Need help creating a roaming theory that I can use for a 2d side-scrolling platform game. What I mean by roaming is travel infinitavely between to points until killed (used for the monsters). Any help or ideas? Thanx. Siberdemon

Unless you are going to do a full pathing method(see A-Star and the rest) you could build a path on a list.

struct movenode
{
int XPosition, YPosition;
int DirectionMoved;
int DirectionFacing;
};

Place your guy on the screen and add the movenode to a list.
Click on a record button.
hit the up and down arrow keys to move your creature and record the movenode and store it on a list.
Leave a little arrow to show where you''ve travelled and make sure you loop it correctly.
Click on a save button and record the list of movenodes to the hard-drive. Then you can load in the list and start the creature anywhere on the list.
You might also want to record the key strokes; it really depends on your movement routines


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Oh, keep cycling through the list either forwards or backwards.

ZoomBoy

siberdemon, just to avoid confusion in the future by attempting to establish some sort of common terminology, moving between 2 or more set points is usually considered ''patrolling''. Usually a creature would patrol between several points to guard an area. Whereas ''roaming'' would imply a much more random kind of motion.

You could also combine a simple ''brute force'' pathfinding method with few waypoints, providing that you set your waypoints up so that you can always trace a straight line from one to the next. The ''brute force'' method would be something simple like:

if (target is to the east)    go east;else{    if (target is to the west)        go west;}if (target is to the north)    go north;else{    if (target is to the south)        go south;}