Duck and Cover

Just to keep from cluttering up Section8's topic here's a convenient route to edifying our new addition.

Stevie D wrote:LOL, not to worry, OTB. Shit happens.

Thanks. That is honestly the first time I've fucked up like that. Although I once accidentally x-fered a topic to the wrong forum and couldn't correct the mistake because I didn't moderate the forum I had sent the topic too...

Okay, let's get back on track then. (BTW, feel free to start another thread, so we don't have to clutter up

Stevie D wrote:The player index question went something like this:

Since the number of player indeces we have to play around with is limited, I was thinking of using JJ86's method of having a generic 'neutral' index (for citizens; neutral, but important characters, etc.) and a generic 'aggressive' index into which I could dump any neutral characters that get pissed off with the PC (rather than have the entire neutral index attack the PC because of one, isolated event.)

It's a great idea, and I can see how to use it if the player manages to fulfill certain pre-set conditions (like clean out a gambler beyond a certain point, after which the gambler gets pissed off). But what if a trigger-happy PC wades in guns blazing? Would it be possible to run a trigger like:

IF Player attacks Character_Magee THEN switch Character Magee to 'Aggressive Index' AND return 'Neutal Index' to neutral sympathy towards 'Player' Index?

Okay, I'm not sure why you're saying that we have a "limited number of indeces" to work with -- are you referring to Teams? -- but the situation is useful regardless.

Sacred FoTEd ReadMe wrote:Tag Name is used to track specific actors and entities. Can be used in triggers to select a single special actor in an otherwise normal player index. It is also used to link keys to doors and switches to anything else. More in the trigger section.

Tag Names are very important and are the crux of what you're wanting to do. If you're going to have a single index for a large number of actors, you can simply assign Tag Names to the various subdivisions among that index. For instance, you could give your gamblers a Tag Name, as well as all of the people in the General Store, etc.

These Tag Names are then used in conjunction with Quantity Unit triggers -- [Tag Name] has less than 100% hp at [Zone Name] -- that have an action of Change Player. You may want to throw an additional Condition of "Quantity - Player Kills" so that it's the BoS that has to kill the people, and not the stray fire from the enemy.

Alternately, don't be afraid to use loads of Player Indeces and have the Teams set to the following:

1. BoS: 1: -; 2: -10; 3: 5; 4: 0
2. Enemy: 1: -10; 2: -; 3: -10; 4: 0
3. Friendly: 1: 5; 2: -10; 3: -; 4: 0
4. Neutral: 1: 0; 2: 0; 3: 0; 4: -

I've used this a couple of times in some of my missions. For instance, I have a battle raging between two factions in a town in one mission. In certain areas I've set up the friendlies and enemies out of LoS of each other, but in some areas I've set them up in plain sight of each other. In the latter areas I simply have a condition that the BoS enter a certain Zone and the indeces that the warring factions are on are switched from the Neutral to the Enemy and Friendly teams (who are hostile to each other).

You could also simply have triggers w/Quantity - Player Kills set up with Switch Team actions. BTW, any kills scored after the hostile entities are switched to at hostile team/index will not affect the PC's Karma/Rep, so if you're looking to have the player suffer for his action in this department you will have to trigger a loss of Rep.

I think that about covers it. If not, let me know.

Stevie D wrote:Psst, QUOTE, not EDIT, OTB

:oops:

OTB

OTB,

Thanks for resurrecting the thread and apologies for not having replied... I'm still near the base of the learning-curve and am trying to suss out the jist of what you're saying, so I can't really engage it, yet...

Yeah, when i said 'indeces', I should have said 'teams', which are the limited quantity.

The 'tag name'... is that also what pops-up when you hold your mouse over a character, in-game?

PS: BTW, mate: 1.8 GHz, 256 MBs RAM. :mrgreen: According to the mystical dictates of cyber-speak, I believe this means I have propriety ownership of your ass, but I haven't worked out why, yet.

Stevie Even on that machine, New Occ. Data WILL take a long time as your map gets bigger, more detailed, etc.

Stevie D wrote:Thanks for resurrecting the thread and apologies for not having replied...

No problem. *hehe* I see it as only fitting that I fix the problem that I caused. :oops:

Stevie D wrote:Yeah, when i said 'indeces', I should have said 'teams', which are the limited quantity.

Ah, now we're getting somewhere.

Stevie D wrote:The 'tag name'... is that also what pops-up when you hold your mouse over a character, in-game?

