bouncing off the walls

i was wondering.
is there a way to stop the character from bouncing off the walls when it runs into a no-access tile? or NPC collision area? i came across a few problems.
i'm only experimenting now, but when the character runs into an NPC, i want it to pop up a dialog w/out having to push any buttons, but in many games the NPC is on the other side of a counter. so i added a proximity event, and upped the collision to a range that would reach beyond the counter, unfortunatly it doesn't exactly work as planned, and half the time i'm bouncing off the collision area.
any suggestions?
the other half of the question, is the tile shifting problem in osX. it's hard to narrow down what tiles are messing up when you keep bouncing off them.
it would be nice to have something like in the old legend of zelda games, where if you keep walking toward a tile, after a few steps or so, it would push it away a block of some sort and clear the access tile so you could access another area.....
thanks in advance for any suggestions.

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hmmm......i'll look into that.

long distance interaction without collisions/proximity events...

what you require more of less would involve L.O.S. and spells with event links.

let's say the player is walking around a crowded downtown, and across the street someone spots him, and begins to call to him.

the NPC would need to be equippped with a large L.O.S. this would determine the radius of they're interaction
(out of sight out of mind )
the player also needs a spell, in the event link 'cast' put a 'dialog' action, or a 'call event' action.

friendlies and stationary characters can also make use of the L.O.S. parameter.

in order to make these unique one time encounters, create a global, when the spell is cast increment the global, give the spell the condition that only allows it to be cast if the global is 'whatever value you deem necessary'.

'pushing'
i have my ideas, but they're foggy right now, but share the same roots as the interaction scheme.

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... I'm like Imhotep but don't flaunt it.

make the counter the NPC.

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(url="http://"http://www.redknightentertainment.com/rkewerks/htmldavesworld/coldstonelinkspage.html")Coldstone Links For - Art, 3D, Animation, Problem Solving, Tips and tricks.(/url) Morvera ner Morden

hey!,
thanks for the suggestions.
making the counter an NPC worked great.
however, i can use the L.O.S. suggestion for later on in the game. there was a number of reasons i didn't use it this time arround. but i definatly messed arround and have some plans for that method already..(for some reason "cast" wouldn't call up the dialog, but "hit target" did. )
however i'm still wondering how to stop the player from bouncing off the walls.. but i do have one idea for how to push blocks arround and the like.. wich was mapping a key to act as an "action" key.
but i don't know how feasable that is at the moment, and i don't plan on experimenting w/it at the moment, but i'll post something when i do.
thanks again. 🙂

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hmmm......i'll look into that.

The Zelda-style block pushing thing...
Vague idea crossed my mind but would be a problem (in that it would be a pain, rather than impossible) if you had lots of these pushable blocks in one location. But basically you have the blocks as NPCs which are created when the location is loaded, rather than being previously placed on the Map. The XY coordinates are recorded with separate globals (you'd need a pair per block, as each block would be a different NPC), also on the initial event. On collision between your character and the block, you compare the position of the character to the globals associated with the block. Depending on where your character is standing in comparison to the block, it will move in a certain direction by removing the NPC block, adding or subtracting to the associated global and then replacing it at the new position. The block will not move left or right if your character is exactly vertically parallel to it (ie. charachter Y = block Y) and the same goes for the other direction. This should not be a problem if you have old Zelda-style movement in your game, where your character moves one tile at a time (you do this by having the speed of your character set at a multiple of the size of your movement tiles, i believe).
Ah, done... probably way more complex than it needs to be and there's a problem with stopping blocks moving into non accessible areas but is something to work on... forgive me if this is nonsense but i haven't been using Coldstone to make an RPG for some time. Ive been making... other things with it... >: ) .Bit out of touch.
Hope I helped,
Migraine.

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Do you get Migraines? - (url="http://"http://www.geocities.com/ibashmyselftosleep")www.geocities.com/ibashmyselftosleep(/url)
"Kids aren't influenced by computer games at all... Pac man's a computer game, how many kids do you know who listen to repetetive music and take mind-altering pills?"

thanks for the suggestions.
making the counter an NPC worked great.

I AM THE SMARTEST MAN ALIVE, I ANSWERED A SINGLE TECHNICAL QUESTION!!!!!! where are my pants......... dammit......... defeat...........

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(url="http://"http://www.redknightentertainment.com/rkewerks/htmldavesworld/coldstonelinkspage.html")Coldstone Links For - Art, 3D, Animation, Problem Solving, Tips and tricks.(/url) Morvera ner Morden

Migraine sez:
**The Zelda-style block pushing thing...
**
idea...
the NPc has the appearance of the block, and is an aggressive caster, when you are in (LOS=1)range, it casts a spell,
which changes your player map animation to that of a standard animation(pinned down by keyframes) that depicts the player pushing in the appropriate direction.

what this als innately does is causes the NPC to switch to its long 'range/cast' animation wich would be an animation of it, depicted as a block, moving back, to prevent bouncing while this is going on, the range animation has an offset collision that's set to follow the action, upon completing the NPC push animation the last frame switches indeces, to one with a correctly aligned collison sphere
(this index could be used to visually show that the block can no longer be pushed, change its color, play a sound etc)
the last frame of this animation switches he player's map portrait back to the normal animation set...

you might want to give the NPCs spell a condition for execution, etc.

well this would be choreographed dance, as such you'll need to calculate the timing between the two objects.

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... I'm like Imhotep but don't flaunt it.
{ edit }

(This message has been edited by ellrx (edited 06-27-2003).)