Run away!

[Rick]

So the controller has Follow() but I'm looking at run away functionality. I'm curious if there is a cool LE entity way (low math) to do this. At a high level I'm thinking a point could be found in the complete opposite direction of the thing the controller is running away from at a given distance and then I could call the controllers GoToPoint().

 

I'm sure this is some vector math here. Get the vector between the controller and the thing I want to run away from, and then get the complete opposite. Normalize it, then scale it to some distance and see what point that is. Is there a different way that people can think of?

[gamecreator]

I've done the direction part in an amateur way before. I placed a temporary entity (pivot?) at the enemy's position and used Point to point it toward the player. You can then get the angle and add 180 to it to face it the opposite direction. Then use a little math (sin & cos) to get a position some distance away.

[Rick]

It's sort of messy and more code than I'm guessing is needed but it does the trick. Thanks for the idea!

[gamecreator]

Just thought of this: you don't really even need the +180 or the sin/cos math. Once you have the Pivot pointing toward the player, you can just use Move on it back some distance and get its position. No math at all!

[Rick]

I was actually doing that, but listening to you I was rotating and then moving forward but I should be able to cut a couple lines and just give a negative z value in the move. Thanks!

 

[edit]

Saved me 1 line of code, but every line counts

[nick.ace]

Another way you could do it is to just subtract the positions and then calculate the new spot from there:

 

dx = enemy.x - player.x
dz = enemy.z - player.z
normalized_dx = dx/sqrt(dx^2+dz^2)
normalized_dx = dz/sqrt(dx^2+dz^2)
final_x = normalized_dx * distance + player.x
final_z = normalized_dz * distance + player.z

 

And then move the enemy to that position. This way, you wouldn't have to deal with pivots.

[Rick]

That's much less code! I'll check that out. Thanks!