sprites

[billybob884-no-login]

Here's an interesting little perdicament. As you may know right now I have 2 sprites for the player, one regular, and one for the hurt state (flashing). What I wanted to do was make a few different sprites for the player, 1) a left/right walking/drifting, 2) a left/right in air sprite (jumping), and 3) an 8-state one for crouching and left/right crawling. now, i could easily set it up using global functions and what not, but if i did and he got hurt, one state would flash, but if the player crouched or jumped, well, you can see my problem. So, I guess I'm just posting this to see if there's any suggestions. If not it's not that big a deal, I know its a bit of a long shot. What I did consider was just not having a hurt sprite, but then when the player hit an enemy, as long as he remained in contact with it he wouldnt be hurt again. Also, right now, the wat I have it set up is that there's also an invincible player, like nothing hurts it, so that makes it even harder.

[bluemonkmn]

What if your invincibility were handled by inventory (you have some inventory item "InvincibleCounter" that counts down to 0 while the player is invincible) and all your collisions with the enemies only activate when player "lacks 1 InvincibleCounter".  That would take care of the invincible behavior; then you only have to figure out how to make that visible to the player so he knows when he's invincible.  Perhaps you could have a global function that creates a sprite where the player is when the player owns an InvincibleCounter.  The sprite would be some "invincibility" sparkles maybe (so you don't have to be careful about what state the player is in -- sparkles are sparkles).  Isn't that what Mario does in some of the later versions?  He leaves a trail of sparkles when he's invincible I think (oh, but that's when he has a star, not after he gets hurt... no matter).  That shouldn't be too hard to figure out.  The sparkle sprite would follow a path relative to the starting point and the path would just sit still with a delay of 30 frames.  Then you can have the sprite delete itself at the end of its path so the sparkles stick around for half a second and then disappear.  since this activates every frame, you will have a trail of 30 sparkle sprites going until invincibility wears off.

[billybob884]

Well, for invincibility i have a 20 second media clip that replaces the background music, plus a little shield sprite appears right over hte player and stays over him until the invincibility ends. oh! now that i think about it, this will work for both invincibility and hurt states!!! the only thing is that the player usually flashes when he's hurt, so ill have to think of something new, maybe just a little bar at the top that runs out. ooo this'll work nicely! and itll get rid of all that messy sprite transition crap! YES!

-----edit-----
ok, small problem, I've got it set up like this, 3 different sprites, Walk, Jump and Crawl (crouch included). You start as Walk, and when you press Up or Button2 (scripted jump), a global function changes you to the jump player. When you press Button4, you are switched to the Crawl player (you have to press it once to switch, if you hold it you won't see any of the walking animation). My problem is that once you switch to these other states (other than walk) you don't switch back. I figured out a bit of a solution, I made a (non-global) function that switches the player to the walk sprite, it's activated by a player interaction with solid tiles. This mostly fixes the jump problem, but opens up new ones:
1) you can't switch to the crawl state (obviously because you're touching the ground)
2) if you're facing right in the air (after a jump) when you hit the ground you immediately face left, and if you happened to shoot with out moving it looks like it's coming out of the back of your head.

[bluemonkmn]

This is going to get much more complicated to do without scripting than it would with scripting, unless you want to simplify it a bit.  Why not just use a single 8-state sprite to handle the walking and the jumping like Ethereal Peace does.  Then for the crouching, switch to a different crouching sprite and force the player to push up to get out of the crouching state.

[billybob884]

well, i tried having the jump state being the up-right and up-left accellerating/decellerating, but then whenever i walked uphill it went to that state. Maybe i just wont use the jump state then, because i wanted the crouch/jump to work much more than the jump sprite. yea, i think ill do that. Thanks.

[billybob884]

ugh, so much fun. while going through and updating all of the sprites with the new tilesets and general setup, somehow all of the maps i changed became corrupt. thankfully though, i havent made many changes since i last backed everything up, so i'm just restoring them from the cd. i dont remember exactly what the mesage as, something like runtime "91" error

[billybob884]

ok, ive just finished setting up the new hurt definitions (where the function isnt activated unless the player owns 1 InvisibleSpriteVariable (ISV)inventory item, but here lies the problem. since i did that for the player getting hurt, theres not really a way for me to set up the invincible state that way. this is going to get a little complicated..

