TFMurphy
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3118
Registered: 06-11-2007
IP: Logged

"Return to prior location" is a wonderful new target location for level entrance movement, allowing - amongst other things - the ability to code useful commands that bring you to whole new 'rooms' that can act as additional interfaces and then drop you back where you were, just as you left the last room.

Problem is, this has the potential to interfere with scripts that are meant to restart on room entrance. For example, a trapdoor puzzle that keeps on resetting itself until it's completed might be coded by having a Restarting script that rebuilds the Trapdoors whenever the player enters the room, and terminating the script once all Trapdoors are dropped. However, the player could enter the room, go halfway into it, then use his command to go wherever and then return, and find themselves in the middle of a rebuild trapdoor field rather than in a midst of a half-solved puzzle.

There are, of course, workarounds for this, like disabling the command while the player is in the critical area, or only rebuilding if the player is detected on a room edge... but this was one example. It's more difficult for an architect to plan where a player may be when they're using a restarting script if they're also using something that "Returns to prior location" in their hold.

So the request is as follows: either "Restart script on entrance" itself, or a new variant of such, should have the ability to not restart if the player enters the room via the "prior location" entrance. A variant would be ideal, since we're still exploring many of the scripting possibilities - there may well be times where a script restart would be wanted even if the player is resuming the previous room midway in... and there may be solutions to the above problem that I haven't considered too. This is simply my suggestion towards this perceived problem in these rather early post-release days.

If anyone has anything to add to this, please feel free.