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Crash Course 2: Invaders - Part 9
by Hectate (Updated on 2015-02-01)
Part 9: Keeping the Ship On Screen
You probably played around with the game so far and noticed something; the ship can go off the screen (and doesn't come back!). Let's fix that, we need to restrict the Ship’s position so it can’t go past the screen’s edge.
Step 66: Create a new When Updating Event for the Ship. We need to add an If and an Otherwise If block inside.
We will use the first to check if the Ship’s position on screen is beyond the left-most edge of the screen (an X position of 0). The second will check if it’s past the right-most edge (a value equal to the screen’s width) of the screen.
Note that it will need to take into account the Ship’s width. Stencyl measures an Actor’s x position from the left-most edge of the graphic; if we didn't account for the Ship's width, the right side of the ship could go further than the right side of the screen.
Step 67: For our conditions, we need to compare two numbers; the Ship's position and the left or right edge of the screen. Let's grab the Greater Than and the Less Than blocks from palette. You can find them in the Flow category, Conditions sub-category, in the Equality section.
Put the Less Than (shaped like < ) block in the top If block's empty space. Put the Greater Than (shaped like > ) in the second, Otherwise If block's empty space.
Step 68: As mentioned previously, one of the numbers we want to compare is the Ship's position. We need a block that tells us that, and we can find it under the Actor category, Position sub-category, Position section; visible as x of Self.
We want to drag two of these blocks out; one for each of our comparison blocks (the < and > blocks). We need one in the left side for both. We need one more change for these two blocks, we want them to say "x (on screen)" instead of just "x". We can click on each one and change them easily with the drop-down menus that appear.
Step 69: Now that we have our first value to compare, we need a second value to compare it against. For our first comparison, we are just going to compare to 0; since an X value of zero is the left side of the screen. All we have to do is type a 0 into the right half of the Less Than block.
The second, Greater Than, comparison will be slightly more complex, however. As previously noted, we have to account for the width of the actor on the right side. Let's get the following blocks and drop them side-by-side in the workspace.
- Minus (found in Numbers & Text > Math > Arithmetic)
- Screen Width (found in Scene > View > Screen Bounds)
- Width of Self (found in Actor > Properties > Size)
We then need to drag the Screen Width into the left side of the Minus block, and the Width of Self into the right side. The result will be a stack of blocks that looks like the below image.
We need to drag this set of blocks into the other half of our second condition. Be sure to grab the Minus block to move them in, or we might only get one of the blocks inside of it instead.
Here's a image of what we should have so far.
Step 70: The goal of setting up these two conditions is to identify when the Ship has gone too far and has reached the edge of the screen. Since we now have those conditions set up, we can have something happen when they are true.
Given that our goal is to keep the Ship on the screen, we want to reset the position of our Ship Actor so that it is back on-screen anytime these conditions are met. To do so, we need two of the Set X to [ ] for Self blocks; one for each condition. Let's drag a couple out and put them where they belong.
Step 71: Just like with the comparison for our condition, the first value is rather easy. We just need to put a 1 into the block so it reads Set X to 1 for Self. Simply put, if our Ship is ever at 0 or less X position (further left than the left edge of the screen), we are going to force it back to 1 instead. This will prevent it from ever going off the left side of the screen.
Again, like our second comparison for our condition, the second value requires a few more blocks to do what we want it to. In this case, let's get the following blocks. Remember that you can ALT-drag on our existing blocks to duplicate them; you should do this to grab the entire stack out of the comparison.
- Minus
- Screen Width
- Width of Self
- Minus (yes, we need a second one)
Again, we need the same math to subtract the width of the Ship from the width of the Screen. This time though, we put that stack of blocks inside the left side of the second Minus block. On the right side, we enter a value of 1 so our Ship gets replaced 1 pixel inside of the right edge of the screen.
Step 72: Now we just need to take the above stack of blocks and insert it into the second Set X to [ ] for Self block in our conditionals. The complete set should look just like the image below.
Once you’ve got this new Event set up, test your game. If it’s working, and your Ship stays on screen, it’s time to move on to our next major Event, enabling our Ship to fire the Bullets we created earlier.
97 Comments
somebody pointed out that in the "otherwise if" loop it should be 1 not -1. Indeed if you change this the ship won't go out of the screen
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Mr. FridayOnElmStreet
Check this one and tell me if it worked"
Always
If X of self < 0
Set x to 0 for self
If (x of self) (Width of self) > (Scene Width in Pixel)
Set X to [(Scene width in pixel) - (Width of self)] For self
Make sure that all the (If's) are in the event of WHEN UPDATED .
Make sure again that this Behavior is attached to the PLAYER(YOUR SHIP)
Make Sure to hit Ctrl-R After saving to make sure that its saved and updated normally.
Then Run.
hope it will work with, cuz it worked with me as am testing it right now.
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I am having issues with the ship going to the right just like other people have before. The ship doesn't go off screen on the left, only the right. I've double checked the boxes and they are exactly the same, I even did what patdi85 listed in the comments in case I missed something and it still didn't work. I tried the behavior, anchoring it to the scene but then it makes the ship bounce when I hit the right...that's not gonna cut it. I'm using versio 2.2...anybody have any other ideas?
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Hello guys
I found a few ways to solve this problem that some of you might find useful
1. Go to behaviors - "Cannot exit screen" for the easiest way.
2. Edit the code for behaviors and copy the code there to try and understand what it does.
3. Follow this tutorial but add an extra event when creating - when created - make self always active.
Hope this helps!
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or just create one behavior with:
"when created
anchor self to screen"
then there should be no problem
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One thing I did was put in "Set X to 0" not "X Speed 0". If your spaceship is doing random stuff, check that.
0
Set the first if block as "if x (on screen) of self is <= 0, set x of self to 1 " and it should work. At least it worked for me.
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Same issue here; going to the right causes the ship to disappear before it should. It seems like the function which determines when to remove the ship for leaving the screen is misreading the size of the screen. Both my screen size and background are set to 640 but the right edge of the screen removes the ship at 568.
Currently the only fix I've found is to just have the ship stop at 568 and not allow enemies to be any further right. That's hardly a real fix though; this tutorial is definitely missing an important piece of information somewhere.
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cont... of my previous comment.
if x(on screen) of ship1 < 0
setx to 0 for ship1
otherwishe if x(on screen) of ship1 > 568
setx to 567 for ship1
This worked for me. any value more than 568 will make the ship disappear.
why is this happening?? :/
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When i am trying to go right. the ship disappears. Its same as above except instead of 'self' it says 'ship1'(name i have given to the ship). and instead of 'screen width' it says 'scene width(pixels'.
ps: going to left(ie: setting x to 0) is working.
how do i make it screen instead of scene
0
