Random spawn

Snivy123454321 · February 2015

I need to some actors to spawn at random intervals. If I use a timer with random(min, max), it will take a random number and use it every time until the game is restarted. Any ideas?

tatiang · February 2015

http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/comment/464547/#Comment_464547

Socks · February 2015

Yes, that's what 'every' means, it means all the members of a set, so it doesn't make sense to have 'every' and then a changing value.

When are you open ?

We open every Saturday.

Oh great, I'll be in town next month, so I will pop in on a Saturday.

I wouldn't risk it if I were you.

What do you mean ?

We might not be open on Saturday.

But you said you were open every Saturday.

Yes, every Saturday for the first day then a different random day every day after that.

WTF?

. . . . . . . .

So . . . you are asking GameSalad to generate a random number and then use that random number every time it cycles around, so it is working exactly as it should, for example the random number chosen is three, so three is used every time.

I'd produce a random timer like this:

Make a game attribute, let's call it X.

In the spawner actor:

Timer, After X seconds
. . . Spawn what needs to be spawned
. . . Change X to a random number
. . . Destroy this actor
. . . Spawn the spawner actor.

Snivy123454321 · February 2015

Socks, you misunderstood, I want random intervals, so 3 seconds the first time, then 4 the next, then 2, etc.

Tatiang's setup works, but thank god for copy/paste, because i have no idea what just happened

tatiang · February 2015

Change self.duration to random(3,7)
First, we set an initial duration for the timer

If game.Time ≥ self.timeStamp+self.duration
The timeStamp is set to game.Time whenever the timer runs. So let's say the timer first runs at game.Time=0 and self.duration is 4. After 4 seconds, game.Time=4 and self.timeStamp+self.duration=0+4, so the rule triggers again.

Change self.duration to random(3,7)
At that point, self.duration chooses a new value -- let's say 6.

Change Attribute self.timeStamp to game.Time
And self.timeStamp gets set to game.Time which is now 4. That rule will trigger again when game.Time is 4+6 or 10 seconds.

And then we repeat the process!

Snivy123454321 · February 2015

Thanks, that makes a lot more sense now

saad1993 · August 2016

@tatiang said:

Change self.duration to random(3,7)
First, we set an initial duration for the timer

If game.Time ≥ self.timeStamp+self.duration
The timeStamp is set to game.Time whenever the timer runs. So let's say the timer first runs at game.Time=0 and self.duration is 4. After 4 seconds, game.Time=4 and self.timeStamp+self.duration=0+4, so the rule triggers again.

Change self.duration to random(3,7)
At that point, self.duration chooses a new value -- let's say 6.

Change Attribute self.timeStamp to game.Time
And self.timeStamp gets set to game.Time which is now 4. That rule will trigger again when game.Time is 4+6 or 10 seconds.

And then we repeat the process!

After setting this up, how do we use this?

Socks · August 2016

@Snivy123454321 said:
Socks, you misunderstood, I want random intervals, so 3 seconds the first time, then 4 the next, then 2, etc.

Yes, that's what my method (above) does.

EDIT: just realised this post is over a year old, whoops, sorry for the late reply

tatiang · August 2016

@saad1993 Just replace the Log Debugging Statements with whatever you want to happen during each loop.

Random spawn

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