Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 5:34 pm
That sounds really fun. So you're full-bore teaching now? Awesome.
Well, okay. What you've mentioned involves zero scripting whatsoever, so you shouldn't have any problem learning and using the tools to build maps and import models. UnrealEd triggers are fairly powerful — everything is powerful, for that matter. (You would not believe how many options a particle emitter has.) You can also have 'use' triggers, where the player must press a key to activate it, as opposed to walking over it, pushing into it, etc.
Setting aside the interface for now, you would only need to script new pickups. Even without a full-blown inventory, you'd still need to script and model new actors so they could show up in the level and have rudimentary behavior (e.g., can be picked up). I believe you can make triggers dependent on the presence of an actor — a key, for example — but I'm not sure about this, and we may have to expand an existing trigger to add this functionality. Fortunately, inheritance is one of UnrealScript's easiest and strongest features.
That's another point I wanted to make: we wouldn't be replacing existing scripts; we would be adding more scripts. A general rule of modding is that you don't touch what's already there because it will break the existing game, so instead we expand that material and put our new stuff in its own package. It gets more complicated when you're adding new concepts, like melee weapons and shields, rune-driven magic, visible inventory, etc.
Well, okay. What you've mentioned involves zero scripting whatsoever, so you shouldn't have any problem learning and using the tools to build maps and import models. UnrealEd triggers are fairly powerful — everything is powerful, for that matter. (You would not believe how many options a particle emitter has.) You can also have 'use' triggers, where the player must press a key to activate it, as opposed to walking over it, pushing into it, etc.
Setting aside the interface for now, you would only need to script new pickups. Even without a full-blown inventory, you'd still need to script and model new actors so they could show up in the level and have rudimentary behavior (e.g., can be picked up). I believe you can make triggers dependent on the presence of an actor — a key, for example — but I'm not sure about this, and we may have to expand an existing trigger to add this functionality. Fortunately, inheritance is one of UnrealScript's easiest and strongest features.
That's another point I wanted to make: we wouldn't be replacing existing scripts; we would be adding more scripts. A general rule of modding is that you don't touch what's already there because it will break the existing game, so instead we expand that material and put our new stuff in its own package. It gets more complicated when you're adding new concepts, like melee weapons and shields, rune-driven magic, visible inventory, etc.
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