Well of Sendell in LBA 2!

[J McKalling]

Originally Posted by Battler

Well of course I made sure that the zone in question also has a part in the few pixels of land before the box so you can actually walk into it. Otherwise it'd be unusable from the start.
However, you've made me think. What if I put it slightly too high above the ground making Twinsen never walk into it, thus it not working? I'll see if I move one part of it slightly lower.

Couldn't you just check how they did it with e.g. Flowerpots that offer hearts or magic etc.? Seems the same purpose, and you could replicate coordination there if at all. I don't know anything myself, really only just theory and experience. You're the one with game data out of us two

[Battler]

Originally Posted by J McKalling

Couldn't you just check how they did it with e.g. Flowerpots that offer hearts or magic etc.? Seems the same purpose, and you could replicate coordination there if at all. I don't know anything myself, really only just theory and experience. You're the one with game data out of us two

Well that's the thing, I cross-checked my zone parameters with those from original change scene zones just to make sure I'm doing everything alright and the game still pretends the zone isn't there. Now I need to try moving the zone a bit lower to see if maybe position was the problem.

[J McKalling]

Ok. And if that still doesn't work, would there be any chance the zones have any functionality somewhere else in code? Like a backlog of existing stuff or something that is checked before a zone is validated? ie. that you'd be having an incomplete zone?

Just following common programmer's tactics in debugging erroneous behavior. If something doesn't work but is a complete replication of something working that already exists, there may be something else that needs to be done first before it is actually used.

I would suggest to inspect the case of the zone, and try to pinpoint whatever is exactly not working. Maybe try different approaches, moving it in height, positioning it in other places just to try it out, maybe making it visible, giving it different triggers, to find it if its 'actually there'.

[Battler]

Originally Posted by Kobold

Looks like I missed something interesting. Supreme knowledge of the LBA 2 files for the win! Can you make a screenshot showing the visibility from the Oasis? I didn't know there was an unused space in desert island - it sure must be accessible in the regular game as well? Just with nothing there.

It's not part of Desert Island, I simply modified the Town to Oasis scene change zone in the relevant scene to point to my "Well of Sendell" scene.

[Battler]

Originally Posted by J McKalling

Ok. And if that still doesn't work, would there be any chance the zones have any functionality somewhere else in code? Like a backlog of existing stuff or something that is checked before a zone is validated? ie. that you'd be having an incomplete zone?

Just following common programmer's tactics in debugging erroneous behavior. If something doesn't work but is a complete replication of something working that already exists, there may be something else that needs to be done first before it is actually used.

I would suggest to inspect the case of the zone, and try to pinpoint whatever is exactly not working. Maybe try different approaches, moving it in height, positioning it in other places just to try it out, maybe making it visible, giving it different triggers, to find it if its 'actually there'.

Well some zones require an actor's life script to be activated. I suspect that's the case with the zones connecting LBA 2 outside scenes.

[J McKalling]

Have you been able to get your zone to work yet?

How did you come to knowledge the actor's life script is needed for the (outside) scene changing zones? Are you also suspecting that this is the thing that doesn't let your custom zone work?

I expect a 'life script' contains the variables and conditioning for determining where you are in the storyline and how far you've progressed. Does only the playable Twinsen have one, or do all characters/objects? And what means activating a life script? From your phrasing I understand it must have something to do with the existance of the instance of an object in the particular scene or something.


Rather than constantly guessing, I would love to see the game code myself... I could understand so much more, so I can be more helpful.

[xesf]

Nice work indeed, Battler.
They probably only had it planned in the early scripts but cut it out before doing something with it.

[Battler]

Originally Posted by J McKalling

Have you been able to get your zone to work yet?

Not yet.

How did you come to knowledge the actor's life script is needed for the (outside) scene changing zones? Are you also suspecting that this is the thing that doesn't let your custom zone work?

There is a life script command in LBA 1 for enabling/disabling a zone. It exists in LBA 2 as well and it seems to be used in that case, it's the only possible explanation really.

I expect a 'life script' contains the variables and conditioning for determining where you are in the storyline and how far you've progressed. Does only the playable Twinsen have one, or do all characters/objects? And what means activating a life script? From your phrasing I understand it must have something to do with the existance of the instance of an object in the particular scene or something.

Both Twinsen and all actors (means anything in the scene that uses a 3D model rather than a sprite) have one. And it just means that from what I see, Twinsen's life script contains commands to enable all relevant change scene zones. Some are enabled always (the scene border ones), some are enabled/disabled according to story progress.

Rather than constantly guessing, I would love to see the game code myself... I could understand so much more, so I can be more helpful.

Oh believe me, a lot of us would love to see that, sadly that's at the moment not possible. I wish I could at least have a working tool to read the life/move scripts of LBA 2 scenes, that would conclusively answer some questions.

[xesf]

Zones are static cube areas of various types that can be trigger automatically by the engine or by the script for a particularly type (Scenery Zones). They are all created in the scene at loading time. The script can be coded to verify if the character (Twinsen or NPC) is inside the Zone, and if it is another block of script can be executed.

[J McKalling]

I'm just a little confused. Battler, do you have properties of the game, or are you just reading their code through the use of 3rd party software? If the former, who single does?

There are some questions I would like answered myself, because of my own Game Engine issues and subprojects, which can only be answered by experienced games.

My number one itching question; how does the game collect the appropriate candidates of objects when a collision of a moving object is to be measured? Backed by the question; how does the game remember the location of all of the (loaded) objects? My current solution is just an iteration of the entire list of loaded contents, and a condition on every one of them. I was going to create a registry to become able to better pinpoint a certain destination of objects, though I assume even better solutions must exist. I'm talking about a 2D platformer here, so all coordination I had to create myself. Maybe does this 3D game have some sort of datatree?

[Battler]

Originally Posted by J McKalling

I'm just a little confused. Battler, do you have properties of the game, or are you just reading their code through the use of 3rd party software? If the former, who single does?

There are some questions I would like answered myself, because of my own Game Engine issues and subprojects, which can only be answered by experienced games.

My number one itching question; how does the game collect the appropriate candidates of objects when a collision of a moving object is to be measured? Backed by the question; how does the game remember the location of all of the (loaded) objects? My current solution is just an iteration of the entire list of loaded contents, and a condition on every one of them. I was going to create a registry to become able to better pinpoint a certain destination of objects, though I assume even better solutions must exist. I'm talking about a 2D platformer here, so all coordination I had to create myself. Maybe does this 3D game have some sort of datatree?

I'm not reading the life or move scripts in any way, which is why I'm not sure what goes on. For the rest of the scene stuff, I'm using my LBA Scene Manger program which supports LBA 2 scenes as much as it can.

As for your question about remembering the location of all the loaded objects: each savegame has a scene stored in itself, in which every actor and sprite are stored with the coordinates they were at when the game was saved. I've yet to understand the precise location and format of that scene in the saved game as well.

[J McKalling]

That I do understand. I've seen that the scenes are always the same upon entry, so at all times there is only one part of the world actively changing. Therefor a savegame only needs to store locations of objects in the current scene.

But the way of storage, I see you don't know either.

[LtDemolition]

Wow, very nice work Battler.

[Zee]

Great job. Wish I knew how to do things like this. Any luck on progressing with the zone issue, Battler?