Complexity of Movement

[Corlen]

Hi again, I was wondering if someone would be really nice and could upload a quick example for me or at least explain to me the steps (because I don't know how to pull this off) where an enemy moves around in curved lines toward the player but tries to keep its distance and when it's near the player it performs an attack. I want it to sit still at first and then when it activates it slowly increases its speed to full speed and near the end of its movement right before it attacks I want it to come slowly to a halt.

My game is a tile by tile movement engine but this enemy is going to be one of the few that totally ignores the tile by tile law of the game.

[Phi]

Sounds like your movement contradicts itself...

an enemy moves around in curved lines toward the player

but tries to keep its distance.

I assume the enemy doesn't attack on it's own, the player has to walk close to it?

[arfa]

A spiral-like motion?

X = Origin+Alterable Value B( "move" )*Cos(Alterable Value B( "move" )*Alterable Value A( "move" ))
Y = Origin+Alterable Value B( "move" )*Sin(Alterable Value B( "move" )*Alterable Value A( "move" ))

A = frequency (fixed)
B = time (incrementing)

There was another post a while back about a spiraling bullet?

[Corlen]

Sounds like your movement contradicts itself...

No it doesn't, I'll upload a picture of what I want.



This is just one example of many possible movements I want the enemy (E) to do.

[arfa]

Introducing some semi-AI would complicate the maths but basically it looks like a straight line and a half circle which is easy enough.

[Corlen]

Actually I meant that to look like an S shape instead of a straight line and then a half circle.

[rudy]

why dont u generate random numbers and use that for direction ?

[Corlen]

Well I've got it sort of working the way I want it to with ball movement and direction calculator but the problem is I need a rotate away from direction function which direction calculator doesn't have. So I used look in direction of hero and then set its direction to its own direction minus 16 but now it does these little circles around the hero instead of smoothly going around in a circle.

[nivram]

I have a Move by Letter example on my website. Maybe you can adapt that. Just an option.

Marv

[Corlen]

I'll check it out.