Always choosing the closest active

[Ealaionta]

Hello fellow programmers

I hope this will be quite a simple issue for you to solve. I am trying to simulate simple life forms (represented by several duplicated actives). Their only objective in life is to eat little "food actives" which I spawn at random positions always when one of them gets eaten so that there are always, say, 3 of them.

Currently all of my little creature actives have a Bouncing Ball movement (I'm aware of the limitations here) and I let them look in the direction of a new food item and walk there to eat it. Of course they now all choose the same object because it's obviously the one that was created recently. How can I change the code so they choose the food active that is closest to them instead of the new one?

I tried realising this with the Advanced Direction Object which works unless there's more than one creature. Is it even possible for several of them to choose the closest food thingie relative to them?

[img:left]http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/482/examplequ.th.png[/img]

[Jacob]

If you put the code into the object's behaviour, it should work.

[Ealaionta]

Okay, didn't try that. I don't know what code you would put in there (including the Advanced Direction Object?), but I see if I'll get it done.

Thanks for your fast answer!

EDIT: Well, I can't seem to get it to work, at least not with the Advanced Direction Object. Does anyone know an easy method to establish the closest active relative to another active with more than one of both types?

[MuddyMole]

This is an old example:
http://cid-b1e7ee094271bbda.office.live.com/self.aspx/Public/Seeker.mfa

[Ealaionta]

Thank you, MuddyMole!

I'm sure I'll be able to learn a lot from your other examples up on that server as well. Gonna be back when I face new problems

[MuddyMole]

You can try, but bear in mind that a lot of the files were made by other people, and I just edited them a little to fix bugs they were experiencing; also a lot of the stuff is completely unrelated to MMF.

I really need to sort it all out - I've forgotten what most of the files are myself

[Dynasoft]

Try this code (needs both the foreach and select objects):

Always:
-ForEach Object: Start foreach loop for critters
ForEach Object: On Loop of critters
-Food: Set alterable value D to distance between food and critter
ForEach Object: On Loop of critters
+Select Object: Select "Food" with lowest alterable value D
-Critter: Look at Food

It's relatively simple, and shouldn't be too hard to understand.