Posted Sunday, July 14, 2002 - 23:28 CET by Z-Layrex

David Chan, Sound Effects Designer

Fragapalooza: If anyone is interested we are doing some sessions at Fragapalooza. If you are in the Edmonton area and want to find out more go to www.fragapalooza.com.

Don Moar, Tools Programmer

Temples: The Rural tileset contains several open-air temples, which do not require an area transition. Perhaps you saw one of the E3 2000 videos which showed something of that nature.

Chapters/Modules: It is the "story" that is divided into chapters, not modules. Each chapter is its own module. Once the players get to the end of one module (only you can decided when that is) write a script that starts the next module using the StartNewModule function. eg: You've rescued the Prince and returned him to the royal family. The king announces that because of you're dedication and skill, he is sending you on a mission to kill the dragon.

Chapter (module) 1: Rescue the Prince
Chapter (module) 2: Kill the Dragon

In Chapter (module) 1, in the king's conversation, on the node describing the task of killing the dragon, you place an Action Taken script which calls the StartNewModule function, passing in the name of the module to start.

Journals: If you want to do this by having the PCs having to talk with an NPC, simply construct the journal category and its entries in the Journal Editor and then associate them with a particular conversation node. If you want to do this without requiring the PCs to talk with an NPC, write a custom script that updates the player's journal and assign the script to an appropriate event, such as the OnClientEnter of the Module or the OnEnter of a trigger which the players must walk across in order to get into the game. There are examples of both the conversation and scripting approaches in the tutorial in the "For Builders" section. The only difference is that the tutorial uses the OnAcquireItem event to update the player's journal.

Decimal Problem: The problem is that the Toolset uses the '.' as the decimal symbol, regardless of the regional settings of your computer. You should be able to adjust this using your computer's Control Panal. This will be fixed in the next update.

Conversations: Don't forget the order of the nodes is important. Typically, you want to structure your conversation such that the nodes with conditions appear higher (before) the nodes without conditions:

WRONG:
Root
-->NPC: Please, we've never met but would you help me save my X?
---->PC: OK
---->PC: No
-->NPC: Did you save my X?
---->PC: Yes
---->PC: No

RIGHT:
Root
-->NPC: Did you save my X?
---->PC: Yes
---->PC: No
-->NPC: Please, we've never met but would you help me save my X?
---->PC: OK
---->PC: No

Notice that the NPCs introductory node is the LAST node in the list at that level. You would put the check of nFirstTimeTalked in the "Text Appears When..." of the "Did you save my X?" node and put the set of nFirstTimeTalked in the "Action Taken" of "Please, we've never met...". It is important to remember this when writing your conversations.