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Week of June 15th, 2009
Topics:
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Getting Help
- The "Assistance" windows
- The Lexicon
- The Forums
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Variables
- Type-casting and the types
- Conventions
- Constants
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Who Dun' It?
- Who Spoke?
- Who Used the Placeable?
- Who Activated the Item?
- Who Crossed the Trigger? Who Entered the Area?
- Was it a Player? a DM?
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Creating Objects
- Preparing the Object
- The Resref
- The Object Type
- At a Waypoint
- Find the Waypoint
- Find the Location
- Where the player is
- Find the Location
- Create the Object
- Deciding on a Tag
- Spawning in the Object
- Doing Things to the Object after Creation
- Preparing the Object
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Tracking Variables
- Local Variables
- Persistent Variables
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Some Useful Scripts
- Making Changes to the Avatar When It Enters the Game
- Fiddling with the Avatar's Inventory
- Destroying the Inventory Items
- Destroying "Non-Destroyable" Items
- Taking Gold From the Player
- Giving Gold To the Player
- Giving General Inventory Items to the Player
- Giving Equipable Items and Forcing an Equip Action
- Random Walk
Homework: Dungeon and Quest
Week of June 7th, 2009
Topics:
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Items
- Properties
- Building your own items
- How to make an item have a conversation.
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Creatures
- Properties
- Building your own
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Triggers
- Choosing the right one
- Drawing a trigger
- Trigger Properties
- Trigger Events and Scripting Preview
- Examples of Trigger Use
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Waypoints
- Waypoint Properties
- Waypoint Directions
- Uses for Waypoints
- Scripting Preview
- How to Set Up a Patrol Route
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Conversations
- How they're used
- The basic tree.
- Branching
- Links (or "Loop backs")
- Tokens: Built-in and Custom
- Colorizing the Text
- Including Other Speakers
- "Actions Taken" and other events
- Conditional Nodes
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The Journal
- Categories
- Entries
- Updating the Journal through Conversations
- Updating the Journal through Scripting
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How to Test Your Mod
- The Build Module Option.
- The Real Way
- The Test Module Option
Homework:
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Homework: Create a Town
Week of June 1st, 2009
Topics:
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Areas
- Area Properties
- Module Properties
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Tiles
- Tile Properties
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Names
- Blueprint / Resref
- Tag
- Display Name
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Doors
- Door Properties
- Transitions between doors
- How to make a door close itself
- How to have a transition without a door
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Placeables
- Placeable properties
- Spawning placeables.
- How to stack placeables
- How to have a placeable hold a conversation
Homework:
May 27, 2009
Topics
Homework
GAME CONCEPT AND DESIGN
COSC 320.101_SU09
SUMMER 2009
Areas
An area is a "section" of your game world. If it helps to think of it this way, you can consider it the "area" you can make using 1 tileset of a size between 1 tile by 1 tile up to 32 tiles by 32 tiles. Your game world very well might have more than one area and each area can make use of a different tileset. You just cannot mix tilesets together in the same area.
By now, I hope you've fiddled with the map maker part enough to have an idea how it works.
Area Properties
An area has a number of properties that you can examine and alter. You can do this by going to the left-hand pane where all the assets that you have used are listed, locate the area name you wish to explore, right-click, and select Properties.
As with nearly every properties sheet in NWN, you will see a window with a number of tabs. Most of the tabs and the items beneath the tabs are self-explanatory, but here's a few important bits:
Basic: Name This is the name of the area as it appears in the left-hand pane and what is displayed to the player when he transitions into the area. If at some point you don't like the name you've given an area, you can change it here.
Events: Here you will find the messages that the area can listen for and react to. onEnter is when a creature enters the area; onExit is when a creatures leaves the area; onHeartbeat is a message that is sent every 6 seconds; onUserDefined....I've never used, so I don't know for sure.
File a cautionary note that using onEnter and onExit bear a trap---every creature that enters or exits causes the event to fire. It's very easy to program yourself into an infinite loop here. We'll see how to avoid that loop later on.
Advanced: Here are some settings you probably won't need to fiddle with...but then again you might.
- Loading Screen lets you specify which of the "banner shots" to be displayed when a player is entering the zone.
- Player vs Player allows this zone to override the default setting for the entire module.
- Resref can't be changed and doesn't tell you what it does...but file the term "resref" into memory for later on.
- Tag will probably be the same as the Name, but it doesn't have to be. Again...file "Tag" away in memory for a bit.
- Variables is new to my experience. As I understand it, this means you can setup certain variables and "attach" them to the area. So, when the game begins the variables are set up, attached, and given the values you specify. Later in your scripts, you can examine those variables, change them, save them back to the area, and make decisions based on the values you find there. You can also do this sort of thing entirely through scripting (which is what I'm used to doing since there was no "variables" area in the old days.)
Comments: Nearly every Properties sheet has a "Comments" tab. What you type here is strictly for notes for yourself when in the toolkit and is not seen by the player.
Module Properties
This is probably a good time to show you how to access the properties sheet for the entire module. From the menu bar, select Edit > Module Properties. Viola! There you go!
Again most of these should be pretty self-explanatory.