No, it is not. What you're referring to deals with the "Display Name". A Tag Name doesn't show up in game, but is something that the AI uses to differentiate between similar entities. If you look at an entity using "Edit Entity" in the level editor, you will notice that there is a field that is labeled "Tag Name". If you fill in this field you can have something happen to/do something to one or more entities while similar entities are not affected by that action.

For instance, you have a group of raiders guarding a fence. You decide that you want to have half of them act bravely, while the other half are not quite so gung-ho. To simulate this, you set up your speech file w/two nodes of speech for each situation that you anticipate, one for the macho-stud-muffins, and the other for the not-so-macho-stud-muffins. You then assign those you deem to be brave a Tag Name (e.g. gateStuds) and those you deem to be not-so-brave another Tag Name (e.g. gateDuds).

In your triggers you would have the conditions set up that you want to change their speech. Under "Actions" you would use "Change Random Speech Triggers" coupled w/the Tag Names of the groups (which will show up on a nifty little rollout menu, but can be typed in manually if needed/more convenient) that you want to affect.

Juggling Teams can be pretty confusing, especially if you're looking to have a complex set of factions on your map. It's definitely worthwhile in the end, though.

Stevie D wrote:PS: BTW, mate: 1.8 GHz, 256 MBs RAM. :mrgreen: According to the mystical dictates of cyber-speak, I believe this means I have propriety ownership of your ass, but I haven't worked out why, yet.

I'm going to ignore that comment in the interest of continuing to help you climb the learning curve. :mrgreen:

Gents,

A couple o' Qs, please:

* What's the minimum bounding-box unit width a human-sized character can fit through? I'm guessing four...

* I had to re-size my map from a grid of 6 by 4 (or whatever the default is) to 8 by 8. That's worked fine, but the only problem is: when I open the map up again, the 'camera' centres on a new point, further up the map, which is not where I want the starting point to be. How do I rig the thing so that the default starting point is back where I began?

Many thanks,

Steve

Stevie D wrote:What's the minimum bounding-box unit width a human-sized character can fit through? I'm guessing four...

Four units is correct, except that female humans in clothes; Leather or Metal Armor can fit through a gap as small as 3 units. In the core campaign there are actually places that you can ambush from very nicely, provided you have a few gals along w/to get through the gap.

Stevie D wrote:I had to re-size my map from a grid of 6 by 4 (or whatever the default is) to 8 by 8. That's worked fine, but the only problem is: when I open the map up again, the 'camera' centres on a new point, further up the map, which is not where I want the starting point to be. How do I rig the thing so that the default starting point is back where I began?

The camera centers on the origin (i.e. center of a cartesian coordinate plane) when you open up a map. If you're dying to have the camera show that when you open up the map, you'll have to shift all of your tiles 'til the proper place is over the origin.

However, the origin is not the starting location for characters. That is controlled by either a Spawn Point Entity, or where Main Character of Player Index 1 is located at. (I'm not sure exactly what logic the game uses to choose which character is the Main Character when placing prefabs. You'll have to tinker w/that one.)

Cheers,

OTB

MUSIC

Gents,

I'd really like to use custom music in my map, but I could use a few pointers on how to do it, please.

OTB, I really liked the ambient wind effect you used in your IOOI demo. Presumably you put that in yourself?

I downloaded JJ86's Quartz map and installed it using the -path technique to get it running. After having played it for a while (nice use of textures, JJ ) I tried putting a .../music/custom folder with some of the .mp3s from Fallouts 1 and 2 in it at the same level as the default file paths. But when I fired the Quartz map up again (via the -path method) there were no background tunes. Is it possible custom tunes only work if they're in the standard .../music/custom folder?

JJ, please don't be offended that I've arsed about with Quartz before properly field-testing your efforts and responding... I get impulses to try things out like this, and have to run on them.

Steve

Stevie D wrote:OTB, I really liked the ambient wind effect you used in your IOOI demo. Presumably you put that in yourself?

Yeppers, did it m'self. All I did was to set up a standard sound file for the map. While I like some of the standard music from FoT, I felt that not using music in this case heightened the gloomy feeling that I wanted for the map. The only time you'll hear music is when you start a fightin'. Other than that it's just various ambient sounds. (I'm glad you commented on that. I was starting to think no one noticed. )

I don't know too much about using custom music w/FoT. I tried it back before I began editing, but I found that I prefered the in-game music to my own MP3s -- and I tried everything from Bad Religion to Aimee Mann and then some -- mainly because the music is synched to the action.

