How can I get this healthbar to decrease properly... and one other question

[XShotGunZX]

What is it you are trying to achieve?
Well the main thing I want to achieve is to get the healthbar in my program to decrease properly, basically my program is sort of like the popular game brick breaker.. but instead of hitting a ball and hitting bricks, you have to catch balls that fall from the sky, and essentially your catching these balls to prevent them from hitting the earth (background pic) and if they hit the earth you lose health.

Also, if someone is feeling really helpful could you also answer...

How can I get the balls and healthbar to stop flickering, I used View.Set ("offscreenonly") and View.Update and I believe its in the correct place


What is the problem you are having?
Well, I have three different types of balls falling, a red one, a green one and a purple one, the red one works as its supposed to, removing 90 health from the health bar, the purple one removes 90 health on the first time, the green one does nothing throughout the whole program, the next time the purple one hits though, it, for some reason removes 180-270 health and it continues like that.

Describe what you have tried to solve this problem
I used whatever I learned in my computer studies class (not much lol, since I just started programming 5 months ago and we just learned about if statements, variables and rushed through mouse commands), I used the resources on compsci such as the FAQ to remove flickering but it did not work, and I looked through the turing reference but could not find anything.

Post any relevant code (You may choose to attach the file instead of posting the code if it is too long)
Well here's my code, I know im using processes and I've also read that processes are bad.. so if the program is messing up due to that, or if you believe it will mess up due to that in the future.. what can I use instead to make the balls work?

Turing:

setscreen ("graphics:900;550,position:middle;centre,nobuttonbar,title:Brick Breaker") var ch : string (1) var x, x2, x3, x4, x5, y, y2, y3, Health : int var i : int := 0 var xPos : int var yPos : int var button : int Health := 900 x := 0 x2 := 0 x3 := 0 x4 := 0 x5 := 0 y := 525 y2 := 525 y3 := 525 randomize randint (x5, 0, 900) randint (x3, 0, 900) randint (x4, 0, 900) View.Set("offscreenonly") var mypic : int := Pic.FileNew ("Earth Picture2.jpg") process background     loop         Pic.Draw (mypic, 0, 0, picUnderMerge)     end loop end background fork background process redball     loop         loop             drawfilloval (x3, y, 10, 10, 12)             y := y - 2             exit when y < 145         end loop         y := 525         randint (x3, 0, 900)         loop             drawfilloval (x3, y, 10, 10, 12)             y := y - 2             exit when y < 145         end loop     end loop end redball fork redball delay (500) process greenball     loop         loop             drawfilloval (x4, y2, 10, 10, brightgreen)             y2 := y2 - 3             exit when y2 < 145         end loop         y2 := 525         randint (x4, 0, 900)         loop             drawfilloval (x4, y2, 10, 10, brightgreen)             y2 := y2 - 3             exit when y2 < 145         end loop     end loop end greenball fork greenball delay (500) process purpleball     loop         loop             drawfilloval (x5, y3, 10, 10, purple)             y3 := y3 - 5             exit when y3 < 145         end loop         y3 := 525         randint (x5, 0, 900)         loop             drawfilloval (x5, y3, 10, 10, purple)             y3 := y3 - 5             exit when y3 < 145         end loop     end loop end purpleball fork purpleball process brick     loop         Mouse.Where (xPos, yPos, button)         x := xPos + 1         x2 := x + 120         drawfillbox (x, 130, x2, 145, yellow)         View.Update         cls     end loop end brick fork brick Pic.Draw (mypic, 0, 0, picCopy) View.Update process health loop drawfillbox (0,0,Health,25,brightred) if y < 146 or y2 < 146 or y3 < 146 then Health := Health - 90 end if end loop end health fork health

Please specify what version of Turing you are using
turing 4.1.1

[Monduman11]

umm i looked at your code and i dont see any hit detection for the green and purple balls all i see is for the red one. add the hit detection for the green and purple and see if it works. and i see that uve used lots or processes, my advice stay away from them cause they cause more trouble than they're worth, only thing they're good for is music

[XShotGunZX]

Monduman11 @ Mon Jun 14, 2010 7:19 pm wrote:

umm i looked at your code and i dont see any hit detection for the green and purple balls all i see is for the red one. add the hit detection for the green and purple and see if it works. and i see that uve used lots or processes, my advice stay away from them cause they cause more trouble than they're worth, only thing they're good for is music

if y < 146 or y2 < 146 or y3 < 146 then
Health := Health - 90

umm y is hit detection for red ball, y2 and y3 is for green and purple balls... and yea,

Well here's my code, I know im using processes and I've also read that processes are bad.. so if the program is messing up due to that, or if you believe it will mess up due to that in the future.. what can I use instead to make the balls work?

What can I use besides processes to make this program run properly XD?

