Airaxen

I know there are many simple tutorials out there for that 2.5 engine sorta in the vein of Sonic 3D Blast. But the ones I've encountered are too simple and don't do much else other than to jump up and down in that z-axis. I want to be able to have a full platforming experience like a 2D platformer for the most part but that extra depth into the background/foreground. I also want put in that streets of rage or double dragon (whatever analogy works) fighting engine as well, so things flying through the air and all that was another factor. I looked at some isometric engine tutorials which were the closest thing I could find but they also weren't what I was after and honestly quite over my head in the math. I tried thinking of an associated array for the level sort of mapping everything out in x, y and z coordinates but couldn't figure out how to handle say placing the entire level and the background into that array or how to handle collisions. Would anyone be willing to help with thinking on how this engine would be made?

Oh, right, I forgot to mention. I'm using MMF2. I feel a bit stupid now that you mention it's partly in Sonic Worlds. I guess my version of it is out of date, thanks.

I'm starting up another project in MMF2 and I'll making a platformer, though I don't know a lot about those engines yet I plan to tinker around with the Sonic Worlds stuff to see how that works. Anyway I want to use a 'buddy' system where it's basically like how Tails would follow you around in the old Sonic games. But I also want to make something that is a bit smarter and can go out and attack a nearby enemy or whatever. The problem is I'm not entirely sure how to start coding for something like this. I imagine there are conditions to look for in a certain order like how far away are you from the player, if you're below them try jumping up onto something, et cetera. I would really appreciate any tips or advice on how to go about this or where I should start. Thank you for your time.

Ah yeah...That'd be pretty good actually. I suppose I could expand on it and in some cases instead of health intervals certain conditions like the number of players or their status could lead into other actions. But that reminds me. I'm not entirely sure how I should go about programming the AI. One thought was to try and make it very broad and general enough to use a single mass of code to control everything. But I have a feeling I'll be programming the individual AI for each enemy instead. Regardless, any thoughts on that?

It is possible to attack and defend. I do not have the elemental chart built into the game, mostly to keep things simple. However I do want to make the AI 'smart' in the sense that how it selects its targets is going to be effective. Like picking on the person that has the most supportive skills when they're healthy. Switching to the target that has the most attack power when health starts to get low to try and get rid of a threat, et cetera.

That's true. That is almost the precursor to what I'd like to do. Making the decision on how to act not on random chance but on something else. It's that something else I can't figure out or maybe random chance made to look cunning is the best I can do.

Ah I forgot to include that. I didn't want to do elemental stuff or magic/physical split just to make things simple. I'd like to have the system be a bit 'smarter' than the one you proposed but it probably is the most easy to make. I do like the sound of temporarily disabling a skill. That is an interesting concept I haven't thought of before.

Well it's been a long and hard journey to get to where I am now. But other than some problems being swept under the rug I've hit what is probably going to be the hardest thing for me to figure out. Now I must point out the following assumptions: There is already some system that denotes what skills an enemy can use. These skills are given a class that specifies what it can target. Either yourself, or someone you want to whack. Some classes of skills like ones that just target a friendly ally will universally be beneficial. Well I'm not sure how to tackle this problem of making a simple AI. I think it'd be something vastly probability based with lots of random number generating. But I don't know how to make it so an enemy who has a few skills is able to decide which one to use over the other. I'd rather not make it so it is just random in what gets used. I'd like to give more information but that's really all I have at the moment. Any thoughts or suggestions would be helpful.

Well actually I seem to have found a workaround for this problem. But I just keep running into more bigger problems. I don't even know what's going on with the latest one. So it's relevant I'm attempting to make an RPG engine rather than the regular platformer. It...Is much harder than I thought. I don't suppose there's something I can model off of or have someone tutor me along the way?

Someone will smack me for whining all the time. Well here's the problem this time. I have a group of sprites. I want to make this sort of universal code for stuff like dying. So to initiate the death loop that sorts things out I have this little line of code. However if one person dies, then another one dies it doesn't register the second time only because the program doesn't realize something happened twice. I don't know how to make the initiating code general but specific enough to realize multiple deaths happen. The code right now looks like this: "group": internal flag 1 is off: start death loop At least that's the general gist of things.

Ohh, that's a very helpful explanation. Especially that bit on the val() function. I would really enjoy it if you sent me that array tutorial. I still have trouble grasping the ideas of loops, especially that infinite loop stuff. And of course some rep to you for the help.

I really wish there was a very friendly database like thing I could use in MMF. But to my knowledge I just have the array. Before I start ripping my hair out I wanted to ask for some help in how to really interact with the arrays. So I want to ask about the following: If I want to find something in the array I imagine I would need to use a loop function. But I'm not certain on how to keep track of how many iterations the loop has run for. I want to use the number of iterations of the loop as the driving force to find the right row or something in the database. I'm assuming that any coordinate can hold either a value or a string, but I just want to make sure of that. Don't want to realize that there's two copies of a coordinate one for strings or values and have that somehow mess me up. Lastly I wanted to ask how to make an automated way to tell the program to write to an 'empty' row. That is to say to write to the first empty spot regardless of how many rows preceded it. Well, that should be all, thank you for your time.

That does help actually. It'll make my life easier to have a specific way of pointing at a person. I forgot to mention I was using MMF and for the engine it's not terribly advanced. I'm just wrestling with it way more than I want to. I have turns and death programmed into things that's about it.

This was a different question but now I have learned I may have a more fundamental problem. I don't think I fully understand how qualifiers and alterable values work. My assumption is that if I modified alterable A value on the qualifier that anything with the qualifier would suddenly be affected the same and all the alterable a values would be changed. At the moment it seems more like the object gains this additional set of alterable values that are of the qualifier. Also, how do I really create a code that can search through all the qualifiers and find the object with a specific value. Like if I spread a value across 10 objects and I just wanted to find the one that was number 4 and then display the other values it had? Right now I have just made a condition saying basically if the entire group of qualifiers had a value of 4 for alterable a then set a counter to show the alterable b. I thought this worked right since it was doing what I wanted it to, but now it doesn't seem like things are working right. It may be another problem. Lastly I've learned I can't really do this on my own at the moment, would anyone be willing to help tutor me through making an RPG's battle engine from scratch?

I think I understand what you're saying. A little over my head but that is helpful. Thank you.