★★★ Video Tutorial: Bigger/Smaller Collision Area ★★★

UtopianGames

Hi Guys,

Noticed a few users asking for something similar so made a quick video, got a stinking cold atm but i hope my voice is clear enough.

At the end of the video there's also a nice trick to cut down on constraints that seasoned GS users use.

You would obviously turn the alpha to 0 on the white actor so its not visible.

The same method can be used for smaller collision areas useful for platform games where the hero bounding box is too big.

More free video tutorials can be found on our forums (link in my sig).



Darren.

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UtopianGames

Less is certainly better when it comes to GS, looking forward to the video.

Darren.

keweworkshop

tshirtbooth said:
uptimistik, its not meant to be an oh snap

cheers

I seem to remember an oh snap a few days ago which got me in trouble. How does it feel to be on the other side??

ohhhhh snap!

tenrdrmer

Definitely gonna be a better solution for Squares and circles but it will not work for Rectangles right? If you have a long skinny actor it will not work right as I see it. Am I wrong?

UtopianGames

Nice video and tutorial, i made the simple falling box as a quick demo, it's got me thinking though if yours would be lighter if i had an 80x80 space ship actor and wanted the hit area to be 40x40 for the bullets to hit.

Darren.

HoneyTribeStudios

Nice and simple tip TSB, cheers.

Another way to have a different size collision area is to move an invisible actor using the game.time

That way it will work for rectangles.

So moving stuff 'manually' by updating the x and y co-ordinates should be light on the processor. So you can have loads of these in one scene and it won't effect the frame rate.

Change the invisible actor's x and y positions to your visible actor every (whatever time interval you want), but use the game.time instead of the timer attribute.

So make an integer attribute 'zero' with a value 0.

Rule:
When zero = floor((game.time*40)%2)
change self.x to TheVisibleActor.x
change self.y to TheVisibleActor.y

Shaz
__________
www.honeytribestudios.com

imGua

2 UtopianGames, Bit disappointed, cause i'm using the same method, and a was sure that in the video I will see more advanced\optimized method. Tshirtbooth method is interesting, but it's not suits every situation.

JohnPapiomitis

imGua said:
Bit disappointed, cause i'm using the same method, and a was sure that in the video I will see more advanced\optimized method. Tshirtbooth method is interesting, but it's not suits every situation.

no constrains, no extra actors, one rule. how much optimized can u get?

imGua

HoneyTribeStudios said:
Nice and simple tip TSB, cheers.

Another way to have a different size collision area is to move an invisible actor using the game.time

That way it will work for rectangles.

So moving stuff 'manually' by updating the x and y co-ordinates should be light on the processor. So you can have loads of these in one scene and it won't effect the frame rate.

Change the invisible actor's x and y positions to your visible actor every (whatever time interval you want), but use the game.time instead of the timer attribute.

So make an integer attribute 'zero' with a value 0.

Rule:
When zero = floor((game.time*40)%2)
change self.x to TheVisibleActor.x
change self.y to TheVisibleActor.y

Shaz
__________
www.honeytribestudios.com

Interesting. But will it work if invisible actor is smaller, and i have to change visible actor position in that way, will it be smooth?

imGua

JohnPapiomitis said:
no constrains, no extra actors, one rule. how much optimized can u get?

If you are taking about tsirtbooth method, I just have situation where is collision involved, that's why tsirtbooth method doesn't work for me.

UtopianGames

TSB's method seems to work well for a space ship being hit by bullets, just done a quick test with 3 bullets and set it up so they need to hit the main part of ship to register a hit.

Not sure if loads of magnitudes in a shooter example is better than 2 constrains for a collision actor but food for thought as they say...i still think the constrained collision actor has its place for some games.

Nice post this one:) nice to share ideas.



Darren.

StormyStudio

nice work indeed guys...I do like tidy rules

thanks for sharing...

now if we can just get Gamesalad to add a 'collision area box' where we enter the number and it increases the collision area as standard for any actor that would be great...

HoneyTribeStudios

imGua said:
Interesting. But will it work if invisible actor is smaller, and i have to change visible actor position in that way, will it be smooth?

Only use that method to move invisible actors as it will move visible actors jerkily. But yes, you can have the invisible actor as small or big as you want if you are using it to detect when a collision occurs with another actor.

POM

tshirtbooth said:
here is the link, it says its still processing at the time i posted this so give it a minute



cheers

Ha! Good to see you already using my magnitude method
Greate video guys!
Roy.