Castle Paradox

[kgenly]

First time poster! Apologies if this has been answered somewhere, I can't seem to find what I'm looking for.

The scene is this: Two heroes walk into a castle and enter into a heated discussion with the guards. Simultaneously, in the background, a seemingly insignificant NPC is walking back and forth talking (really just nodding back and forth) to other, uninvolved guards. At a crucial moment the seemingly insignificant NPC breaks out of his walking and talking loop and intervenes in the argument that the heroes are having.

I want the NPC to move smoothly and continually in the background on his scripted path, despite all "wait for textbox" commands related to the heroes' conversation. Likewise, I want his "wait for NPC" commands to not interfere with the actions and textboxes of the action in the foreground.

It seems to me as if the best way to achieve this is with a "while" command. My script looks sort of like this:

[msw188]

Scripted movement of more than one thing at a time is VERY difficult, but if your heroes heated discussion involves nothing but textboxes, then I think this can be done fairly easily.

First, instead of having all the show text box commands scripted, simply connect all of these text boxes to each other in custom. Have the last text box before the new NPC comes over set to turn on tag 9. Then use the same sort of while loop, like so:

[Bob the Hamster]

This problem sounds like it would be much easier to deal with if you use the new 'plot:set timer' command. It is only available in the nightly 'WIP' builds.

You use a timer-triggered script to control the NPC's pacing, and write your regular script without worrying about him any more than to start the timer script at the beginning, and disable it when the pacing NPC joins the conversation.

[kgenly]

Thanks all, this was very helpful.

I now have another, unrelated problem, in the same script, that I cannot understand for the life of me.

When the script begins, I turn on caterpillar mode and have the two heros "come out" of each other as they do in Final Fantasy 6. It looks like this:

[Uncommon]

Man, I did something like this in my first game. If I hadn't lost the scripts years ago, I could just show you how I did it then, but it wasn't that hard from what I remember.
Now, apparently you want to move them by their rank in the caterpillar, so the problem is, I think the whole variable deal you've got there. See, hero by slot returns the hero's number. Walk hero runs on the rank in caterpillar already, so what the variables are doing is confusing the information. So cut out everything those four lines before you set the tag and replace all instances of "originalleader" with 0 or "me" as you've been using elsewhere, and all instances of "originalsecond" with 1 and the movement should be smoother.

As for the door, lemme guess. It's door zero on this map, right? But this map isn't map zero, is it? The problem is all the default door links, they all say "Door 0 links to door 0 on map 0" until you come in and change them, so my bet is that's where the door's sending you, especially when tag 8 is on.
They really need to do something about that, it might be nice once per game, but it's more a nuisance.

[kgenly]

Wow, thanks for the fast reply. I think I understand the confusion now. I'll give that a try.

[Moogle1]

I assume you haven't posted the whole script, but if you want to make the heroes walk back into each other, make sure you suspend passability for the heroes. Don't forget to set caterpillar mode off afterward, though you don't need to resume caterpillar unless you ever use that functionality.
_________________

Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[TMC]

All commands involving the heroes as they are on the map refer to them by their rank in the caterpillar party. (Which isn't the same thing as their rank in the battle party)

'plot:Wait for hero' only waits for a single hero. You probably meant