Bienie

Thanks guys! If you wish to join the fun there's a topic in the beta testers forum!

As the title says, my Halloween mission is in a state ready for beta testing, and we should have plenty of time to get it going. I'll be making a topic in the beta testing forum, so join me over there! Any and all testers are welcome!

Yes I do think that making readables with more direct hints on lower difficulties is a good idea. I did this for Pearls & Swine, specifically the lady's diary. Still even on harder difficulties it's better to err on the side of clarity, even if a little riddling is never a bad idea. Another tip is to as your testers to comment on the difficulty of such things which usually yields pretty good feedback!

If you are stuck joebarnin has a good hints section in the first post. You should look especially at

Just finished this one this evening. Great work! I really enjoyed the storyline, and the readables were well written.

Thanks, yes I did kind of a mid point between those things. I did end up putting a frob response on the lever to trigger the target_set_frobable entity instead, since using an intermediate trigger_once didn't work. I guess your method would mean even less clutter, but it works now so I think I will leave it as is.

Thanks! That was very helpful. I got it to work, but I should add I had to do a few things differently. When I teleported the lever and then activated it, it translated around the pre-teleport origin and disappeared. I solved it by instead using a second script to hide the lever until the machine is frobbed. I also had to add a target_set_frobable around the machine so that the player can't frob the machine before they have picked up the lever. But in the end, all is wel!

Just finished the mission this evening. Great stuff! Quite the challenge trying to get all the loot with no knockouts, which is how I prefer to play. I really enjoyed Overall I think this is a must play, at least for experienced taffers. There were very few problems with the mission aside from a bit of performance struggles when overlooking the ship and inside the shipping company (strangely). Excellent work!

I have a machine in my mission that controls the power. I want the player to first find a lever to operate the machine, which I have added to the map and it works well. I just can't figure out how to have the player activate the machine, and have the game check if the player has the lever in their inventory and then remove it when they frob the machine, and then it appears on the machine. I figure the last part should be a second lever that becomes visible when the previous conditions are met. I assume there's a bit of scripting involved, which is my weakest mapping skill by far.

Ohh, ok that sounds pretty easy. Maybe I'll try that. I just used a setobjective_visibilty to hide them instead.

Yes that may just be the easiest solution. I'm used to adding hidden objectives to my maps but I've never had one visible and then made it invisible. Functionally that should be the same as having the objective cancelled I guess.

Yes, exactly that. Something happens in the mission that changes the original premise. I see... Unfortunately it doesn't go through the motions of how to implement it. ? If nobody knows I guess I could go with the method Geep suggested. Thanks for the info.

Is there any way to easily cancel an objective? I.E. when the terms of the mission change? I feel like I've seen that in more than one mission but none come to my mind at the moment.

Thanks for leaving your feedback! I'm really glad you enjoyed it! As for the sequel, I hope you're not too against maze-like architecture cause the early part of the mission is on rooftops which has a lot of verticality to it. There is a map that should help with that though. There is a ton more content to explore in that one though, if you are in to hidden content and secrets!

I think I get what you're saying, I'll try adding those lines to the script and see if it repeats at least. In order to retrace the path of the spline I would need to add more nodes to it, is that possible? I didn't see a button for it, and the cutscene tutorial doesn't mention it.

Yikes! Remind me to not get on the console's bad side, it seems to deal with dissenters brutally! ?

Thanks guys! I got the speaker to move along the spline just fine! The only problem is that it moves there and stops, I want it to continuously move back and forth along the spline. I assume a bit of script-fu could solve that, but I don't know what I would need to add. This is what the script looks like at the moment: void Roll5() { $Mover5.time(25); // How many seconds it will take to move along the spline $Mover5.startSpline($Spline5); // Start the func_mover $Mover5 moving along $Spline5 }

Good tip about the AAS flood entity, I've never known what it was, but now the name makes sense! I can't seem to find a decent entry on the wiki about splines, and I've never worked with them before. Any tips on what I need to do, and what script I would need?

Thanks for the reply. I am well aware of the teleport trick, and am currently using it on other AI in the map. It is interesting that pathfinding could still work if the area is still connected. That never occurred to me and I now see why I could never get my fire elementals to move after teleporting them from the "blue room". In this case however, I just thought I would use the AI as a handy carrier of a speaker in my map. I was hoping that the AI would be invisible and non solid (and mute, blind and deaf). I've bound a speaker that plays a sighing sound every x seconds, to suggest to the player that there is a ghostly presence around. I guess that it's pretty obvious I'm working on a Halloween mission ^^ Anyway, is this a good way of doing it? Is there a better way to have a speaker move around in a set pattern like a patrol?

Has anyone used the path_hide entity? I'm trying to get an AI to be invisible and non-solid but still continue its patrol. The path_hide node doesn't seem to do what it says in the editor though. Am I missing something? If it doesn't work, what alternatives do I have? I guess I don't mind writing a custom skin that is transparent, I just need to figure out how.

Jedi_wannabe got the tunes one right, as for the others:

Just finished the mission, and I have to say it's pretty good! I liked the location and all the little piece-meal objectives you put in. Everything was scaled well and there was enough visual detail to keep the eye satisfied. The voice acting sold the setting and there were a few chuckles in there as well. Good job!

It happened again -.- this time I tried to figure out which file was corrupted by removing them one at a time, and once I removed the file called "filters" DR booted back up as normal, and I didn't have to delete my user preferences and redo them! Yay! That was a real pain in the ass last time.

I can't speak for everyone, but personally I've never had much use of the startpack map. When starting a new project I always use the startpack, but not the map file itself just all the handy dandy things that come with it like in-game maps, briefing files, the store etc. The AI rooms in particular seem pretty worthless to me, I think I did use the water room once or twice though.