Hello everyone,
I'm trying to figure out the most optimal way to make a caterpillar system from a top-down perspective in 8-directions.
For those of you who aren't sure what a caterpillar system is, it's when you have entities (such as party members) that follow behind the avatar in real time. Secret of Mana on the SNES is a perfect example of the behavior that I'm going for.
I've done as much research as I could and found some ways to achieve this effect but none result in the behavior that I want.
For example:
-Pinning each entity to the last using the "rope" setting:
This makes the entities follow the player in a snake-like way which doesn't feel natural and also offers little control over other positioning behaviors.
-Pathfinding:
Because pathfinding is taxing to use when the end of the path is a mobile entity, it's unrealistic to update the path goal frequently enough to have entities consistently follow the player; although it does offer flexibility in terms of positioning.
In Secret of Mana, the characters that follow you are always moving in 8 directions and aren't tightly locked into a caterpillar system, they have some freedom to their movements and the distance between each other when following the avatar; they can also break out of the caterpillar system to perform other actions that require their positioning to be different.
TLDR;
-Caterpillar system is when party members follow the avatar
-Pinning feels weird and gives no freedom
-Pathfinding is too taxing
-Every entity should be locked in 8 direction movement
-Entity movement should feel natural
Here's a video of Secret of Mana for reference:
This is a very challenging task and I would be extremely grateful to get some ideas as to how I could make this happen in Construct 2. Thanks!!