[crayonbako]

Hello! I'm brand new here!

I've been messing around with IG Maker for a couple of days now, have looked through the documentation, sample projects, and searched around the internet, but a lot of the program still eludes me.

I'm trying to get an NPC to follow the Player around in a Jump Action project, but without much legitimate success.

Right now I have the NPC gadget set up to turn towards the Player, then move left or right until it comes within 3 tiles of the Player, then stop until the Player moves again.

The setup I have sort of works, but is pretty dodgy; the NPC gadget tends to get stuck, move erratically, not notice the Player's location, etc.
I really want the gadget to follow the Player's path, just a tile or two behind. It seems like something that should be pretty straightforward, but I can't figure it out to save my life.

I've tried making the gadget a slave, but then it floats in mid-air if the Player is near a cliff, when I want it to land where the player landed.

Anyone had any luck getting something like this to work? Even a caterpillar system for an Action-RPG would be tremendously helpful.

Thanks!

[telles0808]

I did a perfect caterpillar system a time ago for my buddy.

Well, I'll give you the yellow stone path, but don't expect a sample GPD for it because I'm sux with english and the best what I can do is give you some tips in your language.

1) First of all, you did the player gadget, all his movements, jumps, actions, etc. Great, it's a nice start.

2) You did the same for a second player, etc, if you did your game multiplayer, or not, if not, miss this step;

3) Now, start a new project to learn how the caterpillar system works, because doing the game like you did is perfect to rpgs, simple actions, but for multi party members it wouldn't work.

4) in the new projet, make all the animations of your player character or simple copy the animation of your last game for the new game (copy and paste).

5) make a new animation called player, where you'll do the exactly same movements, frames, times, everything exactly like your last animation, but here you'll set all the images as an invisible image, without any type of collision box in any frame.

6) there, in the gadget menu, make the player gadget as you did before, everything like your last game, but using your player animations (invisible player).

7) now, you can set this player to have a slave of any other party member just selection him like a slave. To set this slave you will need set in the first sub-tab on gadget menu the main gadget, or, another method (and best) is shot the player as slave. In the pose field just put a standard (and invisible pose), so, every other party member you'll set like this, only one invisible pose, so, when the gadget player shot this gadget as slave, it will use the same animation (remember why you did everything exactly in the 2 animations!? is for it) of the player (IGM works well with it and it's not in a document, I found it testing and trying).

8) Now you know how to make a selectable player, let's go to do a caterpillar system. First of all, make a gadget with all the necessary animations.

9) The most difficult step is here, where you'll create a nice AI, for it you'll need to figure out how the gadget feel his world and how he will interact with it.

9.1) For the Basic Movements, following the player. Create for each side a standing pose, create a detecting pose, create a jumping pose, falling pose, stopping pose, etc.
9.2) Set the standing pose to automatic go to the searching pose after any condition happen, the conditions are the player is far xx tiles, the player is placed in the other way (in the back of the gadget), the player is moving.
9.3) So, in the searching pose you'll need to do many next actions, think in every situation happening, like a wall in the front, so, click in the next action to select the jump, in his conditionals select to jump in any condition happening like "next step hit a wall" with "player gadget is far 3 tiles or a switch in the ground to make the npc jump, you have many ways to obtain it.
9.4) I did a sample game called "Defending the Community a time ago where I exported it to flash, but flash bug like a hell, so, don't piss me off, just observe the result:


Commands:
A - Fight;
X - Run;
D - Jump;
W - Talk;

This is a odd system, with more knowledge you'll increase the AI, doing better.

This flash sample is bugged, but figuring out the EXE version, where the enemy follow the player, stop when the player is facing him, jump back when he successful hit the player, etc. The little dragon on the double jump was set to follow the player direction when he release the double jump, coming with the player for 1 sec and going away after it, but in the flash it buggy too.

So, good luck and ask if something (or everything) was too much duty to understand.

[crayonbako]

Thanks for the quick reply, telles! I'll give this a shot and hopefully get it to work.

I do have a question though: you said to make the standing pose automatically go to the searching pose if something changes, but what if the NPC isn't standing still?
Should the other poses (walking, etc.) also revert back to the searching pose?

Also, for some reason, your flash demo doesn't seem to work for me. It counts down to 6 then stops moving. (I tried it on two different PCs, both with the same results.)
I'd love to see your demo in action though. Is there another way to access it?

Thanks again for your help! I'll post back after I give your method a try.

P.S. Your English is actually quite good! (Much better than my Portuguese )

[telles0808]

In the flash game you need to press start (space bar) to start, because the Flash export buggy the Timer.

If you do all the other poses to return to the checking pose will happen a problem. Figure it out, when the NPC is jumping, and you change the direction, the npc will stop in the air and try to walk/fall. But on the other side it can be useful, like for walking pose, etc.

But I did it just linking the next poses to change in the flavor of the events.

[crayonbako]

So I've been messing around with your AI tips, and I can indeed get the NPC to follow me around, but it doesn't stay close enough to the Player's movements to do what I'm looking for.
I'm trying to get the NPC to follow the Player's movements pretty well exactly (just one step behind).
Something like the following companion in the old Donkey Kong Country games for SNES.

So far I've tried the AI trick about (which basically gives the NPC the ability to chase after me, but not always stay right behind), and I've also tried mapping the NPC to the controller (i.e. the A button makes both the Player and the NPC jump, etc.), which works until the NPC misses a jump, and then it's back to square one.

It seems like this should be possible, but I can't get it to work like I need.

I'm still going to try some other methods, and maybe something will stick.

I'll keep you all posted.

In the meantime, if anyone has any other tips or ideas, please share them here. Thanks.

[telles0808]

for jump tricks, you can try to put switchs on the ground, when he touch it he'll do the "next pose" for that situation.