Buiding troubles

[Malavon's Rage]

I've just started building a module, I'm not having any trouble yet so far except one thing. Today I just now figured out how to connect areas with doors, but now I'm wondering how to connect areas with portals. Any help would be welcome.

[Legolas]

I'd prepared an area transition with lots of images a while ago, but since it was too large to put on the 'net I'm afraid I can't give you the link. I can, however, walk you through area transitions in text only. It may help to follow the steps with the toolset.

Area Transitions:
I'm going to walk you through all the options here, even though you only asked about the waypoints.

The first thing we do is create a fresh area to experiment in. I'm not going to explain how to create an area. Let's use a City Exterior area, and place a Good Castle Main Door and a Slum House 1.
The castle already comes with a door of it's own, but the house does not. To make a door transition possible, select 'paint doors' and pick one of the standard doors. Place it in the door opening of the slum house.

Let’s start with a one-way transition, entering the castle will have you appear at the front door of the house. First, we need to have the tag of the door belonging to the house.
Right-click on the door to the house, select properties and look under the 'basic' tab. The second box from the top will contain the door's tag.
It's probably called "NormalDoor". Change it to "TransitionHouseOutside" for clarity purposes.

Now go to the castle door's properties menu and move on to the Area Transitions tab. Select the 'door' radiobutton as the destination type. In the Destination Tag box, type "TransitionHouseOutside", the name of the door to the slum house. Mind the capital letters.


To make a two-way transition you need to do the exact opposite. Select the 'door' radiobutton in the Slum House door area transition tab, and enter the tag of the castle door in the destination tag box. It's probably CastleDoor, unless you've changed it. CastleDoor is clear enough, so unless you are going to create more doors, there's no need to alter the tag.


To make transitions between areas, first you need two of them. Create a new area. A City Interior map will do. Place a doorway somewhere, and add a door. You can go to properties->basic and change the tag of this door to "TransitionHouseInside". In the same way as before, we can connect this door to the one outside. Under the "Area Transitions" tab, select 'door' and enter "TransitionHouseOutside".

Return to the City Exterior area and edit the Slums House door. Instead of linking straight back towards the castle door, change the destination tag to "TransitionHouseInside". You'll now have a house with a door to get you inside and back outside, and in addition the castle door will also get you outside the slums house.

You may want to save occasionally and test to make sure everything works.



So far so good, you can link from one door to the other. Now let's move on to the more tricky waypoints and triggers.

Bringing up a waypoint’s properties will reveal there’s no option for a transition there. You can’t start an area transition at a waypoint. You can, however, end one there. It’s one-way travel, but unlike with doors, you can place waypoints almost anywhere. Let’s set up a simple one. First, create a waypoint somewhere and give it a proper tag.
Place it somewhere outside, and name it "TransitionWPOutside".
Let’s have a door send you to the waypoint.

Although it doesn't make much sense, let's have the door inside the house bring you to the waypoint rather than the door just outside.
Go to the "TransitionHouseInside" door and change the destination tag to "TransitionWPOutside". Also, make sure to select the Waypoint radiobutton, rather than the Door button.

You will find it does not actually matter which of the buttons you select, selecting waypoint when liking to a door or vice versa will still work. You’ll only start having trouble when a door and a waypoint both use the same tag. In that case, selecting waypoint will bring you to the waypoint, selecting door will bring you to the door. Despite that, it's much clearer when you do select the appropriate destination type.


One final way of setting up an area transition is through the use of triggers. Like waypoints, they can be placed anywhere. Unlike waypoints, you can draw their outline, making them perfect for setting up transitions around sewers and the like.
You’ll note there’s no option for trigger in the Destination Type list. This is because triggers are also supposed to work one way, and this is the opposite way to waypoints. Triggers are large areas, whereas waypoints are infinitely small dots. The first is perfect for leaving from, as you'll be able to find it. The latter is better for teleporting, because the computer needs to know exactly where to positoin the character. Waypoints indicate a specific point and a direction to look in as well, whereas in triggers you could only be placed in a random spot or in the centre, looking in a random direction. Not very practical.
However, as long as there are no doors or waypoints with the same tag as the trigger, you’ll be able to set up a two-way area transition between two triggers. It’s not the proper way of doing things, however.

