[Danukem]

A couple of things. I would make the FIREBARREL do a check for SEs already in the sector before it spawns one -- you don't want to spawn an SE if one is already there. Maybe also check some other things about the sector before spawning so you don't spawn the SE on a conveyer or something unsuitable. Also I would make the SE save the shade in a per actor var when it is spawned, then have it reset that shade when it dies. You can just use killit on SEs and AFAIK it doesn't cause any issues.

[spacekebab]

Didn't even consider checking for any of that. Thanks! took care of it.

[jimbob]

i am trying to make a rudimentary waypoint system that makes the AI face the general direction of the waypoint actor so he generally walks in that direction. the idea is that i place a few points across the map and the AI wanders towards it, and once he reaches it it adds one to the count so he 'aims' for the next sequential one and not backtrack.

state navigate // navigate to the waypoint. 
findnearactor WAYPOINT 20480 TEMP // piece of code straight from the eduke32 wiki. modified for a rudimentary waypoint system.
ifvarvare MHITAG COUNT // make sure the waypoint he is going to is the next sequential one, so he doesnt backtrack. 
ifvarn TEMP -1
{
        getactor[TEMP].x MX
        getactor[TEMP].y MY
        getactor[THISACTOR].x x
        getactor[THISACTOR].y y
        subvarvar MX x
        subvarvar MY y
        getangle ANGVAR MX MY
        setactor[THISACTOR].ang ANGVAR
}
// here starts my own changes to make the system do what i need. 
// if the actor is within the accepted distance from the waypoint, make him aim for the next one by adding one to the count. 
findnearactor WAYPOINT 512 TEMP
ifvarn TEMP -1
{
addvar COUNT 1 
}
ends

the actor runs state navigate every once in a while during his seek state where he tries to find the player, the waypoint or an enemy. it needs a lot of work though. just asking of im on the right track with this. it needs a lot of work to make it somewhat more sophisticated but right now its just used to make soldiers move in a general direction instead of rather randomly around the map, or follow the player a round like a line of lemmings.

[Danukem]

Since you are new at this, verify that you can make your actors walk towards a single waypoint before you worry about incrementing the waypoint number. Test each piece of code and verify it works before adding more, it will save you a lot of trouble later. When you have a proven library and a lot of experience, that's when you can start implementing many things simultaneously.

As for whether you are on the right track, you are kind of on the way to making looping waypoints like the pigcop recon cars. Make sure you read the tag off of the waypoint so that you can compare it to the enemy's counter.

[jimbob]

 Danukem, on 16 August 2021 - 11:34 AM, said:

Since you are new at this, verify that you can make your actors walk towards a single waypoint before you worry about incrementing the waypoint number. Test each piece of code and verify it works before adding more, it will save you a lot of trouble later. When you have a proven library and a lot of experience, that's when you can start implementing many things simultaneously.

As for whether you are on the right track, you are kind of on the way to making looping waypoints like the pigcop recon cars. Make sure you read the tag off of the waypoint so that you can compare it to the enemy's counter.

i will make a simple useractor that will move towards the waypoint at all times to check if it works. and you're right. i should really try to get one thing working before adding too much at the same time.

[jimbob]

well, i have it working with an incremental pathfinding way, but it has a problem. once it reaches the destination it keeps on moving in the direction it came from until the distance from the point he was going first is greater than the distance to the point he is supposed to be going to. what i need is a way to completely ignore the point ( and all others ) that are nót the ones he is going to, in other words only regard the waypoint actor that has the correct hitag as the only actor he could find.

tate navigate // navigate to the waypoint. 
findnearactor WAYPOINT 409600 TEMP 
getactor[TEMP].hitag MHITAG // TEMP is in this case the waypoint actor. 
ifvarvare MHITAG COUNT  // make sure the waypoint he is going to is the next sequential one, so he doesnt backtrack. 
                                            // IE only find nearactor with a hightag the count currently has, one at a time.
	ifvarn TEMP -1 // the actor should only care about the waypoint if both statements return true. 
	{
       		 getactor[TEMP].x MX
       		 getactor[TEMP].y MY
       		 getactor[THISACTOR].x x
       		 getactor[THISACTOR].y y
       		 subvarvar MX x
       		 subvarvar MY y
       		 getangle ANGVAR MX MY
       		 setactor[THISACTOR].ang ANGVAR
	}

