Once you have your
enemy, he is free to do and go wherever he likes. He will chase you all
around the map. You may not always want this. Enemies will react to sounds
and go off exploring to investigate sounds. Because of these things it is a good
idea to try and control their behaviour.
Most enemies are 'hidden' until
needed. Do this directly after they are created
with:
darfuncs.HideBadGuy("Ork1")
Remember to import the darfuncs
file. This file is in the Lib folder. Browse though some of the files you
have imported so far. You can start to see how things work this way. darfuncs
has a lot of useful functions in it. btw. You may have noticed in the Lib and
Scripts folders a lot of files with the extension *.pyc. When a file is
imported, Python makes a copy of it in compiled machine-readable code in order
to read it faster. Later, when some of your own files need to be imported, you
will see these .pyc files appearing in the installed copy of your map in the
main Severance/Maps/MyMap folder. You need pay no attention to these files.
They look after themselves. You don't need to include them in the release
version of your map.
Ok you have hidden your Ork. He and his weapons will
be totally invisible and he will not react to anything. To 'unhide' him
use:
darfuncs.UnhideBadGuy("Ork1")
This call wil be contained in
a function in your DefFuncs file, waiting for the event that triggers
it.
def UnHideOrk1():
darfuncs.UnhideBadGuy("Ork1")
one function can do more than one thing...
def UnHideOrkGroup1():
darfuncs.UnhideBadGuy("Ork1")
darfuncs.UnhideBadGuy("Ork2")
darfuncs.UnhideBadGuy("Ork3")
darfuncs.UnhideBadGuy("GreatOrk6")
What you are doing is using a function to call other
function(s). These functions in turn will call others and so on.
When
the Ork is unhidden, he will be instantly visable and come out fighting if he
sees you. You have to arrange things so that the event that unhides him happens
when the Player cannot see the place where he is hidden. This event is usually a
trigger sector. Sectors are coded in the engine to raise an event when anything
enters or leaves them. A function can be assigned to these OnEnter and OnLeave
events. I'll come to this later. Also the unhide function call can be tagged
on to other functions such as the opening of a door. This way, opening the door
will unhide the Ork standing on the other side.
Now you are writing
functions, a bit more theory. In most cases functions are always put in DefFuncs
file. Don't put them in the .py files that you use to create stuff and don't
create stuff in the DefFuncs file (unless within the body of a function). Doing
these things will not affect anything in a 'live' game, but will
certainly foul things up in a saved game. Keep testing the savegame as you
proceed. It can be a nightmare to sort out savegame bugs when you have a lot of
code.
You made have noticed that some code is indented in the functions.
This is part of the Python structure. It is important to be consistant with your
indentation. One space is enough but using a Tab makes the code easier to read.
You can use any text editor to write code. Notepad is OK, but as your files get
bigger Windows will eventually tell you that the file is too big for Notepad and
would you like to use Wordpad? A word of warning here. Wordpad is Ok but is not
ideal. I have had trouble using Wordpad. Even if you stick to plain text it can
foul up the code and I have had perfectly sound code that won't work due to
some invisible formatting introduced in Wordpad. If you are going to do some
serious coding, get a proper code editor. (I use UltraEdit. Available for d/l on
30-day trial). Note
by Bigtruck: I use the excellent Notepad++ which accepts directly the Pyton
keywords codes and many others langages, you can download itHERE.
Back to the map. You have probably noticed in the game
that some enemies have their own small territories. If you enter a certain
area they will come and attack you but if you back off they abandon the
attack and retreat. This is a nice feature to stop enemies wandering off and
getting lost. To do this, you need to define action areas in the LED. An enemy
needs two contiguous areas: Primary and Secondary. You start him in the
Primary area. He will venture into the Secondary area only to attack the Player,
as long as the Player is in the Secondary area. Move out of Secondary area and
the enemy will retreat. (He may stand there making obscene gestures, but will
not chase you.)
To set these areas in LED, select a
sector (or group of sectors). Goto properties window and scroll along to the
'Groups' tab. You see 32 little tick boxes. Like a lot of things in LED they
are not logically numbered from 1-32. Past 9 you have to
count them but they do represent 1-32. Tick box 1 and press Enter in the usual
fashion. Next. Select any sectors around the Primary one(s) that you want to use
as the Secondary area. Tick box 2 in the Groups box, press Enter. You need to
recompile the map for these groups to work. A few observations here... You will realise that only 16 areas are possible. It may be
that if another area is far enough away that you can repeat the groups numbers
but I have never proved this. Make sure all the Secondary sectors join the
Primaries. Don't leave even small gaps. Also beware sectors that are spilt
horizontally so that an enemy has his feet in Primary area and head in an
unassigned one above. They do not like it. In any case, try to avoid
this arrangement of sectors in any places wher you intend to stage fighting. It
can confuse enemy pathfinding and I have noticed that with Chaos Knights it can
stop the using attacks altogether. As with slopes, any moves you layer make
to sectors that have action areas defined can cause the settings to be lost. If
you move any of these sectors, check the AAs again.
Alright, you have
your map recompiled with an action area. Create your enemies in the Primary
area. Now you have to tell them where their own patch is. Add this code after
creation code for area 1-2:
ork1.ActionAreaMin=pow(2,0) #
Prim ork1.ActionAreaMax=pow(2,1) # Sec
(** to use the pow func in the
math file use:
from math import pow
You will notice something
peculiar here. The 2nd arg is the area but I have 0 and 1, not 1 and 2. This
is back to the Python counting from 0 not 1 thing. Basically, whatever group
number you assigned to a sector, represent it in the scripts by a number 1 less.
If you have a lot of areas, make a note in the enemies file.
#
MainArena pri 1 # MainArena sec 2 etc....
* you may notice in
scripts a lot of ######s Putting a # at the begining of a line makes it
'invisible'. Python will ignore it and anything that follows it om the same
line. It is called a 'comment' in code terminology. This way you can add notes
(or comments) to your code. Also useful for temporarily disabling lines of
code when debugging. If you want to add a lot of notes in a block or disable a
lot of lines, add triple quotes at begining and end:
""" lot of
lines here .... .... """ Python will skip the bit between
the """s
Ok, now test the action area. If you have archers up on high
walls, AAs are essential to stop them trying to jump off. Even so,
archers sometimes do fall. (There is a Knight in the Temple map who regularly
does this. Once he his out of his AA he will go into a trance and try in vain to
get back to his Primary AA.)
)
Past 9 you have to
count them but they do represent 1-32. Tick box 1 and press Enter in the usual
fashion. Next. Select any sectors around the Primary one(s) that you want to use
as the Secondary area. Tick box 2 in the Groups box, press Enter. You need to
recompile the map for these groups to work.
You will realise that only 16 areas are possible. It may be
that if another area is far enough away that you can repeat the groups numbers
but I have never proved this. Make sure all the Secondary sectors join the
Primaries. Don't leave even small gaps. Also beware sectors that are spilt
horizontally so that an enemy has his feet in Primary area and head in an
unassigned one above. They do not like it.
In any case, try to avoid
this arrangement of sectors in any places wher you intend to stage fighting. It
can confuse enemy pathfinding and I have noticed that with Chaos Knights it can
stop the using attacks altogether.
)