Objective trigger trick: Optional battle

starswordc

Made a discovery when I was working on "The Hydra's Head" earlier. I was trying to make it so an optional, difficult battle would occur if you completed two parallel objectives in what I determined to be the wrong order (i.e. the opposite order from what your boff said).

What I hit on was the following states for my two mob groups:

• Appear on: Objective Complete: Activate object #2
• Disappear on: Objective Complete: Activate object #1

Object #1 being a transporter pad you're supposed to disable. Do it in the wrong order, and the mobs appear. Do it in the right order, and they don't. The flaw (of course there's a flaw, it's the Foundry) is that the beam-in animation still shows up, because all you've really done is turn the mobs on and then immediately back off.

spiritborn

I suppose the best way to work around this would be to have hostile mobs spawn outside of view (and with a object that makes its own sound to mask the beam in sound) then patrol into contact with the players.

There's no real way to disable that beam in effect and it will happen when mobs spawn in. best you can do is work around that limitation.

pendra37

Here is another way to do branching/optional things: Map the events to a map dialog
To use your example, there are 2 parallel objectives, Objective A (interact Map object A) and Objective B (Interact Map object .
If you do A then B, no mob appears.
If you do B then A, difficult mob appears.

Set up a Map Dialog with 2 branches. It is Visible when "Component Complete" Map object A.
Branch 1 is Always Visible Always and Hidden when Objective B is complete
Branch 2 is Visible when Objective B is complete

Finally, the mob is Visible when Dialog Prompt Reached Branch 2.

If you do Objective A first, only Branch 1 will be available to complete the map dialog. Therefore the enemy mob will not be spawned when you complete objective B.
However if you complete Objective B first then Objective A, the dialog upon Objective A triggering will only have Branch 2 available. That will trigger the mob spawn and the fight.

In practice imagine something like that.
"Disable long range transmitter" (A) and "Disable the alarm" (B)

When you "Disable the long range transmitter" (A), the BOFF will say
"I read no energy on the system"
Branch 1 "The transmitter is off, let's disable the alarm." (available only if objective B is NOT complete)
Branch 2 "Energy spike, enemies are beaming in!" (available only if objective B has been completed already)

thegreendragoon1

I'm actually doing something very similar to this in an upcoming mission. In my case I have two locations that the player must go to. Both are vital, but the player must prioritize one over the other. Depending on which you go to first the other location will not lost by the time you arrive.

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spiritborn

ruinthefun wrote: »

The other kicker is that the mobs will ALWAYS be optional, regardless of whether they appear or not. If killing an enemy group is an objective, it must always occur, and your mission cannot be completed if you do not make them appear. If it is not an objective, the player is free to bypass or ignore them, whether or not they appear.

It's a rather simple matter of making optional encounters like this that 99% wouldn't ignore, starting with fact that you can spawn the mobs where the player is, which while not recomended makes the encounter essentially unavoidble.

Another way (and a less annoying way too) is to spawn the NPC group in such a way that only way to the next objective leads thru the NPC group again making the fight essentially unavoidble. Also you can spawn the enemies at the next objective in such a way that you cannot do the objective without aggroing the enemies.

So while technically optional in practice you can make so that "failure spawns additional mobs" leads to unavoidble fights, also you can use the fact the fights are avoidble to your advantage and force the players to "go the long way around" if they want to avoid the fights.

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