GameMaker Help with a concept

[Christopher Risdon]

I need help with developing a shooting system for an array of enemy similar to that of a space invaders game. I need an adaptive system that can shoot in 4 cardinal directions based on player position. Say we have an array of 10x10

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Now only the "bottom" most enemies must fire. I already have detections for where the player is. Now the player can destroy any of these enemies from different angles. This creates holes in the pattern. What I need is a way for the enemies to be able to fire and not hit into each other, akin to the space invaders game. I am having difficulty in figuring out how to do the appropriate checks for this.

 

[Siolfor the Jackal]

Have each instance just check of there is another right below it?

 

[NeZvers]

@Siolfor the Jackal but what if there`s a gap bigger than 1?
I'd suggest to have for loop checking up to 9 times below and if it finds other invader sets variable that doesn't allow shooting and use break; to get out of for loop.

 

[CloseRange]

even easier use collision_line( x1, y1, x2, y2, obj, prec, notme );

collision_line( x, y, x, room_height, obj_enemy, false, true);

 

[TimothyAllen]

given you have an array, I would go with the for loop suggestion as it should be more efficient... in a controller object, pseudo

// Fire down
for x, 0 to array_width - 1:
    for y, array_height - 1 to 0:
        enemy = array[xx, yy]
        if enemy:
            enemy.fire(270)
            break

 

[Christopher Risdon]

even easier use collision_line( x1, y1, x2, y2, obj, prec, notme );

collision_line( x, y, x, room_height, obj_enemy, false, true);

I was able to use this to do what I wanted, (Still have an odd bug I need to figure out in the program. But so far I got the it working 99%.