Question - Code Don't understand how clamp works with direction

[Paul Simpson]

Hi,

Just a quick question. I'm trying to make a top down shooter in which the player can only shoot in the direction he is facing. I can clamp the gun objects direction to the players angle no problem, but how do I clamp towards the right 180 degrees of the screen? if the player is looking towards the right (angle 0 degrees), the gun should rotate between 270 degrees (down) and 90 degrees (up) but the following doesn't work

if facing = right
{
    image_angle = clamp(point_direction(x, y, mouse_x, mouse_y), 270, 90);
}

Putting the clamp the other way around, 90 and 270, results in the gun object being clamped towards the left, which is what I want when the player object is facing left, but not when facing right.

What numbers should I put in? I tried having the clamp to be 270 and 450, which also doesn't work. I also tried two clamps depending on where the mouse is, one from 270 to 360, the other from 0 to 90, but I couldn't get that to work either.

Please help!

edit: I just tried having the clamp be between -90 and 90 to see if that would work, but no luck.

 

[FrostyCat]

The two-clamp version is fine theoretically, it's just that your ranges aren't comprehensive enough. Here is a variation:

if (facing == right) {
  var mouse_dir = point_direction(x, y, mouse_x, mouse_y);
  if (mouse_dir < 180) {
    image_angle = clamp(mouse_dir, 0, 90);
  } else {
    image_angle = clamp(mouse_dir, 270, 360);
  }
}

 

[Yal]

The built-in direction variable cannot be outside the range [0, 360) and will have angles automatically clamped to this range if they're outside. Values outside that range will be parsed as valid directions for all trigonometric (& lengthdir, angle_difference, etc) functions, though. This can cause a bit of confusion if you aren't aware of it.

 

[Paul Simpson]

I just tried that, I couldn't get it to work. I copied your code as you provided it, the else statement doesnt activate

 

[Paul Simpson]

Ok that does seem a bit confusing. So how can I do it? Should I try using a different function?
Does the clamping of angles to between 0 and 360 also apply to image_angle?