Multiple Player Starts

[chumbucket91]

Hello TDM!

 

Let me start by saying that I am a HUGE fan of this mod and have been playing Thief FMs for at least 5 years. I think I've downloaded and played every Fan Mission released for TDM and I've otherwise been lurking for quite awhile. I've finally decided to pick up DarkRadiant and attempt to make a map of my own.

 

I've gone through a good portion of the A-Z guide on the wiki, and will probably finish the rest later, but I've decided to get started on a Real ™ Map. The first map I'm making is a pretty formulaic mansion raid mission (my favorite kind). Rather ambitious, so I'm not posting screenshots or getting anyone excited just yet (still drawing room layouts on paper), but I do have a question about how far I can stretch the editor - this will affect my design choices going forward.

 

My question is this: Is it possible to have the player choose their start location in a FM, given a list of possibilities? For example, there's a game called SWAT 4 where the player leads a SWAT team into various criminal hideouts to make arrests and such, and the player, before starting the mission, has the opportunity to choose their entry point. I think this idea will work well for a Mansion Heist, and I really don't want to touch making an outdoor area any time soon, so what I'd like to do is change, say, the difficulty menu, where instead of choosing between "easy", "medium", and "hard" difficulties, the player chooses between "Basement", "First Floor back door", and "Second Floor Window" entry points - for example. Is this possible, and if so how would I go about doing it? I do have some programming experience so I wouldn't shy away from having to edit some gui files or write a python script in darkRadiant if that's what it took, but some clear directions would be helpful before I go digging through code.

 

Thanks for your help!

- Chumbucket

[Sotha]

Hm.. You can teleport the player with a script command or using the teleport entity. The script command was

$player1.setWorldOrigin('824 752 56');

The numbers are the coorninates.

 

I think the teleport entity only needs to be triggered for the player to appear in that location.

 

One way of doing it would be that the player always starts in the same location, but gets teleported to elsewhere depending on different conditions. I'm not sure if you can make a script working like

if difficulty=easy, teleport player to window.

 

One option might be to make a planning hub:

the player starts in his hideout looking at a map. There would be three corridors which are labeled by the entryways name. The corridors do not really go anywhere, but they contain a trigger that teleports the player to the location you want based on which corridor the player chooses.

 

If you can try to learn making guis, I think it would be possible to make the hideout map to work as the teleporter: you make a special readable gui with mouse pointer enabled. Then the player clicks on the map and gets teleported to that location.

 

The downside with teleportation is the loss of immersion and that the player cannot change his mind and choose another way. So, it might be better to make a simple surrounding are so the player can walk to the entry point the player chooses.

 

Good luck!

[grayman]

Welcome to the Mod!

 

You should also be able to place three player starts in your map, and give them different difficulty spawnargs:

 

// Basement - only spawn this player start on "Easy" mode (mode 0)
"diff_0_nospawn" "0"
"diff_1_nospawn" "1"
"diff_2_nospawn" "1"


// First Floor Back Door - only spawn this player start on "Normal" mode (mode 1)
"diff_0_nospawn" "1"
"diff_1_nospawn" "0"
"diff_2_nospawn" "1"


// Second Floor Window - only spawn this player start on "Hard" mode (mode 2)
"diff_0_nospawn" "1"
"diff_1_nospawn" "1"
"diff_2_nospawn" "0"

 

I experimented with this a while back and it worked just fine.

[Jesps]

I vaguely remember Doom 3 (vanilla) had interactive monitors that you could use to activate different things with.

It might be possible to make a "monitor" that looks like a piece of parchment, where the player can click on the desired starting location.

How that would be done? Sadly, I have no idea

[Sotha]

I vaguely remember Doom 3 (vanilla) had interactive monitors that you could use to activate different things with.

It might be possible to make a "monitor" that looks like a piece of parchment, where the player can click on the desired starting location.

How that would be done? Sadly, I have no idea

 

Yeah, that is exactly what I proposed in the clickable map suggestion. It certainly is doable, but I don't know the details. Here's something to start with:

http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=3128 

 

Copying a .gui file from the standard TDM assets and modify that to add a mouse pointer and a few clickable buttons is probably the way to go. All you need to do in your map is to point that the map uses this new gui and ship that gui with the map.

 

Here is instructions how to make buttons:

http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=3606

[Shadowhide]

I vaguely remember Doom 3 (vanilla) had interactive monitors that you could use to activate different things with.

It might be possible to make a "monitor" that looks like a piece of parchment, where the player can click on the desired starting location.

How that would be done? Sadly, I have no idea

phrase choosing can be done in same way

[rich_is_bored]

Grayman's solution is the proper way to do it.

[chumbucket91]

Whether or not it's the "proper" way to do it, Grayman's idea definitely looks easiest - although lots of other good ideas are in this thread. Thanks for the quick replies, everybody! This probably won't be the last question you hear from me...

- Chumbucket

[Glyph Seeker]

Speaking just as a player - all the options suggested would be fine to me - even the teleporting in mission. I would be especially impressed at the interactive map suggestion though. One of the things which I feel made Doom 3 especially immersive was the interactive keypads / computer systems. The "floating" text you get in The Dark Mod is absolutely wonderful, so combining them in your "Den" to start with would be a fun way of choosing your entry point.

[Shadowhide]

The "floating" text you get in The Dark Mod is absolutely wonderful, so combining them in your "Den" to start with would be a fun way of choosing your entry point.

easy to say...

gui scripting requires some skills

all my attems to make doom 3 like font with cursor are fail

[Mortem Desino]

Actually, he's talking about the doom 3 debug "text" entity. Great fun, aye. Unprofessional-looking, but I really wouldn't care.

[DeTeEff]

It works the way Grayman said...I will use it in my main map Not An Ordinary Guest, but someone named nbohr1more started a contest so I felt compelled to put that one on hold and make an entry to the contest...

Edited April 29, 2011 by Fieldmedic

[Glyph Seeker]

It works the way Grayman said...I will use it in my main map Not An Ordinary Guest, but someone named nbohr1more started a contest so I felt compelled to put that one on hold and make an entry to the contest...

 

Any new maps from you will be a pleasure - the sooner the better! ;-P