Krool’s Forces: Sweetening the Challenge - The Game Maker's Companion: Game Development - page 122

34. Follow this with a Set Variable action that sets the Variable state to ESTATE_WAIT . Of
course, this should really be ESTATE_ATTACK because we want the Beastie to shoot when
Zool is closer than 150 pixels away. However, we're not going to add the attack state
until a little later on, so we'll always just switch to the wait state for now and come back
and change this later.
35. Follow this with an Else action.
36. Follow this with a Set Variable action that sets the Variable state to ESTATE_WAIT .
37. Include a Set Alarm action ( main2 tab) that sets Alarm 0 to 30 Steps .
38. Include an End Block action ( control tab). There should now be 20 actions in the Step
event of obj_beastie , as shown in Figure 5-7. Notice how the actions for ESTATE_DECIDE
occur after the actions for ESTATE_MOVE , which is the only way of getting into the
ESTATE_DECIDE state. Also note that by the end of these ESTATE_DECIDE actions, it is
impossible for the state to still be in ESTATE_DECIDE . This is important, as we have no
sprite to draw for ESTATE_DECIDE , so it shouldn't ever finish in that state.
Figure 5-7. The Step event of the Beastie object. Note that both of the state transitions from
ESTATE_DECIDE go to ESTATE_WAIT at this stage