Following and Respawning [SOLVED]

[Atelier]

Hi, I have two quick questions.

The player can team up with NPCs against enemies, and their ally also follows them through rooms. When a player enters a room they're given a list of other characters who are there.

This works fine, however, as the player enters a new room first, (followed by their ally) the latter's name does not show up - the function for checking the room has been called before the ally has a chance to get there. In essence, how do I make sure their ally enters the room at the exact same time as the player, or if possible, just before? Room_AfterFadeIn gives a nasty jarring effect to the game so I don't think it's a solution.

Secondly, how can I implement a simple respawning system for items and characters? Dead characters are sent to room 0 and object visiblity is simply set to false when the player picks them up. Say, 1 minute for characters (2400 loops) and 30 seconds for items (1200 loops).

Thanks,
Atelier

Edit: Thanks for the help, both questions answered.

[tzachs]

For the first problem, I suggest maintaing a variable (or a list if there can be more than one follower) for the follower, and in the "check" function add that variable/list...

For the second problem, when killing a character, just set a timer and when the timer is set return the character.

[Crimson Wizard]

Well, that's my suggestion:

Code: ags

const int MAX_RESPAWNABLE_CHARACTERS = whatever;
const int CHARACTER_RESPAWN_TIME = whatever; // In ticks (1/40 sec)

struct RespawnableCharacter
{
   int Delay;
   int OriginalRoom;
   int OriginalX;
   int OriginalY;
   Character * pChar;
}

RespawnableCharacter[MAX_RESPAWNABLE_CHARACTERS];

Code: ags

// This function must be called every tick:
function UpdateRespawnableCharacters()
{
   int i;
   while (i < MAX_RESPAWNABLE_CHARACTERS)
   {
      if (RespawnableCharacter[i].pChar.Room == 0)
      {
          if (RespawnableCharacter[i].Delay == 0)
          {
             RespawnableCharacter[i].pChar.ChangeRoom(
                                 RespawnableCharacter[i].OriginalRoom,
                                 RespawnableCharacter[i].OriginalX,
                                 RespawnableCharacter[i].OriginalY);
          }
          RespawnableCharacter[i].Delay--;
      }
      i++;
   }
}

Ofcourse, you must setup all the respawnable characters at game start...... Good thing if their indexes go in sequence(s), so you can use loops to do this. In general case --

Code: ags

RespawnableCharacter[0].pChar = cMyEnemy1;
RespawnableCharacter[0].OriginalRoom = cMyEnemy1.Room;
RespawnableCharacter[0].OriginalX = cMyEnemy1.x;
RespawnableCharacter[0].OriginalY = cMyEnemy1.y;

etc etc etc

If enemies are assigned to, let's say, indexes 5 to 30, it will be like

Code: ags

int i = 5;
while (i < 31)
{
   RespawnableCharacter[0].pChar = character[i];
   RespawnableCharacter[0].OriginalRoom = character[i].Room;
   RespawnableCharacter[0].OriginalX = character[i].x;
   RespawnableCharacter[0].OriginalY = character[i].y;
   i++;
}

When character is killed, you simply do

Code: ags

RespawnableCharacter[X].Delay = CHARACTER_RESPAWN_TIME;
RespawnableCharacter[X].pChar.ChangeRoom(0);

have fun