Coroutines are awesome

[Jasoco]

I will give a shiny Stanley Nickel to the first person who converts LuaStar to use Coroutines so I can have my characters think about their paths without pausing the execution of the game for half a second.

[Inny]

I will give a shiny Stanley Nickel to the first person who converts LuaStar to use Coroutines so I can have my characters think about their paths without pausing the execution of the game for half a second.

Here's my personal implementation of A*: https://github.com/inmatarian/landofway ... finder.lua
Of course, it'll undergo massive tweaking as I work on this project. Anyway, line 99 is the code you're interested in.
Here's a mob that uses it: https://github.com/inmatarian/landofway ... nenemy.lua

[Jasoco]

Thanks! After a bit of work I have something working.

I am a bit surprised though. I notice your path is returned as a string of directions. N, S, E, W instead of a table of X and Y values. Any reason for this? Not that it matters. This actually could work in my favor. Haven't decided whether I'll convert it to an X, Y table version or keep the directions. I do need to do more testing to see how it holds up and if there's any delay while running my game with a dozen enemies all making decisions at once.

[Jasoco]

Having some success, but also encountering a really strange bug where my enemy object will stop halfway through following its path. It's very strange. I had one where I made 100 enemies and 90 of them stopped and refused to move. Is there a limit to how many coroutines can be running? Am I jamming this too full?

I can't see why though since they freeze after they've already generated the path and have started following it. So weird.

Bottom line is I haven't had any slowdown while all of them choose paths. But my grid is only 21x14 tiles. I'll have to test it out with a grid much larger.

[Inny]

The underlying objects move on a fixed grid. I came from the ZZT/MZX background (I was inmate2993) and the project is heavily influenced by it, so NSWE directions are how I designed everything. The A* engine was built in the same mindset.

I'm not sure what your bug is, but if you pulled code from the DragonEnemy, he's cutting down the path to a part of itself. Since the player is actively moving, the enemy is only using A* to get around obstacles and return to attacking, not to touch the player. In fact, one of the places I need to upgrade the A* is to allow a good enough path when it can't find the best path.

A simpler demonstration of my A* engine is this sprite: https://github.com/inmatarian/landofway ... rhardt.lua
On line 24, he gets the path and then immediately follows it.

[Jasoco]

Still working on bug shooting but I modified the pathfinder so instead of returning the path, it applies the path to the enemy object from within itself immediately after it builds the table of directions. I know that's not the problem because I made it work this way after having the problem to try and fix it. I'll figure it out. It's weird and probably a silly oversight on my end. I doubt it's the pathfinding since they usually freeze halfway through following a path. So it's probably a bug in my own following code. Weird though because even if I have only 2 enemy objects, eventually one of them gets stuck while the other never seems to. Need to do more analyzing.

Edit: Well I'm silly. I wasn't even creating a coroutine to put the pathfinding function in. Not that that has anything to do with my problem. It just proves the bug has nothing to do with coroutines. lololol

[PerdeT]

Code: Select all

function love.update(dt)
    coroutine.yield(co)
end

btw, this should be

Code: Select all

function love.update(dt)
    coroutine.resume(co)
end

[ReFreezed]

10 years later...

[Gunroar:Cannon()]

Ahhh, now I understand the foolishness of necro-ing.

Edit: But at least it clears confusion for anyone seeing the thread now

[GVovkiv]

10 years later...

i mean, better late then never, huh?