Endless waves logic suggestion

Cool, thanks. Oh, no need for getting around it, i run all of the waves as one object which spawns multiple enemies from the pool as soon as is appears, so the pause won't be interrupting anything. After all, i'm back to syncro spawners, which is good, i think it's simpler than triggering waves and moving the level wave settings object around

So, after a set amount of time, pause kicks in, existing enemies are added to the array, as soon as the array is detected as empty (when enemies are destroyed or go off-screen), custom event is fired which starts the elimination type boss wave and unpauses the waves. That about does it nicely.

Hi again! I failed to see few steps forward and i ended up in trouble. As mentioned earlier in the thread, i made 20 syncro spawners (5 on each screen side) with each wave activating a random syncro spawner subset. To make waves spawn using different syncro spawners (for sake of variety), each wave on every syncro spawner is the same. That way, each wave will spawn enemies on a different position and it will be nice and dandy. That all sounds good, but in practice, when difficulty increases and multiple spawner subsets activate at the same time it's no good, since the same wave will spawn same prefabs, only on different positions, which is not the idea i had in mind. Workaround would be overly complicated i think, and it would result in a much larger number of waves involved.

Since there's (i suppose) no way of launching different waves at the same time using syncro spawners, i'm afraid i will have to get back to using triggered spawners. We already discussed it, i can simply use global waves with empty waves that will trigger custom events which, in return, activate triggered spawners.

But there's something i miss and i don't see there's a way to emulate it. By using syncro waves that are not empty i can use "end when all destroyed", which is kind of essential for self regulating the difficulty (making waves spawning faster if you're a good shot). By using triggered spawners there's no way i can implement that. Any suggestions?

One more thing, is there a way to change the number of valied custom event receivers on runtime? I tried getting the spawner properties, but there's no valid receiver quantity to be found.

Hello, sorry, i was unable to answer yesterday. Yes, sorry, a mistype, i meant levelsettings, not spawner, i don't remember seeing valid qty exposed as a variable. I didn't enter the script (i'm at work), is it exposed as a public variable? Is there a possibility to put a random min/max range for valid qty of triggered spawners in the roadmap?


I'll wrap my head around it, i see there is an active mode setting for the pool items, that's handy, but i'm yet too see how to avoid overlapping same prefabs on different spawners. Maybe by adding the prefabs to an array then eliminating the duplicate ones or something like that but all of that seems overly complicated for the purpose. I have an idea. When i use the prefab pools, is there a way to eliminate the item from the pool once it is spawned and then "refresh" it once the new level starts? Does the weight actually represents how many prefabs of certain types are in the pool when i select exhaust before repeat?



I've got a better idea on this one! I can use the existing array used for boss wave spawning i mentioned earlier, as soon as it is empty i can launch a new wave, and when the experience variable hits a threshold, it launches a boss event instead of a new wave. Hope that checking an array every frame won't hit cpu too heavy. Since i'll be using empty global waves, i won't be using wave completion bonuses to add points to experience variable, but killable modifier instead. That's even better, i can fine-tune the difficulty.

In the end i guess it will function something like this. Empty waves trigger triggered spawners. Destroyed enemies add up experience and empty the array. When experience reaches threshold, waves are paused and boss wave event is triggered. When array is empty, end wave event is sent so the next starts (unless experience threshold points to starting a boss wave). For that i will also need an answer for that first question, runtime tweaking of valid triggered spawner receivers.

Hello,

yeah, maybe i'd like to ramp up the difficulty during the level itself by increasing the number of valid receivers on custom events or experience variable, not wanting to wait for the next level. Or launch a special type of random event, for example a meteor rain that will be difficult by itself and i want to keep the enemy spawning at minimum at that time by lowering the valid receivers quantity. I suppose that can help me provide some more variety to the game.

For the second question, that sounds like a good idea but it might prove non-doable in the long run, too much complication leads to branching into further complications. Would the prefab pool with all of the items of weight 1 and exhaust before repeat checked prevent spawning the same prefabs if all of the triggered spawners for the wave are set to spawn them from the same prefab pool?



Or, let me rephrase it to a real situation. There's a prefab pool with two objects, each with a weight of 1. There are two triggered spawners spawning from that prefab pool only. Exhaust before repeat is checked. Custom event hit both spawners at the same time. What is going to happen?

1. Both spawners spawn the same prefab?
2. One spawner spawns one prefab, other one another?
3. One spawner spawns one prefab, other one spawns nothing?

Ok, good enough, than i know how to handle it.




Nah, don't want to bother you, if it can't be accessed easily then it wasn't meant to. Disabling objects sounds like a good idea though, i'll just disable a random number of them and voila. Thanks for the idea and support once again!

Why not!

Well, in the end i decided to go full on with triggered spawners and prefab pools (just as you recommended when i started the thread), no global waves, no syncro spawners, and it's working great even with only with a basic FSM without some in-depth tweaking, based on number of enemies on screen and experience points.



Now i anxiously wait for that valid receiver qty variable