This is great - though it did steal my thunder
My approach was roach movement as per DROD. This works fine for one roach (disregarding Beethro movement and diagonal movement)
I can post the script once I work out which laptop has the saves on but the main focus had been:
* Beethro movement "
at the same time"
as roach movement
-- This was achieved using last on the roach sprite
-- Corollary of that meant directions had to be calculated before the move
* Roach movement preference (inc diagonals)
-- This required ... notation and visual markers in horizontal and vertical directions centered on Beethro (like English Country Tune demo) but also 8 different shadow roaches so the roach could be "
teleported"
to the right square based on results (creating diagonal movement when needed)
-- All of this required correct layering so the roach couldn't climb walls etc
* Sword movement
-- Having just one key meant some sort of "
virtual keypad"
to define the rotation. This was fine but felt clumsy
---
* Multiple roaches
-- This is where I gave up. I couldn't work out a generic way to emulate roach movement and target squares for more than one. Seemed I'd need to create 1 + 8 entities per roach and that just felt too clumsy
* Beethro diagonal
-- I couldn't implement this in a satisfactory way since Roaches/Monsters were already using the later frame
I gave up at this point. The guy's a genius and will probably look at the source but I think I hit the current limits for what I wanted to achieve
