Making a gun that shoots

Tratax

@AtomAlexander what kind of game are you imagining you'll make? there's a few different ways to do this depending on how complex you want to go

Dave

@AtomAlexander are we talking 2D or 3D here? Since you mentioned sprites I'm assuming this is a 2D game using the sprite engine?

If the game is 2D, it is also worth mentioning if your idea is top-down or side-scrolling - this will affect how the direction for the bullet needs to be applied.

AtomAlexander

Side scrolling and 2 d I'm a sprite based guy not good enough at coding to make 3d stuff lol 😂

Maxwello

So you just want to add a gun into the animation right?

AtomAlexander

Yes but I only want the gun to appear when sprite is aiming. (like only when holding be and then only fire when shoulder button is pressed for example)

Maxwello

Part 2 of the video tutorial on sprites gets to this near the end.
State variable within an array of animation data? Or something

AtomAlexander

OK I'll re-watch that video

waldron

@AtomAlexander youl have different states for your sprite(character)
like ;
idle = 0
walk= 1

ect
and then your have your animation for those states

so add a state
draw gun = 2
then for your animation choose the tiles with that state in
for shooting check out a sample or users project and see how they did it

Dave

Everyone's correct here :) You'll need a a few different states and that should manage everything you need.

Are you planning on drawing the sprites yourself with the image editor or using the built-in assets? I'm also wondering what you mean by "aiming"..

If you want to simply shoot straight across the screen, you'll need only to increase the bullet's x position.

If you want to "aim" and shoot in a direction, it's a little different. Still simple, but it involves using something called normalize(). I'm super happy to explain it here, but I won't overload you with info that isn't relevant to what your goal is!

Let me know and I'll put together a post.

AtomAlexander

I'm making my own sprites and yes the bullets will only be traveling along the x axis I call it among because I don't want h to have the gun out and showing unless you press the button to upholster it. Also the gun it's a different separete sprite

Dave

Alright - well it sounds like you'd make us of setSpriteVisibility() on the gun itself, so you might have a button press which sets the visibility of the gun sprite. Let's say you had (in this example code I'm assuming your gun sprite is create and stored in "gunSprite":

In your game loop:

if c.zl then
    playerSprite.aim = true // set a flag in the sprite properties so the game knows the sprite is aiming
    setSpriteVisibility(gunSprite, true)
else
    playerSprite.aim = false
    setSpriteVisibility(gunSprite, false)
endif

This would be alright, but the problem would be that for every frame the ZL button is held, you are setting visibility and the aiming flag. An improvement could make use of the "rising and falling edge" concept in the sprite tutorial part 2 video:

You'll need a global controls and "old" controls variable:

c = controls(0)
old_c = c

You will also want to make sure your gunSprite visibility and player aiming property are set to false before you enter the main loop:

setSpriteVisibility(gunSprite, false)
playerSprite.aim = false

Then, in your main loop

// before you do anything with controls, read them:
c = controls(0)

// check if ZL is pressed and wasn't pressed on the previous frame (when you initially press the button):
if c.zl and !old_c.zl then
    playerSprite.aim = true
    setSpriteVisibility(gunSprite, true)
endif

// check to see if ZL is not held and was held on the previous frame (when you let go of the button)
if !c.zl and old_c.zl
    playerSprite.aim = false
    setSpriteVisibility(gunSprite, false)
endif

// after you've done everything you want, before you draw things, store the old state of the controls:
old_c = c

This way, you only set the visibility and aim state to the correct values once, when the button is pressed or let go of.

There will be much more in terms of the shooting and processing bullets, but this is a core concept which will help!

AtomAlexander

You guys are the best thanks for all the help