An elevator lever

[Springheel]

Here's another question about something I'm not sure how to do.

 

I'm setting up an elevator, and I was trying to think of other configurations than pushing buttons to send the elevator from one floor to the next. What I'd really like is a steam-punk style lever, sort of like the image below (not necessarily that large), where the player moves a lever to the number of the floor he wants to go to.

 

I'm not sure exactly how to do that (if it's possible at all) however. The player can't (I don't think) literally frob and 'pull' the lever to the number they want. Having it move forward each time it is frobbed would be too awkward to control.

 

I thought about trying an invisible button over top of each number, but then would there be a way to get the lever to move to that spot?

 

I've never done even a regular elevator before, so I'm a bit out of my depth. Anyone know whether something like this is even doable? Any option would have to be usable by AI as well.

[grayman]

One issue you'll have is when the lever is at "3" and you frob it. How does it know to go to "2" or "4"? We'd have to give the player the ability to "grab" the lever, and--while hanging onto it--move it in the correct direction. Sounds like a combination of lever code and grabber code. When the player lets go, the lever would move to the closest "slot" and then probably some script would know what happened and make the elevator go to the right floor.

[Springheel]

Yes, I didn't think that would probably be easy to do, if it would work at all. What about putting a button on the "2", and when the player frobs it, the lever moves to the "2" position (and the elevator goes to the second floor). Is that possible? It's still basically pushing a button, but the aesthetic would look like the player was moving the lever to select the floor.

[Sotha]

Yep, getting that to work would require amnesia like "frob and move mouse to interact" kind of functionality.

 

Invisible buttons and frobbing is bound to be confusing as it is sometime difficult to even frob visible things.

 

Making a stepwise system:

frob 1st time -> lever moves to 2.

frob 2nd time -> lever moves to 3 and so forth would be probably easily doable with scripting. But the AI certainly would not be able to use it.

[Sotha]

Yes, I didn't think that would probably be easy to do, if it would work at all. What about putting a button on the "2", and when the player frobs it, the lever moves to the "2" position (and the elevator goes to the second floor). Is that possible? It's still basically pushing a button, but the aesthetic would look like the player was moving the lever to select the floor.

 

I think it is a script, then.

When the button 2 is pressend the elevator works as they do. Simultaneously you call a script.

The script then rotates the aesthetic-only lever handle to the desired position. I'm sure there is a script command like "entityname.rotate(degrees)" or something. Cannot check as modwiki has been down for ages.

[Springheel]

Here's another possibility that might be easier (I don't think I'm likely to jump into scripting). A bank of Thief-style levers (see image), one per floor, and the player pulls the one for the floor they want to go to. That would eliminate the need for invisible buttons and still look more steam-punkish.

[grayman]

Yes, I didn't think that would probably be easy to do, if it would work at all. What about putting a button on the "2", and when the player frobs it, the lever moves to the "2" position (and the elevator goes to the second floor). Is that possible? It's still basically pushing a button, but the aesthetic would look like the player was moving the lever to select the floor.

 

Yes, you could solve the problem with the addition of buttons. The simple method would be to make the button a standard elevator call button, but have it also call a script to control the lever movement so it rotated to the correct angle. The downside of this design would be that the elevator would begin moving before the lever was finished moving. It would look nicer if the button called a script that rotated the lever to the proper angle and when the lever stopped, target a hidden elevator call button targeted to the elevator.

[grayman]

Here's another possibility that might be easier (I don't think I'm likely to jump into scripting). A bank of Thief-style levers (see image), one per floor, and the player pulls the one for the floor they want to go to. That would eliminate the need for invisible buttons and still look more steam-punkish.

 

Yes, that would work fine, and wouldn't need scripting. It's the solution I used for the dumbwaiter in In the North: three pull-cords on each of the three floors. Just pull the one for the floor where you want the elevator to go.

[Springheel]

Yes, I really appreciated the fact that it was controlled by ropes instead of buttons.