What kind of shift does a power-up use?

Or rather, which kind of shift is the closest in shape to a power-up?

Let me explain. I wanted a house with a ghost in it to talk after the player got the ghost eye, and because using signs in an empty house looks weird, I needed to use flag warps for it. At first I used a square shift because I wanted to make extra sure the player triggered it when they got the ghost eye, but later I realized that it worked a little too well, and it was possible to trigger the shift without getting the eye. So now I'm using a circle shift. However, I'm not sure it's impossible to trigger one without the other here, either. So what kind of shift would work best here?

I think the "spot" shape is closest in size to power-ups. The collision mask of power-ups is their visible shape; so if you leave visibility on, you can see how well they line up. You could give the player the Eye with the Shift to ensure it is collected.

Another approach, place the Eye in a narrow pit. It will be much harder for players to hit one object without hitting the other.

Foolproof approach, make the player fall down a chute to collect the power. If the walls aren't climbable they'll have no choice but to collect the Eye, and pass through any square-shaped Shifts.

The best idea I can think of is to use room duplication. Use the flag shift to shift to a duplicate room to the same spot where the eye will be in both rooms and make sure that "do not quantize" is not checked. It will force the shift to place Juni in the center of the square in the duplicate room and collecting the eye powerup will happen no matter what. It will look like there's a slight "hitch" as the power-up might not match the collision mask of the shift type but most people won't notice it. I would recommend not using a square shift because that will make that hitch the most apparent. But make sure the room (or rooms) connected to the area that you collect the eye all have flag warps that are the same as the one for the ghost talking room.

You could also use another shift over the flag shift that flags on the eye power-up if you haven't used all three. I assume that would work but I'm not sure if one shift triggers before another or if they'll all happen simultaneously, I assume it's simultaneous because I've never noticed otherwise.

Thanks for the advice, guys. Some of these are a little too complicated for what I'm trying to do, but I'll keep them in mind should I attempt anything similar in the future.

Ego: I was actually using a variation of the narrow pit idea. It kinda has to be a shallow one, though, because the player could reach there with a climb or jump power-up. Anyway, I'll see if I can't rework the pit a little bit to make it work better, and I'll change the shift to spot. Again, thanks for your help!

Are the signs on the same screen as the eye power up? If not, you don't need to do any of this shift stuff, you can use a flag warp that directly checks if Power4 is on or off.

If it is all in the same room, if you make the shift give Power4 and trigger a visual effect, it won't matter if the player actually collided with the eye or not.

Are the signs on the same screen as the eye power up? If not, you don't need to do any of this shift stuff, you can use a flag warp that directly checks if Power4 is on or off.

I'm guessing I would need to edit the World.ini directly (i.e., not from the Level Manager) to do this, correct? How exactly should I format that, then? Pretty much the same as other flag warps?

edited to sound less snippy

Just the same. An example:

[x1000y1000]
Flag(A)=Power4
FlagWarpY(A)=1
You can also do it quite easily from egomassive's Level Editor Plus, in the warp tab.

Also, saw it before the edit, bwahaha. Didn't actually think it sounded snippy previously.

Quote from: sergiocornaga on December 20, 2013, 14:14:44

Are the signs on the same screen as the eye power up? If not, you don't need to do any of this shift stuff, you can use a flag warp that directly checks if Power4 is on or off.

I'm guessing I would need to edit the World.ini directly (i.e., not from the Level Manager) to do this, correct? How exactly should I format that, then? Pretty much the same as other flag warps?

You can do it with the level manager. The power-ups are at the bottom of the flag drop-list, and they're named for convenience.

Here's how I'd do it: Make a "Do not quantize" square shift that takes player to a duplicate room with a ghost (or with a cut-scene shift). There a flag warp takes Juni back if she hasn't got the Eye power-up.

Isn't it easier to just flagwarp set the powerup, so when you shift, it also sets the powerup to true? That way the size and shape of the shift doesn't matter, and when a powerup is collected, it is no longer drawn on the screen.

Wow, that's a lot of replies for such a small topic. Thanks for all the advice, guys! I think I will leave the level as is for now, because I have the ghost resting in the corner when the flag is untriggered, and the incongruity there tickles me pink. This'll definitely be helpful if I ever make another level like this in the future, though!