Dungeon Master Forum

OK, I've seen a number of threads here that touch on what I'm attempting to do, and I swear somewhere in either Dungeon Master or Chaos Strikes Back I've seen this 'puzzle' done before, but for the life of me I can't find it. I've spent the last few hours scouring those dungeons in RTC with no luck, and the threads here apparently aren't close enough to what I'm doing to help me in my problem. So...

I've got a wallitem_dent that is a trigger, it's state is visible, it's operated by MISC_GEM_BLUE, it's action is 'toggle' and the other options I have checked are destroy item, disable self, and alternate state. It has 2 targets, a movable wall (and it successfully toggles the state of the movable wall), and a clone of wallitem_switch_blue named "wallitem_blue_gem_inset". Wallitem_blue_gem_inset is not a trigger, and it's state is invisible.

What I'm expecting to happen is for me to be able to take a MISC_GEM_BLUE click it to the wallitem_dent and the MISC_GEM_BLUE to go away, the wallitem_dent to disappear, the wallitem_blue_gem_inset to become visible, and the movable wall that was previously blocking my path to open up and allow passage.

What IS happening is that my MISC_GEM_BLUE goes away, wallitem_dent does not disappear, the wallitem_blue_gem_inset does not become visible, but the movable wall does open up correctly.

I swear this has been done before, because I'm fairly certain that's not an original idea of mine, but I can't find an example of it, and the several threads I've read about similar issues haven't helped me.

What's more is that I've successfully created a coin-op treasure room like you see in dungeon master on the level above the one with the death knights/tentacle eye thingies/and the spiders. Those coin-op alcoves are essentially the same thing as what I'm doing here except they work and what I'm doing here is not working. So I just don't understand what it is that I'm doing wrong. If someone could please advise me I would very much appreciate it, because I'm really at a loss here. I've tried everything I can think of and nothing works.

I have an example dungeon created to test the various permutations of this issue I'm having. I'm willing to upload it, but apparently I don't know how. :p

I think the problem is with disable self/destroy self both being ticked. I think that they get in each other's way, one blocking the other. You can either disable self so it becomes a useless graphic only decoration, or you can destroy self so it goes away completely. Maybe each type of wall object has a different priority, so the coin slots lucked working correctly?

The coin slots are using a copper coin, they're disabling themselves and destroying the coin, and toggling the square alcove's visibility state, everything works fine.

The dent is using a blue gem, it is set to disable itself, destroy the gem, and it toggles 2 different targets, the movable wall right adjacent, and cloned bluegem switch.

I don't see any differences in the mechanics themselves. The only things I see that are different are the wall items I'm using, and the fact that it's got 2 targets, and only one of the targets works. I'm still fiddling with it, trying to come up with some chain of events where I get the outcome I want, but I really just don't see what it is I've done wrong.

On the wall tile next to my switch I'm working on I've created a copy of both wall items, the dent and the blue gem switch, with both objects set to visible. When I test it out both graphics overlap each other, so I know that whatever IS happening with my trigger, it's not making my blue switch visible. I THOUGHT that if I cloned the switch and then put in "NULL" in place of the alternate front and side graphics, that I wouldn't have to worry about toggling the on/off functionality of the switch, and it would instead toggle the visibility state, but unless I hard code it in RTC I can't make the cloned blue gem switch turn visible.

Well after much playing, I found a work around. I found that if I set the blue gem inset to visible, and then had a party operated floor trigger toggle it to invisible (at a much earlier part in my dungeon) then have a secondary wall switch that looks like a dent in the same location as the other, I can have that secondary switch destroy both wall dents and I get the effect I was after. It's a kluge, and I still have no idea why the gem/dent toggle doesn't work like the coin/alcove, but at least I was able to work around the problem. I just thought I'd post to let people know the workaround I found.

Must be something odd to do with the blue gem switch having two visible states unlike the coin/alcove, but not sure why. Glad you got it to work anyway! If I ever come across a better solution, I will post it here