Trying to get multiple enemies to jump independently.

[Storsorgen]

Hello! I'm currently programming a bunch of jumping slimes, and I've run into a snag that I've experienced before, but I can't remember how to solve it!

As it is, if one slime is touching the ground while anotheri s jumping, it will mess up the jump, due to a conflict in a fastloop that says "If slime is touching ground, subtract from the y position" to avoid falling below the ground.

The code is as follows.

Height of Slime < 8
set height of Slime to Height("Slime")+0.45

Height of Slime <> 0
start loop "slime" Abs(Height("Slime") times

On loop "slime"
Height of Slime > 0
set Y of Slime to Y("Slime")+1

On loop "slime"
Height of Slime < 0
set Y of Slime to Y("Slime")-1

On loop "slime"
Slime is overlapping a backdrop
Height of Slime <0
set Y of slime to Y("Slime")+1
set height to 0

On loop "slime"
Slime is overlapping a backdrop
Height of Slime >0
set Y of slime to Y("Slime")-1
set height to 0

Now an individual slime will behave exactly like I want it to, but if there is more than one they will mess up.
I tried solving this by a spread value and then referring to it in the loop, but the problem there is that since the gravity is dependant on the "slime" loop starting Abs(Height), I can't refer to the loopindex properly as one would do with

On loop "slime"
Id of Slime == Loopindex
Slime is overlapping a backdrop
Height of Slime <0
set Y of slime to Y("Slime")+1
set height to 0

Any ideas on how to do this? If I can I'd like to keep the gravity system, as the jumps become precisely as smooth as I want them.

Any help is appreciated, thank you.

[King_Cool]

Just a suggestion from reading the topic:

I thnk it would be very wize to create Virtual Controll Buttons for the Enemy Object.
For example,
Flag1 = Right
Flag2 = Left
Flag3 = Jump

This way each Enemy knows when he/ she is performing an action without getting confused

[Storsorgen]

Hiya! The problem with having action-states like that is that the gravity part keeping the slime from falling through the earth needs to be active at all times, but only affecting one slime at a time. If I add a pre-requisite that a slime has to be in the jump state to be affected, they will all fall down from the very beginning. Thanks for the idea though!

My current train of thought is to have a loop in a loop.
I'll loop through Nobject("Slime") times, and in every loop i will perform the gravity checks, and if the id of the slime corresponds to the loopindex of the main loop, the gravity of that slime will be checked. I haven't tried this yet, but does it seem like a valid idea?

[SolarB]

Nifflas has some jumping things in Knytt stories, there's an .mfa of that floating around somewhere. Could be useful.

[Storsorgen]

I found an mfa, but I couldn't find any enemy a.i programming in it, however.
I guess my main problem is how to have a loop that defines fallspeed by iterating in relation to the gravity value, while still selecting slimes based on loopindex. To do this I'd need to do a loop within a loop, afaik, but is that even possible?

[LB]

Loops within loops are possible and used almost all the time. In this case, ForEach would be a little useless (it doesn't have a way to run a loop for the currently selected obejcts so you have to use MMF2's slower fastloops instead). You can loop over each object and then on each of those loops run a subloop. You can get the index of both the outer loop and the inner loop because the loop index expressions let you specify the loop name.

[Storsorgen]

How would it be formatted if i wanted to run a subloop?
In pseudocode:
On Loop "Mainloop" for Slime:
run Gravityloop for Abs(Gravity("Slime")) times
and then in the gravityloop

If ID of Slime equals Loopindex
Slime is overlapping a backdrop
set slime y to slimey-1 ?
Sorry if it all comes out a bit jumbled.

[King_Cool]

I made this using ForEach Object ( ForEach loops ).
Hope it helps.

Objects with "Enemy" Qualifyer are considered Enemies and act like Enemies.
Objects with "Obstacle" Qualifyer are considered solid Obstacles, which "Enemies" interact with.

For this example to work:
- All collision masks have to be square

[Storsorgen]

That seems really awesome King_Cool, although that particular code demands every obstacle to be an active object, no? Still, I'm going to mess around with it and see what I can do!

[Storsorgen]

Test slime.mfa


This is a small example of the slimes being used. The masks are currently set to visible.
As it is, the jumping works some of the time, but sometimes the slimes get stuck to the floor, and I can't seem to locate the exact circumstance.
Any ideas what might cause it?