I discovered a most unintuitive behavior of the scripting engine today. I had a script set up to enforce a condition of room completion, as follows:
Appear
Imperative Required Target
Wait for event Player activates orb
Imperative Invulnerable
To my dismay, I discovered that when an NPC becomes "
Invulnerable"
it can no longer be a required target for room clear gate toggling. After checking with the helpful coppro, I ascertained that this was indeed intentional (hence the placement of this topic in Feature Requests), and was probably to prevent some sort of abuse by architects.
I would now argue that these two imperatives should not be mutually exclusive, for three reasons. Firstly, that it is not at all intuitive; secondly, that it makes for one of the most elegant ways to enforce a puzzle condition short of no scripting at all; thirdly and most importantly, that it prevents some puzzle potential. For you must see that just as the wubba is not truly invulnerable to death, neither is a so-called "
Invulnerable"
character. It may still be killed in several ways, including:
* dropping off of platforms
* briar
* having pit/water built under it
* any number of unusual customized conditions set by the architect
And as custom monsters are gaining popularity and legitimacy, anyone can see how having to kill an "
Invulnerable"
character could easily be an essential aspect of some worthy puzzle.
For all these reasons I promote this behavioral change. And if some foolish architect should try to abuse the potential, as one might any of the many other abusable elements of DROD (i.e. just about everything), we shall do what has always been effective: Play another hold.
____________________________
DROD has some really great music.
Make your pressure plates 3.0 style!
DROD architecture idea generator
[Last edited by Jatopian at 01-23-2008 11:55 PM]
.
I actually like having a character that can't die from most conventional means. Leads to unique puzzles.