// here starts my own changes to make the system do what i need. 
// if the actor is within the accepted distance from the waypoint, make him aim for the next one by adding one to the count. 
findnearactor WAYPOINT 512 TEMP2
	getactor[TEMP].hitag MHITAG
	ifvarn TEMP2 -1
	ifvarvare MHITAG COUNT  // add 1 to count only if the current waypoint has the same value as the one where the player was moving towards, 
                                                    //  used to prevent a retrigger causing the count to rise 1 every tick the actor is within the set distance
	{
		addvar COUNT 1
		spawn EXPLOSION2 // just to check if he reaches the correct point, and does not re-trigger the count. set off fireworks one you reach your goal.
		break // force restart of the subroutine
	}

ends

i tried putting a ifvarvarn MHITAG COUNT { break } after the actual getting the angle code but that didnt seem to work, if i place a waypoint between the actor, and it has not the correct hitag the actor will then ignore the one that does have the correct hitag, this makes figure 8 forms impossible, wich is something i could live with, but surely there is a way around it.
i was thinking allong the lines of running a search through the spriteid's until it finds the correct one before proceeding.

but my actor does not follow a simple path i layed out start to finish, so thats a win.

[Danukem]

Regardless of how many instances of the actor are within the distance, findnearactor will always return one result, so you can't use it to sort through them. The only time I would use findnearactor is when it really doesn't matter which one you are finding as long as it is within the distance. For example, if I had a paper actor that I wanted to catch on fire if a fire actor was near, then I might make it use findnearactor to search for close fires and then start burning on a positive result.

For pathing, if you are going to do a search at all (which may not be necessary depending on how you set things up), then you should start the search using statnum with a loop using commands such as headspritestat/whilevarn/nextspritestat. In the loop you can check picnum, distance, tags, or whatever you want.

[jimbob]

i tried setting up a headsprite loop but i dont know how to set it up, so it probably did an infinite runs and locked the game.
how could i set up a pathing system without doing a search for the correct pathnode? afaik no matter wich way tou slice it you are going to have to do a check to see if there is a pathnode within range, get wich node it is and make sure that the AI is going to the next sequential one in order to avoid it backtracking or going the wrong direction. my reasoning was to do a check ( findnearactor ) then check if it is the correct pathnode ( does it have Hitag 0? ) and if so move to that. then increment the search for hitag value +1 once it reaches the correct pathnode ( ignoring others in its patch because they do not equal the hitag value, wich is important because the closest he just reached will need to be ignored so he can immediatly fixate on the next one. )

[Danukem]

jimbob, on 19 August 2021 - 06:47 AM, said:

i tried setting up a headsprite loop but i dont know how to set it up, so it probably did an infinite runs and locked the game.

When I get some time I will put an example on the wiki (remind me if the weekend goes by and its still not there). Otherwise, if I post some code for you here, it will just be lost in time like so many other code snippets.

EDIT: You could also start the loop with "for spritesofstatus 1" which might be easier for you to get your head around:

https://wiki.eduke32.com/wiki/For

[Danukem]

Here you go:

https://wiki.eduke32.../Headspritestat

My example shows how to set up the loop. But instead of counting, what you want to do is check picnum (for the waypoint actor), then check its tag. If your moving actor has already latched onto a waypoint, you don't need to keep running the loop unless it is close enough to require going to the next one, or in case something has gone wrong.

[jimbob]

Awesome, i’ll study that later today. Hardly slept so the info will probably not stick. Updating the wiki was a great idea, who knows what great nuggets of info are burried in this thread.

[Mark]

Probably not much from this year but here is a folder of con tips and tricks I gathered from posts over the years. I released it before but maybe you missed it. Its unorganized but still very useful.

Attached File(s)

•  con code tricks.7z (141.1K)
  Number of downloads: 433

[jimbob]

awesome

[jimbob]

Danukem, on 19 August 2021 - 12:44 PM, said:

When I get some time I will put an example on the wiki (remind me if the weekend goes by and its still not there). Otherwise, if I post some code for you here, it will just be lost in time like so many other code snippets.