[Monduman11]

XShotGunZX @ Mon Jun 14, 2010 7:27 pm wrote:

Monduman11 @ Mon Jun 14, 2010 7:19 pm wrote:

umm i looked at your code and i dont see any hit detection for the green and purple balls all i see is for the red one. add the hit detection for the green and purple and see if it works. and i see that uve used lots or processes, my advice stay away from them cause they cause more trouble than they're worth, only thing they're good for is music

if y < 146 or y2 < 146 or y3 < 146 then
Health := Health - 90

umm y is hit detection for red ball, y2 and y3 is for green and purple balls... and yea,

Well here's my code, I know im using processes and I've also read that processes are bad.. so if the program is messing up due to that, or if you believe it will mess up due to that in the future.. what can I use instead to make the balls work?

What can I use besides processes to make this program run properly XD?

um procedures are a good alternative to use instead of processes. and what you do with procedures is have one for your main stuff and then have one for the drawing of the balls and the hp bar. so in the first one put everything that is related with your movement, and hit detection stuff, and then just do another procedure for drawing and it makes your code look neater, and most importantly its more efficient

[XShotGunZX]

well I tryed using procedures, didn't work out..

I still need help on this can someone help me

[TerranceN]

I see from using processes you want to do two things at once. Unfortunately you can't, even with processes. All they do is run part of one process then a part of a different process, the problem is you cannot control the frequency or importance of each process, so one process may get a lot more parts run than another, seemingly at random.

Instead of trying to do two things at once, we can trick the user into thinking that we can. If we run everything in one big loop fast enough, it seems to the human eye that multiple things are happening at once. But we need a way to control how fast that loop goes or on some computers the game will be faster/slower. We can do this with Time.DelaySinceLast(delayTime:int). This will delay for (delayTime - time since last called) so if your game takes 10ms for one loop and you give Time.DelaySinceLast 30ms, it will delay 20ms. This will cap the speed the loop can go. Finally, (simple) procedures are just a way to group similar code together, for more look here. Here is an example of all this in practice:

Turing:

View.Set("grphics:500;500,offscreenonly,nobuttonbar,title:Example") var isRunning : boolean := true var x, y, v, x2, y2, v2 : int := 1 proc Update()     y -= v     y2 -= v2     if (y < 0) then         y := maxy         x := Rand.Int(0, maxx)         v := Rand.Int(5, 10)     end if         if (y2 < 0) then         y2 := maxy         x2 := Rand.Int(0, maxx)         v2 := Rand.Int(5, 10)     end if end Update proc Draw_()     cls         Draw.FillOval(x, y, 10, 10, red)     Draw.FillOval(x2, y2, 10, 10, blue)         View.Update() end Draw_ loop     Update()         Draw_()     Time.DelaySinceLast(33) end loop

Hope that helps.

[XShotGunZX]

yea that helps alot thanks! but there are a few parts I do not understand how to use correctly, can you tell me what they do so I can attempt to use your method in my program lol , only reason im asking is that my teacher will think I did no work and copied all the code if I don't even know what some of my own code does...

code:

var isRunning : boolean := true what is "isRunning" and :=true? var x, y, v, x2, y2, v2 : int := 1 why do you put a :=1 after the variables : int? proc Update () why the brackets with nothing inside? y -= v y2 -= v2 why is it -=? what does that do? proc Draw_ () Why do you put an underscore and brackets here? why do you even put blank brackets XD Time.DelaySinceLast (33) and lastly I couldn't fully understand this.. can you explain this please and thank you :)

[TheGuardian001]

XShotGunZX @ Tue Jun 15, 2010 6:09 pm wrote:

code:

var isRunning : boolean := true what is "isRunning" and :=true? var x, y, v, x2, y2, v2 : int := 1 why do you put a :=1 after the variables : int? proc Update () why the brackets with nothing inside? y -= v y2 -= v2 why is it -=? what does that do? proc Draw_ () Why do you put an underscore and brackets here? why do you even put blank brackets XD Time.DelaySinceLast (33) and lastly I couldn't fully understand this.. can you explain this please and thank you :)

isRunning is a variable. Give it whatever name you want, as long as you know what it represents. := true means that it is a boolean (turing will infer the type of the variable from the value you put in it), and that it is set to true (booleans are either true or false)

the := will give all the variables on that line a value of 1. This is basically just so that they don't accidentally get used before they have a value. You should generally always give your variables an initial value, even if it's an empty one (0 for ints, "" for strings, etc).

Brackets are considered to be good practice, since some other languages do actually require them. The underscore has no meaning, it's just a part of the procedure name.

y2 -= v2 is the same as y2 := y2 - v2. It's just a short from. It essentially means the first variable is equal to itself minus the second variable. Instead of having to re-write the variable you want to subtract from, Turing will understand that you want to subtract from whatever variable you are editing. This also works for +=, *=, and /=

Finally, Time.DelaySinceLast(milliseconds). Essentially what this does is ensure that at least (milliseconds) has passed since the last time Time.DelaySinceLast was called. If that amount of time hasn't passed, the program will wait until it has.
When you use delay(time), the program will wait for (time) milliseconds from when it gets to that delay. When you use Time.DelaySinceLast(time), it will wait for (time) milliseconds since the last time Time.DelaySinceLast or delay() was called, IE:

code:

put "Hello!" delay(50) %waits 50 ms. for i : 1 .. 50     put "in a looooop." end for Time.DelaySinceLast(1000) put "done"

Now, let's say that the for loop in that program takes 150 ms to run. Once the program gets to Time.DelaySinceLast, it will check how long it has been since the last delay was used (in this case, 150 ms). If it has been less than 1000 ms, it will wait for the remaining amount of time (in this case, it waits 850 ms,) so that the time between when the for loop starts and when "done" is put on the screen is at least one second.

