Java: Basic Movement AI not working

Question

I am working on a basic AI system to get an entity to follow a player. I created both the player and the ghost entity, but it seems as if the ghost only wants to increment both x and y, it never wants to do the opposite, or choose only x or y to use. Here is where I implemented the ghost and player in my constructor:

public MansionAzazel() {
    ...
    TileCoordinate ghostSpawn = new TileCoordinate(52, 50);
    TileCoordinate playerSpawn = new TileCoordinate(54, 52);
    player = new Player(playerSpawn.x(), playerSpawn.y(), key);
    player.init(level);
    ghost = new Ghost(ghostSpawn.x(), ghostSpawn.y(), player);
    ghost.init(level);
    ...
}

Here is the update() function for the ghost:

public void update() {
    int xa = 0, ya = 0;
    if (anim < 1000000)
        anim++;
    else
        anim = 0;

    if (player.getX() > xa)
        xa++;
    if (player.getX() < xa)
        xa--;
    if (player.getY() > ya)
        ya++;
    if (player.getY() < ya)
        ya--;

    if (xa != 0 || ya != 0) {
        move(xa, ya);
        walking = true;
    } else
        walking = false;
}

In which to sum it all up, the ghost entity will only and always move in one direction because the coordinates are 0 and I don't know why.

Answer 1

If the intent is the move the ghost toward the player and if the move() method moves the ghost (you haven't given us enough info to be sure), then perhaps the update() method should initialize xa and ya to ghost.getX() and ghost.getY(). It seems to reset xa and ya to 0 every time update() is called.