EDIT: You could also start the loop with "for spritesofstatus 1" which might be easier for you to get your head around:

https://wiki.eduke32.com/wiki/For

ive gotten it to work for like 80%, the actor moves towards the right point, ignores other points with a 'wrong' hitag value and clearly reaches the destination ( it sets off an explosion ) but then just keeps going in that direction, the loop doesnt seem to restart with the new COUNT +1 :/ the code could be heavily condensed with this method though.

TEMP in this context is the waypoint, and THISACTOR is whoever needs to go to the waypoint.

state navigate // navigate to the waypoint. 
for TEMP sprofstat 1 { getactor[TEMP].hitag MHITAG  ldist xydist THISACTOR TEMP }
ifvarvare MHITAG COUNT  // make sure the waypoint he is going to is the next sequential one, so he doesnt backtrack.
                                             // IE only find nearactor with a hightag the count currently has, one at a time.
	{
       		 getactor[TEMP].x MX
       		 getactor[TEMP].y MY
       		 getactor[THISACTOR].x x
       		 getactor[THISACTOR].y y
       		 subvarvar MX x
       		 subvarvar MY y
       		 getangle ANGVAR MX MY
       		 setactor[THISACTOR].ang ANGVAR
					ifl xydist 512
					ifvarvare MHITAG COUNT  // add 1 to count only if the current waypoint has the same value as the one where the player was moving towards, 
                                        // used to prevent a retrigger causing the count to rise 1 every tick the actor is within the set distance
					{
						addvar COUNT 1
						spawn EXPLOSION2
						break // force restart of the subroutine
					}

	}
ends

maybe it needs an actor side restart? say if the xydist is lower than 512 run the state again in the actors code?

[Danukem]

You should be getting the hitags of the waypoints into a per actor var using eventloadactor, and then checking the var of the waypoint against the COUNT var. Right now you are pulling the actual hitag, and I'm guessing those are all zero. To be clear: you are using getactor[TEMP].hitag when you should be using getav[TEMP].hitag.

That would explain why it keeps going straight -- you increment COUNT but then no sprites in the map actually have the next hitag of 1.

Also, you need to check for the picnum before checking tags, because right now ANY sprite of statnum 1 with the right hitag will be seen as a target.

[jimbob]

i have my waypoints set up like a path for the recon car, i manually set the hightag for each pathnode with the apropriate hightag starting at 0 then 1 etc.
for now my code works for like 90% again, it sees the waypoint sprite, gets the angle, moves towards it, when he reaches it does an explosion and then again just keeps going straight. i used some setactor flag to change the pal for some steps so i can visually check what the actor is doing.

anyway, here's my piece of frankencode, im going to bed, not feeling too great meaning i cant focus right.

onevent EVENT_LOADACTOR 
//	switch sprite[].picnum // other way of checking the picnum, seems needlessly complicated.
//		case WAYPOINT
ifactor WAYPOINT
			{	
			    getactor[].hitag MHITAG
			    getactor[].lotag MLOTAG
			    // setactor[].hitag ZERO // resetting to zero seems counter intuitive to what i need.
			    // setactor[].lotag ZERO

			
			}
//		break
//	endswitch
endevent


state navigate
for TEMP sprofstat 1   
ife sprite[TEMP].picnum 5427
			{ 
				setactor[THISACTOR].pal 2 // if found the node, turn angry and try to grab it.
				getav[TEMP].HITAG MHITAG  
				ldist xydist THISACTOR TEMP 
			}
ifvarvare MHITAG COUNT  // make sure the waypoint he is going to is the next sequential one, so he doesnt backtrack. 
//IE only find nearactor with a hightag the count currently has, one at a time.
// ife sprite[TEMP].hitag COUNT 
	{
		
       		 getactor[TEMP].x MX
       		 getactor[TEMP].y MY
       		 getactor[THISACTOR].x x
       		 getactor[THISACTOR].y y
       		 subvarvar MX x
       		 subvarvar MY y
       		 getangle ANGVAR MX MY
       		 setactor[THISACTOR].ang ANGVAR

			{ 
				getav[TEMP].HITAG MHITAG  
				ldist xydist THISACTOR TEMP 
			} 
	}
else break

					ifl xydist 512
				 	ife sprite[TEMP].hitag COUNT 
					// ifvarvare MHITAG COUNT 
// add 1 to count only if the current waypoint has the same value as the one where the player was moving towards, 
// used to prevent a retrigger causing the count to rise 1 every tick the actor is within the set distance
					{
						setactor[THISACTOR].pal 1 // visual check, does he reach the point and stay in this line of code?
// it apears not. he immediatly turns to spritepal 2 again after briefly flashing blue. 
/// IE once the nasty node has been grabbed and destroyed move to the next one.
						addvar COUNT 1
						spawn EXPLOSION2
						break // force restart of the subroutine
					}
break
ends

[Danukem]

I've got my own projects to worry about so I'm not spending any more time on this. The one piece of advice I will give you is you need to do more debugging than just spawning an explosion when the actor reaches the first waypoint. You need to be logging vars at key points to check what is going on.

