Testing if EnemyAI has movement points for move actions or other actions

[NoobDude29]

Hello,

My unit has been separated in 2 different types of “actions” the Move action and “Other” actions, they use different points and are independent of eachother, in this case how should i go about testing if the player has action points to do either a move action or an other action in the EnemyAI script, TryTakeEnemyAIAction.

I have two functions for checking if the unit has enough points to either move or to do other actions(naming will change most likely)

public bool CanSpendActionPointsToMoveAction(BaseAction baseAction)
	{
		if(moveActionPoints >= baseAction.GetActionPointsCost())
		{
			return true;
		}
		else
		{
			return false;
		}
	}
	public bool CanSpendActionPointsToTakeOtherActions(BaseAction baseAction)
	{
		if(otherActionPoints >= baseAction.GetActionPointsCost())
		{
			return true;
		}
		else
		{
			return false;
		}
	}

I dont know if i explained well enough what im looking for here, if not please let me know and il try to explain it better.

[NoobDude29]

So apologies for the stupid question, I was quite tired at the time of posting it but i did figure out the solution to it… il leave the code snippet here in case anybody is doing something similar to what i am and might find this usefull.
Il just paste the check, the rest of the code is exactly the same as in the video.

private bool TryTakeEnemyAIAction(Unit enemyUnit,Action onEnemyAIActionComplete)
	{
		EnemyAIAction bestEnemyAIAction = null;
		BaseAction bestBaseAction = null;
		foreach (BaseAction baseAction in enemyUnit.GetBaseActionArray())
		{
			if(baseAction.GetActionName() == "Move")
			{
				if (!enemyUnit.CanSpendActionPointsToMoveAction(baseAction))
				{
					continue;
				}
			}
			else if(baseAction.GetActionName() != "Move")
			{
				if (!enemyUnit.CanSpendActionPointsToTakeOtherActions(baseAction))
				{
					continue;
				}
			}

[CodeMonkey]

I would caution you against using strings to identify the action, strings are very brittle and error prone, you should never use them for identifying things. I actually talked about this topic in a very recent video https://youtu.be/0_UiF-4-7xM?t=348
You could instead ask the enemyUnit to give you the MoveAction reference, assign the MoveAction in a separate field, then just compare baseAction == moveAction;
Nice job on implementing separate Move and Action points!

[NoobDude29]

Hello there my favorite CodeMonkey!
Il take this time to thank you for all the hard work and all the knowledge you have shared with the community across the years, i have been following you for a long time and its a pleasure doing this course, i plan on releasing a game on steam and il use this course as a base to build upon, so thank you and keep up the good work.

Now on the topic at hand, you are absolutely correct and i have made the necessary changes to avoid using strings, i will place the code here in case anybody else needs it.
Also in the future i might want to make certain abilities(actions) use both a movement point and an action point so the if statements might need to check for something else instead of just the action, maybe a 2 bool flags, but thats for future me.

private bool TryTakeEnemyAIAction(Unit enemyUnit,Action onEnemyAIActionComplete)
	{
		EnemyAIAction bestEnemyAIAction = null;
		BaseAction bestBaseAction = null;
		foreach (BaseAction baseAction in enemyUnit.GetBaseActionArray())
		{
			if(baseAction == enemyUnit.GetMoveAction())
			{
				if (!enemyUnit.CanSpendActionPointsToMoveAction(baseAction))
				{
					continue;
				}
			}
			else if(baseAction != enemyUnit.GetMoveAction())
			{
				if (!enemyUnit.CanSpendActionPointsToTakeOtherActions(baseAction))
				{
					continue;
				}
			}

[Brian_Trotter]

A small optimization here, as repeated access to a method that will yield the same result every time is unneccessary…
At the beginning of TryTakeEnemyAIAction:

BaseAction moveAction = enemyUnit.GetMoveAction();

then in the foreach loop

if(baseAction == moveAction)
			{
				if (!enemyUnit.CanSpendActionPointsToMoveAction(baseAction))
				{
					continue;
				}
			}
            //At this point, baseAction cannot == the moveAction, as 
            //that case has already be dealt with in the if clause that this else refers to
            //making this if redundant.
			else //if(baseAction != enemyUnit.GetMoveAction())   
			{
				if (!enemyUnit.CanSpendActionPointsToTakeOtherActions(baseAction))
				{
					continue;
				}
			}