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Also, to keep the player from burying its self when it switches from crawl to stand, I had to make the crawl/crouch frames all as tall as the regular standing player, so the whole half top of each frame is blank. This works good, but it creates a problem when the player shoots while crouching/crawling. As you probably know, to shoot the 'fire button' activates a function that creates a sprite relative to the player. And since the top half of the crouch state is empty, it looks like the attack is coming out of no-where.

----edit----
ok, i came up with a solution, but it has some problems. What i did first was to shorten the crouch and crawl states so they were as small as possible and both the same height. Then I created a few functions:
The first, 'Crawl' is activated by pressing the down button, it activates a series of functions; one to switch to the crawl sprite, and the other to teleport the player down by the difference between the standing and crawling sprites heights (25). This way the player wont re-appear in mid-air after the switch and fall down. Then I did the same thing for the 'Stand' function, but vice-versa. The problem with this method is, when the player presses down and is already in the crouch position, or presses up and is in the stand position, he is still teleported via the corresponding function. This isn't so much a problem for pressing down and being in the crouch already, mainly because it's far less likely to happen, but pressing up to jump will be a problem, you see.
Now, I believe that a solution may lie in doing something similar to how the non-scripted shooting works (with the switching of inventory items and what not,) but since this is a considerably different situation, I'm really not sure how to go about setting it up.

[bluemonkmn]

ok, ive just finished setting up the new hurt definitions (where the function isnt activated unless the player owns 1 InvisibleSpriteVariable (ISV)inventory item, but here lies the problem. since i did that for the player getting hurt, theres not really a way for me to set up the invincible state that way. this is going to get a little complicated..

I'm not sure I entirely understand what you're trying to accomplish.  Do you have two different invincibility states?  Like an Invisible state and an Invincible state?  Could you accomplish your goal (whatever it is) by using the same item, just with different quantities of it?

ok, i came up with a solution, but it has some problems. What i did first was to shorten the crouch and crawl states so they were as small as possible and both the same height. Then I created a few functions:
The first, 'Crawl' is activated by pressing the down button, it activates a series of functions; one to switch to the crawl sprite, and the other to teleport the player down by the difference between the standing and crawling sprites heights (25). This way the player wont re-appear in mid-air after the switch and fall down. Then I did the same thing for the 'Stand' function, but vice-versa. The problem with this method is, when the player presses down and is already in the crouch position, or presses up and is in the stand position, he is still teleported via the corresponding function. This isn't so much a problem for pressing down and being in the crouch already, mainly because it's far less likely to happen, but pressing up to jump will be a problem, you see.
Now, I believe that a solution may lie in doing something similar to how the non-scripted shooting works (with the switching of inventory items and what not,) but since this is a considerably different situation, I'm really not sure how to go about setting it up.

I still think this would be a lot easier if you used script, but I guess there's a certain attraction to avoiding script just on principal... kind of like trying to make poetry rhyme.  Anyway, perhaps you could create two inventory items called "IsCrouching" and "IsStanding".  The function that makes you crouch (the one that processes the down arrow) should require the IsStanding item, and one of the functions in its series should alter the inventory to add an "IsCrouching" item to the inventory (and if you check the "Remove Item(s) on use" checkbox, the IsStanding item will automatically be removed.  Conversely the function that makes you stand by processing the up arrow should use up "IsCrouching" item, and should include a function that adds an "IsStanding" item to the inventory in its series.

[billybob884]

I'm not sure I entirely understand what you're trying to accomplish.  Do you have two different invincibility states?  Like an Invisible state and an Invincible state?  Could you accomplish your goal (whatever it is) by using the same item, just with different quantities of it?

well, originally i had 3 states for hte player, regular, hurt, and invincible. invincible used the inventory InvisibleInvincibleVariable (IIV), and hurt used InvisibleSpriteVariable (ISV). I don't know why they're named that way, either you or durnurd just used those names while explaining how to set this up and thats what i used.

