Alarms

[MirceaKitsune]

This is a fun element which exists in most stealth games, yet I haven't seen any TDM missions with it. Surprising given how simple it would be to script... but in any case I'm very intrigued by the idea.

 

The way I imagine alarms working is by having a button trigger a speaker and potentially a red light which blinks. The speaker can be located in a different place from the button, although my favorite alarm type are those where the button and the speaker are both part of a device on the wall. They could definitely work well with TDM's theme: On medieval missions, the alarm can be a bell you can ring directly, or a mechanism that shakes a bell when a button is pressed (music boxes exist after all). On missions containing electricity, there can be a megaphone playing a loud noise when the button is pressed.

 

As for how they would work, my idea is pretty simple: An alerted NPC (my suggestion would be alert levels 4 and 5) can interrupt their search or postpone attacking you, and instead run to the nearest alarm and activate it. Additionally, the player might himself want to activate alarms, in order to trick guards into running to a given area and freeing his path. When an alarm sounds, any NPC close enough to hear it will become alerted and run to the source of the sound. I would suggest a gradual alert system here... so an NPC very close to the alarm gets an alert level of 4, one further away gets 3, one who is too far to care gets 2, and one who can barely hear it just 1. An ongoing alarm should probably last for about 30 or so seconds, but keep the alert levels of NPC's in its radius to a constant minimum.

 

Are there any missions that use alarms, or any scripts to implement them? Personally I think this can and should be part of TDM by default, and an alarm entity should be there for mappers to easily add to their missions. They're at the heard of many stealth games, and I think add a lot of depth of them as well.

[grayman]

TDM has alarms.

 

Several missions use them, though I couldn't point you to anything specific atm, given my age.

[nbohr1more]

Try: Thomas Porter 1: Knighton Manor

[MirceaKitsune]

Nice. I played nearly 30 missions so far, but never saw alarms anywhere so I thought they don't exist. And I remember seeing Thomas Porter in the mission list, but since it's a long series I decided to leave it for a bit later... will do!

[VanishedOne]

I remember the trap-type alarm in KM, but does it have AI-triggered alarms like the OP describes, or are we still in the http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/13671-call-script-on-enemy-alerted/?p=282976 situation?

Edited January 8, 2015 by VanishedOne

[MirceaKitsune]

Yeah, I'm wondering about alarms with these two components: The AI becomes alerted when hearing the alarm and runs to the noise source, and the AI can itself press the button to sound an alarm when becoming alert through other means. I understand that the first works, but there are issues with making the second thing possible?

[VanishedOne]

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/9082-newbie-darkradiant-questions/page-216?do=findComment&comment=360279 suggests a means of making an AI do something special when alerted, but it's a bit of a workaround.

[Lux]

dbl post!

Edited January 9, 2015 by Lux

[SteveL]

dbl post!

No it wasn't! Please repost

[Lux]

I'd read up enough to see "KM" and didn't know if Mirceal knew what that meant so I posted Knighton Manor but afterward I saw that nbohr1more had already posted so I removed it.

 

dbl post!

Edited January 9, 2015 by Lux

[Sotha]

Try: Thomas Porter 1: Knighton Manor

 

This mission was made before we had the alarm entity.

 

 

 

The effect in this mission is fake, but moderately convincing.

 

Alarm noise will bring in new AI, but will not alert nearby patrols.

 

 

[Agent Jones]

I've managed to make an alarm using a script,thanks to Sotha's workaround,although his way to guide the AI(triggering a conversation) didn't work. I used $guard.addTarget($alarmpathcorner) and then path_interact.
I suggest including something like this in the 2.03 prefabs, to spare new mappers the trouble of figuring it out.

[SteveL]

We do have proper alarms. Sotha created Knighton's Manor before alarms were properly implemented in TDM, which is why his method couldn't alert random passing AI. For "real" alarms that alert whoever happens to be in earshot, use the newer entity alarms: in DR's Create Entity dialog, under Sound you'll find atdm:alarm_sound, which is where the sound comes from.

 

Under "Targets" you'll find atdm:start_alarm and atdm:stop_alarm. You target the atdm:alarm_sound from those. And you can activate the start/stop entities in the normal way from triggers, doors, switches, conversations, objectives complete etc.

[Agent Jones]

We do have proper alarms. Sotha created Knighton's Manor before alarms were properly implemented in TDM, which is why his method couldn't alert random passing AI. For "real" alarms that alert whoever happens to be in earshot, use the newer entity alarms: in DR's Create Entity dialog, under Sound you'll find atdm:alarm_sound, which is where the sound comes from.

 

Under "Targets" you'll find atdm:start_alarm and atdm:stop_alarm. You target the atdm:alarm_sound from those. And you can activate the start/stop entities in the normal way from triggers, doors, switches, conversations, objectives complete etc.

That's what I used to create the alarm. The tricky part was getting the Ai to activate it.

Edited January 19, 2015 by Agent Jones

[SeriousToni]

I used an alarm system in a test area for my second mission last year and it worked pretty well. Don't know why this is used so few though.

[Obsttorte]

 

my second mission

status?!

[MirceaKitsune]

Nice. What about the AI triggering an alarm themselves when alert? Can they be easily configured to push a button when getting past a certain alert level?

[Obsttorte]

That's a bit hard to do, although I've once worked on a script that does this. he setup was a bit difficult, though.

 

I started working on implementing it into the code, but never got finished with it

[MirceaKitsune]

Ok... I was hoping the new alarm entities mentioned above can do this too. Perhaps buttons (and other interactive entities) should themselves have an alert level parameter, which causes an AI to run to them and use them when alert... this way they can be used for more than just triggering alarms.

 

Part of the code to do this might already be there too: Sometimes, instead of attacking you when seeing you, an enemy AI will run to another room and alert other guards. Perhaps part of that system can be reused?

[SeriousToni]

status?!

Sadly too much real life stuff to do and in my free time I mostly play games with some friends online atm But this doesn't mean that it will never be developed