Post by Keith Heitmann on Dec 7, 2004 14:15:52 GMT -5
By Matt Zimmitti, Tilted Mill Team Member (QA and Dev. Support)
We’re almost there folks. We essentially have a working(ish) scenario. It has a lot of loose ends which we’ll shore up soon. First though, we need to add a little bit of military in to spice things up. We’re also going to start playing with triggers and in doing so we’ll make the world level a little more dynamic. Also, I’m assuming you have read pages 9 & 10 of the Editor Manual. Let’s get underway.
1) Basic Military Sites
Military sites are essentially just trade sites with a few small differences. We’re going to make a Bandit Fort and have it get revealed when the player explores south. The military in this scenario will be optional, so this first site will not send raiders. If the player decides they want to attack the raiders, then things will get more interesting once the player has attacked them. Here’s what I did after hitting the “New Activation Site”.
- Site Category: Enemy Site
- Cost Category: Citizens
- Cost Type: deactivation
- Resource: designated spearmen
- Cost: 10
I then added 10 archers and 600 food as deactivation costs. Fill in text and labels the same as you would a trade site. Move it to where you want it on the map, uncheck Visible and Active and you’re done. Just make sure you set “Exploration Up The Nile” to reveal your new site.
The site I’ve just created will require 10 archers, 10 spearmen and 600 food to deactivate. Well, if I was a bandit and someone “deactivated” my fort, I’d be pretty angry. We want there to be some sort of repercussions so upon defeating the fort, we’ll have more sites open up.
2) Raiders (our first trigger!)
I went in and made another military site called “Desert Raiders”. I used the graphic called “D. Enemy Camp” and made sure to check Spawn Raiders. I think I’ve mentioned this before but, just to reiterate, the Spawn Raiders checkbox does not spawn the raiders. It only puts the icon in the world level UI so that the player can determine what site is responsible for the raiders. We need to go in and set up a trigger to make the raiders show up. What we want to do is say that if the Desert Raiders site is open (the condition), send raiders every year (the effect).
a) Hit the Triggers button at the bottom of the screen (it’s just above the World Level button).
b) Create the Condition
- Press Condition then New
- Type of Condition: World Site
- It should now say “World Site Condition Details” in the bottom left of the UI. First select the name of the site you want to have responsible for the raiders (Desert Raiders in this case) from the first drop-down and select the state you want to check for (Is Open).
- Now give the condition a name that makes sense and press the enter key. I named mine “Raider Camp Open”.
c) Create the Effect
- Press Effect then New
- Set Type of Effect to Player
- It should now say Player Effect on the bottom-left
- Select Event from the first drop-down labeled “Action”
- For Player, select Player 1 (I’m 99.9978% sure that whenever you are asked to enter a player you should enter Player 1)
- Select Raiders Libyan under Event. There are other raider events with different cultural tags. These simply dictate the graphic used for the raiders that enter the map.
- Once again, name it appropriately. If you fail to enter a name, the editor will autogenerate a name that tells you very little about what is actually going on. When you only have a couple of triggers/conditions/effects the names don’t matter much. Down the road you will lose your mind if you don’t label these things.
d) Create the Trigger (finally)
- Press Trigger then press New
- Make sure Trigger Is On is checked. If this is left unchecked, then the scenario will start with the trigger inactive. You only do this latter case if you are planning on having a different trigger activate this one.
- Check Conditions True For and enter 960 seconds. There are 20 seconds in a game week and 48 weeks in a game year (20 * 48 = 960 seconds @ 1.00 speed).
- Check Looping. Looping triggers will continue to check after they have been fired. In this case, we want our raiders to show up yearly as long as the site is open. By making this a looping trigger we are saying once you fire, start counting again.
- Below, we enter our condition and our effect from the previous two steps.
- Finally, name the trigger.
What we now have is a trigger that checks to see if our Desert Raiders site is open. If it remains open for 960 seconds, it will send raiders and immediately start counting to 960 again. How many raiders? Every time a raider event fires, 3-6 show up at the edge of the map. If you want more aggressive attacks, fire the raider event off multiple times. We’ll do this with another site later.
3) Site Dependence
Triggers can be used to affect other sites. Our Desert Raiders site isn’t very tough, so what I’m going to do is make it return as long as it is supplied. I made another military site called “Supply Camp”. It’s a tougher site with significantly higher requirements. What I’ll do next is set up a trigger than reopens the raider camp as long as the supply is open.
a) Create a Condition that can be checked to see if the Supply Camp site is open (just like step 2b)
b) Now we will make two effects. One that makes the Desert Raiders site open and one that makes it visible. The Type of Effect in both cases will be World Site. One effect will have Open Site as its Action and the other will have Make Site Visible.
c) Now for the trigger.
- Hit Trigger then New
- Check Trigger is On
- Check Conditions True For and enter 480 (half a year)
- Check Looping
- Below, enter the condition that checks if the supply is open.
- Enter the first effect we create (open site)
- Next to that first effect there is a drop-down that presently says “End”. Select “And” from that drop down. A second effect drop-down should now appear. Select our second effect (make visible).
- If you like, you can add more effects to the statement in the same manner. I chose to add a raider attack event as well (the same event we cooked up in 2c) so that when the Desert Raiders site reopens it sends a group of raiders to say hi. I intentionally do no have it check to see if Desert Raiders is already open.
