Enemy AI chase twitching left and right to move vertically

Question

I'm making an enemy follow the player based on his possition and attack if he is within a distance and his last movement (if the enemy last moved to the left, it will attack to the left, etc.). It attacks just fine left and right but not up or down. I tried watching frame by frame to see what happened and discovered that the enemy was twitching left and right to get to the player even if it was above or below him, which is the reason it is recording the last move to the left or right and not attacking top or bottom.

This is the code I use to update the position to where the enemy is going to move (pposX and Y is the player's current position and stillLock the last direction to where the enemy moved)

        xMove = 0;
        yMove = 0;

        if(pposY < y){  //UP
            yMove = -speed;
            stillLock2 = 3;
        }
        if(pposY > y){  //DOWN
            yMove = speed;
            stillLock2 = 4;
        }
        if(pposX < x){  //LEFT
            xMove = -speed;
            stillLock2 = 1;
        }
        if(pposX > x){  //RIGHT
            xMove = speed;
            stillLock2 = 2;

And this is the method I call to create a rectangle with the range of the attack if the cooldown limit is met and hurt the player if it intersects it's collision bounds. (attack is a boolean var indicating enemy is ready to attack)

public void checkAttacks(){
    attack2Timer += System.currentTimeMillis() - lastAttack2Timer;
    lastAttack2Timer = System.currentTimeMillis();
    if(attack2Timer < attack2Cooldown){ 
        return;
    }

    Rectangle cb = getCollisionBounds(0, 0);
    Rectangle ar2 = new Rectangle();
    int arSize = 50; 
    ar2.width = arSize;
    ar2.height = arSize;

    /*
     * Still lock diagram
     * 1 = Left
     * 2 = Right
     * 3 = Up
     * 4 = Down
     */

    //creates collision rectangle


    if(attack && stillLock2 == 3){          //UP
        ar2.x = cb.x + cb.width / 2 - arSize / 2;
        ar2.y = cb.y - arSize;
    }else if(attack && stillLock2 == 4){    //DOWN
        ar2.x = cb.x + cb.width / 2 - arSize / 2;
        ar2.y = cb.y + cb.height;
    }else if(attack && stillLock2 == 1){    //LEFT
        ar2.x = cb.x - arSize;
        ar2.y = cb.y + cb.height / 2 - arSize / 2;
    }else if(attack && stillLock2 == 2){    //RIGHT
        ar2.x = cb.x + cb.width;
        ar2.y = cb.y + cb.height / 2 - arSize / 2;
    }else
        return;

    attack2Timer = 0;

    //if something above happened, check collisions
    if(handler.getWorld().getEntityManager().getPlayer().getCollisionBounds(0, 0).intersects(ar2)){ //damages if player is there
        handler.getWorld().getEntityManager().getPlayer().hurt(1);
        return;
        }
    }

I would appreciate so much if anybody had an idea of how to fix this! (And I'm trully sorry about the code dump).

Answer 1

The problem happen (guess) when you are at an adjacent position where even if position is up\down it still be left\right. Since left\right are the last conditions, it overwrite the value of up\down.

Resolve by either:

1. Use "case" condition instead of "ifs"
2. (Recommended) Use two variables. One for up\down and another for left\right.

As bonus, here's how to organize the attack.

Try this simple logical technique since width = height = size (s).

//position modifier
s = arSize;
m = s / 2;    //adjust as you wish  Range: [s]..[s/2]..[0]

if(attack)
{    
     //UP
     if(stillLock2 == 3)
     {
         ar.y = cb.y + s;
         ar.x = cb.x - m;
     }

     //DOWN
     if(stillLock2 == 4)
     {
         ar.y = cb.y - s;
         ar.x = cb.x - m;
     }

     //LEFT
     if(stillLock2 == 1)
     {
         ar.y = cb.y - m;
         ar.x = cb.x - s;
     }

     //RIGHT
     if(stillLock2 == 2)
     {
         ar.y = cb.y - m;
         ar.x = cb.x + s;
     }
}