How to make a tile vanish after player steps on it, in a tilebased game?

Question

So I'm adding the basic mechanic of making frail/breaking tiles, those that break apart and disappear after the player has walked ontop of them. Now I thought this would be as easy as...:

//Breaking tiles represents the 2d array number, that describes the breaking tiletype.

if( TileWeAreStandingOn == breakingTile){

        //frameCount is a variable that counts the frames, after 30 frames (1 second) the tile disappears.

            frameCount++;
            if(frameCount > 30){

        //So, when 30 frames has passed, the tile is removed

            TileWeAreStandingOn = noTile;
            frameCount = 0;

        }
}

Now this works, but it only works WHILE you are standing on the breaking tile, once you jump, the countdown stops since the initial if-statement is not valid anymore. So I am trying to find ways around this where the player could jump onto a frail/breakable tile, and then jump onwards, and the tile would still break after 1 second. Also, if he walks past several breakable tiles in a row, they should all break timely, that is, they should all break after a second of the player has moved off of that tile. (which would result in a domino like timing, where one breaks shortly after another)

I need to make the tiles work independently, so that each tile reacts and starts to disappear/break whenever the player touches it. But my system is build around how the player interacts with the 2d array map and the tiles aren't independent entities, only the player is.

So I'm asking for suggestions how I can make the tiles react independently based on Players interactions with them? Especially in this case, where a tile should disappear a second after the players has touched it.

Thanks in advance guys!

Answer 1

Isn't it as simple as having a collection of tile locations and frame counters that get updated?

So where you have that code now (in rough pseudocode),

if( thisTile == breakable && !breakingTiles.Contains( thisTile ) )
{
    breakingTiles.Add( thisTile );
}

And somewhere else you do something like

foreach( tile in breakingTiles )
{
  ++tile.timeUntilBroken;
  if( tile.timeUntilBroken > 30 )
  {
     tile.Break(); // or whatever
  }
}

Answer 2

Use flash.utils.Timer to fire a destruction event for each tile.

In the simplest case, this would look something like this (no guarantee for syntax correctness, I don't have the SDK installed here).

if( TileWeAreStandingOn == breakingTile)
{
    var destructionTimer:Timer = new Timer(1000 /* milliseconds */, 1);
    /**
      * This assumes TileWeAreStandingOn is a local variable in this method's scope,
      * so it can be bound with its current value into the event-handling closure.
      * It would need a small rewrite if it's an instance or class variable.
      */   
    destructionTimer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER_COMPLETE,
        function {) { TileWeAreStandingOn = noTile; });
    destructionTimer.start();
}

Answer 3

The way around it is to have/create a memory where You store information WHAT should happen and WHEN it should happen. Then memory should be checked whether time has elapsed (in WHEN) and if it did, then do that WHAT should happen.

You can acomplish this in several ways:

• have few variables, this would work for one event (one WHEN, WHAT)
• have array of variables ... see Tetrad
• have callback ... see Martin

Each has its own pros/cons.

You seem to me to be quite new/unexperienced to programming. I would recommend You to do some more excercises in general programming. Data structures and algorithms. Quite nice book about programming is C Programming Language, the language it is for -C- is similar to Flash. You should also try searching stackexchange for recomendations on beginners book/tutorials on programming.