Am I being too ambitious?

**LemonyWeasel** · 26th July 2012, 08:59 PM

Hi all,

Played with the MMF2 demo a few weeks ago and now I'm the proud owner of the product. I feel like I've joined a club.

There are an incredible amount of tutorials and other bits of advice out there, whether its for creating an entire game or explaining how to create one element. I've made a couple of prototypes on my own, both of which were extremely basic. Now I've done that, I want to focus my time on a project that will help me to learn new MMF2 skills/extensions on the way.

So... fast forward a bit... there are several mechanics that I would like in my game that I can't really create at the moment. I was wondering if you (the community) could help me out...?

Line of sight - existing tutorials seem either too unrealistic or just don't explain well enough (specifically naming the Move Safely 2 particle effect thing)
Patrolling/Path movement - this is pretty straight forward, but when it's coupled with line of sight, follow/search and shooting mechanics then it gets a little more complicated
Follow/search - once the enemy sees the player via line of sight they should follow the player, unless they move out of view again - pause and return to patrol
Shooting - as explained, while Patrolling/Aiming/Following I would like the enemy to shoot at the player
Special Ability - the player will have the ability to 'phase' through walls, thus evading patrols and evading the enemy actively following him/her

I think my question really is, well, multiple questions. How best to do each of these mechanics?

The things I can foresee being issues are:

Not letting the enemy see the player when an obstacle is in the way, even when actively following the player.
Not letting the player 'phase' so that they get stuck, leave the play area, or similar.

So, where do I begin?

When it comes to visuals/elements, all I need is an enemy, a player, and some walls to make a room. Then I can test all the mechanics. It's programming that seems complicated and a bit too much right now.

Please shed some light!!!

Cheers all.

**BrashMonkey** · 26th July 2012, 09:17 PM

Welcome to the family! THere are ways to customize and optimize each of those things for your needs...it really depends on the game play etc... like I've seen really un-optimized line of sight examples that constantly shoot invisible sprites in ALL direction to see if any hit the player... this is insane.. for most games, you only need to shoot directly at the player and see if that hits the player or stops at a wall etc first.

The phase thing is a cool idea and will just require some clever game design and code to make work nicely...if need be, you can place invidible sprites which signifiy which wall etc can be phased through to make game-breaking phazes impossible manually per level...otherwise come complicated eventing will definately have to happen.

good luck. I hope the rest of the comunity can help in greater detail.

cheers

**happygreenfrog** · 26th July 2012, 09:30 PM

I don't think those mechanics are too ambitious. Go for it! If you need any help on specific parts of it, let us know. Also, welcome to the forums!

**foyzul2002** · 26th July 2012, 10:48 PM

Hi @LemonyWeasel.

If you check out: http://www.castles-of-britain.com/mm...lessitemap.htm you'll find a lot of stuff you're looking for. Just download and dissect and learn and enjoy.

**Konidias** · 26th July 2012, 11:10 PM

Well there is no "best way" to do any of it. My advice would be to tackle each thing individually and then combine them together.

**gkinfinity** · 26th July 2012, 11:52 PM

Okay, so a few things. First of all, check out Marv's site as foyzul2002 suggested. He posted the older version of Marv's site however. This one might be different, but idk. Check it out just in case.

Link

Line of sight - The best way to test line of sight is to stretch a small active object from object A to object B. This involves stretching the object and changing it's angle. Search the forums for 'line of sight' and you'll probably find a good example. Using the surface object to achieve this might be the best solution.
Patrolling/Path movement - Give your enemies the path movement type. When the line of sight (LoS) line isn't overlapping an obstacle it means that the enemy can see your character. At this point in time have the enemy look in the direction of the player and set his speed to 0. Once the LoS line overlaps an object again have the enemy resume his path movement by setting his speed back to what it is normally. This will only make enemies shoot at you however; it won't make the enemies run after you. The problem with them chasing you is that it starts to get into AI related stuff which is pretty hard to accomplish.
Shooting - This is pretty easy. While the enemy is looking at your player simply have an event that makes the enemy shoot in the direction of the player. Make sure you have your Action point set to the right location so that enemy actually fires the bullet out of the gun he/she is holding.
Phasing - You're right to be concerned with getting stuck in walls or leaving the play area. Those will be issues assuming your character can only phase through walls for a short amount of time. I wouldn't worry about this until you get the other stuff down first.

This can certainly be done though. I've done all of the things you mentioned (including the chasing, resuming patrol, and phasing through walls stuff) even though they weren't necessarily all in the same game. Good luck to you and welcome to the forums!

**Eliyahu** · 27th July 2012, 12:24 AM

There is a Line of Sight extension, but it only works with tile-based maps.

**MuddyMole** · 27th July 2012, 12:26 AM

It is do-able, but it's also very ambitious for a first project.
You'd probably do well to get a good grounding in the basics first, which you can do with even a really simple project.

eg. Create a Pong clone. Now give the ball a custom 360 degree movement and make it bounce realistically. Now make the AI opponent anticipate where the ball is going (instead of just following it). Now make it so you can have multiple balls (multiple instances of the same "ball" object) in play at the same time.
It might sound easy, but it'll teach you about custom movements, fastloops, object scope, etc - all of which are essential for almost any game.