[XShotGunZX]

ohhhh ok, I understand it now, well it seems that

var isRunning : boolean := true

does nothing in that program.. so I removed that and I changed all the terms to stuff that we learned and I understand.. so for now my program looks like this

code:

View.Set ("graphics:900;550,offscreenonly,nobuttonbar,title:Example") var x, y, v, x2, y2, v2, x3, y3, v3, x4, y4, v4, x5, y5, v5 : int := 0 var mypic : int := Pic.FileNew ("Earth Picture2.jpg") proc Update     y := y - v     y2 := y2 - v2     y3 := y3 - v3     y4 := y4 - v4     y5 := y5 - v5     if y < 146 then         y := maxy         randint (x, 0, maxx)         randint (v, 5, 10)     end if     if y2 < 146 then         y2 := maxy         randint (x2, 0, maxx)         randint (v2, 5, 10)     end if     if y3 < 146 then         y3 := maxy         randint (x3, 0, maxx)         randint (v3, 5, 10)     end if     if y4 < 146 then         y4 := maxy         randint (x4, 0, maxx)         randint (v4, 5, 10)     end if     if y5 < 146 then         y5 := maxy         randint (x5, 0, maxx)         randint (v5, 5, 10)     end if end Update proc Draw_     cls     Pic.Draw (mypic, 0, 0, picUnderMerge)     drawfilloval (x, y, 10, 10, brightpurple)     drawfilloval (x2, y2, 10, 10, blue)     drawfilloval (x3, y3, 10, 10, green)     drawfilloval (x4, y4, 10, 10, purple)     drawfilloval (x5, y5, 10, 10, brightgreen)     View.Update end Draw_ loop     Update     Draw_     Time.DelaySinceLast (33) end loop

[size=12]Will it affect how the program will run overall if I changed stuff like Rand.Int (blabla) to randint (blabla) or is it just that those things are a different way that turing works like x -= y and x = x - y

and lastly, how would I go about adding the brick code into these procedures... I tried putting the code that makes the brick move into update and the code that draws the brick itself into draw_ and well.... it was a horrible result... I also tried putting the brick code into a seperate procedure and adding that into the loop... and it was messed up lol, sorry if im asking too many questions its just that im new to programming and I have no clue what im doing... heres the brick code by the way.
(The brick is the little box that catches the balls)

code:

loop         Mouse.Where (xPos, yPos, button)         x := xPos + 1         x2 := x + 120         drawfillbox (x, 130, x2, 145, yellow)         View.Update         cls     end loop

[TerranceN]

The isRunning variable was going to be checked every time the loop went around so that you could set it to false in another procedure and exit the loop. I just forgot to add that part.

Putting the moving code into update and the drawing code into draw is the correct thing to do, what was horrible about it? Did you copy the View.Update and cls too (giving you two of each in the Draw_ procedure)? If you did, go line by line and think about what that would do.

[XShotGunZX]

TerranceN @ Tue Jun 15, 2010 8:15 pm wrote:

The isRunning variable was going to be checked every time the loop went around so that you could set it to false in another procedure and exit the loop. I just forgot to add that part.

Putting the moving code into update and the drawing code into draw is the correct thing to do, what was horrible about it? Did you copy the View.Update and cls too (giving you two of each in the Draw_ procedure)? If you did, go line by line and think about what that would do.

oh.....hehehehe... I made a stupid mistake.. I forgot to add a variable to the mouse position thats why it wasn't working.. haha I figured it out after trying to make the brick code work in a completely new program... yea.. ok.. basically I got everything now..

can you explain how the isRunning thing is supposed to work and what it would do for my program? btw thanks for all the help I really appreciate it

[Srlancelot39]

if you are running the graphics in a process, it may flash dispite the use of offscreenonly and View.Update.

[TWizard]

Well answering the first question ask you could just set the damage as in:

var damage, health, x, x2, y, y2 : int

x := 0
x2 := 0
y := 0
y2 := 0
damage := 50
health := 400

if y = y2 and x = x2 then
health := health - damage
end if

Draw.Box (0,0,400,10,red)
drawfillbox (0,0,health,10,red)

If the would be any help to ye. I don't fully understand the concept of the game or your entire question so basically all I got from it was health bar and damage. Thats what I came up with so it may help or be totally unless.

[TWizard]

var red_x, red_y : int

red _ y := 500
red_x := 200

proc Red_Ball
red_y := red_y - 1

if red _ y := 0 then
red_y := 500
end if
end Red_Ball

loop
delay (25)
cls
drawfilloval (red_x,red_y,10,10,red)
end loop

And that should help your process problem just put them in procedures then put them in one loop. At least thats what i understood from your question.