Question

We are currently developing a tile-based and turn-based game. In our game, there are characters that can attack others from afar. However, the attack range seems a little bit hard to describe using algorithms. It is illustrated below, every number indicates the range between the tile ‘0’ and itself.

5 4 3 3 3 4 5 
4 3 2 2 2 3 4
3 2 1 1 1 2 3
3 2 1 0 1 2 3
3 2 1 1 1 2 3
4 3 2 2 2 3 4
5 4 3 3 3 4 5

Is it possible to implement a function like this?


int GetRange( const Grid & a, const Grid & b );


Answer 1

Only 3 possible cases need to be dealt with:

• when the points are on the same horizontal line,
• on the same vertical line,
• all other cases

In C++:

int GetRange( const Grid & a, const Grid & b ) {
  int x=a.x-b.x, y=a.y-b.y; // get change in x & y coordinates
  if (x==0) return abs(y);
  if (y==0) return abs(x);
  else return (abs(x)+abs(y)-1);
}