Moving an Object to A Point - iphone

Another relatively simple question I hope.
I have a person object that I move to a point designated by a point on a screen touched by the user.
I would like to have a set speed that the object moves to the position in.
However I am not sure how to do it as every time I calculate it it either has varying speeds or the x origin gets there before the y origin and vice versa.
I would like to be able to move them at the same speed and have them reach the point at the same time.
I hope I have explained this well, if not please ask questions
Thanks in advance
Disco

In your update function, calculate the X and Y distance from point A to point B, and each frame increment the difference by the same fraction rather than a constant value.
i.e. player.X += difference / frameCount.

Well, speed is distance * time, and what you need is an instance of NSTimer. Use timerWithTimeInterval:invocation:repeats: and have it invoke a moveObject method. The moveObject method move the object by a certain distance each time it is called until the object's object's location is equal to the destination's location. Then the moveObject method invalidates the timer and Bob's your uncle.
---UPDATE----
Wouldn't you know it, no sooner had I written this and what do I see? UIView animateWithDuration:animations: . Which is the above, but, like, way easier. At least, I hope so for I haven't used it myself. Yet.

Related

Get x and y 'coordinates' from object speed and direction

I have a player object that controls like the ship in Asteroids, using speed and direction. This object is fixed in the middle of the screen, but can rotate. Movement of this object is a visual illusion as other objects move past it.
I need to get x and y coordinates of this player object, from an origin of (0, 0) at room start. x and y do not provide this info as the object does not move. Does anyone know how I can get 'fake coordinates', based on the speed and direction?
One thing to make sure is that you're not just getting x and y on their own, as that will get the current object's x and y position. Instead, make sure to reference the object you're trying to get. For example:
var objectX = myShip.x;
var objectY = myShip.y;
show_debug_message("x: " + string(objectX));
show_debug_message("y: " + string(objectY));
I think you are thinking about it wrong. You do not need "fake coordinates". Real coordinates are fine. Give the ship and asteroids/enemies whatever coordinates and velocity vectors you want; randomly generate them if the game is like Asteroids.
The coordinates do not have to be fake; it is just that when you render in your game loop, you render a particular frame of reference. If the origin is the center of the screen, when you paint an object at (x,y) paint it as though it were at (x - ship_x, y - ship_y) -- including the ship, which will be at (0,0). If you wanted to make rotation relative to the ship too, you could do the same thing with rotation.
Now, you have your question tagged as game-maker. I have no idea if game-maker lets you control how sprites are painted like this. If not then you need to maintain the real coordinates as separate properties of objects and let the official (x,y) coordinates be relative to the ship. The trouble with this is that you will have to update all of the objects everytime the ship moves. But like I said I don't know how GameMaker works -- if it is a problem maybe ask a question more specific to GameMaker.
You'll need to think what you'll use to move the ship around, but then use that code on different variables.
Normally, you'll update the x or y if you want to move the ship, but since you're not going to do that, simply use a custom variable that replaces the x and y value (like posx or posy), and use them on the code that would otherwise be used to move the ship around.

What's the difference between these two SpriteKit functions?

I don't know what's the difference between these two functions.
First:
coin.run(SKAction.moveTo(y: -146.115, duration: 0))
Second:
coin.position.y = -146.115
The SKAction will not be processed until the next frame-- directly after update. If you call .run after didEvaluateActions, your position will not be updated, and you may encounter bugs due to that.
The second line of code will take place immediately, regardless of your position in the SK loop.
Example, if you are using physics, and call .run(.move( on something in didBegin(contact, and then are expecting that sprite to have moved already by didEnd(contact), then you will have problems. In that situation, you want to manually adjust .position instead of using an action.
Secondly, the .run command is also less performant, because it requires the initialization of an SKAction object, which is somewhere between 20-30% slower than just adjusting the position manually.
Granted, that amount of difference doesn't add up to much, but in complicated scenes it could be the difference between getting everything done in 16ms (60fps) or not.
Third, as others have mentioned, there is the forDuration parameter, which allows you to animate the movement over a period of time.. say, 2 seconds, or however long you want.
SKAction.moveTo() has a duration parameter, which is there, because it is an animated version of changing a node's position over the specified time interval. On the other hand, changing the position of a node doesn't animate the movement.
In first line you are using your coin class object and accessing function run through it's object.
coin.run(SKAction.moveTo(y: -146.115, duration: 0))
In second line coin class object accessing it's property position.y and assign it float value.
coin.position.y = -146.115
Hope u got it!!!

