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I've recently implemented Uman's loading enemies on the fly technique from one of the stickies at the top of the scripts forum

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=73014&b=23

This works great but I've noticed that in some cases enemies will be invisible once the player reaches their spawn point only showing the shadow cast at their feet to let you know they are there.

I've setup trigger zones with Umans 'zoneactivate1.fpi' for the AI main and put the enemies name in the 'If Used' field. I've set the enemies 'Spawn at Start' to No, 'Max at any Time', 'Max Spawn' and 'Number to Spawn' to 1 as per the instructions.

I don't need the enemies to respawn multiple times so I'm just using the default 'appear1.fpi' for the enemy AI start as apposed to the 'spawndestroy.fpi' also as mentioned in that thread.

The only references to enemies being invisible are:

'Entities will be invisible if you have placed them far away from the trigger zone but will be already have recieved the activation instruction and await player proximity.'

and

'I really cant see how anyone would be able to get an invisible entity (unspawned) unless they purosefully set up things to do that adjusting the range and trigger zone position will remove that possibility every time.'

I've tried moving the trigger zone and the enemy position in the room aswell but I still haven't been able to resolve it with 100% accuracy. Most of the enemies spawn and appear perfectly every time but a couple of them don't using exactly the same method.

Also I've noticed that the trigger zone doesn't need to be stretched over the area of the spawn point for the ememy to be spawned and my trigger zones are only at most 4/5 squares away from the required enemy.

Can anyone give a definitive methodology for ensuring that enemies are rendered correctly using the spawning technique in Umans thread ?, are there any restrictions for trigger zones e.g. have to be on the same level as the enemy etc as I have a zone just before the player drops 1 floor into a pit with 2 spawned enemies.

I've tried using the 'spawndestroy.fpi' for the enemies I'm having trouble within their AI start and the enemy will be visible once reached but will just be standing there not doing anything.

Any help with this would be appreciated

Nomad Soul,

The load and unload files were and still are an unfinished work. Now quite old. They were originally not intended to be applied to Characters particularly and there may well be some erratic behaviours associated with the use with Characters. At best even the default behaviors of Characters inside FPSC has always been to say the least somewhat erratic and inconsistent with many other factors influencing their behaviours.

Currently with the current run of upgrades I can not say how they may affect the Load/unload files stabiity in use as the current upgrades hae seen some changes in the way various things work.

Personally I have not used FPSC scince V1.04 RC2 was superceeded by the current versions which do not meet with my personal aspirations in fact particularly with reference to FPSC Characters which without going in to detail need some help in the areas of their influence on the engine and their beahaviours which are beyond the scope of the end user control.

If this situation were ever to change then I may pick up the load/unload entities dev again but at this moment in time FPSC contimues to gather a thick layer of dust on my hard disk.

To be honest with you I have not worked with Characters with these files for a long time because of Character instability with recent versions of the engine. Most of my Chracters have had to be removed completely awaitng some future stability for them and their influence on the engine before it is worth picking this up again. Without stability of these things inside FPSC then any attempt to fix issues with these files is just going to go around in never ending circles. Of course we have X10 on the horizon and we do not know what that will mean for itself or the current versons of FPSC.

To me currently it means I have no FPSC I can work with though I dearly wish I did and then I could help myself, you and the FPSC community furher through my own development work. Right now I do not wish to inverst further time in the product until I am aware of where it is going and what it means to me.

But to answer your question. Characters inside FPSC with or without these files use have never been 100% accurate and have always shown numerous erratic behaviours as with some other entities falling within the scope of various engine influences. I think with these files you have to accept their will be some limitations and use them to best advantage to remove as much of the burden of any level on the engine as you can. There are many ways to do that using the files and it should be documented well. At the end of the day they can be a significant help but their are some internal engine restrictions particularly in the case of Characters that impair any such systems capability to reach its full potential as it was never designed to incorporate or accommodate such features or with them in mind.

If it was then the engine would possibly have much more potential to reach greater levels of efficiency even within the development of X10.

