Boids

[mikeisinlove]

without clearing the previous frames
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hohnjFj_zqI

[NobodysSon]

This was posted some time ago but I wanted to say how cool I thought your program was! It is very soothing to watch - reminds me of schools of fish.

[Sir_Silver]

Cool demo.
I have a couple of suggestions about the code:

Code: Select all

closest = {x=boid.x,y=boid.y}

The line above creates a lot of intermediate tables, you can just use 2 variables or do:

Code: Select all

closest.x, closest.y = boid.x, boid.y

I haven't taken the time to download the love file or check out the code, but what's so wrong with the first piece of code? Assuming that there isn't another handle to that table somewhere, it should just get garbage collected eventually, right? Are you just suggesting this for the sake of minimizing the work that has to be done come garbage day? :p

[ivan]

I believe the code was creating intermediate tables in a loop.

but what's so wrong with the first piece of code? Assuming that there isn't another handle to that table somewhere, it should just get garbage collected eventually, right? Are you just suggesting this for the sake of minimizing the work that has to be done come garbage day? :p

Yes, primarily because of the GC and it's just not a good use of intermediate tables
(I'm probably nitpicking, but then you have to access the table via "." which is slower than using locals)
In my experience, poor GC leads to occasional frame drops.

[prixt]

Haven't been able to code properly for sometime, finally got access to my own laptop.
Here's a new one.

[KayleMaster]

Can this be used as a pathfinding alternative for grid based games?

[prixt]

Can this be used as a pathfinding alternative for grid based games?

Well this technically isn't pathfinding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boids
The grid here exists so only entities within a certain range will be iterated.
But you could get creative and use this combined with other algorithms.