Random location set?

[Retro Lord]

I'm in a bit of a jam. I have a playfield made up of 9 screens. At the start of the game I want the game too decide upon 1 of the screens where the "artifact" is. Aka missile0. The player walks around searching for it. Any ideas on a way too set this up and also making the game remember where the "artifact" is located if the player leaves the screen without picking it up (aka touching it)?

 

My setup for the screens is

if v=1 then playfield:

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
X.....X.................X......X
X.....X.................X......X
X.....X.................X......X
X.....X.....XXXXX.......XX......
X.....X.....XXXXX.......XX......
X.....X.....XXXXXXX.....XX......
X...........X..................X
X...........X..................X
X...........X..................X
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
end

 

etc.

 

And going to another screen is as simple as checking for the players x,y position.

[ZackAttack]

You could use this to generate a random number between 0 and 8. (Add 1 if you need 1-9 instead)

a = (rand&1) + (rand&7)

There are other ways you could do it too. Though I'm guessing the speed for this isn't critical since it's at the start of the game.

[Retro Lord]

Neat. So at the titlescreen I could have:

 if joy0fire then goto start : a = (rand&1) + (rand&7)

And then a system to check what value a is like:

 if a=0 && v=2 then missile0x=50:missile0y=50 else missile0x=200:missile0y=200

 if a=1 && v=4 then missile0x=50:missile0y=50 else missile0x=200:missile0y=200

 if a=2 && v=6 then missile0x=50:missile0y=50 else missile0x=200:missile0y=200

v would be the counter for the rooms. Am way of how this would work?

[Retro Lord]

I think I almost solved it. If I do the code I mentioned above without the else variable at the end it kind of works, but missile0 only appears in screen v=2 and no other screen. And if I leave after finding it it's always present in all the other screens aswell.

 

If I include the else variable missile0 is not in any of the screens.

 

 

 

UPDATE:
Found something that almost worked. if I changed

 if joy0fire then goto start : a = (rand&1) + (rand&7)

too

 if joy0fire then g = (rand&7) : goto start

missile0 is indeed at a randomly chosen screen. I still have the issue with keeping it from appearing if you leave the screen without picking it up.

Edited January 7, 2015 by Retro Lord

[ZackAttack]

Neat. So at the titlescreen I could have:

 if joy0fire then goto start : a = (rand&1) + (rand&7)

And then a system to check what value a is like:

 if a=0 && v=2 then missile0x=50:missile0y=50 else missile0x=200:missile0y=200

 if a=1 && v=4 then missile0x=50:missile0y=50 else missile0x=200:missile0y=200

 if a=2 && v=6 then missile0x=50:missile0y=50 else missile0x=200:missile0y=200

v would be the counter for the rooms. Am way of how this would work?

This code looks very redundant. There should be a much easier way to do it than having so many similar if/else statements.

 

I'm not sure how v is being used in the rest of your program. If you post the .bas source file I could assist you further.

[Retro Lord]

Yeah, I'm not that good at optimizing my codes so I believe they are really bloated and a majority of it could be done alot better. Cheers for having a look at it.

 

Download = default.bas

[ZackAttack]

It looks like variable v holds which room you are currently in and can be 0-8. It also looks like you always begin in room 0. So I would recommend generating a number between 1-8. This will prevent the random number from ever being the starting room.

if joy0fire then g = (rand&7) + 1 : goto start

Now g will contain a room 1-8 to hide the item in. Instead of having an if for each room you can simply compare g with v. If they are equal, you must be in the room with the item. Then we can use data arrays to lookup the x and y positions for each room. Notice that v is used to index into the _item_x_location data array. For example if v is 3,

_item_x_location[v] will evaluate to 120 since 120 is the 3rd item in the _item_x_location[v] array.

 if g = v then missile0x=_item_x_location[v] : missile0y=_item_y_location[v] else missile0x=0 : missile0y = 0

 data _item_x_location
 30, 30, 120, 80, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50
end
 data _item_y_location
 50, 50, 20, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50
end

Hope that helps.

Edited January 8, 2015 by ZackAttack

[Retro Lord]

Neat solution! Thanks a bunch, that was very helpful!