Trigger for visited area?

lansounet

Say I have a creature that can teleport me to various area through dialogue actions, but I only want the response for each travel option to be available only if the area has been visited before.

Is there a trigger - like VisitedArea("AreaRes") - to allow this? Or do I have to EXTEND_TOP every one of those areas with some

IF
	OnCreation()
	Global("VisitedThisArea","GLOBAL",0)
THEN
	RESPONSE #100
		SetGlobal("Visited[Area]","GLOBAL"1)

and check for Global("Visited[Area]","GLOBAL",1) in each response?

Ardanis

More or less yes, check for "Visited[Area]".

lansounet

Alright Thanks for the quick answer.

CamDawg

I strongly discourage the use of OnCreation for, well, anything. There's also no reason these need to sit at the top of an area script.

lansounet

I was thinking top of the scripts just in case some other mod does an extend_top on it with bugged looping script. Like the current case of DSotSC-BGT (v2.16) Lion's Way extend_top that prevents some BG1NPC content

What's the deal with OnCreation() ?

DavidW

I'd probably do something like

<<<<<<<< .../mymod-inline/area_add.baf
IF
Global("Visited%area%","GLOBAL",0)
THEN
RESPONSE #100
SetGlobal("Visited%area%","GLOBAL"1)
Continue()
END
>>>>>>>>


ACTION_FOR_EACH area IN ar1234 ar5678 ar9101 BEGIN
COPY_EXISTING ~%area%.are~ ~override~
READ_ASCII 0x94 script
BUT_ONLY
EXTEND_TOP ~%script%.bcs~ ~.../mymod-inline/area_add.baf~ EVALUATE_BUFFER
END

lansounet

That's pretty much what I did with 1 .baf for each area script, without all the evoluted code and variable replacements

Cuv

CamDawg said:

I strongly discourage the use of OnCreation for, well, anything. There's also no reason these need to sit at the top of an area script.

I can think of one reason I would use it: Custom Text Screens. Other than that... agree.

CamDawg

lansounet said:

I was thinking top of the scripts just in case some other mod does an extend_top on it with bugged looping script. Like the current case of DSotSC-BGT (v2.16) Lion's Way extend_top that prevents some BG1NPC content

What's the deal with OnCreation() ?

In this particular case, it's entirely superfluous so all it's doing is introducing a point of failure.

My beef with OnCreation and EXTEND_TOP is mainly my conservative coding nature--I'd rather my own mod fail than break someone else's (i.e. reveal city areas and ar0300 in Tweaks). For whatever reason, I feel like I see OnCreation()/Continue() in particular abused in area scripts when the scripting would be perfectly fine waiting for the next script cycle.

lansounet

Points taken!

DavidW

Cam, I agree with the conservatism in principle, But if I put a block at the top of an area script and include a Continue(), I can guarantee that the rest of the script executes correctly. If I put it at the bottom, I can't guarantee that my script will execute correctly, because I don't control the content of the rest of the script and there's no automated way to check if the existing script allows things at the bottom to execute.

DavidW

lansounet said:

That's pretty much what I did with 1 .baf for each area script, without all the evoluted code and variable replacements

It's a matter of taste whether it's worth doing it my way. The main advantage is that it's easier to debug and much easier to tweak the details later.