| Back: Ending the Graphical Blues | | | The Designer's Forum | | | Next: The Evolving Role of Dungeons |
|
More time spent at designing scenarios has given me the opportunity to discover even more of the wonderful quirks of the BoE engine. Some of these are new bugs, some are just warnings for designers, but all, I think, are useful. Paste Special bug: I have never seen this bug described anywhere, but it is indeed evil. If the Paste Special button, used to copy an already placed special node, is used multiple times on the same spot, multiple copies of the special will be placed, and then called when playing. This wouldn’t be noticed with one time messages, but for an Increment Flag node it can cause great headaches for designers. The solution is just to be careful when using the Paste Special button. The only way to tell if there are multiple specials on one spot is to use the Delete Special button. If there is still a tiny “S” in the corner after the Delete button is used, there is still a special there. What makes this bug a problem is that is it often difficult to see exactly which square the mouse is over when doing things like pasting specials or deleting, so this often goes unnoticed. One Time Special means One Time: More of a warning, but even if the flag used for a one time special is set back to 0, the special won’t occur again. If you want something to occur more than once, use the If/Then node instead. Terrain and Special Nodes: One thing that can be very useful is the Call Special Node When Walked On ability of terrain. Want to prevent a party from moving around in combat mode? You could put combat blocks via a special node on every square of terrain, but a level can only have 50 different special nodes. Instead, make the floor terrain call a combat block, and you can fill the level with as many as needed. This could also be used to count the number of steps a party takes, and probably a lot of other uses, too. Stairway Nodes: If you use the Jump To field in a Stairway node, remember that the party changes level during the node, so the special called will actually be in the new level, not the old. You probably should just make sure the stairway node is always the last in a chain to avoid this, but it can be done. More Terrain Tips: The Transform To field can also be very useful. For example, by using custom graphics that are copies of the standards but with the brightness turned down (darker), you can change a town from night to day with one special node. Move walls around in a maze, make a building disappear ... just make sure to plan your terrain usage and don’t run out of custom terrain slots. You could combine the combat block idea from above and make a fight more difficult by changing the floor to a terrain of the same picture that calls a combat block special every other round. |
| Back: Ending the Graphical Blues | | | The Designer's Forum | | | Next: The Evolving Role of Dungeons |