[jimbob]

Danukem, on 22 August 2021 - 04:34 PM, said:

I've got my own projects to worry about so I'm not spending any more time on this. The one piece of advice I will give you is you need to do more debugging than just spawning an explosion when the actor reaches the first waypoint. You need to be logging vars at key points to check what is going on.

adding logvars helped, managed to track down the issue and now have a working system.

state navigate
for temp sprofstat 1
ife sprite[temp].picnum WAYPOINT
                        { 
				getav[THISACTOR].COUNT COUNT 
				getactor[temp].htowner NODE 
				getactor[temp].hitag FOUNDHITAG
				ifvarvare FOUNDHITAG COUNT
					{
						addlogvar COUNT
						addlogvar FOUNDHITAG
						addlogvar NODE
					}
						ifvarvare FOUNDHITAG COUNT
						{

						        {              
						                 getactor[NODE].x MX
						                 getactor[NODE].y MY	
						                 getactor[THISACTOR].x x	
						                 getactor[THISACTOR].y y
						                 subvarvar MX x
						                 subvarvar MY y
						                 getangle ANGVAR MX MY
						                 setactor[THISACTOR].ang ANGVAR

						                        { 
										getactor[temp].htowner NODE 
						                                getav[NODE].FOUNDHITAG FOUNDHITAG 
						                                ldist xydist THISACTOR temp
						                        } 
										ifl xydist 512
						                        		{
						                                                addvar COUNT 1										
						                                        }
						        }
				
                      		  }
				
			}


ends

[jimbob]

quick question, how can i make an actor be affected by the masterswitch and or activator? i want my waypoint to be able to be 'switchable' for example, i want actors to stop navigating ( or waiting ) when a certain condition is not met. like a wall that has to be blown up, or a gate to be opened. imho the easiest way is to have a pal switch so when the pal is 1 the actor waits, but after doing X and the activator is activated, switch to pal 0 wich gives the OK to move ahead. right now the actors are piling up on a wall so i need a way to halt them.

another way would be a line of sight check, i tried that but for whatever reason they always seem to come back positive. :/

[Danukem]

https://wiki.eduke32...activatormotion

You can check for an activator being triggered using that.

Make sure that you test your ability to detect the activation separately from your code that makes the actors wait. I would use ifhitspace to trigger the waiting mechanic first just to make sure it works properly, then change it to trigger on the activator once you have it working. Otherwise if you test everything at once and then the inevitable failures occur you won't know where it is breaking.

[jimbob]

so activatormotion doesnt mean physical motion, but rather 'switching' motion? well even if it is i can just make a simple 2way train with it i guess. i came across that but it didnt seem like what i needed. guess i was wrong. thanks

[Danukem]

You could also set a gamevar when a switch is used by checking its picnum, or have it set when a crack is blown up or whatever the condition is. You don't have to use checkactivatormotion, I just mentioned it because you specifically asked about activators.

[Salvation]

I was able to implement a scope code but my problem is that the scope won't shut down after i change my weapon.So the scope is active if i once press turnaround -key and then switch weapon and no matter does that other weapon has a scope code or not.

To shut it down i must "disable" scope by clicking turnaround off and then switch weapon.

Here is the code:

onevent EVENT_DISPLAYROOMS
ifvare currentweapon 3
//ifvare player[THISACTOR].curr_weapon 3 // if player has weapon m4 selected

 getinput[THISACTOR].bits TEMP1
 ifvarand TEMP1 268435456
 { addvar turnaround_keytime 1 }
  else
   { setvar  turnaround_keytime 0 }

ifvare turnaround_keytime 1
   { xorvar sight_on 1 }

ifvare sight_on 1
  {
   setaspect 32768 52428 // activate the 4x scope 
  }
endevent

What should i do to do following: If i have scope and i switch weapon which does not have scope code the setaspect will return as it is before scoping?

