[SOLVED]Having trouble spawning mobs

[Cookie10monster]

Hi, I am working on a game similar to terraria and am working on mob spawning. When I set the mobs positions during the load function, they work fine, but when I run this
if love.math.random(1,1000) == 1 then
NumberOfMobs = NumberOfMobs+1
Mobs.posX[NumberOfMobs] = 1000
Mobs.posY[NumberOfMobs] = 300
end
It creates the mob, which is drawn, takes damage when you hit it, and falls. However, it does not collide with blocks, or, if it does, it collides with them several blocks lower than it should. I have done some testing, and found that I am able to spawn in mobs with other ways. For example, if I run this:

if NumberOfMobs<=10 then
NumberOfMobs = NumberOfMobs+1
Mobs.posX[NumberOfMobs] = 1000
Mobs.posY[NumberOfMobs] = 300
end
everything works fine. Any ideas on why this is? Thank you!

Floating Islands 0.3.2.love

Here is the .love

(509.17 KiB) Downloaded 204 times

[s-ol]

You should share a .love.

Also it might be a good idea to handle the mobs differently:

Code: Select all

-- spawn new mob:
table.insert(mobs, {posX = 1000, posY = 300})

-- draw mob
for _,mob in ipairs(mobs) do
  drawMobAt(mob.posX, mob.posY)
end

[Cookie10monster]

You should share a .love.

Also it might be a good idea to handle the mobs differently:

Code: Select all

-- spawn new mob:
table.insert(mobs, {posX = 1000, posY = 300})

-- draw mob
for _,mob in ipairs(mobs) do
  drawMobAt(mob.posX, mob.posY)
end

Shared the .love, and you're right, I probably should handle the mobs a little bit more efficiently. I should probably know this by now, but what is the difference between doing this

for i = 1#Mobs.posX do
DrawMob(Mobs.posX,Mobs.posY)
end

and using ipairs? Is ipairs more efficent? Thanks!

[Positive07]

Shared the .love, and you're right, I probably should handle the mobs a little bit more efficiently. I should probably know this by now, but what is the difference between doing this

and using ipairs? Is ipairs more efficent? Thanks!

Well deleting the monster is way more complicated, you have to delete all the data from the different tables... and tracking all that stuff is not nice really... You could for example delete posX and forget to delete posY and get all weird positions (and hell that is a difficult bug to track), or you could delete a mob you didnt intend to delete...

For example deleting a mob as you have now will be something like

Code: Select all

MobDelete = function (i)
    table.remove(Mob.posX, i)
    table.remove(Mob.posY, i)
    --...
end

Instead if you had a mob table with mobs you could do

Code: Select all

MobDelete = function (i) table.remove(Mob, i) end

And this deletes ALL the properties for that Mob

Also creation is simpler since you can define all the properties in a single table instead of in different ones

Code: Select all

--Now
MobNew = function (x, y)
    local i = #Mob.posX + 1
    Mob.posX[i] = x
    Mob.posX[i] = y
    --etc
end
--With the proposed change
MobNew = function (x, y)
    table.insert(Mob, {posX = x, posY = y})
end

Still this is code design and personal preferences but by expirience we can tell you this is better, and cleaner

Hope this was helpful

[Cookie10monster]

Thanks for the replies, the info is good to know. However, this doesn't solve the original problem. Any ideas?

[pielago]

can you make different files .lua inside your main folder example: main.lua , player.lua, enemy.lua, map.lua..etc
It will be a lot easier to read and fix

[Cookie10monster]

can you make different files .lua inside your main folder example: main.lua , player.lua, enemy.lua, map.lua..etc
It will be a lot easier to read and fix

You're right, its a lot more organized with different things in different files. Not everything is in its own .lua, but I hope this helps. The code for the mob is in the mobs.lua folder. The two original mobs are created in lines 32-52 of the variables.lua folder

[Positive07]

So... where is the .love?

[pielago]

just make others ( .lua) files than upload the (.love) than community can help you solve it
let main.lua be just a main and not all of it lol

[Cookie10monster]

So... where is the .love?

Whoops! It looks like it didn't upload it correctly or something. My bad. The .love in the post is the new one. Thanks!