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Help! My mod is corrupted!

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Week of June 15th, 2009

Topics:

  • Getting Help
    • The "Assistance" windows
    • The Lexicon
    • The Forums
  • Variables
    • Type-casting and the types
    • Conventions
    • Constants
  • 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?
  • 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
  • Tracking Variables
    • Local Variables
    • Persistent Variables
  • 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

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Week of June 7th, 2009

Topics:

  • Items
    • Properties
    • Building your own items
    • How to make an item have a conversation.
  • Creatures
    • Properties
    • Building your own
  • Triggers
    • Choosing the right one
    • Drawing a trigger
    • Trigger Properties
    • Trigger Events and Scripting Preview
    • Examples of Trigger Use
  • Waypoints
    • Waypoint Properties
    • Waypoint Directions
    • Uses for Waypoints
    • Scripting Preview
    • How to Set Up a Patrol Route
  • 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
  • The Journal
    • Categories
    • Entries
    • Updating the Journal through Conversations
    • Updating the Journal through Scripting
  • How to Test Your Mod
    • The Build Module Option.
    • The Real Way
    • The Test Module Option

Homework:


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Week of June 1st, 2009

Topics:

  • Areas
    • Area Properties
    • Module Properties
  • Tiles
    • Tile Properties
  • Names
    • Blueprint / Resref
    • Tag
    • Display Name
  • Doors
    • Door Properties
    • Transitions between doors
    • How to make a door close itself
    • How to have a transition without a door
  • Placeables
    • Placeable properties
    • Spawning placeables.
    • How to stack placeables
    • How to have a placeable hold a conversation

Homework:

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May 27, 2009

Topics

Homework

 

  

GAME CONCEPT AND DESIGN
COSC 320.101_SU09
SUMMER 2009

Getting Help

The commands of the scripting language are usually pretty common language. If you want to find out how many hit points a creature has, you can probably find the command by searching for the keywords "creature" or "hitpoints." In this case "hitpoints" brings up a list of commands that contain the word and there we find....GetCurrentHitPoints( ) .

The Assistance Windows

When working in the scripting window, you will see three distinct panes. The main one (top-left) is where you do your actual typing. To the right is a "search" pane. You can type keywords in the field, and it'll filter down to the commands that contain those keywords.

Select one of those commands and you'll see text appear in the bottom window. This gives you some (limited) idea of what the command does, how to format the command, what arguments it requires, and what it returns (if it returns anything).

Also note that NWN scripting is extremely case-sensitive!

The Lexicon

I mentioned it at the beginning and I'll re-mention it here. The Lexicon is a great help. It also has keyword search and filtering, but it also breaks the commands down into catgories (Visual Effects, String Manipulation, and so on) and gives more data on how to use the commands, what hidden traps exist and how to avoid them, and so forth. I couldn't NWN without the Lexicon. (http://www.nwnlexicon.com/)

The Forums

Set up an account at the Bioware site and search the forums for your answer. For a good, long while, it's probably a safe bet that any question you have has already been answered a dozen times. So search first, and post only if you can't find an answer.