Events

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Revision as of 00:19, 3 April 2015 by Saabie (Talk | contribs) (Sub Events)

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THE MAIN ITEMS
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Events allow you to make things happen at different times of the game, independent from whatever the user types at the prompt. This can be one of two ways - after a set number of turns from something, or after a set amount of time from something.

Examples of typical events might be a day/night system, or a random event such as weather.

Event Control

Clicking on the Event button on the ribbon toolbar brings up the following window:

EventControl.jpg

The Event Control tab allows you to control when the event runs. This works in a similar way to a Character Walk Control.

Event Name is only used within Developer, to help you uniquely identify the event.

You can choose whether you want the event to:

  • Wait until triggered by something else (Not Started)
  • Start after a certain delay from the start of the game (Waiting for X turns)
  • Start immediately when the game starts (Running)

If you choose Waiting for X turns you can set this to a fixed number of turns, or a random number of turns between two values by clicking on the 1:1 button.

IconWarning.png You MUST also specify how long the event will last in the right-hand edit box. If you leave this at zero or enter a number that is smaller than the total number of turns for all of the sub-tasks, then the event will stop running before all of them have been executed.

This can be a fixed number of turns, or a random number of turns between two values (by clicking on the 1:1 button).

Continuously Repeating an Event

The Repeat event on completion checkbox at the bottom left of the page can be ticked to have the event repeated continuously, otherwise it will run once and then stop.

The Repeat Countdown checkbox is only available if Repeat event on completion is ticked and the event is set to start off Waiting for X turns. Selecting this checkbox will cause the event to wait the specified time between each time it is repeated. Otherwise the wait only occurs before the first run and the event is repeated immediately whenever it finishes. If the wait is set to a random number between two values, subsequent runs of the event will each have a different random delay.

ImgTip.png ADRIFT will not allow an event to loop if it's length is 0. This is because it would create an infinite loop.

Task Control

Unless you have set the event to start immediately or after a certain number of turns, you will need to use task controls to start the event. To do this, click the Add Control button. This will add a section to the area in the bottom half of the form where you can choose to Start, Stop, Suspend or Resume the event.

EventControlStart.jpg

The difference between Suspend and Stop is that any stopped event will start again from the beginning, whereas if the event has been suspended, it can be resumed from it's current position.

Each task control is triggered by the completion or uncompletion of a specific task (another task's action unsetting this task).

The IconNewRestriction.jpg button can be used to create a new task. When a task has been selected or created, this icon changes to IconEditRestrictions.jpg and will open the selected task for editing.

Sub Events

Sub Events are the actual things you want to happen during the event. Often this is just displaying particular text. However, you can also run and unset tasks, or have different text permanently appended to various location descriptions.

The Sub Events page looks like this:

EventSubEvents.jpg

Click Add Sub Event to add a sub event to the event. The picture below shows the sub events page with two new sub events added:

EventSubEventsAdd.jpg

ImgTip.pngYou can change the sequence in which sub events run by selecting one and then clicking on the Up/Down arrows in the bottom left of the screen.

The first thing you need to decide is when the sub event should occur. This can be:

Turn based triggers:

  • After X turns from Start of Event
  • After X turns from Last Sub Event - This is useful if the previous sub event occurred at a random time
  • With X turns before End of Event - This is useful if the length of the entire event is random

Time based triggers:

  • After X seconds from Start of Event
  • After X seconds from Last Sub Event

All values you specify for X can be an exact value EventXtoX.jpg or a random value between two numbers EventXToY.jpg. You can toggle this by clicking on the 1:1 button.

Once you have specified when the sub event should start, you need to select what you want the sub event to do. The choices are:

  • Display message - This will simply output the message in the following textbox to screen. You must specify which locations this applies to. This defaults to Everywhere. You can set this to a location group, or to a specific location by clicking on the IconGroup.jpg icon. If the player is not in a location specified here, the message will not be displayed.

EventSubEventMessage.jpg

  • Change Look description to - This will append the message in the textbox to the location description of whichever location the player is currently in. Again, you can restrict which locations this applies to by changing the dropdown.
  • Execute Task - This will attempt to run the task you specify. If the task does not pass it's restrictions, it will not run. Typically you would select a System task here.

EventSubEventTask.jpg

  • Unset Task - This is only used with non-repeatable tasks. If the player enters a command that matches such a task, and it passes it's restrictions, then ADRIFT sets the "Completed" status of that task, preventing it from executing a second time. When a sub-event performs "Unset Task" this "Completed" status is reset and it will now be possible to run that task again.

For example, the player could enter a command to press a button on a machine which turns it on. If you want a second press of the button to do something different, such as turn it off, then the specific task for "press button on the strange machine (turn on)" would not have it's "Task is Repeatable" box ticked. The task could start an event that describes what the machine does for a few turns, and then it switches itself off. Now that it is off you want to be able to switch it on again, so use "Unset Task" to re-enable the task.


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