Repelling enemies from themselves?

[Mdsx]

Pushing enemies out of each other...How do I do that?

In games like Odin's Sphere and Muramasa: The Demon Blade you fight enemies that don't collide with each other in the conventional sense ala Mario. Instead when the enemies are overlapping each other they slowly are pushed out. That way you never have a bunch of enemies stacked up.

Anyone know how to accomplish this? I imagine they would be pushed out of each other in opposite directions.

Still, I have no idea how to go about this. Any ideas?

[Mdsx]

Anyone? I have no idea how to do this one. I just tried doing distance code for the same objects and it didn't do squat. I tried this specifically

Always
-Set X dist to X( "Enemy" )-X( "Enemy" )

Clearly that won't work for obvious reasons. I've never had to really deal with this before. Anyone have a solution or example?

[RickyRombo]

Wait, you want them to overlap, then slowly both move away from the collision?

How far do you want them to overlap? What movement are you using, if any? (I haven't played Odin's Sphere or whatever)

Maybe a diagram or something would help?

Otherwise I'd say make the object slowly stop (by subtracting one from its speed) when it's detector (invisible object always being set to the position of the object) is overlapping the opposite object. When it reaches 1, (aka as far as it can go before it triggers every time it's stopped) then reverse it and add to the speed.

[Mdsx]

The main reason for this is so they don't get all bunched up and visually look like only 1 enemy.

Heres a quick mockup



Another reason for this is so they can move through each other which allows me to have more enemies on screen. I'll probably only have them pushing out if they overlap completely for too long or something.

[Jeod]

Detector one pixel in size in the center of each enemy. When the detector is overlapping another detector (aka when an enemy is completely overlapping another enemy) reverse the enemy's direction. This requires the detectors to all have the same X position of course. Or the same Y position if they move vertically.

[RickyRombo]

You might want it a little bigger than that depending on the push distance. But I'd say for certain that you want detectors!

If you want it smooth, reduce the speed before reversing and then increase the speed again. If you want it to be quick, bounce on detector collision.

Will that work?

[00J]

yeah detectors on their feet, and also maybe some code to keep them on the same plane. Like always set y to 400 or so.

[Jacob]

You could run a fastloop that moves each active in a variety of directions, records it in Alterable values, then moves back. You will know what is around the player and not need detectors.

[mobichan]

So, how exactly do they get on top of each other in the first place? Because your AI code could just stop them from moving (stall them, for instance) when they get near each other.

[Jaffob]

If both enemies were already moving anyway, wouldn't they just move off one another?