Poisoning food & drinks, booby trap items

[MirceaKitsune]

A few stealth games (such as No One Lives Forever 2) had this fun little feature for some assassination missions: A few minutes after the map starts or after the player enters a certain area, a servant brings your target a plate with something to eat or drink. If the player is quick enough, one way of completing their mission is putting poison inside the dish without being seen, then watching from a distance as their target consumes it and dies then everyone bursts into chaos. I was wondering how possible this is to do in TDM, if anyone wrote any scripts for it, or if some missions already attempted this.

 

The first step would be adding a new item called poison... which the player can select, look at and highlight a food object in the world (such as wine glasses, plates, apples, bread, etc), and press the "use" key to poison that item. The second and more difficult step is programming an AI to consume food items... in some cases by randomly picking them from a table as they patrol near it, in others by sitting at a table where dinner is already prepared (the player must get there and poison it before the AI arrive to eat), and in others by having a servant go to another room and deliver the food to them. An obstacle might be the requirement of new animations (eating and drinking)... plus new voices for the AI ordering food / drink, talking to themselves as they take food from a table, as well as allies yelling "someone has been poisoned" when the victim dies in front of them.

 

In any case, I think the implementation should be a flexible one... so missions can let the player booby trap any kind of special item. For example, one room could contain a music box, which the AI will eventually ask someone to deliver to them. The player is given a miniature bomb at the start of the mission, which they can plant inside this music box before that happens. When the AI receives the box and opens it to listen to the music, they blow up and die. Or the trap could be a gas bomb, and opening the music box releases gas and everyone in the room falls asleep. The system could also be used for constructive purposes... like the player hiding a dagger in a prisoner's soup (after guards checked it) in order to smuggle a weapon to a friend in jail, once the AI takes the plate and brings it to them.

[nbohr1more]

Penny Dreadful 2 has a poisoning objective, I think there may be at least one other mission too (Sotha?).

It might be cool to have it part of the core mod though.

[New Horizon]

I don't think anyone would need to write a script for something like that. Just create the poison item with the Stim / Response system in Dark Radiant. I think there are already eating / drinking animations...or some that would pass for it.

[MirceaKitsune]

I'll check that mission out, thanks. And I looked at Stim & Response in DarkRadiant briefly, although I couldn't understand them well yet (mainly because the menu is very buggy). But from what I did understand, poisoning a food item could be done by enabling a special property on it, then the AI interacting with it simply causes their health to become 0 or another effect. I am however not sure how well the AI understands picking up an item and delivering it to a character or location.

[Gestas]

Have the food in the kitchen. Maybe note about mealtime... When player stims the food with poison, it starts convo. servant walks to it, grabs it, walks it to the dining room and sets it down on table. Master is there or comes in and eats.

 

Is there an animation for pouring a pitcher? Would be cool to have someone already eating, drinking occasionally, player poisons pitcher, servant refills goblet..

Edited January 13, 2015 by Gestas