Toolset Encounter Design features

shadguy

I'm going off some very old notes I dug up, but here's a number of wishlist items I had from a past experience working on encounter setup. I've got separate notes on nwscript requests that I'll file in the scripting forum, and I've already posted a couple suggestions for the DM Client where appropriate.

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Basic Tab

Encounter Spawn Options: Single Shot/Continuous. With reference to this material ( https://nwnlexicon.com/index.php?title=Maxam_-_Introduction_To_Encounters ), the continuous option has some quirks that make working with them a little non-intuitive. Having to re-enter the trigger for a respawn in awkward.

I'd also suggestion renaming Continuous to "Continuous (Group)" and and a new option "Continuous (Individual)". The Continuous Group option would essentially be the current behavior with any bug fixes; once all monsters from a spawn die, they will respawn as a group as the respawn timer expires. Continuous Individual will respawn individuals from the encounter as they die, without necessarily waiting for the whole group to die. Continuous individual *may* choose from any creature on the creature list with the same CR (and within the same group, if those are implemented).


Scripts Tab

OnSpawn - Expose the script(s) that choose which monsters to spawn from the list(s). New nwscript functions will likely need to be exposed.


Advanced Tab

Active is currently On/Off. We can script fanciness, but some folks may find "Active - Day Only/Night Only/Specific Time Range/Specific Dates" types of options fun. For example, maybe a spawn is only active during full moons.

Spawn Radius - new feature - Spawns are placed within the specified distance of the chosen encounter Spawn Point.

Minimum Spawn Distance - Spawns are placed no CLOSER this distance from the PCs. Especially helpful when no spawn points are specified by the encounter, such as for DM placed Encounters.
Maximum Spawn Distance - Compliment for the above.


I'm sure other folks have similar/better/different related ideas. There's a good number of scripted systems on the vault, but they tend to use waypoints rather than encounters. I think the built in system can get a lot of mileage out of some of the ideas above and/or ripped out of vault systems.

-Dave

Terrorble

It's true, the basic encounter from the toolset could be a lot more. I've spent a lot of time finding, learning, and editing custom content to control encounters and spawn behavior. I'd be very happy if improvements like this made their way in at some point.

Verin

Option to assign custom tag to the creature(s) spawned.

Option to set the linear or circular patrol path for the spawns.

There are other options. So far, there are custom triggers available that can also spawn mixtures of creatures and cancel each other, based on tags, so the encounters could be tailored for specific entry point. Cancelling each other or spawning different creatures depending on the direction PC approaches the area. Assigning the names to creatures spawned or the chance to drop specific items as a loot once killed. All this was already done by the community, but should be part of official trigger system.

HousePet

Might be slightly off topic, but I've never known what is going to spawn when you have a range given for the number of creatures and for the possible CRs of the creatures.
How does it decide on wether it spawn more critters or higher level critters.
And what does the difficulty setting even do?
The interface could be more transparent here.

Dark_Ansem

Following. I like this quite a lot.

shadguy

@Shadooow 's work, here: https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/script/trigger-based-spawn-system-shadooow , may interest folks as well. Supporting Shadoow's ideas by integrating those features directly in the tS with gui support would be huge.

-Dave

dunahan

Following too, I'm also experimenting and learning from @Shadooow 's work @shadguy mentioned here

shadguy

FYI, Daztek has worked on an nwnx Encounters plugin. Those running linux servers may find this handy.

Linky: https://github.com/nwnxee/unified/tree/master/Plugins/Encounter

-Dave

Khuzadrepa

Expanding this feature is a fantastic idea, @shadguy ! I am especially interested in the 'OnSpawn' script being editable and thoughts on the 'Active' checkbox. I know there is/was a bug that even if you set it active or inactive, there was one more cycle of spawning before it actually took effect. Not sure if that has been fixed or not. I've also got an idea below that might work in case your suggestions can't for day/night.

1) I'd like to add a checkbox to make the encounter not scale by character level. Default it to scaling (to keep compatibility), but be able to check/uncheck a box to avoid normal behavior and just randomly spawn one entry in the spawns list (or something similar.) Utilize the Minimum and Maximum Creatures field to determine how many are spawned (but preserving the Unique check box so it could just be one of that entry that would be independent of the Min/Max.)

2) A field for percent chance the encounter actually spawns no creatures. Depending on how it's implemented, have it default to spawn 100% of the time (again for compatibility, but make it so the builder can set it to other values (like 50%) and it does a check on trigger but still starts the timer to re-trigger even if nothing spawns. Random encounters done easily!

3) Add check boxes in the spawn list (next to Unique) whether that spawn is for day or night (default to both checked for spawning day and night.) Might be a different way to implement this, but would be great to add something that delineates day/night.

The goal of these changes would be the ability to create more diverse/random encounters in a straightforward way.

I learned recently that the encounter OnEnter event doesn't trigger prior to the monsters spawning... would it be desirable for it to trigger before or are there uses for it as it is?