Castle Paradox

[emmychu]

Hihi! I was hoping someone could help me out with a question!

All the battles in my game are triggered after touching NPCs that wander the map, representing the monsters as opposed to random battles. The player can avoid the walkabouts and battles will not be triggered, and there are a set number of encounters on the map. Touching the NPCs runs a script that starts a battle formation. I have each NPC set to use only once so that they disappear after the encounter.

However, I'd like for all the enemies to respawn after leaving and re-entering the maps. Is this possible? The 'usable once' command seems to destroy them permanently, which makes sense. Is there another way I can destroy the NPC with plotscripting (how do I make it target whatever NPC the player has bumped into specifically?) and set the map to forget the NPC states when leaving, therefor having the NPCs respawn when the player comes back?

Thanks for any help or suggestions! I hope I was clear enough!

[emmychu]

ACTUALLY, I think I've found something that may work.

Using 'npcref' as a name, I believe it makes a script refer to whichever NPC triggered the script (had to do some digging around to find that one!).

So, I have all my NPCs set to 'usable repeatedly' now, and my script reads:

[TMC]

Hello!

Yes, that's the way to go. And yes, the arguments to NPC use scripts and other triggered scripts need to be much better documented.

NPCs on the current map will also be reloaded when you load a saved game.
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"It is so great it is insanely great."

[emmychu]

For some reason this isn't working for me anymore! I'm not sure what I must've changed, since I'm sure I did have it working...

Right now the enemies aren't disappearing after the battles, and they immediately trigger another battle formation. The only way they get destroyed properly is if I set them to useable only once, which isn't what I want!

Do I need to give them all different script arguments? Do they all need to have script argument 0? I'm really confused as to what the problem is, since I'm sure they were working properly not too long ago!

My script that all the enemy NPCs are set to trigger:

[TMC]

I can think of a few possible things that have changed to cause the script to be repeatedly retriggered:

1) You turned on the "permit double triggering of scripts" general bitset

2) You added an after-battle script to the map

3) There is some other script being triggered or run, such as a script being called by a timer every tick.

All would have the same effect: "fight formation" causes a one tick wait before the NPC is deleted, during which time other scripts can be triggered, including OtherworldBattlesOne itself (either if the permit double-triggering bit is on, or if some other script is also triggered, so that OtherworldBattlesOne doesn't appear to be the active script anymore).

Anyway, the fix is easy: just move the delete NPC before the fightformation command. However that solution is specific to this script. More generally you would want the script to not allow being triggered twice, with an explicit test:

[emmychu]

I double checked, and the double-triggering of scripts wasn't turned on, so that wasn't the problem.

I did put in a 'run' script for the hero to speed up while holding Z, which is the only thing I can think of that would interfere. However, I just went and took that off of the map's on-keypress script, and the problem is still occurring.

It seems that the NPC is just simply not getting deleted. I tried moving them a few tiles as well, and they did not respond. Is the 'npcref' not working with them?

I even tried to include 'destroy NPC(npcref)' before the fight formation trigger. The NPC still was not destroyed, and triggered another battle after. I'm really confused. :C

[Bob the Hamster]