| How do you think NPCs should behave? |
| As they do now, where Move( ) will only change facing if a direction different than the current facing is supplied. |
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14% |
[ 2 ] |
| I'd like to see a seperate Face( ) function that only changes the facing, and for Move( ) to move the NPC regardless of the current facing direction. |
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64% |
[ 9 ] |
| I don't care either way, but I'd like to see a photo of Austin in bikini briefs included in the 098 distro. |
|
21% |
[ 3 ] |
|
| Total Votes : 14 |
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| Author |
Message |
Luth
POL Developer
Joined: 03 Oct 2007
Posts: 21
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 Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 11:06 pm Post subject: POLL: Considering changes to NPC Move( ) |
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I'm considering a change to NPCs and I wanted to get user feedback before I go and change anything. As things currently stand, "Movement" is defined as either a change in facing or position. For Frozen and Paralyzed, this makes perfect sense and should not be changed. However, it leads to some peculiar behaviors. For instance, if an NPC is facing NW and the script tells it to Move( N ), the NPC will not walk north, but will only face that direction. This is commonly seen in Move( ) where a direction is not passed in, but rather a bounding box. NPCs will "sit and spin" 7 times out of 8, and only move forward if the Random Direction it chooses happens to match its original facing direction. Needless to say, this doesn't do much to give the illusion of "life" to our NPCs. 
Many of us have scripted around this issue with little jobbies like this:
| Code: | var dir := RandomInt( 8 );
npc.facing := dir;
Move(dir); |
or worse if they are to be constrained in bounding boxes.
So what I propose is to separate "Movement" (except in the previously mentioned Frozen and Paralyzed states) into two functionalities: Face( ) and Move( ). Face( ) will only ever adjust the NPCs facing attribute (exactly like altering npc.facing directly). Move( ) would cause the NPC to change location, regardless of its previous facing direction. In the above example, Move( N ) would cause the NPC to walk one space north, adjusting his facing in the process, even though he was facing NW before.
The other devs will be giving me feedback on the issue, and letting me know any technical reasons for or against the change that I may be unaware of, but I'd also like you, the users, to provide feedback as well. So please take a second, cast a vote, and leave a comment or question if you are so inclined.
Cheers.  |
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