Randomly generated terrain and another confusing feature

mystic 2628

Some of you have probably seen my other post so you know what kind of game I'm making. For others, I'm just making a small, aerial view, pirate ship battling game. All is going well so far, but I've run into a problem with detecting ramming. I'm not exactly sure how to detect which ship is ramming which, and according to physics, if a ship rams the side of another ship, it'll do way more damage than any other type of collision.

I think it may be something to do with the ships X and Y velocity and having the game deal damage to hitpoints depending on how high a ships a velocity while ramming is. However, due to the half sail, full sail and no sail features, the X and Y velocity of the players ship and the enemy ship may be the same, meaning that technically, both ships have rammed eachother at the same time even though the player is the one who rammed the enemy.

Basically, when two ships collide, I need a way of detecting which ship was actually ramming and which ship is being rammed.

mystic 2628

Also, in terms of random generation. I wanted land to be generated in levels as a way of obstructing the player and varying the battlefield. But I've got no Idea of how to randomly generate terrain... I've seen it being done in games such as air supply but I'm not sure how to do it in a smooth way where it won't look like a big graphical glitch.

tatiang

Take a look at this: http://gshelper.com/shop/advanced-game-functions/how-to-spawn-actors-with-out-overlapping-in-gamesalad-tutorials-video

And this: http://blog.habrador.com/2013/02/how-to-generate-random-terrain.html

mystic 2628

The guide is played for? I'm pretty sure my dad won't bother paying for some kind of guide like this but I'll look into it. A dollar is a small price to pay for random terrain generation. Before I go ahead and buy this, will it actually teach me how to generate properly or will I be left with some kind of big guide that still leaves me confused?

tatiang

The first link contains a Video tab where you can watch a video that I think will be helpful to you.

You're asking about an advanced concept so it's going to take a steep learning curve unless you're already familiar with concepts related to terrain generation (I am not). That means a lot of time and trial and error or it means an investment in paying someone to make it for you or teach you how to make it.

You can also see if others here have suggestions for how to get started.

mystic 2628

OK. After looking at the video, it seems pretty good, seeing as I can also make it so islands won't spawn around the player and in can make them spawn outside the players camera. Unfortunately, i'm on the windows version of GameSalad, which is messy and laggy, unlike Mac...

Do you need the index attribute to work this? Because on windows, we ain't got no indexes...

tatiang

An index attribute is just a whole number greater than or equal to zero, whereas an integer attribute is a whole number less than, equal to, or greater than zero. They are for the most part interchangeable.

mystic 2628

So I can still work this without an Index. Problem is my parents have pretty much cut of all access to my computer, so i'm stuck until he decides to give me back my power cable...

mystic 2628

Ok. Got the power cable back. I'm gonna start on this now.

mystic 2628

Is it a good idea to have a table managing actor? Basically where you do all the code involving tables?

mystic 2628

Ok. I've tried it out. Spent an hour at it, but I think I need the index attribute. You remove a row from the table "At index" which automatically makes me assume I need the index attribute. After filling out everything correctly, it still isn't spawning, and my guess is because of the index attribute.

typemaster

In windows, it is called the integer attribute.