[SOLVED] Relative scripts for character ID's

[Glenjamin]

Sorry for the several posts lately,  this should be the last one until i'll have a great base to work off.

Once again we're talking variable management with characters.


For example, I have this script to indicate a character has died:

Code: ags

 function repeatedly_execute(){
    
 if (NPHealth[cJerry.ID] == 0){
   
   cJerry.Say("Looks like I'm dead friend.");
   
   }

 }

With the current setup I'd need to do an if statement for every NPC in the entire game.

I'm looking for a way for AGS to grab the character.ID of any NPC who's health has reached zero, and then use it to run the death script.

(Theoretically looking like this)

Code: ags

 function repeatedly_execute(){
    
 if (NPHealth[Character.ID] == 0){
   
   Character[character.ID].Say("Looks like I'm dead friend.");
   
   }

 }

(I've also added +1 to the health array so the character.ID's align properly)

Thanks.

[dayowlron]

you need to set up a for loop to check all the characters.

Code: ags

for (int i = 0; i < Game.CharacterCount; i++)
{
   if (NPHealth[character[i].id] == 0){ 
           character[i].Say("Looks like I'm dead friend.");
   }
}

can't test my code but it should be something similar to this.

[Snarky]

(Edit: Sniped by dayowlron. I'll just add that character[i].id is redundant: the ID of character[i] is always i.)

That's easy; it's just character[i].

However, do note that particularly when you're calling something from repeatedly_execute(), you need some logic to make sure it doesn't get called over and over again. So, in this case, you need to make sure that NPHealth[i] is NOT 0 on the next game loop.

Typically you might do something like:

Code: ags

function repeatedly_execute() {
  for(int i=0; i<Game.CharacterCount; i++)  // If you only want to check a subset of the characters, you can change that here
    if (character[i]!= player && NPHealth[i] == 0) {
      character[i].Say("Looks like I'm dead, friend.");  // Added a comma for grammar. :p
      NPHealth[i] = -1;  // Set this to -1 so it doesn't get called again next loop
    }
}

Edit 2: However, rather than having this in repeatedly_execute() (as I always say: if you're a novice AGS coder and you're writing code in repeatedly_execute(), you're almost certainly doing something wrong), a better solution would usually be to do the check and action when you modify the NPHealth of the character. For example, have a Character.Damage(int damagePoints) function that you always call when you want to apply damage to a character, which subtracts the health points, checks whether they're 0 and if so gives the response.

[Glenjamin]

I used snarky's snippet and It worked like a charm. Thanks guys.

When the game first loaded every character in the game started doing a rolecall of "Looks like im dead, friend". I thought it wasn't working until I realized they only said that because I didnt declare their health variables yet!

Time to really get cracking.

[Khris]

For reference, here's the rep_exe-less solution:

Code: ags

// header
import void HealthChange(this Character*, int amount);

// main script
void HealthChange(this Character*, int amount) {
  NPHealth[this.ID] += amount;
  if (NPHealth[this.ID] <= 0) {
    this.Say("Looks like I'm dead, friend.");
    // ...
  }
}

Use it like this:

Code: ags

  cJerry.HealthChange(-10); // lose 10 HP