Ok, so I made all collisions require that the player doesn't own any ISV. ISV is only 120 (2 sec) and IIV is 900 (15 sec). So I almost need to be able to have the cilision require that he doesnt have any of either. I'm trying to think of a way to maybe make the functin that does the damage itsself require the inventory, but I don't think that's possible.

Actually, there is a "messy way" to set that up..
What I could do is, first modify the IIV to have a max of 1, initial of 1; then make all damage causing functions require 1 of it. When the player hits the item that makes him invincible, it activates a few functions. One, it creates the over-shield (just for display), Two it changes the music, Three it removes the one IIV, making none of the hurt functions work. Four it creates a "timer" sprite that waits 15 seconds, then activates an EOP_...    Then, that EOP function will add one to the IIV after the invisible state is over, causing all hurt states to work again (also it changes the music back and deletes the shield). I think this'll work; granted, it will be a bit "unprofenssional", but as long as it serves its purpose.

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ok, everything worked except the hurt functions didnt require the IIV, maybe because they're activated via colision? or is that "Use inventory:" thing not really a "requires inventory"

[bluemonkmn]

The activation parameters of a function are only considered when the function is activated by touching it with the player sprite.  If a collision or tile interaction or anything else triggers the function, it activates regardless of the activation parameters.

Is the difference between the hurt state and the invincible state just the length of time, or does the invincible sprite kill enemies when he touches them?  If it's just a time difference, you could use a single inventory item with a higher quantity for the longer invincibility.  If it actually does behave differently (player kills the enemies by touching them) then maybe you can set *both* items to 900 when the player becomes invincible and only set the ISV variable to 120 when the player gets hurt.  That way, the collisions that hurt the player only have to check ISV to determine when they happen.  And the collisions that kill the enemies only check IIV to determine when they happen.  I think the rest takes care of itself and you don't have to deal with all that other messiness.

[billybob884]

yep, just the time difference, damnit yo, howd you figure that out?  

the only thing ill have to do now is create a seperate inventory, because before i was using the ISV also for a horizontal bar at the top, just as like a little "SafeZone" meter, so ill have to make another inventory item thats just for show. no biggie

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ok heres the "biggie", i noticed there was a problem when i was able to get hurt again when the SaveZone inventory (its the 1 just for show) was olny half drained. i did a little investigating, and figured out that the ISV (teh one the hurt functions are working off of) is being frained twice as fast as the other. since both the hurt and invincible are working off of the same inventory item, they're, well, screwing with each other. i have to have global functions to remove the inventory to create the "timer effect", and had to make each one "Uses inventory item" (to require that there is at least one of the inventory item). now, when he gets hurt, what hte function does is it adds +120 to the ISV, which is simultaneously activating both the ISV (hurt) and IIV (invincible), which is whats causing it to drain twice as fast.
my next problem is that when the player became invincible, the shield wasnt disengaging (deleting itsself) at the end of the invincible period. so, i fugred out that the cause of all this was because i was using 2 seperate global functions to remove the ISV. what i ended up having to do was delete one of them, and now its all good.
the last thing i need ot figure out is what im going to do aboutthe shield situation. originally i just had a shield that was created 0,0 relative to player, and it was controlled by input (same speed, grav, ect), and it was teh same size as the player sprite too, so it never got caught on anything. but now that the player can crawl, effectively changing his size, i cant use this method anymore. what i tried to do was create one big shield, almost 2x bigger than the player, and just set it to "Follow player sprite". i had to set it to 10 speed to be able to keep up with the player, but it jsut flew all over the place, like it went crazy. sothen i tried giving it a low speed, and it lookedd a little better, it aws stil very shakey, but it couldnt keep up with the player when he jumped/fell. so im oging to need to figure out something else for a graphic..

[durnurd]

When the shield is flying all around, this may be partly because the momentum is > 0.  Try setting the momentum for that sprite = 0.  Alternately, you could delete the shield sprite and recreate it at 0,0 relative to the player every frame.