Stevie D wrote:Is it possible custom tunes only work if they're in the standard .../music/custom folder?

I'm thinking yes. Here's why:

Custom Music Folder ReadMe wrote:If you want to play your own mp3's during the game put them in this directory. [Emphasis mine. - OTB]

So I'm guessing that you have to put them there. (You could always try and found out...

OTB

If you put your music in the custom directory, it'll only be used randomly if the user selected the custom music option within the options screen.

I never looked into it myself, so I can't help much really.

Red wrote:If you put your music in the custom directory, it'll only be used randomly if the user selected the custom music option within the options screen.

You know, that could be it, Red. When you run FoT with a -path command it sets up a CFG file for FoT that's independent of the core game. Stevie may want to check to ensure that when he's running the -path command the "Custom Music" option is selected.

OTB

Red wrote:If you put your music in the custom directory, it'll only be used randomly if the user selected the custom music option within the options screen.

I never looked into it myself, so I can't help much really.

That was the missing link, Red, cheers!

I got some of the old Fallout background-music classics running in the background of JJ's map and I cannot emphasise enough how much atmosphere they gave to it. It makes me wonder how much people would have liked the original Fallouts without Mark Morgan's works of genius.

I can only recommend you experiement with this, gents. Whilst I can't imagine how many hours JJ put into meshing together all the decay/damage patterns on his roads and buildings to make everything look just so, this is a quick-fire, so-easy-it's-almost-cheating way to make our maps come alive. And it's fully compatible with the -path function!

Steve

Stevie D wrote: I downloaded JJ86's Quartz map and installed it using the -path technique to get it running. After having played it for a while (nice use of textures, JJ ) I tried putting a .../music/custom folder with some of the .mp3s from Fallouts 1 and 2 in it at the same level as the default file paths. But when I fired the Quartz map up again (via the -path method) there were no background tunes. Is it possible custom tunes only work if they're in the standard .../music/custom folder?

JJ, please don't be offended that I've arsed about with Quartz before properly field-testing your efforts and responding... I get impulses to try things out like this, and have to run on them.

Steve

Hey no problem. As long as you are doing something constructive with it!

Stevie D wrote:I got some of the old Fallout background-music classics running in the background of JJ's map and I cannot emphasise enough how much atmosphere they gave to it. It makes me wonder how much people would have liked the original Fallouts without Mark Morgan's works of genius.

Maybe we can one-up your idea one, SD. Maybe some of should look into including some converted ACM files that are actually part of the sound file of the map so that you don't have to deal w/the short-comings of using custom music. Namely, things like having the music cut out when you start dialogue w/people, then having a new track selected when you exit the dialogue -- well, diatribe, really -- window.

This could come in very, very handy w/a FO replica map... :twisted:

OTB

Jimmyjay86 wrote:

Stevie D wrote: I downloaded JJ86's Quartz map and installed it using the -path technique to get it running. After having played it for a while (nice use of textures, JJ ) I tried putting a .../music/custom folder with some of the .mp3s from Fallouts 1 and 2 in it at the same level as the default file paths. But when I fired the Quartz map up again (via the -path method) there were no background tunes. Is it possible custom tunes only work if they're in the standard .../music/custom folder?

JJ, please don't be offended that I've arsed about with Quartz before properly field-testing your efforts and responding... I get impulses to try things out like this, and have to run on them.

Steve

Hey no problem. As long as you are doing something constructive with it!

Tell you what, JJ, I've been playing Quartz for a while, now, and with the World Map theme from Fallout the First and the Redding and Desert [Wind] themes from Fallout 2 in the background, it really comes together and feels like a great, traditional Fallout map.

I was going to keep that line-up 'secret' for my map (when it finally comes out :roll:), but I really, really suggest you gents try it out, especially your good self, JJ. Mind you, I've got a couple of other music ideas up my sleeve... :twisted:

OTB wrote:Maybe we can one-up your idea one, SD. Maybe some of should look into including some converted ACM files that are actually part of the sound file of the map so that you don't have to deal w/the short-comings of using custom music. Namely, things like having the music cut out when you start dialogue w/people, then having a new track selected when you exit the dialogue -- well, diatribe, really -- window.

This could come in very, very handy w/a FO replica map...

OTB

ACM... don't tell me, I know this one. They're the compressed sound files from the two Fallout RPGs, aren't they? Hence ACM2WAV, I suppose.