We’re almost there folks. We essentially have a working(ish) scenario. It has a lot of loose ends which we’ll shore up soon. First though, we need to add a little bit of military in to spice things up. We’re also going to start playing with triggers and in doing so we’ll make the world level a little more dynamic. Also, I’m assuming you have read pages 9 & 10 of the Editor Manual. Let’s get underway.
1) Basic Military Sites
Military sites are essentially just trade sites with a few small differences. We’re going to make a Bandit Fort and have it get revealed when the player explores south. The military in this scenario will be optional, so this first site will not send raiders. If the player decides they want to attack the raiders, then things will get more interesting once the player has attacked them. Here’s what I did after hitting the “New Activation Site”.
- Site Category: Enemy Site
- Cost Category: Citizens
- Cost Type: deactivation
- Resource: designated spearmen
- Cost: 10
I then added 10 archers and 600 food as deactivation costs. Fill in text and labels the same as you would a trade site. Move it to where you want it on the map, uncheck Visible and Active and you’re done. Just make sure you set “Exploration Up The Nile” to reveal your new site.
The site I’ve just created will require 10 archers, 10 spearmen and 600 food to deactivate. Well, if I was a bandit and someone “deactivated” my fort, I’d be pretty angry. We want there to be some sort of repercussions so upon defeating the fort, we’ll have more sites open up.
2) Raiders (our first trigger!)
I went in and made another military site called “Desert Raiders”. I used the graphic called “D. Enemy Camp” and made sure to check Spawn Raiders. I think I’ve mentioned this before but, just to reiterate, the Spawn Raiders checkbox does not spawn the raiders. It only puts the icon in the world level UI so that the player can determine what site is responsible for the raiders. We need to go in and set up a trigger to make the raiders show up. What we want to do is say that if the Desert Raiders site is open (the condition), send raiders every year (the effect).
a) Hit the Triggers button at the bottom of the screen (it’s just above the World Level button).
b) Create the Condition
- Press Condition then New
- Type of Condition: World Site
- It should now say “World Site Condition Details” in the bottom left of the UI. First select the name of the site you want to have responsible for the raiders (Desert Raiders in this case) from the first drop-down and select the state you want to check for (Is Open).
- Now give the condition a name that makes sense and press the enter key. I named mine “Raider Camp Open”.
c) Create the Effect
- Press Effect then New
- Set Type of Effect to Player
- It should now say Player Effect on the bottom-left
- Select Event from the first drop-down labeled “Action”
- For Player, select Player 1 (I’m 99.9978% sure that whenever you are asked to enter a player you should enter Player 1)
- Select Raiders Libyan under Event. There are other raider events with different cultural tags. These simply dictate the graphic used for the raiders that enter the map.
- Once again, name it appropriately. If you fail to enter a name, the editor will autogenerate a name that tells you very little about what is actually going on. When you only have a couple of triggers/conditions/effects the names don’t matter much. Down the road you will lose your mind if you don’t label these things.
d) Create the Trigger (finally)
- Press Trigger then press New
- Make sure Trigger Is On is checked. If this is left unchecked, then the scenario will start with the trigger inactive. You only do this latter case if you are planning on having a different trigger activate this one.
- Check Conditions True For and enter 960 seconds. There are 20 seconds in a game week and 48 weeks in a game year (20 * 48 = 960 seconds @ 1.00 speed).
- Check Looping. Looping triggers will continue to check after they have been fired. In this case, we want our raiders to show up yearly as long as the site is open. By making this a looping trigger we are saying once you fire, start counting again.
- Below, we enter our condition and our effect from the previous two steps.
- Finally, name the trigger.
What we now have is a trigger that checks to see if our Desert Raiders site is open. If it remains open for 960 seconds, it will send raiders and immediately start counting to 960 again. How many raiders? Every time a raider event fires, 3-6 show up at the edge of the map. If you want more aggressive attacks, fire the raider event off multiple times. We’ll do this with another site later.
3) Site Dependence
Triggers can be used to affect other sites. Our Desert Raiders site isn’t very tough, so what I’m going to do is make it return as long as it is supplied. I made another military site called “Supply Camp”. It’s a tougher site with significantly higher requirements. What I’ll do next is set up a trigger than reopens the raider camp as long as the supply is open.
a) Create a Condition that can be checked to see if the Supply Camp site is open (just like step 2b)
b) Now we will make two effects. One that makes the Desert Raiders site open and one that makes it visible. The Type of Effect in both cases will be World Site. One effect will have Open Site as its Action and the other will have Make Site Visible.
c) Now for the trigger.
- Hit Trigger then New
- Check Trigger is On
- Check Conditions True For and enter 480 (half a year)
- Check Looping
- Below, enter the condition that checks if the supply is open.
- Enter the first effect we create (open site)
- Next to that first effect there is a drop-down that presently says “End”. Select “And” from that drop down. A second effect drop-down should now appear. Select our second effect (make visible).
- If you like, you can add more effects to the statement in the same manner. I chose to add a raider attack event as well (the same event we cooked up in 2c) so that when the Desert Raiders site reopens it sends a group of raiders to say hi. I intentionally do no have it check to see if Desert Raiders is already open.