Moving sprites with position values

Rather than set active objects to move according to a move type (such as path nodes) I've used alterable values to set the horizontal and vertical when colliding with backdrops. So in my game the purple down-facing spider moves up and down the screen, changing direction when it hits a backdrop. Likewise with the left/right facing spider.

While these work great I have a few problems:

1. How do I change the speed of movement?
2. How do I have different speeds for each direction?
3. How do I change sprite facing direction of the left/right spider?
4. How do I add a movement delay when a sprite collides with a backdrop?

Here's my events:

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d9...psqq1wucyh.png

I'm also having problems with room transitions.

I'm making a Manic Miner type platform game. When my player has left the screen I can't get the next screen to centre in the frame.
Basically my frame is a large area divided into rooms of 640 x 480, like a grid. I need the screen to centre on the next room when the player leaves.
I'll also need that to work for multiple exits and entrances into and out of the same room. It needs to work exactly like Manic Miner does in other words.

Looks like you're making your own custom movements for those bad guys, you cold use - instead of plus to reverse the direction and set the direction. I personally would use the bouncing ball movement if you want easier control over your bad guys. For example: Direction and speed. You can add a delay by using 'Limit conditions' - restriction actions; by - what ever time you choose - you'll find it under the 'special' conditions (look for the cog icon). If you get stuck post your .mfa and I'm sure you'll get the help you need.

I tried the bouncing ball movement but it's no good for what I want. I just need enemies to bounce from one backdrop to another vertically or horizontally and the custom movement seemed to be best way to do this and quicker to build rooms. The bouncing ball type, even if just set to bounce in one direction will eventually just start bouncing around the whole screen in random directions.

The bouncing ball wont bounce randomly if you set the bouncing ball's random setting to 0 and set the security to 100. Trust me it will be heaps easier. Upload your MFA and I'll show you.

Random setting is 0 and security is 100. Still bounces around the screen. Are you sure it's Bouncing Ball movement and not something else?

I checked your file, you're right background objects will make the ball randomly bounce, no matter the security or random setting. Solution - use an invisible active, and when the bad guy collides tell it to change direction. Active Collision Detectors will make the bouncing ball perform as you want. Hope my example file that I sent by PM helped, and did what you wanted to achieve :)

Thanks aenever. I sent you a PM reply, I could have just posted here instead though. I see now how to do what you've suggested - it does mean however that for each enemy I need two new hidden actives (or copies of in most cases). Whereas the way I started with there was just the enemy, but with limited control over direction and speed. Hmm, tough one to decide what's best; depends how far I'm going with this project.

Related to this my play area is 6400x4800 and the frame is 640x480. This breaks down to 100 rooms. As I start to popluate this with actives am I going to run out of memory o

You could create actives when you enter a new room and destroy actives when you leave each room. I'll post your fixed example here tonight when I get home. Maybe other users can find better options.

Here's your fixed file, see what you think. Maybe other users can also offer some suggestions?

Attachment 16754

Sorry for the delay replying. I still can't open your file. I can download it but loading it into MMF2 it just says it's an unknown format and fails to open. Perhaps you're on a later version of MMF2? Mine is 2.0 (R2517.12).

Anyway in absence of seeing what you've done I managed to work something out.

Firstly, the enemies. I've set them to bouncing balls and have actives change their direction. I've got a platform and a fire sprite that travels around it changing direction, sticking to the platform. It looks great.

Secondly, I dropped the every timer and just had a 1 pixel wide active move left and right and when it hits a 1 pixel wide trigger active it fires. When I want to kill this I just destroy the actives = no more looping sound effect.

Thirdly, I've got a sort-of working room transition. It works beautifully when changing from one room to another horizontally but not for the vertical. I can explain better with the attached Tests.mfa.
The reason I designed the frame like this was so I could have a status panel below the game area. The image below shows an as yet unfinished room.

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d9...psrwkmqmc5.png

In the Tests.mfa I've got a simple four room set-up in a 1280x960 frame. Although the player can easily drop down from the upper rooms to the lower ones, he can't get back up again because he can't jump high enough. Rather than change the jump gravity, which I can't do as that would ruin the rest of the game, is to somehow have the player pushed upwards automatically by an active(?), and quite quickly too so there's no delay from one room to another. That is as close as I can get an upper and lower room to be because of the status bar. As you can see in the image above I have each room name displayed in the status bar with lives on the left and gems collected on the right.

How do I do this?

Attachment 16768

I'm using Clickteam Fusion 2.5 Dev, sorry I didn't realise you were using MMF2 - I should have examined the thread more closely. MMF2 can't open CTF2.5 yet I was able to open your file and add changes.I don't have MMF2 installed any more. I should have twigged earlier when you said you couldn't open my file from Dropbox. I'll examine your file and see if I can offer a suggestion.

Try this, it works:
Create an active at 303, 463 set it to invisible
Then set up a condition if player is overlapping active (only one action when event loops)
Set Player position to 306, 399
Center Display at 320, 244
It actually looks quite good, if I do say so my self - it wont make your player float yet I think you'll be please with the effect anyway. Let me know how it goes.

Hmm. I tried that and when the player tries to drop down the hole to the red room he just rapidly bounces up and down over the hole (because the new active is changing his position to 306, 399 in a loop).

I did this instead:

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d9...psleundlyo.png

I made the top and bottom walls 16 pixels high instead of 32. This then allows the player to seamlessly transition from the blue room to the red room and vice versa.

The only problem with this is that it doesn't leave any room for my status bar. Though I could probably squeeze the "Gems : 0" and life counter in I won't have any room for the room names.

I've also encountered a more pressing issue. when the player looses a life in the blue room for example, I've been using set player position to the same position as the start of the frame. But what if I'm entering the blue room from the orange room and killed? Obviously my respawn position needs to be in the blue room but at at the exit/entrance of the blue/orange room instead of the starting position of the frame.

Not respawning after losing a life in the right place would open the game up to exploits and probably break the game when respawned in the wrong place.

So I've been thinking of having a global value of C, for example, set to different numbers that then correspond to a set player position command.

For example. When the player hits the "Orange to Blue" active it sets the global value of C to 1. A condition says that when the global value of C = 1 and the player loses a life to set player position to 602x400 (right next to the exit/entrance).

So If the player has entered the blue room from the orange room and loses a life he respawns back where he came in. But if he entered the blue room from the red room and then loses a life (the global value is 2 say) he then respawns here.

Basically wherever the player enters a room and loses a life it's there that he needs to respawn.

Is this making any sense? because it kept me awake most of the night trying to solve all these problems.

I made a short video of what I've made so far. It's still very much at the Work In Progress stage.

https://youtu.be/pR5qDGhMqyk

Great work your game is coming along nicely:) Hmmm, it seems there is a bit of a difference between the behaviour of CTF2.5 and MMF2, here's my file for CTF2.5 users if there interested my solution, not sure why it wont work in MMF2?

Attachment 16773