[Reaper_Man]

You probably need an "else" for that very first "ifvare currentweapon 3", and/or you need more brackets around things. So something like:

onevent EVENT_DISPLAYROOMS
ifvare currentweapon 3
{
    getinput[THISACTOR].bits TEMP1
    ifvarand TEMP1 268435456
        addvar turnaround_keytime 1
    else
        setvar  turnaround_keytime 0

    ifvare turnaround_keytime 1
        xorvar sight_on 1
}
else
    setvar sight_on 0

ifvare sight_on 1
    setaspect 32768 52428 // activate the 4x scope 
endevent

[Salvation]

Hey, thanks! It actually worked perfectly!

However i encountered another issue...

I have also another weapon that requires scope, it is in place of the shrinker. I tried to copy-paste the code you described above with only change that currentweapon -> 6

---> Result is that now both scopes does not work. The setaspect -effect is visible only on a 1 microsecond.
I do onevent EVENT_DISPLAYROOMS
---> then i paste code
endevent

Sorry to bother you like this. I thought that this code will work in a weapon like a weapon as long as i change the currentweapon -value. So what i should do so that the code can be modified to work in a more than a one weapon.

EDIT: I FOUND THE SOLUTION!

just a quick testing and felt that this one works: Switch the place of currentweapon and put a few { } more and made a rows for currentweapon 6.

onevent EVENT_DISPLAYROOMS
{
    getinput[THISACTOR].bits TEMP1
    ifvarand TEMP1 268435456
        addvar turnaround_keytime 1
    else
        setvar  turnaround_keytime 0

    ifvare turnaround_keytime 1
        xorvar sight_on 1
}
else
    setvar sight_on 0

ifvare sight_on 1
ifvare currentweapon 3
	{
    setaspect 32768 52428 // activate the 4x scope 
	}
ifvare sight_on 1
ifvare currentweapon 6
	{
    setaspect 32768 52428 // activate the 4x scope 
	}
endevent

[Reaper_Man]

Not sure that is working the way you want, you have an orphan "else" with no "if" because you moved around code. I'm actually surprised that even compiles.

Just FYI, if you have a series of if statements with only a single command within them, you don't need brackets:

ifvare sight_on 1
    ifvare currentweapon 6
        setaspect 32768 52428

You could also tighten up your if logic at the end:

ifvare sight_on 1
{
    ifvare currentweapon 3
        setaspect 32768 52428 // activate the 4x scope 

    ifvare currentweapon 6
        setaspect 32768 52428 // activate the 4x scope 
}

I'd also argue that the key press processing being in the same block of code as the aspect ratio stuff is bad practice. You want your code to do one thing, and only one thing. So here's what I'd do:

appendevent EVENT_TURNAROUND
{
    geti .bits TEMP1
    ifand TEMP1 268435456
        add turnaround_keytime 1
    else
        set turnaround_keytime 0

    ife turnaround_keytime 1
        xor sight_on 1
}
endevent

onevent EVENT_DISPLAYROOMS
{
    ife sight_on 1
    {
        ife currentweapon 3
            setaspect 32768 52428
        else
        ife currentweapon 6
            setaspect 32768 52428
        else
            set sight_on 0
    }
}
endevent

[Salvation]

Sorry for my late response. I replaced my code with yours but result was that the sight stopped working. When i press the turnaround key nothing happens. Could the issue be in my weapon code? I'm not using original renders, i'm using state -renders and scope code is quite interesting.

[Reaper_Man]

You could try changing EVENT_TURNAROUND to simply:

appendevent EVENT_TURNAROUND
{
    xor sight_on 1
}
endevent

Since you don't need the additional code capturing the key press.

[RPD Guy]

Hello there,

How can I check if there's a wall between 2 different coords in the game? I think that is something like "ifcansee".

[bullerbullerseven]

RPD Guy, on 01 October 2021 - 07:52 AM, said:

Hello there,

How can I check if there's a wall between 2 different coords in the game? I think that is something like "ifcansee".

https://wiki.eduke32.com/wiki/Cansee

Do you know how to set in variables?
If you are trying to make 2 actors check if they can see each other, remember that their xyz is the bottom center of the sprite.