JavaFX - Creating basic jumping mechanic

I've been looking for awhile now for someone who had created a good example of making good physics in JavaFX, or even just a 'basic jumping mechanic' as the title says. I can't really find any information on it and I'm not really sure how to implement the idea.
All I want is a basic example, or just an explanation, or even just a point in the direction of what element of JFX I'm going to use.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks
I'm assuming you already have some sort of game loop that ticks 60 times a second such as the AnimationTimer. If you want the jump height to be something like 200 pixels, you need to set and objects y-velocity (velocity is added to the objects location every tick) to a large negative number (as the object is moving upwards) and add a smaller amount every tick to this velocity until it hits zero, (this will be the top of the jump) and then keep adding this value to the y-velocity until it reaches the ground or collides with something. (This value will be your gravity constant)
In essence, you need to set the y-velocity to a high value then take away small increments every tick to slow the jump until the y-velocity hits 0, then begin adding the gravity constant again until the object hits the ground, hope this helps :)

Setting up a power meter in cocos2d

I am a straight noob. Everyone else says it, but I'm dead serious.
My question is, what is the best way to make a power meter to move a object? Meaning, how to set it up so that the longer the player holds the more power they get. Also how, would I incorporate physics?
What I'd like to accomplish is to have a player holding onto something so that when he taps on the screen and hold he powers up, and when he lets go he throws the object a certain distance.
just checking if the there is any thouch sequence or not is rather an easy thing, you just have to overload two functions for your scene class, one to inform you whenever a touch sequence begins and one to tell you touch is ended. the source code example is describe in this link. after than i think you need a gauge to show how much power is gathered so far, the easiest way is to use a texture with full power shown in it and the set it as texture and then show it little by little as the power goes up just as the code below:
// to create the gauge with zero power
CCSprite *s=[CCSprite spriteWithTexture:[CCTextureCache addImage:#"gauge.png"] rect:CGRectMake(0,0,0,10)];
// and then whenever the power changes you call this method
[s setTextureRect:CGRectmake(0,0,power,10)]
note that in my code i am using a 100x10 texture (power is somthing between 0..100 and texture height is 10 as the last parameter in both CGRectMake functions)

Implementing a saved ghost for each level in a game

I'm developing a video game for the iPhone. I want each level to save a "ghost" of the best run, just like in Mario Kart.
I've already implemented it, but I used a brute force approach that stores (x, y, rotation) values each frame (60 per second). Needless to say this is very expensive, especially for a mobile device.
I guess I could store the data less often and interpolate when rendering the ghost, but I'm not 100% sure how to do this and if it will look good.
Has anyone done this before? How would you implement it? Is there a standard approach?
Linear interpolation is very easy, if that's what you want. But if the objects you want to interpolate can have non-linear trajectories (from ballistic or lateral accelleration effects) the thing gets more complicated.
The simplest approach would be for you to record the initial position for an object and its movement vector (x,y,z speed, as offsets per time unit). You won't have to record it again for that object until it changes its speed and/or its direction. Then you just record the elapsed time, the new position and the new movement vector (theoretically you don't have to record the position again, just the vectors, but I'd recommend doing so to have a check value - after the program is debugged you can discard it).
Then to playback you place the object at the original position and, for each time frame, add the movement offset to it until it reaches the time for the next recorded position. And so on.