Mission Building: Advanced Techniques

[Cunjo Carl]

 

Have a quick question about getting the mission builder to do something special?
Find some neat and useful trick? Tell us about it here!

 

I'll get the ball rolling with tricks for handling mission requirements in any order, or all at once.
 

One at a time:
Just shown for comparison, connecting requirements in a row checks them one at a time.

 

In any order:
Lets the player tackle your requirements in any order, allows you to trigger optional dialogue during a mission, and gives your player an option of which objectives to do (like winning by doing 2 of 4 objectives). First choose some variable to temporarily track progress, like score, funds, or fuel hidden in a nearby tank you've spawned. Set this to the number of objectives that need doing. In my case, I wanted the player to destroy 4 buildings, so I set the score to 4. Next, for convenience, put an always true node with 'run once' turned off on both sides of your objectives. Link the first always true node to each of your objectives and dialogue triggers. Then, have each objective link to a node that decreases the remaining objectives variable by 1. After this, link everything to the second always true node, and finally have this node link to (in order) first a node that checks if the objectives remaining variable is 0 (win!), and second the original always true node at the start of the loop. In this way, the player will continue to run through the loop until they've completed enough objectives to escape.

To have multiple triggers for a single result that happens only once. Have both triggers link first to the result node with 'run once' selected, and then link second to an always true node that bypasses the result.

All at once:
There's a few ways check multiple requirements at once, but the easiest I've found is using time. Link together nodes for each requirement you want satisfied, such as altitude>x, speed>y, and speed<z. Then, have the final requirement link to (in order) first a 'time since node' node testing if the time since the initial requirement was <5s, and second link back to the initial requirement. In this way, the system will first check to see if each requirement is satisfied one by one, and then on a second loop double check that they're all satisfied simultaneously before moving on.

 

 

Edited March 18, 2018 by Cunjo Carl