To be honest, I'm not sure what you're suggesting, OTB, but I didn't really have a problem with the music fading out and re-starting either side of a 'conversation'. Maybe it's the ambient nature of the above tracks, I suppose.

Section 8 (if you're reading ) is there any way we can get round the musical-pause-for-diatribe function?

Oh, BTW, I had a root through IOOI's files yesterday to try to find how you put that wind ambient effect in. The only sound files I could find were the rocket-launcher effect ones. How did you get that effect in, if you don't mind my asking?

Steve

Stevie D wrote:Oh, BTW, I had a root through IOOI's files yesterday to try to find how you put that wind ambient effect in. The only sound files I could find were the rocket-launcher effect ones. How did you get that effect in, if you don't mind my asking?

It's no secret, nor are there any additional files involved, except for the OTB_Demo02_Sound.txt, located at OTBdemo\locale\missions\Demo02.

If you want to know how to do it, take a look at that file, and the ambientExample.txt located at core\editor. If you have problems w/that there is a tutorial by WaltherN in the tutorials section on DaC and/or NMA that cover it. The only thing I did differently was that I didn't assign ambient music like every mission in the core campaign did. Rather, I simply went for the ambient sound, which is usually done along w/the music. Like I said in another thread, I think that works well for the desolate feel of the map.

OTB

OnTheBounce wrote:However, the origin is not the starting location for characters. That is controlled by either a Spawn Point Entity, or where Main Character of Player Index 1 is located at. (I'm not sure exactly what logic the game uses to choose which character is the Main Character when placing prefabs. You'll have to tinker w/that one.)OTB

Methinks that the main char within the human team is the one closest to the Top of the map zone. Of course this only counts for preplaced chars on the map, not prefabs. Seems like that... from abit of testing. Even though its pretty wierd.

OnTheBounce wrote:[...]there is a tutorial by WaltherN in the tutorials section on DaC and/or NMA that cover it. The only thing I did differently was that I didn't assign ambient music like every mission in the core campaign did. Rather, I simply went for the ambient sound, which is usually done along w/the music. Like I said in another thread, I think that works well for the desolate feel of the map.

OTB

Wow, OTB, that's actually something to get quite sweaty-palmed about... After having read WaltN's tutorial and read through the AmbientExample.txt, it's seems there's a wealth of possibilities with ambient sound.

I mean, conceivably, you could have a squallid 'New Reno' area to your map, complete with the New Reno MP3 rom Fallout the Second, which fades out as you leave it, only to blend into the music from... damn, what's that town called that's run by Set and his Ghouls in the first Fallout?... for a ghoul-populated area. Blimey, that IS food for thought...

The only problem I can think of is this: how many channels does FoT allow to ambient effects? For example, if you remember one of the bars from Redding, when you walked past it, a short sample of a honky-tonk piano played over the background music; could FoT handle this?

Right, I'm off to do some tile-building, it's been too long, and I'm just procrastinating, now.

Steve

Stevie D wrote:Right, I'm off to do some tile-building, it's been too long, and I'm just procrastinating, now.

...and I've hit a brick-wall already! :roll:

Since reading about the joys of the -path feature and plug 'n' play style mods, I've been meaning to sort out the file-structure of my map and arrange it into the folder tree that it should be in when it's finally bundled into a .zip.

The only problem is, I can't see how I can use custom tiles in that way. Because I tried to put all of Senor Deluxe's custom tiles outside of the FoT/core folder system, I can't get to them, as the editor won't let me go any higher than the ...core/tiles folder.

I notice both you, OTB and JJ86 have imported all the custom tiles you've wanted to use as sprites... am I mistaken in saying sprites aren't entities or tiles? How would I go about using them in that fashion, oh learned ones?

Steve

You have to use the -path switch with the editor too. I haven't tried it to see if it will then allow you to access the standard tiles but that is the concept. I guess all of my stuff is within the core directory so I have never had any problems.

Sprites are not tiles, but they are used in entities. They are the part of an entity that shows up on the map. I like using entities for some things because you can use them to trigger game events or use them to pass on information.

The -path option works just fine in the Editor, but be warned that it doubles all the directories... Say you have sprites/misc in your custom directory, the game will list the core folder directories (the usual ones) and then it'll display the directories in the -path specification, so you'll effectivly have two "misc" entries in the list.

However wether you go in the first or second "misc", it doesn't matter, as it'll list ALL the files in BOTH directories regardless. (So you needn't worry about choosing the right one).