baseline question

[Matti]

I'm working on a swordfight with several enemy characters and I want the player (well, the sword) to be drawn in front or behind the enemy, depending on the kind of attack.

I have this line to change the baseline accordingly. It's supposed to be the enemy's baseline + 1 or - 1 (basel).

Code: ags

  if (player.Baseline != character[baseChar].Baseline + basel) player.Baseline = character[baseChar].Baseline + basel;

It didn't work at all and I was going to post this here. Then I changed

 character[baseChar].Baseline

to

 character[baseChar].y

and it worked! Shouldn't the default baseline be the same as character.y ?

[Khris]

As far as I understand the manual, you can use the .Baseline property to keep the baseline at a certain fixed position while setting it to 0 will make AGS go back to use the character's feet.
In other words, by default Character.Baseline is always 0 and in that case the engine will use Character.y to determine the drawing order.

[Matti]

Yeah, but isn't it a bit strange that

Code: ags

if (player.Baseline != x) ...

works, while

Code: ags

player.Baseline = character[baseChar].Baseline + x

doesn't work? I mean, both character's baselines are set to 0 (or Character.y), so where's the difference? It seems like I can get the player's baseline, but not the other character's baseline - or I can get both baselines, but not set one baseline depending on another baseline (if both are set to 0)..

[Khris]

The first part will always work; assuming that player.Baseline is 0, you're essentially doing

Code: ags

  if (basel)

The second part tries to set the player's Baseline to either -1 or 1, the former will be ignored I guess and the second doesn't make a difference.

To illustrate it better, here's the proper way to get a Character's current baseline:

Code: ags

int GetBaseline(this Character*) {
  if (this.Baseline) return this.Baseline;
  return this.y;  // Baseline == 0 i.e. is at this's feet
}