Special zones in MMF 2?

[Appo]

i was thinking of doing a special zone like in sonic 3 but with my limited programming skills it would be abit difficult. Then i thought well doing a special zone like sonic 2 can't be that hard, i was wrong i can't get the movement of sonic right. So if anyone can help me out with either of the special zones it would be greatly appreciated.

[USC]

Sonic 2's special states are fairly easy to do, as long as you realize that it's the background that's moving and not Sonic. It's all a lot of trickery really.

Make the background be an active object that changes directions based on what you tell it to do (IE: When counter == 1, have the background go into the 'facing right' animation; when counter == 2, have it do the 'going up' animation, etc). You can use the counter to make a layout for the zone.

Then, based what the counter is, create rings at certain points and have them increase in size as they get close to Sonic/the screen; Sonic can only collect them when they're close enough (IE: When they're a certain size).

Hope that gives you some ideas.

[Appo]

Thanks USC but i understand that it's all background trickery, the part i mean is the sonic movement, the way he curves up or down when you press left or right. I've been messing about trying to do the special zone from sonic 3 (i'm guessing thats background trickery aswell) i can get the 'floor' to turn as you do but it's just storing the possition of the ball and that stuff goes over my head.

[USC]

Oh, Sonic's movement is just like a 360 engine, where he's stuck inside a bowl with really high edges. There are plenty of tutorials on the main site for how to achieve that.

As for the Sonic 3 stages, you might try setting up a flat mini-map off-screen, with a player dot that moves on-scale with Sonic (IE: Sonic's facing forward for five seconds, move the player dot one pixel). Then, use the player dot's distance from the orbs to calculate where they should appear on the real screen.

[Appo]

Thanks, i'll give it a go

[Appo]

i have everything movement wise working now, however i have a slight problem with the rings. I want the rings to move slightly out from where they are created to give more of a '3D effect', I've tried using decimals but for some reoson that won't work. I want the rings to go down the red lines in this screenshot, at the moment they go to far out.

Here is a screen shot of my code aswell. I'm just getting used to fastloops so maybe these are causing the problem. If anyone can help it would be appreciated.

[USC]

Just glancing over your code, you need to have some events that make the ring's Xspeed be 0 when they're NOT overlapping the line; that's why they're continuously going to the left or right.

[DimensionWarped]

There's really only one thing you need to know about Sonic 2's special stages...

IT'S A TRAP!

90% of the major changes to tilt are entirely cosmetic sure, but when it comes to the placement of rings and bombs in the distance, that's where things get absolutely nutty. The one saving grace you have is that almost everything is generally on some kind of ring... the trick is finding where in the X and y that ring should be placed at and how big it should be. The size is the easy part... the placement on the other hand, that's tricky.

Of course then you get to those truly weird segments where the rings start flying in from all directions, and I don't know what to tell you there.

[Appo]

@ USC: The lines in the screenshot are drawn on in paint just to show where i wanted them to go. I basically have 3 small squares (the ring creators) called left, middle and right. So two rings are created at the middle creator with a slight offset to the left and right of it, then the F AV counts up so the rings have no y or x speed until F reaches 60 (this gives the rings time to grow in size before actually moving) then if the rings x position is lower than the middle creator it sets the y speed to 1 and the x speed to -1. I tried to set the x speed to -0.5 but it just won't have it and seems to round off to -1.

@ DW: Yeah I can see me having a stress related heart attack with some parts. I am doing two other (simpiler) one like sonic 3 but top down and another with the 'fake 3D' but sonic quicksteps left and right to get rings and avoid stuff, then see which plays best.

[BlazefireLP]

If you find setting Xspeed - or + 1 makes it go to far. Apply Floats and then you can use decimals such as 0.5 and it will look more like what you want.

[Appo]

How would i go about that? i've tried setting the speed to 0.5 but MMF seems to keep rounding it off to a whole number..

[USC]

You could also change how often Xspeed is added to the rings, either by changing 'Always' to 'Every 2 milliseconds' or some sort of constantly incrementing counter system if you don't like using timers.

[Appo]

thanks USC that seems to work, should of thought of that... anyways thanks

[BlazefireLP]

MMF2 doesn't like decimals naturally. So we have to compensate by applying them. But yeah USC's method would be quite a bit easier especially for someone not heavy in the programming field.

[Appo]

Yeah i've normaly use themethod USC mentioned but i'm a bit out of practice with MMF2.

[BlazefireLP]

Hope this will help you a bit It's not the best method for floats, but I'm sure it could be of some kind of use to you, I hope.

[Appo]

Thanks Blazefire, that will hep me hout quite a bit. Rep up