Messaging Near Players

Okay, so I'm making a plugin and I need to message all the players within a certain radius of a block. How would I do this? And there's no point in asking for my code because it'd be no help to you. All answers are appreciated whether they work or not

 

@The_BloodHound Player#getNearbyEntitites check if they're a player and then message them.

 

@The_BloodHound It is not possible directly to get entities around a block, however you can get nearby entities from other entities. If you have a block location, spawn an arrow or something at that location, gather the nearby entities then remove the arrow or other "holder" entity.

 

@nj2miami
OR just iterate over all entities in the world and check their distance to the location :/

 

@The_BloodHound

Code:java

Block b = null;
for(Player player : b.getWorld().getPlayers()) {
    if(player.getLocation().distanceSquared(b.getLocation()) <= (radius*radius))
        player.sendMessage("A message.");
}

Something like that, haven't looked at the code for distanceSquared so maybe the radius * radius should be just radius but it should work.

 

@megamichiel @Hawktasard That is grossly inefficient. Just because something works does not make it correct.

 

@nj2miami
You should learn some more . It's the same method entity.getNearbyEntities() uses but easier. If you look through the code of getNearbyEntities() it ends up doing the same thing

 

Thanks for the reply everyone, I'll look over the code and test these.
Also, maybe I can spawn a pig at a certain location and get the nearby entities within a radius and message them.

 

@The_BloodHound Spawning a pig could alter the result. Not by much, but it still can. Try a non-moving entity that is small, such as an arrow. All you would have to do is spawn the arrow above the block and make sure player's aren't allowed to pick it up.

 

I actually think it's better because

1. You don't need to create an Entity
2. You aren't iterating over every entity. Only the players

@The_BloodHound You don't need to iterate over Entities that you don't need. Just iterate over the players in the world and compare their distances.

 

What does "iterate" or "iterating" mean? There are some terms that I'm unfamiliar with in coding
Also, I was wondering if place a command block with the tell raw command and powering it with a redstone block would be another way.

 

@The_BloodHound Iterate basically means to loop through something. So, if you're iterating through a list, you're looping through the entire list.

 

I don't see how that would have to do with Bukkit. I don't know if there is an in-game command to get entities in a radius.

 

You can do /tellraw @a[r=Radius] {text:"Blah blah text here",color:aqua} and I was thinking I can just place a command block with that command inside it (Meta data I guess I'd be using)

 

@The_BloodHound What's wrong with doing it with code? If you use command blocks, Bukkit isn't needed.

 

I'm not sure how to place it with the command in it. (with bukkit)

 

@The_BloodHound You shouldn't need to use command blocks in general unless you want to. If you don't know how to do something with code, check the JavaDocs. http://www.javaminecraft.com/bukkitapi/org/bukkit/block/CommandBlock.html

 

@The_BloodHound

You don't need a command block to do this, however, and that's a terrible solution.

 

Okay thanks for the feedback.

 

LOL. Yah totally efficient to constantly have to iterate over every entity in a world to check if they are within a relative distance to a location. *smh*

 

@nj2miami

http://pastebin.com/U3QyUvie

 

> Being this ignorant

That is exactly what Entity#getNearbyEntities(...) does.

Not that iterating over a few thousand things and performing a simple calculation is that expensive, anyway. The fastest way to is iterate over every Player in the world and check their distance, however.

 

I know what getNearby does, my point stands that if you wanted to message Players near a specific location, which of these would you choose? I don't really see why you would write the additional lines of code to do a or b when Bukkit already can do the calculations for you in one line of code.

a) Scan all entities and calculate if they are within a radius of a location

b) Scan all players and calculate if they are within a radius of a location

c) Allow Bukkit to do all the lifting for you, spawn an arrow at a location, grab nearby entities, find which are players and blast a message to them?

 

@nj2miami You still have to do as much iterating with option C as you do with A and B. B is just the most efficient out of the rest.

 

@nj2miami
I don't get it, what's so bad about my solution?
I also don't understand why spawning an arrow would make it any better?

 

@Hawktasard
Nothing, it's fine. @nj2miami just thinks it's bad.

 

Can a moderator lock the thread because it's causing arguments. Thanks

 

Locked.

@The_BloodHound Please use the report button for things like that.

 

@bwfcwalshy You didn't lock the thread.