Shooting Question

[Redsquirrel]

Hi All,

I wonder if I could ask for some advice..

I have a baddie shoot a bullet every 0.25 seconds. (he moves as well). However every 5.00 seconds i want him to shoot a bonus item.

I can do this, BUT i want him then not to shoot the normal bullet at the same time but after he has shot the bonus, i want it to revert back.

I did this..
start of frame
- set flag to 0

every 0.25
& flag=0
-baddie shoots bullet


every 5.00
-set flag to 1

if flag is 1
baddie shoots bonus
-set flag to 0

Im sure im missing something here though..

any ideas? (or a better way of doing it)

thanks in advance.

[Thrawn]

Looking at what your writing out in pseudo code it looks right and it should work. What is happening instead of the desired outcome?

[DavidN]

It looks you have sort of the right idea - it would take a small change to get it right:

Always: Set flag to 0
Every 5 seconds: Shoot a powerup and set flag to 1
Every 0.25 AND flag is 0: Shoot a bullet and set flag to 1

Every time the events are checked, they're run in order from top to bottom. Each time, the flag will start at 0. If the timer is at a five-second mark, then a powerup will be shot and the flag will be set to 1 for this point downwards. If, on the second event, a powerup has already been shot, then the flag will have been set to 1, and the bullet will be prevented from shooting as well (as it will only do so when the flag is still 0).

[Thrawn]

Hmm, interesting.
I was under the falsehood that when something was set to "Always" that it would ALWAYS be set to a certain property. Guess that doesnt really make any sense when I think about it tho. How is the "Always" command best used then?
Also, Im curious as to the way you put the 5 seconds condition before the 0.25 seconds one. I obviously still have a long way to go.
Sorry to hi-jack your thread RedSquirrel, just interested in learning all I can about the programming in MMF2.

[Redsquirrel]

no prob!

I tried out this again, and it didnt seem to really change. However i increased the time from 0.25 to 0.50 and it seems a bit better.

Maybe the time between each shot causes little issues..

In a way id prefer to not drop the power up every five second (perhaps make it random) but then again as its a score challenge game it might be somewhat unfair if some times there is more chance to obtain the power up (or score in this case).

[Jaffob]

This might work a bit better, especially if a power-up drop and a gunshot will not always be perfectly in-sync:

Every 5 seconds: Shoot a powerup and set flag to 1
Every 0.25 AND flag is 0: Shoot a bullet and set flag to 1
Every 0.25 AND flag is 1: Set flag to 0

That should cause a bullet not to be fired once, anytime after a power-up is dropped. This would allow you to drop power-ups every 5.12 seconds for example and have it still work out OK.

Hmm, interesting.
I was under the falsehood that when something was set to "Always" that it would ALWAYS be set to a certain property. Guess that doesnt really make any sense when I think about it tho. How is the "Always" command best used then?
Also, Im curious as to the way you put the 5 seconds condition before the 0.25 seconds one. I obviously still have a long way to go.
Sorry to hi-jack your thread RedSquirrel, just interested in learning all I can about the programming in MMF2.

Using the "Always" condition is akin to using a condition such as "1 = 1": It will always be evaluated as true, although it doesn't necessarily always happen. The "Never" condition can be thought of as "1 = 2", and will actually cause an event to never happen (because a single false condition will stop the entire event). Hope that helps.