Thanks Uman

Sorry to hear about your feelings on FPSC in general at the moment. I can understand why though, I quit development once after flashing lights wouldn't work in a full build of my game, then it was fixed in v1.04 RC8.

I'm using v1.05 RC2 at the moment as I want to try and keep up to date with things but it can be annoying waiting for a fix for something that you wouldn't expect to be outstanding after the product has been around for a few years.

Lee said in a post that he's only going to be working on fixes / stability for things over the next few versions so fingers crossed future releases will get things back on track for you.

I've just done some further testing and I changed the character I was currently using (Fat Zombie) to Zombie Cop with the same trigger zone / spawn points which worked fine.

As you say I will just have to use your method wherever possible in the game on a trial and error bases either compromising on which characters I can spawn in certain situations or accepting that if I really want to use a particular character, to either change the situation or have them spawn from the start of the game. Time consuming but worth it for any potential performance benefits.

By the way, before I noticed the invisible issue, I had every character apart from the 2 necessary at the start of the game being spawned. The increase and stability in frame rate was significant to the point that I was able to keep a substantial amount more graphics detail in and was even considering reducing the player speed slightly.

Therefore I hope this won't be the end of your development on this as I think it could be one of the few things to really improve performance and the amount of potential we can expect to see from FPSC games.

I agree that this is now something in TGC's hands as it clearly works fine for some characters / situations and not in others for no explained reason and must be a stability issue with the way characters are handled and not your method. It's not practical for you to worry whether further development will be required with every release.

Bearing in mind the potential your work has in improving performance it should be viewed as a high priority fix for TGC and I'm a little surprised that this subject has been left to collect a little dust now like your FPSC installation!

If it's not addressed by the time v1.05 final is ready then I might have a go at scripting something to improve the success rate, using your development as a starting point as this is too important to not get picked up again.

Thanks

Load/Unload is a nice code, but IMHO has got 2 problems using it with enemies:

1) if you want that enemies are visible you should remove the alphaetc.. (sorry i don't remember the command now), or set it to 100 from the script, and it would work fine.

2) the big problem is that spawnandestroy script does not recall the main AI script (as appear.fpi script does) of enemies and so they seem without life because they have no main behaviour to run.

I hope Uman could fix this in future, cause all of us would like to use that code with enemies!

Hi guys,

There are many good scripting members here at the forum who could pick this up and improve upon it.

There are probably reasons they have not done so. Pehaps the same ones I have or not I cannot say.

It is the whole concept which needs looking at, not these particular scripts as they could undoubtedly be improved to provide better and perhaps more functionality.

In order for such a system to best add value to the engine the FPSC itself would have to have some further pre-requisites in place. It is a complicated subject and has or had the potential for a wide area of influence for advanced gamemaking with FPSC not refering to fancy features which it would also encourage, but soild basic feature enhanced gamemaking potential, however the pre-requisites do not hold favour with Lee at this stage. The past debate about this is over and Lee and TGC have a plan for FPSC to deliver for the product which currently does not include the main necessary pre-requisite which relates to Charater problems. Without reference to a fix for this then such a system can only be very limited in its benefit. Why is too complicated to go into here. Still I am sure some benefit can be gained by the current possibilities for those who are prepared to put the effort in. Few will be prepared to do so.

The situation with X10 I know not of and would be a completely different animal altogether I presume

At such future time as FPSC would show me it can take advantage of this kind of feature then I will needless to say pick it up again if no one else does and in any case would need to do so for my own gamemaking endeavours.

holy crap u guys write a lot.

Uman is the master of long posts.
Allegdly the update of FPSC that is currently being worked on will alleviate some character issues and increse the speed of FPSC by improving the character AI and other things.
While I am still developing my game(s) I cannot finish them for basically the same reason as others.
Hopefully when the upgrade/source code for FPSC is released in the near future that will solve some of our problems.
Then we just have to worry about the huge file sizes...
FPSC has come a long way forward since V1.
Hopefully we as a community have a lot to look forward to.
Look on the bright side...if some of these posts are long you get reading practice in...