Enemy Movements

[FlinkGigitty]

It turns out that this forum is really active, and with lots of help! So Im gonna use this opportunity to ask a little more about stuff that have been bothering me. Ive worked with MMF for almost a year now, with almost no questions asked, so I guess its time to solve a few things. My main thing thats left now is the movement on my enemies. My game is pretty much alike Super Mario. I think its 2 kinds of enemy movements I want. The first one is like the "Bullet Bill" from Super Mario. If you dont know what a bullet bill is, its a cannon that shoots out a cannonball thingie every 3rd second or something. I want this too. Before, I have just used a path movement, but the silly part there is that the path ends somewhere. On Super Mario, if the cannon ball dodges you, and you sort of follows it, you will see it for a very long time no matter how far you walk. Ow yea, I forgotten to say. The bullet only goes left or right, means no fancy rainbowish path. Simply x amounts of pixels/sec horizontal. And I want it to be able to shoot a new bullet every 3rd sec.

Second movement on enemies is also very easy to use with a path movement. Like the turtles, or the evil mushrooms in super mario, I want an enemy that turns around after x amounts of pixels. The idea I have about this is to make a new group (say, group 3) and make an invisible wide square that the enemy can follow. When the square ends, the enemy turns around and walks the oposit direction. This way, I dont have to make every enemy unique as they are on quite different places and should change direction on different amounts of pixels.

Any ideas about this?? Im getting close to something I can call a game soon

[Jacob]

To continue the path movement select loop at end. Make sure reposition is not selected.

For the other thing, it would be easier to make an object that the enemy changes direction when it hits.

[Popcorn]

For enemies just moving left and right, I prefer the bouncing ball movement. Yes, you read correct... Set the inital direction to left or right and give it a low speed and you have your movement. Now you can give it commands to turn around if it hits something, or suddenly change speed etc..

If you have enemies that moves on platforms and fall down when they reach the end, you can give them platform movement and tell them to move left or right by adding / subtracting their x position when they are overlapping a platform. They will fall down to the next platform without any additional events! You will have to set the playercontrol to another player and deactivate player control for that player, or set its speed to 0 and turn off jumping.

For more advanced enemy platform coding, you could look for DavidN's platform tutorial

[FlinkGigitty]

Haha bouncing ball, ofcourse Thanks I will stick to the easy part.. Noone will see the difference when my game is finished anyway

This leaves just the bullet bill movement.


And about the path movement, yea I have the reverse thingie. But lets say the first platform an enemy walks on is 150 pixels, and the next one is 250. According to my skills, I need 2 enemy objects, 1 that patrols 150 pixels and 1 that patrols 250.. But I suppose Im missing something to do this easier :p

[mobichan]

What he is saying is that the Bullet Bill enemy should use Bouncing Ball. Bouncing ball just moves objects in a specific direction at a specific speed.

If you insist on using path movement for the patrolling enemies, then you would need to make multiple enemies or a single enemy with multiple movements. To add movements, click the +/- button at the top of the movements tab (next to the movement's name). Then in your code you can set the movement number when you create the enemy.

[FlinkGigitty]

Oooh, then I missunderstood a little. Hmm.. Bouncing ball as bullet bill... Im gonna try that! And Im gonna check out the multiple movements Ill tell later how it went

[FlinkGigitty]

Ok Im getting a little confused again. I actually want the bullet to shoot in 1 direction.. or 2, doesnt matter. However, I kinda want a clone or copy of that bullet as a new bullet after. Which means that if you decide to keep up the speed with the bullet, you can run with it through the whole map. This is how it is on super mario. A bullet shoots, and you run after it. It doesnt disappear before its out of the frame. Ive actually been looking for a solution for this clone/copy effect, and I realize that its pretty hard to explain. Im gonna ask another way for something else that I can connect myself to what I need.

Lets say I have an active object of a smiley face. Everytime I click, wherever I click, I want this smiley face to appear on that location on the screen (in the window). This way, you gotta clone the single object somehow. Got a solution for this? And I will connect it to my own issue myself

[mobichan]

For the bullet bill, you need to create a bullet bill every X seconds at the position of the cannon/firing object. In the same line that you create it, you need to tell the bullet bill what direction to move in. It is really that simple as long as you have the bullet bill movement set to bouncing ball. The object will just keep going and you can follow it.

[FlinkGigitty]

But I dont know how to create a new bullet bill every X sec. Are you able to write in what I have to do in MMF?

[nivram]

Every 1 second
>Create bullet bill at (where ever you want it created on the frame).

Marv