Dungeon Master Forum

Hi there. I was wondering if it,s possable to start of with a member or members of the party as misc_bones. And if so how do you go about it.
Thanks for all the usful help in this forum.

The MISC_BONES item is the pile of bones that doesn't belong to any character - when a character dies, they generate a bone pile with their own name in it (eg MOPHUS_BONES). I haven't used the RTC editor for quite some time now, but as far as I recall, there isn't a way to add a named bone pile into a map. Plus that character would need to already be a member of the party, and dead. I don't think there's a way to do that...not unless you create the character(s) you want, start a game, kill off those you want to start as being dead, save the game, and then send out that save file as well as the map file when you want people to play it.
Or something .

i was working with this, cloned my own characters bones. no matter what, you need a character to pick up the bones. what you can do is create new bones and have it activate the ADD CHARACTER, which you've placed in a mirror somewhere, so it can be done provided there is a character already in the party to pick them up and activate it. i think i saw an option of make object clickable somewhere, not sure, probably read it while i was tired and had a few, but i think it's there and i would not know how to assign it either. i'd like to know more about the misc bones, i have a raise dead spell, if you raise dead it affects the misc bones, ALL of them, including the character that was assigned on death, so it must be from cloned bones. this is necessary when using npcs. so when i raise dead misc bones turns into a skeleton it will turn the character into skeletons too, if not from a clone.

I can think of a few simple ways to do this:

Option 1: If you want a party member to start out as dead, you could assign a party member and set up a trigger that kills him/her on the start tile. You would probably also want to have some way of adding a living party member as well, to manipulate the bones, and a teleporter to teleport the bones to the location you want them to be found as well.

Option 2: A better way would be to clone a decorative floor object to be clickable, in the object editing dialogue box there is a tab where you can select what happens to an item on certain events, one of which is a mouse click, you need to create a cloned relay with a descriptive name of what happens or what triggers it, then set up an action on "click 1" that that does "object_activate" and is set to eg: "RELAY_REVIVE_DEAD_CHARACTER" or whatever you name the relay. Get this relay to target an action set to "add member to party" and select an unused party member. You can also require that the party be holding a particular item when they click on the bones. I've done this sort of thing in the demo of my Castle Lynchgate RTC dungeon, for a different purpose, but it could be used to add a new party member, assuming you have the room for another party member.

Option 3: Clone an alcove, give it Alar of Vi (or other suitable image) graphics. Set up a clone of the MISC_BONES object and name it CHARACTERNAME_BONES. Place the cloned altar and bones in the dungeon, then set up the cloned alter to act as a trigger, activated when the cloned bones you made is set within the altar, and have the altar activate an ACTION object that is set to ADD MEMBER TO PARTY and targets the character you want to have attached to those bones.

I hope this helps.

Oh, and welcome to the forum.

i do not think you can make a monster mouse clickable, or can you? this would really make things all that much easier if i can, that means limbo can be avoided if one accidently dismisses their last character

yes, monsters can be made clickable, I did it in my Castle Lynchgate dungeon, you can click on the guards in the barracks and they say a brief message to you, and you can click on the merchant in the stores as well, and it opens up a menu of things you can ask him about to do with using the shop. I thought you've done this in your unfinished essence of chaos dungeon, and in your monster AI test dungeons?

OH, wait, I get what you're talking about, and yes, you can make it clickable by the pointer used by an empty party, you can also set up a relay with a condition that checks for party size, with a counter that tracks the party size, activated whenever a member leaves the party, and deactivated whenever a member joins the party. In Lynchgate I use this system to make sure the party size does not exceed the current maximum, yet that maximum can be changed later on. So basically you can use this to have a relay activate the remove party member action but have that relay fail to activate if there is only 1 party member, so your last member could then never be removed.

yes SU, i will try making the monster npcs clickable with no party, we wouldn't need the relay counter idea if aplayer can click on a monster with no party members and still hire the character npc. i knew i saw that somewhere, i must have a try at it.
you'll see what i've done after you have checked out the latest demo. beowuuf has helped out with it, so far so good, has bugs, most can be fixed, some can be bent.

Thank you all for your help and kind words. Will try them out tomorrow, (stuck at work).

No problem. I'd love to see what you're able to do with our suggestions.

Chaos-Shaman wrote:yes SU, i will try making the monster npcs clickable with no party, we wouldn't need the relay counter idea if aplayer can click on a monster with no party members and still hire the character npc. i knew i saw that somewhere, i must have a try at it.
you'll see what i've done after you have checked out the latest demo. beowuuf has helped out with it, so far so good, has bugs, most can be fixed, some can be bent.

I just remembered that the empty party clickable is set by the op-bys so wherever you have access to selecting an "ob-by" you can set it up for an empty party to be able to operate something.

yeah, i kinda figured that, wasn't sure if i missed something, i had tried before but could not find a way to access it, you had my hopes up SU, darn.

Yeah, I guess you'll have to stick with the party size tracking counter and block any attempts to remove the last party member from the party, that is if the engine will even let you remove the last member from the party in the first place.

umm, i guess you know if you checked out the demo that yes one can remove the last charracter. i was just wishing so bad i could have done a characterless click to join, but i am still satisfied with limbo, it would be like starting a whole new section, or dungeon with that option anyway. i have three ways so far to do this, one being unstable though, the otherrs are doable but not as beautiful as what we'd like to see. i am still plugging away at possibilities. if only a little bit of help would navigate this way, but most likely everyone is too busy on their own engines and dungeons that that is an unlikelyhood. i can say this SU, i am very impressed with Clodius, i like his works. we need some team building, get the right balance of skills and together we can make something others can enjoy.

I agree.

One obvious way to add a party member when a party is in limbo is to use a mirror of course, another is to have at least some NPCs not be using a monster object at all but some other inanimate object type, such as column, that does have access to the "op_bys" option, and thus can be set to be operable by an empty party.

hmmm, that sounds like a good way, but how does a column move about on its own? objects other than monsters do not move on their own, but i think i know what you mean, is it possible to move tile objects around as though it was a monster on tile, so a puddle maybe? , or perhaps a trigger, or even cloud that represents monster bitmaps but is really something else.
hmm, i like your imagination......

I saw key holes that "move around" in "Dungeons Matter" a RTC custom game.
That is in Chaos level a place where a lot is moving, this is activated by ant mens and a giggler stepping on pads in the "control room(s)".

really terkio? like that would be awesome! is that move_tile or teleport function combination? if there is a way to fake a monsters movement that is represented as being an item using tile movement, it would be mind bending. it would break some of the rules especially if it could some how be swapped out being able to produce a somewhat personal ai.

I know this is old, but i came across it while looking for something else.

I did a similar thing with switches and keyholes moving around.
It was 5 or 6 switches on one side of a corridor. Just simple floor triggers are fine. I had, say... trigger 2 activate switch 5 and deactivate the others, trigger 4 activate switch 1 and deactivate 2, 3, 4, 5, etc...
The main thing is with the bitmaps... The alternative bitmap has to be taken out or made the same as the regular bitmaps, or they won't disappear/reappear.

So the random movement of a monster moved the switch around the corridor. Of course it depends on the random element of monster movement, but with enough relays/time/patience and a large enough area it could be made to appear random even without this.