new chain chomp mechanics, [preview]

Some people may remember the lone chain chomp from the old Pocket Mario demo, and over time I was asked to release a howto for it. But the MMF event code was extremely messy, slow, and unreliable, and I could never make the chomp more useful.

A couple days ago I got the idea to revisit these buggers with the lua object, and the results are as good or better than the PM chomps, as well as cleaner, faster, more reliable, and requiring only a few actual MMF2 events. In theory, it should support as many chain chomps as MMF2 can support objects (but you wouldn't want to do that).

I may still tweak the chain a tiny bit and I have a few speed optimizations to make, plus I need to add comments to bring it up to my normal howto standards. Other than being a nice piece of enemy AI, this is also my proof that lua is useful for more than just data storage and processing.

Edit: Updated, completed
Download link

Oh my god, I love this. ;_;



Extraordinary job, RII!

I might try and do this for GM

it also proves to me that the lua object can handle more than one object at once

TIME TO LEARN LUA

I think Grant already has one on the main site.

Yes. Click object selection has always been anything but scientific and always breaks when you finally think you got it.

the only problems i run into with object selection are for things like a gravity or collision engine that needs to apply to multiple objects (which is one of the reasons why i'm using active picture)

they all require spread values and fast loops. Which is really unwieldy when you're trying to event your logic as well.

Edit: one of the things about selection that pisses me off the most is you can't use an object's own properties in the event actions if there are multiple objects present. ONE object will be selected to have its properties captured, and they'll be applied to every other matching object. In nearly every case, the intuitive behavior is that an object's properties would be reflexive.

I didn't realize until now that an .exe was included.

Very nice job on this. Works nice and smoothly. And support of multiple Chomps in a room is always a good thing.

I see it works somewhat differently from mine. (I basically tried to copy the SMB3 Chomp's behavior as closely as possible with my Chomp how-to.)

FYI the tutorial's complete

And I tried to copy them closely, but I'm not sweating any minor differences. In this tutorial, chomps can be added, deleted (try clicking them), and they optionally will always lunge at the target object (what you're dragging around with your mouse).

Attached File ( Number of downloads: 32 )
 chomp.zip

I am crying over how great this is.

This really is very good indeed.

The only thing I can think of mentioning is that I noticed the chain links don't drag behind the Chomp, but kind of just stretch in and out while staying around the same distance apart. It still looks OK the way it's done, though.

they drag when they're pacing on the ground, if the links are close enough to be touching. Otherwise they stretch, making the chain look like it's under tension anyway. The only iffy part is that they also stretch during the falling portion of their animation, but I wasn't really happy with the alternatives I came up with. I might bang on it some more, but it's a minor detail.

Question: Is it possible for a TGF2 version of this?

Or only MMF2?

Do the Bonus Packs work for TGF2? I don't have TGF2 so I can't test it, but if you have it, let me know.

Ah yes, I see that now.

I think the main thing I noticed was the stretching during the falling portion.

But really, it's not a big deal. I'm just studying them closely, to see where the differences lie between yours and mine.

TGF2 is basically MMF2 with NO plugin support. So in short, no it won't.

I wasn't sure if ClickTeam had released any plugins at all for it, I knew that SDK plugins were out of the question.