Elfstone
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File: Castle Steele.hold (3.3 KB)
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I have started another hold. Hoping that I am not being too ambitious this time, but I would like to make a bigger hold than the 3 little ones I've done so far. My plan is to use a fair number of the rooms that I made for the December 'Beauty over Brains' contest in a setting in which the puzzle elements will not be condemned and the rooms will be connected by a bit of a story. I may also re-use a room or two from the 'Maze of Mellenfral' hold.

Firstly, is it considered acceptable to re-use rooms in a different hold? I don't want to breach etiquette.

Secondly, I'm having problems with the movement of a character. The attached file has the first couple of rooms and I have left it 'anyone edit' hoping that you will be able to see the commands I have written. What I want is for the secretary to move a little towards Beethro during the conversation and then lead Beethro out of the room, but he is getting stuck. Can some kind soul point out where I'm going wrong?

Elfstone.

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[Last edited by Elfstone at 01-21-2007 07:02 PM]

krammer
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Try giving him a more explicit route - I think the problem is that he can't pathfind round the black door. Try adding a few more squares for move-to commands. (In fact just adding 17,19 should work...)

And I wouldn't worry about using rooms from other holds unless they are those published on the holds board, in which case it becomes a bit of an annoyance for highscores. However it's your hold, your rooms so it's up to you really.

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Elfstone
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Thanks krammer! I'll have another go at this.

Oh, and I had already decided not to use any rooms from 'Seasons' which is the only Hold I have on the Holds boards; the other two have only appeared on the Contests board, so I assume Highscore don't apply?

Elf.

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Elfstone
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File: Castle Steele.hold (6.4 KB)
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Well I did that and certainly the secretarty moves very smoothly now, without getting stuck.

Unfortunately, he moves straight out of the room and has vanished before the conversation is half finished. I assumed that each command would be carried out in the order on the list, but he just keeps on moving. How do I get him to stop in front of the chair/throne and speak from there until the conversation is finished?

Elf.

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FAPCA - Technical Design Excellence in Layout and Aesthetics

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[Last edited by Elfstone at 01-12-2007 03:39 PM : (added new file)]

krammer
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Ah, this is a problem for everyone.

As DROD is a turn-based game, character scripts follow commands, one per turn - except for speech, which runs in real-time (as it has to). As such as soon as the speech is displayed DROD skips straight to the next command (because it can't tell when speech has "finished"). There are various workarounds though.

Add some "wait x turns" commands so that the player has to move or press 5 so many times before the next command is executed. Alternatively (or additionally) put in a "wait for player" so he won't move until Beethro reaches a certain point.



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Elfstone
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Chaco
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Also, you can use Flush Speech Off as the NPC leaves the room so the speech disappears for people who just want to skip past your speech. It's cleaner that way.

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Tombot
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For my hold I just had a guy telling you to remain motionless until the dialogue finishes.

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schep
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I'm still most impressed with the solution in JtRH. When Beethro moves too far away from the character, cut out the remainder of the conversation (with that "Flush speech No" command) and start up the "this conversation is over"-type ending. The big catch here is that the ending needs to make sense whether the entire conversation was played or Beethro walked away immediately.

Tim
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There are many, many tricks you can do.

Some examples from my Tunnel Vision hold (and if you haven't played it, you should. I've put many dialogue tricks in there):

* Write in newspaper style. Make the first part important and the rest only an explanation of the first. This way, a player does not really need to hear except the first few sentences.

* Write shorter sentences. The game will wait shorter to display the next sentence if they are shorter. Besides, I don't want to read long texts.

* Make Beethro take longer to finish the room, don't let Beethro have a straight path from start to exit so that he can leave the room early. Also, let him do lots of interesting things there while listening. I don't like to walk entire boring spirals just to hear one sentence.

* Divide the room into multiple parts, and let the speech continue after Beethro reach that part.

* Don't move your character.

-- Tim

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Elfstone
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Thanks to Chaco, Tombot, schep and Tim!
This is a bit more complicated than I thought, but I really want it to tell a bit of a story in this hold. I'll have a go at your suggestions.

Elf.

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Tahnan
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In my limited hold-building experience, I've come to decide that in the end getting dialogue/story right just requires a little bit of indulgence on the part of the player. I mean, the player always has the option of hitting the space bar (or whatever she has "flush text" mapped to) to skip all your well-crafted speech. So while there're some tricks to use--the ones mentioned here are good--in order to time the speech correctly, there'll always, I think, be some dependence on the player to stand still long enough to hear the speech.

selotte
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I like the three rooms you have made until now. Just go on.

Elfstone
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Thanks also to Tahnan and selotte.

Tahnan - I think you're right and I will have to 'chop up' my text into smaller bits otherwise players will just miss much of it.

selotte - I'm pleased! have you played my hold "Seasons", the one that's on the Holds board? If you like these 3 rooms you would possibly enjoy Seasons too.

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Tombot
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Howabout some orbs that has to be hit in a certain order to open a door and that only the person speaking can give you the correct order, thus forcing whomever to listen to the whole dialogue.

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[Last edited by Tombot at 01-16-2007 06:08 PM]

Chaco
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You'd have to be using scripting instead of regular door associations to do that, otherwise again the player could solve the orb puzzle while the person is talking.

But yeah, that's a great idea. Have a mod.

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coppro
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My strategy that I've developed but not actually implemented is to give the player cues allowing him to play through cutscenes, or to leave the cutscene path, thus flushing speech and ending the speech bubbles.

Alneyan
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Tombot wrote:
Howabout some orbs that has to be hit in a certain order to open a door and that only the person speaking can give you the correct order, thus forcing whomever to listen to the whole dialogue.

While that solution works in the technical field, I'm not overly fond of the scheme, personally. Some players will want to skip past the dialogue, some way or another; why would you want to prevent them from doing that? I know I've cursed enough times at those games with unskippable cutscenes. You may want to skip past the story bits when replaying a room (or the whole hold), or simply because "story-telling" implies "the game isn't Drod" in your logical world.

Coppro's solution seems to be much better in this regard: people who want the story will just do so, and the others won't have to jump through hoops just to get on with the actual gameplay activities. That sounds like the best of all worlds to me.

Tombot
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It depends on how important the information is, players might need to know somthing to actualy finish the hold.

It probably is not the solution to everything, but it is worth mention.

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selotte
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I have now played Seasons. really good, I like it very must.

Elfstone
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selotte wrote:
I have now played Seasons. really good, I like it very must.

Thank you!

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Elfstone
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A follow-on question: can anyone tell me how to make Beethro speak in the entrance room? If I click on him all I get is a "describe entrance" box.

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Chaco
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You need to make an invisible NPC, then use the speech command and select Beethro as the speaker.

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Elfstone
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Chaco wrote:
You need to make an invisible NPC, then use the speech command and select Beethro as the speaker.

Aha!! now that I wouldn't have thought of.

Thanks Chaco!

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Neather2
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good elf

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