Dungeon Master Forum

I'm having a little trouble getting my removable wall to work.

Basically I have an item in an alcove, and when it's picked up, the wall on the level below should open up (but it's not). Best example I can think of for a comparison would be the junction alcoves in CSB, where the weapon in the alcove toggles the ways wall open/closed.

What settings should I have it going as? I've got the alcove as a trigger and deactivating the wall. What am I missing?

You need to use the "Constant Weight" option if you want something to trigger when an object is removed.

Tried that and still no cake. I'll post a picture...

You've got the Operated By set to "HAND_EMPTY" -- but you said you wanted it to be operated by removing an item from the alcove. The Operated By therefore needs to be the item in question.

You'll also need to change the action to Activate -- actions set on a constant weight trigger actually do the opposite effect (think about it, it makes sense.....)

(Basically, what you're saying is "While this item is in the alcove, I want the wall to remain closed (Activated)" -- the corollorary being "While this alcove is empty, I want the wall to remain open (Deactivated)")

By the way, it's late and a while since I've done this -- I may have it the wrong way round....!

I tried playing around with it a bit more, but still couldn't get it going. I was able to get the result I desired by placing a floor trigger infront of the alcove which was activated by the item in the alcove being "on and above". So basically as soon as you pick up the item in the alcove it'll activate the trigger moving the wall I desired, but I'm still determined to get the alcove thing working.

Could there be an issue with the way I have the alcove itself? It's an invisible alcove that's activated by a coin slot. There is writing on the wall where the alcove hides that is destroyed via the coin slot as well. I've got them stacked as following
"Txt"
"Alcove (Invisible)"
"Staff"

Does the Alcove maybe need to be the highest item in that list? Have noticed in some instances that if an item is down the order it doesn't always work as it should

The staff needs to be above the alcove I think

I'll give that a try tonight when i get home from work and see how it goes. I think in everything I've done, the staff has been on the bottom of the list

You can't have the disable self check box selected when trying to use the constant weight check box. If you do, then in effect the trigger is deactivated from the beginning, i.e., the movable wall was triggered to be closed as soon as the engine starts and then is disabled. So, when you remove your staff from the alcove the trigger has already been disabled and nothing happens. The constant weight method only works if you're willing to let the trigger remain active and toggle your wall open and closed every time the staff is put in or removed from the alcove.

If you really want the movable wall to open only one time, and not re-close if you put the staff back into the alcove, then you'll need to use the trigger in front of the alcove method with the disable self box for that trigger selected.

Surely you can have the alcove trigger through a one-time relay.

Beo,

I don't believe you can use a DISABLE_SELF_RELAY.

The way the constant weight TRIGGER works is that it performs the ACTION on the TARGET while the OPERATED_BY_OBJECT is in the alcove. If the alcove's TARGET is a DISABLE_SELF_RELAY then, assuming the OPERATED_BY_OBJECT is in the alcove at startup, the DISABLE_SELF_RELAY will be activated as soon as the engine starts and it will perform the ACTION on the relay's TARGET one-time and then not execute again. It won't matter what you do with the OPERATED_BY_OBJECT in the alcove, the relay won't be activated, because it already was activated one-time when the engine started. In Twiggy's case, using a DISABLE_SELF_RELAY would result in the MOVABLE_WALL being opened on startup rather than being opened when the staff is removed from the alcove.

As far as I've ever been able to figure out, the only way to achieve a one-time ACTION on an OBJECT by removing something from an alcove is to use the ON_AND_OVER method with a DISABLE _SELF_TRIGGER in front of the alcove. At the same time, if you want a one-time action to occur when you place an OBJECT into an alcove, then using a DISABLE_SELF method on the ALCOVE_TRIGGER works fine.

In CSBwin I think such things could be
easily done with a COUNTER and an AND
gate. I know nothing of RTC but I always
thought it implemented these standard
actuators from Dungeon Master.

Odd, haven't checked the mechanics for a while I guess. A counter is the other way to go, the object out of the alcove is one count, and walking anywhere near the alcove is the other count. That should negate the issue of the false trigger at game start, shouldn't it?

Yes, DM_player is right, DISABLE SELF does not work with constant weight triggers, I forgot about that.

Thanks for clearing that up. I've already got the floor triggers in place but i'll have a play and see if i get it working