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About entrances/exits and moving containers

chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
How do doors work exactly? Looking at ARE files in the Infinity Engine browser I can see that every passage has two things: the red-colored trigger area and the gold door icon for the entrance. The entrance has only the name saying where it leads to, like Exit0704 when it is in the area 0703. The trigger for it is actually called Door0704 and uses Entrance name that is the Exit name of the golden icon (confusing, that). So the golden icon just contains this information for the trigger, which actually does the transporting, yes? And the door to be clicked on isn't really necessary, it's a separate thing.

Now what needs to be done in the destination area? Does some kind of landing point have to be prepared? How do I point the trigger to coordinates I want? How do I tell it to put me in a specific place?

The second question is about containers and placement more generally. How do I move, say, chests about? I change their Location: X and Location: Y coordinates, but that doesn't seem to do it. There are other coordinates called Launch point and Bounding box below. What are those?

Comments

  • AstroBryGuyAstroBryGuy Member Posts: 3,437
    Entrances/Exits: There are travel regions (exits) and entrances (the "gold doors" in NI). The travel regions flag an area the party can use to exit the region. Entrances are locations the party can appear when entering an area.

    The travel region will indicate both the area it links to as well as the name of the entrance in that area. So, looking at AR0703 in NI, Door0704 is a travel region that links to destination area AR0704, and the entrance in AR0704 is Exit0703. The logic is that when I'm looking at AR0703, I can easily discern to which area Door0704 leads (AR0704). Looking at AR0704, I can also easily discern from which area entrance Exit0703 comes from (AR0703).

    Entrance Exit0704 is actually connected to the travel region Door0703 in AR0704 (not Door0704 in AR0703). It is named Exit0704 because when the party arrives via that entrance, they are coming from AR0704.

    Note: if you are talking about doors that are openable/closable, that is another story, since you are getting into editing the tileset for the area.

    Containers are also defined as regions. You can put a container region anywhere you want, but the chest graphic is part of the area's art. So, the chest itself isn't movable.

    If you want to get into area-making, see this tutorial from @Yovaneth:

    http://www.simpilot.net/~sc/dltcep/index.htm
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    Well, thank you very much again. A very thorough explanation that tells me exactly why nobody arrives to my new area from modified Candlekeep - I need to edit the inn door trigger. Area-making is beyond me for now, and openable doors I don't need, except: is there any way to make a doorway appear at a designated spot, as part of a spell, for example, along with a trigger? I'm working on a spell that would ideally bring about a door the characters can click on, open, enter and be transported to another place. I can substitute a visual effect for the door, some kind of arch if that's impossible, but the trigger is what matters here.
  • AstroBryGuyAstroBryGuy Member Posts: 3,437
    Not that I know of. Openable doors are handled via the area's tileset. When you open a door, the tiles are swapped from the "open" state to the "closed" state. That means that they are tied to a particular part of an area, since the entire tile(s) are swapped. Regions are also specified in the area file.

    You could have a spell create an invisible creature that will initial dialog and transport the party to another area. Take a look at the Teleport Spell mod to see how something like that could be done.

    http://forum.sigil.cz/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=740
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    I've figured out the invisible creature thing.
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    @AstroBryGuy , about dialog.tlk. For some reason my changes to it don't show in the game. Just blank. Any idea what that could be about? And by the way, wouldn't different mods clash if they added lines with the same numbers to dialog.tlk? StringRef 70000 let's say, in my mod and someone else?
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  • AstroBryGuyAstroBryGuy Member Posts: 3,437
    Yeah, as @subtledoctor said, you don't manually hack the dialog.tlk file. Use WeiDU to add new strings to the dialog.tlk.

    Here is the README for WeiDU:
    http://www.weidu.org/~thebigg/README-WeiDU.html

    Mod How-Tos at Gibberlings3:
    http://gibberlings3.net/forums/index.php?showforum=62

    Or, just do what I did, download mods, crack 'em open, and see how they work. :smile:
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    Jesus Christ, that makes it about 10 times as complicated. It's not easy doing everything else for a mod, now it turns out I can't even put in text strings without using a DOS-era editor?
  • mf2112mf2112 Member, Moderator Posts: 1,919
    edited July 2016
    Don't Panic. Ironically, as a long time sysadmin working in mostly Microsoft environments and being pushed into UI-for-everything, I am having to go back and learn PowerShell since Microsoft is now moving forward backward forward into command line again. Try Notepad++, it is great free editor for Lua and many others. Command line isn't so bad, just save your code and you may find re-using it a lot easier the next time. Copy/paste. :)
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    edited July 2016
    Well I'm not Microsoft. I really don't care to do a lot of typing, unless it's creative writing. :angry: I'm not panicking, I just need to figure out exactly how to make Weidu add entries to dialog.tlk and then make my mod refer to them, what with the items already quoting string numbers I added to the main file. Grr.

    ...

    DISSIMULATION AND OBSCURATION

    By Tzunk

    The stocky, almost cubical octavo presents problems with opening; eventually you realize the binding is on the other side, but the thin holding chain must be passed around the knob a few times. As the tome splits open, you see that the pages are very thick and the ink thin like water paint. Floral, large initials glisten rouge and vert every few lines. The calligraphy is also quite nice, if a little rounded, and comfortable-looking grotesques wink and wave their sepia flutes at you from the margins. When at last you break through to the words, you discover the book to be a fairly common primer on sleight-of-hand and stage tricks. This becomes the last straw. You slam the covers shut, infuriated, to a faint, probably unreal cheering and trumpeting.

    ...

    That's what I like... pages of syntax not so much.
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    edited July 2016
    All right then. I think I got it: you are talking about mod compatibility. Instead of appending dialog.tlk in Near Infinity I should create separate dlg files for conversations. Does that have to be done in Weidu, though?
  • chimericchimeric Member Posts: 1,163
    So is there a way to avoid Weidu or not? Suppose I don't write dialogues but only item descriptions and such. Where do I put those strings?
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