Creating multiple selectable characters

[zorg]

Code: Select all

characters = {}
characters[1] = {
-- ...
}
characters[2] = {
-- ...
}
-- etc.

would work then; probably what (both of) you wanted.

[pactace]

what the heck that makes no sense

[Jasoco]

It makes total sense. Each character would be part of a single characters table. I call them Entities in my games though. Sometimes Actors. Either way it's all just a table with data in it. (That's what all of Lua is. Tables full of stuff.)

[pactace]

hm so basically make a table such as

Code: Select all

characters = { player 1 
                                                                                       player 2
                                                                                       player 3
                                                                                       player 4}

then do all the

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player[1] = 	{
				x = 256,
				y = 256,
				x_vel = 0,
				y_vel = 0,
				jump_vel = -4000,
				speed = 700,
				flySpeed = 800,
				state = "",
				h = 55,
				w = 45,
				standing = false,
			}
	player[2] =    {
            x = 256,
            y = 256,
            x_vel = 0,
            y_vel = 0,
            jump_vel = -4000,
            speed = 4000,
            flySpeed = 8059,
            state = "",
            h = 55,
            w = 45,
            standing = false,
            }
	player[3] =    {
            x = 256,
            y = 256,
            x_vel = 0,
            y_vel = 0,
            jump_vel = -4000,
            speed = 400,
            flySpeed = 859,
            state = "",
            h = 55,
            w = 45,
            standing = false,
            }
	player[4] =    {
            x = 256,
            y = 256,
            x_vel = 0,
            y_vel = 0,
            jump_vel = -4000,
            speed = 400,
            flySpeed = 859,
            state = "",
            h = 55,
            w = 45,
            standing = false,
            }

then make sure the player = the characters like

Code: Select all

player = player 1 

then have the things that swich them out such as

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function love.keypressed(k)
   if k == 1 then player = player[1]
   elseif k == 2 then player = player[2]
   elseif k == 3 then player = player[3]
   elseif k == 4 then player = player[4]
   end

right?

[Robin]

then have the things that swich them out such as

The key is a string, not a number, and you confuse the player table and the characters table, so I'd do something like:

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function love.keypressed(k)
   if characters[tonumber(k)] then
      player = characters[tonumber(k)]
   end
end

,EDIT: Oops, missed a whole page.

[Muris]

I honestly think the best way to approach this is to make a function, where you create a table with common values, then return the table and fill the rest of the values manually, basically kind of like OOP aproach. Something along the lines:

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local function createCharacter( o )
	o = o or {}
	o.x = o.x or 256
	o.y = o.y or 256
	o.x_vel = o.x_vel or 0
	o.y_vel = o.y_vel or 0
	o.jump_vel = o.jump_vel or -4000
	o.speed = o.speed or 400
	o.flySpeed = o.flySpeed or 859
	o.state = o.state or ""
	o.h = o.h or 55
	o.w = o.h or 45
	o.standing = o.standing or false
	return o
end


local players = {
	createCharacter( { x = 100, y = 200 } ),
	createCharacter( { x = 200, y = 210 } ),
	createCharacter( { x = 300, y = 220 } ),
	createCharacter()
}
local fontHeight 
local playerIndex = 1

function love.load()
	fontHeight = love.graphics.getFont():getHeight()
end

function love.draw()
	local ypos = 5
	
	love.graphics.print( "Current player: " .. playerIndex, 5,ypos )
	ypos = ypos + fontHeight
	for j,v2 in pairs( players[playerIndex] ) do
		love.graphics.print( j .. " = " .. tostring(v2), 10,ypos ) 
		ypos = ypos + fontHeight
	end	
end

function love.keypressed(key)
	if key == " " then
		playerIndex = playerIndex + 1
		if playerIndex > #players then playerIndex = 1 end				
	end
end

You can change turn by pressing space. It shows all the values the object has so you can see the values of each separate object by pressing the space. I suggest digging more about object oriented programming, if you want to know more about this, like adding functions to each object and every object having unique identity (I probably made that up for describing oop). There are also some good implementations for classes in lua in the libraries: https://love2d.org/wiki/Category:Libraries

[pactace]

what is tonumber?

[Robin]

[manual]tonumber[/manual] converts strings to numbers.

[Jasoco]

It converts a value to a number. For instance if you have a string like so "300" it will change it to 300. It basically converts number to other numbers or strings to numbers. It is used when you want to make sure a value is a number before trying to perform a math calculation on it. If it is already a number it will remain a number. Basically.

There's also tostring which converts other values to strings. Like numbers will become strings (300 becomes "300") and booleans become string versions "true" and "false". And nil values become "nil". You'll want to use this on booleans when trying to print their values to the screen. (Like for debugging)

[Muris]

Seems like people just answered. Something to add strings arent same as numbers:

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if 1 == "1" then
	print( "One is one")
else
	print( "One isn't one!")
end

This prints: "One isn't one!", this is because they are different types. It is same as false is not nil or false is not 0 nor 0 is not nil. I think in javascript you can do comparison 1 == "1" which returns true, but if you use strict comparison 1 === "1" in js, it returns false.

Also something to add on jasocos printing. If you try to add string to boolean, you will get an error, so you have to explicitly say, that you need a string version of boolean variable aka tostring(booleanVariable). Same goes with nil
In other words this throws an error:

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print(false .. " yo")