Help with enemies respawning elsewhere in map

Most of my code is a big mess with a lot of inefficient fixes. What I'm trying to do right now is no exception.. So imagine that in the last level of my TC, there are "gates" drawn on the wall and whenever you kill and enemy their body disappears and a new enemy is spawned in front of one of the gates at random. The purpose of the body disappearing is to prevent too many actors from crashing the game. The 22 positions that the new actors spawn are hard coded in front of these "gates".

I tried my best to implement this without asking for help, but I'm at a loss. The two problems I'm having are as follows:

1) the enemies are disappearing before their death animation is shown, ideally I'd like them to die, hit the floor and sit for like 10 seconds then disappear, and only after all this would the new enemy spawn.

2) Sometimes when an enemy spawns the game crashes with "MoveObj: bad dir!"


This is at the end of KillActor in WL_STATE.C. 

OH! And I'm using the DOS version of the game.

Code:

if (gamestate.mapon == 9) RemoveObj(ob);
if (gamestate.mapon == 9)
{
int RandomSpawn = US_RndT()%22;
if (RandomSpawn == 0 && tilemap[53][30] == 0)  {SpawnStand(en_guard,53,30,116); }
if (RandomSpawn == 1 && tilemap[53][35] == 0)  { SpawnGift(53,35); }
if (RandomSpawn == 2 && tilemap[52][42] == 0)  { SpawnStand(en_officer,52,42,116); }
if (RandomSpawn == 3 && tilemap[49][51] == 0)  { SpawnStand(en_guard,49,51,116); }
if (RandomSpawn == 4 && tilemap[43][54] == 0)  { SpawnStand(en_dog,43,54,116); }
if (RandomSpawn == 5 && tilemap[36][55] == 0)  { SpawnGift(36,55); }
if (RandomSpawn == 6 && tilemap[29][55] == 0)  { SpawnStand(en_guard,29,55,116); }
if (RandomSpawn == 7 && tilemap[22][54] == 0)  { SpawnStand(en_officer,22,54,116); }
if (RandomSpawn == 8 && tilemap[15][52] == 0)  { SpawnStand(en_guard,15,52,116); }
if (RandomSpawn == 9 && tilemap[11][46] == 0)  { SpawnStand(en_ss,11,46,116); }
if (RandomSpawn == 10 && tilemap[9][37] == 0)  { SpawnStand(en_guard,9,37,116); }
if (RandomSpawn == 11 && tilemap[9][31] == 0)  { SpawnStand(en_dog,9,31,116); }
if (RandomSpawn == 12 && tilemap[9][25] == 0)  { SpawnGift(9,25); }
if (RandomSpawn == 13 && tilemap[10][19] == 0)  { SpawnSchabbs(10,19); }
if (RandomSpawn == 14 && tilemap[12][14] == 0)  { SpawnStand(en_guard,12,14,116); }
if (RandomSpawn == 15 && tilemap[17][10] == 0)  { SpawnFakeHitler(17,10); }
if (RandomSpawn == 16 && tilemap[27][8] == 0)  { SpawnStand(en_officer,27,8,116); }
if (RandomSpawn == 17 && tilemap[33][8] == 0)  { SpawnStand(en_guard,33,8,116); }
if (RandomSpawn == 18 && tilemap[40][9] == 0)  { SpawnHitler(40,9); }
if (RandomSpawn == 19 && tilemap[49][13] == 0)  { SpawnStand(en_ss,49,13,116); }
if (RandomSpawn == 20 && tilemap[52][18] == 0)  { SpawnBoss(52,18); }
if (RandomSpawn == 21 && tilemap[53][25] == 0)  { SpawnGretel(53,25); }
}

Hello,

I guess the problems you seem to be having make sense in the end. Here's what I can tell you about those problems:

1) The KillActor function is called when the enemy dies, i.e, when he begins his death animation. You can think of it as if it's called the next instant after the enemy's health dropped to 0. So, yeah, the moment you finish your enemy, he is going to disappear. If you want them to disappear after being actually dead, you'll have to do this some other way. In fact, there are various ways of doing that. You can make a special death state for each enemy, specifically for that level (although I wouldn't recommend that, considering you're using DOS).
You could create a new function that would be called on every last death state, and that function would only remove the dead guys on the level you wanted, for example.
You could create some conditions comparing the current state of the enemy with its last death state in the DoActor function call, which would remove the bodies in a certain situation.
Anyway, like I said, there are many ways you can do that. You just got to choose what you want, if it's something functional, something good looking or whatever you priorities are.

2) Hmm, I'm not sure what was your intention in your SpawnStand calls.

Code:

 SpawnStand(en_guard,12,14,116);

The fourth parameter is the "dir" parameter. By the way, whenever you come across some function you don't know, it's usually a good start to look at its prototype. For example, look:

Code:

void SpawnStand (enemy_t which, int tilex, int tiley, int dir)

So, yeah, that's why it is a bad dir. 116 is indeed bad. SpawnStand wants an integer value contained in [0,3], 0 being east and going to 3 counterclockwise, each number being one of the four cardinal directions. I guess that is most likely the reason for your problems. The error you're receiving simply means that the direction variable an actor does not belong to the expected values (which are the four cardinal directions plus the 4 intercardinal directions).

Anyway, everything I said here can be confirmed by yourself if you look in the code. That'd be a nice exercise, I guess. Hope I helped you a little bit, at least.

Luigi

For some reason I thought the range 'dir' would be 0 - 360. That seems stupid now that I'm thinking about it. Thanks Luigi, that completely fixed the crash I was having.

Good to hear . Lemme know if you need any more help concerning the other problem.

Luigi