Choppy enemy movement

Question

I had a question about How to calculate the enemy to arrive in the middle of cell.

How to calculate the enemy to arrive in the middle of cell?

The posters pointed out that the direction of the enemy isn't needed because the velocity already has a direction. I modified the code -

if(position.x < start.position.x) {
            velocity.x = ENEMY_VELOCITY;
        }
        else if(position.x > start.position.x){
            velocity.x = -ENEMY_VELOCITY;
        }
        else {
            velocity.x = 0;
        }

        if(position.y < start.position.y) {
            velocity.y = ENEMY_VELOCITY;
        }
        else if(position.y > start.position.y){
            velocity.y = -ENEMY_VELOCITY;
        }
        else {
            velocity.y = 0;
        }
        position.add(velocity.x * deltaTime, velocity.y * deltaTime);

The enemy's movements were choppy after it go around the tower I added the range of the middle of a cell but it looks like it'll stop in certain places.

public void plotPath(Cell start, float deltaTime) {

        if(position.x < start.position.x && Math.abs((start.position.x - position.x)) > 0.01f) {
            velocity.x = ENEMY_VELOCITY;
        }
        else if(position.x > start.position.x && Math.abs((position.x - start.position.x)) > 0.01f){
            velocity.x = -ENEMY_VELOCITY;
        }
        else {
            velocity.x = 0;
        }

        if(position.y < start.position.y && Math.abs((start.position.x - position.x)) > 0.01f) {
            velocity.y = ENEMY_VELOCITY;
        }
        else if(position.y > start.position.y && Math.abs((position.y - start.position.y)) > 0.01f){
            velocity.y = -ENEMY_VELOCITY;
        }
        else {
            velocity.y = 0;
        }
        position.add(velocity.x * deltaTime, velocity.y * deltaTime);
    }

I think Math.abs((position.y - start.position.y)) is a wrong way to calculate. I tried to fix 0.1f to different value, but it'll stop somewhere after passing the tower or having choppy movements, it's much less than before.

Answer 1

Conceptually, the problem you're running in to is that you want to stop at an exact point and don't know how to handle the problem with time sliced velocity calculation.

One way to solve this is to consider not moving the enemy at only your ENEMY_VELOCITY number. When the distance between your current position and your desired position is less than your per-frame velocity, set your velocity for that frame to the distance. That'll put you pretty much where you want to be (of course with float inaccuracies) and you can stop at that frame.