idea: Timer entity

[jdude]

Would this be easy or even possible to impliment?

 

An entity where you can type in 2 things under one parameter.

 

For example:

 

Entity Class: Timer

name: ENTITY NAME

Operation1: event1, 1

Operation2: event2, 4

Operation3: event3, 6

 

The operations would be the parameter where you enter the info of target entity and the delay (in seconds)

 

Currently we have trigger_relay but to do complex events you require a lot of them which gets frustrating and hard to manage.

[greebo]

What kind of functionality would this entity provide over the existing trigger_* entities?

 

We have:

trigger_once_entityname

trigger_entityname

trigger_relay

trigger_timer

trigger_once

trigger_multiple

 

Each of these implements a delay as well - so I guess you can do almost anything with a combination of these, can't you?

 

Btw: this is not a DarkRadiant issue.

[jdude]

Whoops sorry!

 

But the problem is that say you have three events. Event 1, Event 2, and Event 3. To make each event trigger from one trigger brush you'd need three Trigger_relay entities. The brush would have to target each trigger_relay in order to have different delayed times and each trigger_relay is impossible to tell which is which by any means other than their position in the editor.

 

Now say you have 100 events which occur at different times. Instead of having 100 different trigger_relays all you'd need is one trigger_operations (or the purposed entity) which would help organize everything drastically.

[greebo]

Well, I guess it's probably better to do such complicated events by scripting anyway, but people obviously don't like to hear that.

 

I understand your need, maybe this is something for a rookie coder who is looking to take on a simple programming task? Ok, just kidding. It might get looked into sometime, that's what I'm trying to say.

[jdude]

Lol okay thank you

[Fidcal]

Yeah, this is similar to my idea of a script gui - to produce a sequential list that can trigger different things in order. In Thief this is done with conversations which are massively extended beyond just actual conversations.

 

The problem with scripting is finding time to learn it when the average mapper would only use it very occasionally. If I had to add a new script function every other week I'd have probably learnt the basics by now but to spend a month or so learning scripting then only use that knowledge once or twice in a year is not motivating.

 

Maybe this is an opportunity or a prompt for a group of us to start a self-class to produce some very simple scripts for a library plus a tutorial. There is already a thread but it faded for the very reason that we mappers don't need a new script very often.

 

So in this case there must be a simple script line that triggers an entity and another to cause a delay. The mapper need only copy and paste these and adjust the values. I'll have a look and maybe re-invoke that other thread or start a new one.

[Tels]

Problem with the "script library" is that people then need to know the very basics of scripting (how does it look, what is the syntax, what is a function, where do I place it etc etc.) and we have seen already that is too complicated for most non-programmers

 

I agree that a "trigger this sequence of events after this time" would be a nice plugin for DR or a new entity. However, currently we are a bit short on programmers to implement it <tels shuffles back to writing JS doc scripts>

[Fidcal]

I'll start a new thread on this in level editing.