Explosions - what am I doing wrong?

[highrise]

Hi guys

I can't seem to create an explosion. Basically what I wanted to do was have a small explosion when the player hits a deadly block, i.e like a mine, which would damage the player but not kill them - I will worry about that code later, for now I just wanted to test the explode command.

So I made a screen and a player character, and put a deadly block in his path. I made sure to set specialise->particles, and then I put this simple code as a test in the player control event.

IF deadly
EXPLODE 8
ENDIF

I ran the game but nothing happened. Then I put a sound into the code to see if it was running - it was, I got the sound when the character crossed the block, but no explosion.

I tried the same thing with LASER, and that also didn't work. It seems like the particle speciality is not running, I don't know. I also tried it on two different emulators.

thanks in advance.

[highrise]

p.s I also added a small code so it only happens once, i.e I set the variable 'e' to zero at the start of the game.

if deadly
if e=1
explode 8
e=0
endif
endif

....still nothing

[SPECIALIZATION]

WHAT YOU SELECTED?

[alessandro]

As stated in the manual, you must REMOVE your sprite after the EXPLODE command, and it's also wise to add a counter to avoid the explosion not being displayed due to the KILL command. To do so, put a variable, say L, as 0 in the Restart screen event, then the following in the Player control event:

IF DEADLY
 BEEP 100
 EXPLODE 8
 LET L 1
ENDIF
and the following in one of the two Main Loop events:

IF L > 0
 ADD 1 TO L
 IF L > 42
   KILL
 ENDIF
ENDIF
The screen will then restart and L put to 0 again.

Collision with LASERs is detected as COLLISION 10.

If you want to make the sprite explode only once per game, set a variable, say E as in your example, to 1 in the Game Initialization event. Then modify the Player control event as follows:

IF DEADLY
 IF E = 1
   BEEP 100
   EXPLODE 8
   LET L 1
   LET E 0
 ENDIF
ENDIF

[andrewvanbeck]

I'm gonna have a guess... you resized the game window.

I'm afraid its a bug - if you resize the game window then the particle specialisation stops working - lasers, trails, explosions. Its a real shame, but maybe you can make do with the initial window size instead, means starting over but AGD users have to be flexible

[alessandro]

Mar 30, 2017 9:17:44 GMT andrewvanbeck said:

I'm gonna have a guess... you resized the game window.

I'm afraid its a bug - if you resize the game window then the particle specialisation stops working - lasers, trails, explosions. Its a real shame, but maybe you can make do with the initial window size instead, means starting over but AGD users have to be flexible

Not really Both Seto Taisho Vs Yokai and the title I am currently working on are specialized as "particle", do not use the initial window size, and lasers, trails and explosions work correctly. Tested on AGD 4.6 and 4.7.

I tested the code examples above and they work as intended. The explosion counter idea in particular has already been implemented in Seto Taisho.

[andrewvanbeck]

Which emulator are you using Alessandro - I've seen that particles bug in Spin, I'm starting to wonder if the emulator is causing more problems than AGD.

Should really start using Spectaculator again, but god knows where my purchase details are for that.

[alessandro]

ZX Spin was a lovely emulator in its heyday, but Dunny has not updated it for ages and it's buggy as hell.

I am using Spectaculator most of the times, although for testing purposes SpecEmu is, as far as I know, the closest you can get to the real thing - and new software should be checked on real hardware before releasing it to the public anyway.

The only reason to keep using Spin nowadays is that, to my knowledge, it is the only emulator for Windows which allows you to record live tape save output through a WAV file, which is great for studying custom loader schemes when you only have the source code and no sample available.

For the license details I'd advise you to ask Jonathan Needle himself, you are a registered user after all and I am sure he will help you.

[highrise]

hi guys

I discovered the exact detail of this particle bug which I reported in the bug section. Basically, if you set up a screen which includes the last column on the right, then particles won't work.