An In Vision event?

[lverona]

Hey fellas!

To make the game faster, I decided to have enemies not do anything when they are out of vision by choosing the appropriate option in their Actor Control.

Here is the problem though.
I have an enemy. It has some CollisionFree checks in its DrawActor. When it is out of vision it then does not do Draw Actor. However, I somehow need to give it the initial xvelocity=1 when it is within vision.

Before I encountered the fps problem, I had the initial xvelocity=1 in the Create Actor. What happens is that Create Actor does work when the actor is out of vision, thus all my enemies out of vision simply crawl away from the map and by the time the player gets there, they are not there.

So I think my fps problem would be solved if I simply find a way to set this xvelocity to 1 only when the exact enemy clone is within view. Do you guys think this is possible?

In other words - is there any sort of an In Vision event?

[Hblade]

What I'd do is add an if statement. Or redefine one using a void to make the code cleaner, like this:

Code: Select all

if(xscreen>0 && xscreen<view.width && yscreen>0 && yscreen<view.height)
{
    code here
}


If you want to make it a little neater you could define the if statement like this

Code: Select all

#define ifVisible if(xscreen>0 && xscreen<view.width && yscreen>0 && yscreen<view.height)


Then all you'd have to do is this:

Code: Select all

ifVisible {
    code here
}


Thinking about the FPS problem.. gimme a sec and Ill edit this post










EDIT:
Alright, this might solve your FPS problem.

Code: Select all

void safeDraw(char *actorName)
{
    Actor*a=getclone(actorName);
    if(a->xscreen>-5&&a->xscreen<(view.width+5)&&a->yscreen>-5&&a->yscreen<(view.height+5))
    {
        VisibilityState(actorName, ENABLE);
    }
    else
    {
        VisibilityState(actorName, DISABLE);
    }
}


This will draw the actor when he's inside the view, but when he's not, completely disable his graphics, speeding up the game all together.

To use this function:

Code: Select all

safeDraw("Enemy1");


Simply replace Enemy1 with the item you want to disable. it will automatically disable the cloned actors as well, so if you have item pickups, those will not be drawn outside of the view either if you name it.

[lverona]

Hblade, thank you for your time and advice! Will try all of this out!

[Hblade]

No biggie if this doesn't help let me know and I'll try something else. If I can't help, ask skydereign. He's possibly the smartest user on here. If Sgt.Sparky were here, he'd be able to help you in a jiffy. When he was 13 years old he was already the smartest user on the GE Forums (In my opinion). Litterally anything you wanted to know, he could figure out.

[lverona]

Thanks guys. Being a Linux user for three years now, I am used to relying on the community factor and love to help out when I can myself! So I am sure I will figure out how to do my GE game and give it to you guys to play!

[Hblade]

Haha, great news

Linux Tip:
You can use WINE and run gameEditor.exe perfectly as if it were running on windows.

[lverona]

Why? Linux version seems to run just fine!

[Hblade]

While it works fine, you have audio bugs and full screen glitch where the desktop resolution doesn't change

[lverona]

Hey man!
Tried your method. It works, although for some reason it seems to make things even slower when the actor is present on screen. Maybe it continues to make it visible all the time.

Also - this works ONLY for the original actor, the clones are just visually disabled and they are not enabled when you see them. So for some reason the function does not work for the clones.

Maybe I missed something? I added the function to the Global code and then added the call into Draw Actor of view.

[lverona]

Okay, I fixed this, will make write a reply here in several minutes.

[lverona]

Okay, so I did this without the global code and so far without using your IF statement (although I did try it too and it seems to give similar results).

1. Actor is set to NOT receive events out of vision. So this already disables the Draw Actor cycle when Out of Vision.
2. Out of Vision event code says this:

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if(animindex==2 || animindex==3){ DestroyActor("Event Actor"); }
else xvelocity=0;

Meaning it will destroy the enemy if it has animations 2 or 3 - which are the animations of a robot being broken. So if you kill the robot, it will be destroyed when out of view.

3. This is what the Draw Actor of my robot (enemy) looks like:

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if(xvelocity==0){

//depending on the animation
//we send the robot going right or left
//if animation is "broken" we do not move robot
if(animindex==0)xvelocity=-1;
else if(animindex==1) xvelocity=1;
                }



//making sure the robot turns around when encounters a pit or wall
                                if(xvelocity!=0){

if(CollisionFree("Event Actor",x+30*xvelocity,y+2) || CollisionFree("Event Actor",x,y)==0)
 {

xvelocity=xvelocity*(-1);
if(animindex==0) ChangeAnimation("Event Actor", "goright", FORWARD);
else ChangeAnimation("Event Actor", "goleft", FORWARD);
                                          }
                }

What this does is grants the robot velocity according to the current animation - going forward or backward. And it does so only when the robot is within the view.

I will make further tests to see how much of these enemies I can have on screen without lagging, but my slowing down problems have been solved so far, although not always consistently - sometimes GE behaves well, sometimes suddenly starts lagging again. But when I compile the game - it works fine. In fact, compiled it worked fine even with older code...

[Hblade]

Oh wow

and sorry about it not working o.o I dunno what the bug is xD

and grats on getting that idea the animation idea Its nice.