I need help with getting my player to shoot his bullets in a timed manner

d34thst4lker

I'm currently working on having my player shoot only 3 missiles (on screen) at a time, but I want each missile to be shot at a certain rate so they don't bundle together. An example of this is from Megaman X. The shooting is at a VERY nice rate and I would love to know how I can achieve this. Any help will be much appreciated!

Thanks in advanced!

TTStu

Hmmm, you're getting close to having us write you game for you, sometimes a programming problem is something you've got to figure out by yourself, as there are more than one ways to skin a cat!

Having said that, try adding a timer activiation to your firing mechanism.

Eg, if you've got a "fire button" then each time it is tapped, record the "last tap" timestamp. Then, every time you get a new tap, check if the time delta is greater than *some value* (eg .3 seconds or something).

That's just one way.

d34thst4lker

Yes, I have already thought of doing something like that... But unfortunately I do not know the correct method in collecting the timestamps. Which function would I be using to get the timestamp? thanks

d34thst4lker

And also, I don't want the shooting to be disabled until the time has passed. The player is still able to shoot, but the missile just waits until the given time to be shot.

This is so that if the person is holding down the "Fire" button, the bullets wont get crowded together but will fire in an orderly fashion

d34thst4lker

Ok, I sort of got it working but its not perfect,

if ( [event timestamp] - lastTimeStamp > 0.2 ) {
NSLog(@"True");
[mPlayer shoot];
lastTimeStamp = [event timestamp];
}

Maybe someone can give me a better idea?

borrrden

Are you saying that you would like to have the gun continuously fire until the button is released? Or only fire 3 shots like Mega Man X?

iosNighthawk

Hey d34thst4lker, weapon fire can be a little tricky because their are a number of variables to think about. Is the weapon currently firing, is their ammo in the weapon, is it reloading etc.

I would tackle this by creating a Weapon Class. This will keep your code in one easy place to manage your weapon and you will be able to re-use it across games.

To handle variable shooting add a cool down to your weapon class. Say it needs to cool down X seconds until another shot can be fired. Then you can just call fire or shoot on your weapon as much as you want. Internally the weapon will know it can fire a shot if certain conditions are met. Or if you don't want it to handle it internally set a flag for you weapon that you can check to see if you are able to fire a shot.

d34thst4lker

Thanks for the replies... I'll be trying some out.

@borrrden - Well the way Mega Man X has it, is that the bullets are always apart from each other no matter how fast you press the button to shoot. Gotta see it to know what I'm talking bout

seriousGeorge

In that case you just have to add a boolean which sets "allowShoot" (for example) true or false.

Pseudocode:

-(void) shoot() {
  if(allowShoot == YES) {
       //shoot code here
       allowShoot = NO
       [self performSelector:@selector(allowShooting:) withObject:self afterDelay:1.5]
  }
}

-(void) allowShooting() {
 allowShoot = YES
}

Now you can hammer shoot() as often and fast you want... it will always trigger the shot logic every 1.5 seconds (or whatever you prefer)

d34thst4lker

hmm I'll give that a try, thanks

d34thst4lker

works!!!! Thanks!