[Request] Courses / Paths / Nodes / Line for Ways.

Hello everyone,

Construct is earning many new features and it's so nice!

So, to miss the possibility of don't suggest this feature, I decided to try.

In one of the most famous Game Makers of the market, exist a great feature, called by Path.

It work giving to the developer the power of draw a line and then make things follow it.

The line is always modulated in points, so, you can manipulate the line between two points to make arcs or straight lines.

Okay, you can make it using timers and sines, but what I'm proposing is a thing easy to be used by everyone, but hard to be done by Ashley, and that's the point.

I hope this idea gain power, because it can have many, many, many uses, beginning on Tower defense games, going to racing games, passing on tug of war games, vertical shooter, horizontal shooter, RPG games, platform games (giving the possibility of making AI much easier to follow the player) and finally, a path to the Canvas/Camera follow.

Screenshot:

<img src="http://s3-ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com/rpgmaker.assets/files/buildscreens.png" border="0">

These little lines with points where they change the direction is the Course line.

http://www.igmbrasil.com/help/03_0515-layoutcourse.html

igmbrasil.com/help/03_0515-layoutcourse.html

igmbrasil.com/help/03_0512-layoutgadget.html

<img src="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47035927/Samples/course_rpg.jpg" border="0">

<img src="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47035927/Samples/course_space.jpg" border="0">

Behind the scene, the intuitive of placing nodes connected by lines representing paths, combined with the Sin behavior, can be very interesting.

Thank you.

Having a graphical way to make paths would be super useful, I would love to see this implemented.

I noticed the Gameleon engine uses this method almost exclusively.

It would be nice, but the question is how to add it to the editor?

newt

Some possible actions:

• Start follow the course at point X;
• Stop the follow the course at point Y;
• Stop the follow the Course;
• Reverse the follow orientation on the Course;
• Detach from the Course;
• Set Course speed;
• Match the orientation to the Course orientation;
• Random select a new Course when two Courses are overlapping each other;

And some conditionals:

• Course is on screen;
• Course is set enable;
• Course Point is on screen;

And much other things.

It could have a pixel step mode too.

Ey ... You could make it ... But it would take you some scripting ... , say what ... I'll make you an example in free time ...

Whiteclaws it would be amazing!

Very cool system, I would love to have something like this in C2 ;]

Looking at the sample images. I thing this would be a very helpful tool. A visually integrated pathing system.

By the way - if anyone can't wait, R0J0hound made a nice example a while back using a catmull-rom spline algorithm. I used it in airscape for the orbital bullets. Some of the C2 changes have broken it however so I won't post it here.

Ashley, any interest in making this feature? I hope yes! even if it go to the end of your big todo list.

+1

would like to see the pathfinding ability have an option to display the path it takes before moving - pre much what this is

You can draw the path of the pathfinding behavior by placing sprites at each node and aiming them to the next node.

You can draw the path of the pathfinding behavior by placing sprites at each node and aiming them to the next node.That is a good work around, but pathfinding is for more complicated interaction of pathing. While it is good for some things, sometimes having more manual graphical control over modular control is more efficient.

Sort of like WebFont VS SpriteFont for functionality.

+1 yes this would be a great feature/plugin, there's so much you can do with it

It needs the supporting of layout editor to define/draw the path, so that it might not be easy to implement with 3rd plugin.