies aswell. but how can i spread out each shadow for each zombie? (1 shadow for 1 zombie, if a zombie dies, that zombie's shadow disappears).
ive tried this before, a long time ago, and i remember having a problem with shadows not being distributed correcly for all enemies. the result was that some enemies had shadows, others didnt. is there a simple, yet effective solution to this?
oh and btw, another thing: ive used the Bouncing Coin Example from nivrams homepage to add to my empty shells when bouncing off the ground. the problem is that i can't seem to stop them from bouncing in random directions for each bounce. nivrams example-file does not have this problem. but my shells bounce in totally random directions every time they hit the ground. why?
Thanks for the great comments, but please no need to give credit.Quote:
Originally Posted by AndyBazooka
Marv
You could just put the shadows into the actual animations... that's the easiest solution.
MMF has "object pairing" so if you create zombies and then create shadows, you can just tell the shadow to follow the zombie and each shadow will pair with a zombie... or something like that. I never fully grasped the object pairing concept. You can learn about the object pairing thing in this tutorial though:
http://www.diybandits.com.au/MMF/tut...nstances1.html
As for the bouncing shells randomness issue... You probably need to go into the shell object's properties for the Pinball movement and change the initial direction to only be 4-12 instead of all 32 directions.
I checked out the bouncing coin example and I decided to revise it a bit. The coins felt floaty and like they had no weight to them. Each bounce was going too high for the loss in energy that should be taking place. It looked really unrealistic.
So here is a revised version that shows both the old "floaty" example, and the new "weighty" example.
Attachment 9369
awesome, def going to use this.
thanks!
EDIT: Question: is it difficult to make enemies want to avoid an object? like two non-matching magnets, so that they walk around the object instead of (like now) sliding next to it, getting stuck sometimes.
i want to make the parked police-car (as seen in my previous screenshot) an obstacle for enemies without them getting stuck on it.
Question #2: (still waiting for an answer for my previous post aswell) Is there any good example-file of a drag and drop inventory (mouse)? kinda like in Minecraft.
I saw an inventory-extension/example file here in the forums (written in French, i cant understand it), downloaded it, but couldt get it to work even though i installed it correctly. MMF2 just says that there is no inventory extension to be found, even though the mfx(?) file exists in the extensions map.
nvm about Question #2, got the mfx file working now.
Anyone who can show me a basic, but smart enemy AI movement? Just need my zombies to move towards the player, but walk around obstacles in the way, without getting stuck. Im having a big problem with this right now :(
oh, and another thing: ive used the Overlay Redux object combined with the Alpha channel object to create a spotlight effect on the main-character. the problem is that, when i walk to the right of the screen (screen scrolls to right), the spotlight drawn in the overlay redux object isnt no longer in sync with the alpha channel object. how can i fix this?
Attachment 9408
AI can be some of the hardest parts of a game to code. What you are asking isn't even really "basic". It's very complicated to set up a really good system for enemies to avoid obstacles while hunting the player. You can see how difficult this is by just looking at a lot of famous games where you could easily fool the AI to get stuck walking into a wall while pursuing you.
I mean the simplest solution would be to first create the events to have the enemy always move toward the player, but include conditions to make sure the AI only moves toward the player while they aren't running into obstacles. Then you'd want to create some events that get the AI to try to move around the obstacle before pursuing the player again. For example, say you have a vertical wall dividing the player and the enemy on left and right sides respectively.
1. Have enemy move toward player (from right to left)
2. Enemy runs into wall. Stop enemy from moving through wall
3. Since enemy can't move through wall, pick north/south direction at random and move that way
4. If enemy position doesn't change, it means the enemy is stuck in a corner. Attempt to move in the opposite direction.
5. If the enemy successfully walks around the wall, then just continue the hunting events
This is probably the simplest method, but you're going to run into issues where enemies will just get stuck... If you want really good obstacle avoidance you're going to need to get enemies using some real form of pathfinding... possibly A* or something. Though A* might be overkill and could potentially bring your framerate to its knees. I think for the sake of simplicity... my 5 step solution above would work best.
You'd just need to store the direction your enemy is moving, and if it gets stuck on an obstacle, try getting it to move to it's left/right to get around the obstacle. If you want to get a bit more advanced, you could run a fastloop detection to find out which direction would be the shortest to take, so the AI doesn't walk the "long" way around an obstacle. But this is a bit more complicated to set up... You'd need to compare the two distances to the edge of the obstacle and pick the shortest distance.
Thanks for the answer Konidas. The 5 steps you mentioned is kinda like how I got it all set up now. Gonna try and make it better.
Btw, a random question: Anyone knows how much it would cost me to upgrade my MMF2 Standard copy to the Developer version? Now that I already own MMF2 Standard..
You would save the full cost of MMF2 off MMF2 Dev
Upgrade here: http://www.clickteam.com/website/world/upgrades
Thats awesome!
Thanks
I've been looking at alot of different light-examples that uses alot of different extensions to work. Extensions like: overlay redux, alpha channel, surface object, etc. (You can see one of my failed attempts on Page 3 in this thread (picture))
What I want to achieve is the possibility to place (and move) different light-sources/spotlights around the screen, while the room is completly (or very) dark.
Example: you enter a room that is pitch black. You then turn on your flashlight or turn on your lighter to be able to see what that room contains (showing everything behind the dark-screen). How can i achieve this effect without the use of many calculations, extensions etc as seen in other examples? Can I achieve this by mixing one or two different Effect-filters on the objects (flashlight-beam vs dark-screen)? Is there even a simple way for this to work?
I dont care about casting shadows or anything advanced like that. I just want everything within the light-areas to be visible, while the rest stays dark.
I'm going to just quote Gustav's post:
This works well but just be aware of the note that states you need to use Direct3D 8 or 9... This won't work on platforms where that display mode is not an option. It's going to be hard to do it without Direct3D 8 or 9 anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gustav
This is the easiest solution to your problem and it requires zero extra extensions.
Your game looks good. Looking forward to playing it.
Awesome!
That works well enough. Thanks again, Konidias.
Also,
thank you Klik-It :)
Okay, so I played around a bit with the lighting-method that Konidias showed me.
While it does work fairly well, there are two things that annoy me about it and I was just wondering if there was a solution to these two annoyances:
#1 - I want my game to have a day/night cycle, which means that the darkness needs to slowly fade in instead of - day = light, night = BOM! pitch black. There is no way to fade in backdrop objects like the one I use now for the darkness. Either its pitch black or nothing at all.
#2 - Every light source is now shown in front of every single object in the level. If there is a fire behind a car, the light from that fire still shows in front of the car. I tried experimenting a bit with this to come up with a solution, but with no luck. The best I could do was this: Attachment 9417
And that only works for the player, not for any other lightsources.
Is there a solution to these problems, or would I need to find another way to make light-sources?
For #1, you don't *have* to use a quick backdrop. You can just use a small active (like 32x32) and then just resize it to fill the screen. Then you can adjust the opacity on that. Depending on what platform you're targeting this game for, it will either be a big problem, or no problem at all. PC should handle it just fine with no framerate hit.
For #2... I can't think of a way to do this, short of just building your game in a 3D engine. But that doesn't mean it can't be done... I just don't know how to do it. :p