The "
wait for event"
script command has grown hugely in importance with the inclusion of challenge scripting -- though of course it has many other uses, in any hold with a storyline or just characters who are meant to react to certain events. Unfortunately, it can be very frustrating to use -- in many cases it's not obvious exactly what triggers a certain event, and there is
no documentation in the F1 help files on the different events. I accept that this has happened because new events relating to the 3.0 (and later 5.0) features had to be added on top of the existing framework without changing it. But it's now reached a level of complexity that has to be addressed.
The particular anomaly that made me sit down to write this post: in my last "
Passing of the Hold"
room, I wanted a character to react to a roach dying by fire trap. Naturally I first tried "
Wait for event Monster burned"
-- but no, that's a 3.0 event that reacts to hot tiles. "
Fire trap burning"
isn't it either, that reacts to a fire trap simply being active, even though that's completely redundant with "
Fire trap activated"
.
This isn't the first problem I've had with "
Wait for event"
. "
Splash"
is triggered when anything falls in water, fine. I wanted to react to a monster falling into pit. Thinking there wasn't such an event, I had to redesign two entire rooms. Turns out there is, but it's called "
Object fell"
, so you can hardly blame me for overlooking it.
"
Monster stabbed"
is triggered by stabbing any single-tile monster or a rock giant. Rattlesnakes have a separate stabbing event -- but it isn't triggered by stabbing a length-2 snake so it dies. For that you want "
Serpent smashed"
, the same event as for red serpents (or adders) dying. If you want to detect an adder being stabbed, you're out of luck.
So, what I'm saying is, we need to have documentation on exactly what triggers each different event. The names aren't enough any more. Some of them need to be renamed -- "
Monster burned"
should be renamed "
Monster burned by hot tile"
now that fire traps also exist. I'm happy to help with writing this documentation, but I still don't know all the details it would have to include.
And yeah, adding events for fire trap death and stabbing adders would be nice too.
____________________________
50th Skywatcher
