World Issues

I created a character in my world using She-builder, and every time she moves forward or walks [in any direction], she sinks into the ground. I've tried correcting the ground and making it more level, but nothing works. Is there a function I can use? If so, which one and how?

Hi Cathryn,
I took a look at your file and found a couple reasons for this.

Since Alice is utilizes a 3-dimension world using the "move to" call moves one object towards a certain point on another object. For instance if you had a bee in the air and used move to your charachter would fly through the air to that point.


Solution: Just as your were already using turn to face, which constrains movement only to the 2-dimensional plane you can then instead use a move forwards command.

The other problem was with the "happy" method. I dont' know if this came preloaded with Alice but appearently wasn't written correctly. Your character after completion of the method ends up slightly lower than it started.

haha, it sometimes feel's pointless to help people...............

I tried what you suggested- thank you for the advice- but it didn't work. Sorry if I csme off as ungrateful; I was having some log-in issues. ^^;

It is a common problem with Alice characters. Dick Baldwin's tutorials talk about this so if you search those out on the forums you'll find lots of info, but basically:

Your character has a set of axes which you can make visible. If these are not exacly aligned with those for the ground, then the character will sink into the ground or rise up depending on the direction they are going. See the thread here

Also, moving parts of the character are done by turning and sliding done in small steps, and because of the way numbers representing this are held in the computer, and the order in which they are done, it is difficult to undo exactly. See here So sometimes slight inaccuracies accumulate and things don't end up where you expect.

And, if those aren't enough, body parts move relative to the parent (in the sense that branches of a tree have the trunk as a parent). But because it is difficult to find the lengths of the parts, positioning in a walking sequence can't be worked out exactly. So people approximate, making it look right. But errors accumulate.

The fix I'd suggest is do_together, and have the character move up by... whatever amount works, at the same time as they walk in whatever direction. Fiddly, and tedious to get right, but it is less tedious than drawing every frame of your animation by hand!

Did you download the game file I included? I fixed all the errors you were experiencing. I can't remember but I may have also added comments.