Let’s see how it is done. Place a Sewer Entrance 1 and draw an area transition trigger around the grate. Name it SewerEntrance and link it to the waypoint we created earlier (again through 'properties', 'Area Transitions', destination type 'waypoint' and the proper destination tag, "TransitionWPOutside").


So far, all two-way transitions have needed doors to operate, or required tricking the module into thinking the trigger was a waypoint or door itself. The proper way of setting up a transition without using doors, however, is by using two triggers and two waypoints. Let’s set up a hidden underground path between the sewers and the inside of the house.

First, place a waypoint on top of the sewers. This is where you will come out. Because the trigger was named "SewerEntrance", let’s make the waypoint tag "SewerExit2".

Then, go back inside the house and draw another trigger, around a rug on the floor for example. Call it "SewerEntrance2", and link it to "SewerExit2". Also place a new waypoint on top of the trigger, or anywhere else in the room for that matter. Name it "SewerExit". You can now get back outside, but you can’t take the sewer entrance inside yet.

Go back outside one final time, and change the destination tag of the sewer trigger from "TransitionWPOutside" to "SewerExit".

Finally, you may want to change the direction the waypoint is pointing in. This determines which way the character will look upon emerging. This is done in the same way as you rotate everything in the Toolset, by holding the SHIFT button while manipulation the waypoint with the mouse.
You can also select a specific loading screen, if you like. In this case, you may like to set an image of the house as a default for the area, in case someone enters through a door, portal or whatever, but select an image of the sewers only for entering the house through the sewer entrance. But that’s another matter.
And that is all there is to it. No need to use the Setup Area Transition button, because creating transitions manually is just as quick, more accurate, and you will know what it is you have been doing.

It may be clearer with screenshots, but hopefully this'll be useful as well.

When you want to make a waypoint from one portal to a different area, you want to use a one-way area transition using a trigger and a waypoint. Place the trigger around the portal and put the waypoint wherever you wnat the character to teleport to. Happy building

[Malavon's Rage]

I understand about doors and connecting areas with them, it's just using waypoints and triggers that I don't understand where to put them. and with waypoints, where do I connect them? I'm just confused on that part. Any more help is more than appreciated.

[Legolas]

Okay. Let's assume a simple one-way transition using a trigger and a waypoint. You draw the area transition trigger somewhere, and it will be visible and clickable in the game as a blue zone. You put the waypoint in some other place, so that when you click the trigger in the game, you are teleported directly to the centre of the waypoint, looking in the direction of the waypoint's arrow.

You can link the two very easily. Just change the waypoint's tag, this is done under Properties -> Basic. In the middle box, named 'Tag', enter a new name. Call it 'transitionWP1" for example.
Then, under the trigger's Properties -> Area Transition tab, select 'waypoint' as the destination type, and enter "transitionWP1" in the Destination Tag box.
That is all.

As to where you should place them, the two most common methods are either drawing the waypoint around a shape on the ground, like a sewer grate, a rug, portal or similar, or placing a square or trapezoid shape along the edge of a map, usually but not necessarily on the middle of a road.
Waypoints can be placed anywhere. Sometimes you'll want to place a magic circle on the ground with the waypoint in the middle, or perhaps you want to place the waypoint in a doorway. Placing it near the edge of a map in the middle of a corridor will also work.
If you are using a two-way area transition, waypoints are often placed at the centre of both triggers.

If you can't get it right, try experimenting so you can locate the reason behind the not working (you may have entered the tag in the name box, misspelled the tag, put capital letters in the wrong places, there can be lots of causes).
Again, hope it helps. A module without transitions is often severely handicapped

[Malavon's Rage]

Thanx for your help, I think I might have it now! [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 05-26-2003, 04:49 PM: Message edited by: Malavon's Rage ]