I'm back! And other Event news.....

[Tarlanon]

Well, finally I have been able to get back to working on my little DC mod. And it feels good to be back. It is great to see that some of the little problems I have had with the Editor/Engine have been taken care of. Great work CocoaSpud and gang! There is lots of great new art, many projects seem to be in the works.

This is all good. No, this is all GREAT!

Whilst I was toiling away in my little world last night, I ran into a bit of a snag. I was able to overcome it (much in part to the Spud still having the debug output of the engine turned on -- Which hopefully will always be an option) and I thought I would offer a little tip to any newbies like myself who may struggle once you start deeply nesting events in a given location. For the rest of you 'old timers' this problably is something you have all known about.

Anyway, on the to explaination.

Say you have a location on your map that has a lot of activity going on there. This could be the main guild house where all the quests are given, or just a very active part of the dungeon or cave. Either way, you are likely to have a very deep tree of events spawning from that location. Here is something you will want to keep in mind while you are 'coding' it. Take for instance an event tree which looks like this :

[+]-Text Statement (1)
......|
.....[+]-Text Statement (2)
...........|
..........[+]-Text Statement (3)
................|
...............[+]-Special Item (4)
.....................|
.................(And so on)

Pay special attention to the [Chain Trigger] field when you are deeply nesting events like this, especially if some of these events are set to run [Once Only]. If event (1) was set to always happen and the [Chain Trigger] field was set to "Only if event happens" then event (2) will fire next when the party activates the events. Now if event (2) was set to happen [Only Once] and the [Chain Trigger] was set to "Only if event happens" then when the party activates the event, event (1) would fire; Then event (2) would fire because the event (1) occured and the [Chain Trigger] dictates that event (2) can run because event (1) happened; Now event (3) would fire because the same set of conditions exist from event (2), and so on.

The 'Gotcha' that I experienced happens next. Say all the events I just described occured. The party leaves the area then returns. Event (1) fires again because it "Always happens", and the [Chain Trigger] passes it's verification because event (1) fired. Now when you get to event (2), it does NOT fire because it was set to happen [Only Once]. Since the [Chain Trigger] for event (2) is set to "Only if event happens" and since event (2) was only set to "Only Once" the event doesn't fire and Event (3) will NOT be processed. Nor will ANYTHING ELSE down that chain.

Hopefully that description made some sense. The long and short of it is, be careful when coding long event trees. If something at the top of the tree doesn't fire correctly, there is a good chance everything underneath it won't work either.

Just FYI. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[SilentThief]

Welcome back!!! Not too much news going on. Manikus has asked for suggestions on the FAQ being worked on. Richard ('Spud) is silent right now prolly due to the hurricane, and I think you've seen there's a bunch of DC activity in the UAForever yahoo group. Sadly, Frank; who had the different wallsets, decided to leave due to some communication problems...

But its gud 2 C U bak
SilentThief

[manikus]

Welcome back, Tarlanon.

That's a good explanation of a common issue that arise, do you mind if I copy it for the F.A.Q.?

And as for the different wallsets, I can probably answer any questions you might have, though I'm not sure where Frank got all of screen captures from. As for his demo crashing your machine, try it from the editor-> start from current position option. There is a lot of stuff still to be worked out with making this wall configuration work, but it's still a great idea.

-manikus

[Tarlanon]

Most certainly you can use it in the F.A.Q. if you want. There are parts of my explaination which can seem confusing in parts, so if you want to change a few things about it to make it easier to understand go right ahead!