A couple of questions to make my project better

[SuperChiken]

Me again...

First off, how do I make a whole bunch of items go together in a single group so that if I make my bullets homing I can tell it to target any of the enemies, not just a single type?

Second, if I were to make a shotgun in 8-way movement, how do I make it so that--
1:The bullet shoots in 4 directions which are different for each direction the character is facing?
2:Pick 4 random directions out of a select group?

If you need further explanation, please ask.

[LB]

1. Give all of your enemies a qualifier, then do events on the qualifier instead of the enimies. Works great!

2a. Just make different animations for different directions.
2b. You can add a random direction to a list object via the Random() expression in the Specail Object.

[SuperChiken]

Okay, that works now, but I have a new dilemma:

Whenever the game goes on, it will continue to be painfully easy. Painfully easy UNLESS I tell it to every so often increase the speeds of all of the enemies. How do I make every single one of the enemies to come increase their speeds in timed increments. Say every, I don't know, minute, the speeds of the spiders and wasps increase permanently by five... How would I go about doing that?

[LB]

Use a global value, and add to that, and have:

Speed of Group.Enemy <> Global Speed:
Set speed of Group.Enemy to Global Speed.

[SuperChiken]

Okay, I feel like an idiot asking all of these questions, but at least I'm learning something in the process.

And believe it or not, I have yet another question. Suppose I want a particular one of my enemies to drop a random weapon or power-up. Is it possible to use qualifiers to group together the power-ups and use that to drop them? It seems it is harder to do than I expected, so if that's not how I create that feature, then how would I go about doing that?

And I don't really understand how to use a list object... let alone use it to make the directions of the bullets differ in every single shot. And then there is always the problem of actually making the gun shoot four bullets at one time in a group of random directions which are perpendicular to the player. Could you further explain that please?

[LB]

1. Set a global value to a random number, then have several conditions like:
Random Global Value = 3;
Pick Group.Enimies at random:
-Create power-up 3 at 0,0 from Group.Enemies

2. OK Here is how you would do it: (as a concept)
First of all, like I said, all you have to do for changing the animation for every direction of a bullet is go into the animation editor, and simply make a different animation of the bullet for every direction. I don't see how you got list object out of that.
Now to make a four bullets shoot out in four random directions, you DO need a list object to keep track of it. Everytime you want to do it, use these actions:
On shoot four random bullets:
-List Object: Reset
-List Object: add a line Str$(Random(32))
-List Object: add a line Str$(Random(32))
-List Object: add a line Str$(Random(32))
-List Object: add a line Str$(Random(32))
On shoot four random bullets:
-Shoot object Bullet in direction Val(List Line Text$( "List", 1))
-Shoot object Bullet in direction Val(List Line Text$( "List", 2))
-Shoot object Bullet in direction Val(List Line Text$( "List", 3))
-Shoot object Bullet in direction Val(List Line Text$( "List", 4))

Simple as that.

[Sterling7]

Well, *some* of this I can make a suggestion, anyway.

If the power-ups are a static object, the way *I* would do it (and I'm sure others would have their own variation) would be to use a single object for all the power-ups, but use the different *directions* of the static object for the different kinds of power-up. (Say, speed for up, shot power for right, invincibility for left, bonus points for down. Since the object doesn't actually move, the direction its facing doesn't particularly matter.) Then, when the enemy is destroyed, if it spawns a power-up, give that power-up a random direction.

As far as the random element goes, I'd just use a hidden counter and generate a random number.

I think for the shooting you're going to need to either use "create" rather than "shoot/launch" to make your projectiles or have a different "shoot" event for each direction the player might be going.

[SuperChiken]

1. Set a global value to a random number, then have several conditions like:
Random Global Value = 3;
Pick Group.Enimies at random:
-Create power-up 3 at 0,0 from Group.Enemies

2. OK Here is how you would do it: (as a concept)
First of all, like I said, all you have to do for changing the animation for every direction of a bullet is go into the animation editor, and simply make a different animation of the bullet for every direction. I don't see how you got list object out of that.
Now to make a four bullets shoot out in four random directions, you DO need a list object to keep track of it. Everytime you want to do it, use these actions:
On shoot four random bullets:
-List Object: Reset
-List Object: add a line Str$(Random(32))
-List Object: add a line Str$(Random(32))
-List Object: add a line Str$(Random(32))
-List Object: add a line Str$(Random(32))
On shoot four random bullets:
-Shoot object Bullet in direction Val(List Line Text$( "List", 1))
-Shoot object Bullet in direction Val(List Line Text$( "List", 2))
-Shoot object Bullet in direction Val(List Line Text$( "List", 3))
-Shoot object Bullet in direction Val(List Line Text$( "List", 4))

Simple as that. wink.

@LB
1. I get it now, I'll do that.

2. First of all, the animation part, I was not getting at the list object for. I figured it out by then. And I am using a single shooting animation for all of the shots of all of the weapons.

On the part about making the bullets fire how I want. The problem seems to be related to the fact that it doesn't like to fire multiple shots at once. I've done it before when I first got TGF2, and was playing around with that. Spread-shots seemed to work very well.

From the looks of what you have there for the direction list, if I want different directions to have a different set of directions that it is allowed to shoot in, would I need to modify the list in any way from what is up there? And will I have to make a separate list object for each of the eight directions?

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@Sterling7 Thanks! The power-up idea is great, and I will definitely be using it that way. It seems to work very well.

The random element idea is a nice idea as well. I will try my best to implement it.

On the shooting deal with the "create" item in use, I made it so that it is random and shoots three projectiles in random directions from a given 5. What ends up happening is that it only shoots a single of the three projectiles. The other two get stuck on the creation location. They don't move either. Once the system gets up to the maximum number of objects, (500) it makes all of the clogged projectiles launch out in their directions spontaneously. Any way to avoid that?

[LB]

Hmmm, well when an object is created it will select it only and only do events on it. Try creating the object in a separate event.

[SuperChiken]

Sounds good.

And I was editing my post while you posted, LB.