| Back: Occam's Blade of Exile | | | The Designer's Forum | | | Next: Simple Innovations |
|
We've all seen it before: The "good" wizard teleports into the room, the evil one tosses a Kill spell at the good one, the good one sears the evil one with holy flames, et cetera. Or perhaps one casts Ritual of Sanctification on an altar and it is instantly dispelled or blows up into a pile of rubble (before the inevitable EXP gain, demon fight, et cetera). Cutscenes and fancy explosions aren't "new" in Blades of Exile by any stretch of the word, and I won't claim credit for making them, although it surprises me that somebody hasn't written an article about them. Thus, we begin the magical ride through poofs and bangs and zaps: TAKE NOTE! The latter two SFX type values are switched. The editor claims that a value of 1 calls the Ice Bolt/Kill explosion, whereas 2 calls the Teleportation explosion. These values are switched: 1 calls the Teleportation explosion, whereas 2 calls the Ice Bolt/Kill animation. This has already been noted in Alcritas' "Things That Don't Work", but it's still worth saying. SFX Bursts Update the Screen. What does this mean? Essentially, whenever you call an SFX burst regardless of where it occurs, the screen will reflect other nodes that have been called. In other words, all Place Town Enc. nodes, Change Terrain nodes, Place SFX nodes, and any otherwise cinematographic nodes you call will be displayed immediately as the SFX begins. What does this mean? This means that if you have the good wizard go into his "custom attack stance" and destroy the evil wizard with a fireball, causing his corpse to spew blood, you can do this. It's not going to make most Blades players drop their jaws on the floor in amazement, but it's considered to be the most state-of-the-art way of doing things (unless you're a masochist who has played Tomorrow- although the law of diminished returns comes into effect here), and if your scenario has powerful wizards combatting each other, it may add a bit of realism. Happiness Is In A Warm Gun Oh, so you don't know how to make the offing of your villain as cool as it could be? Well, in using the way I described earlier, there are a few things that should be done first- 1) A "good wizard attacking" monster. This monster can have whatever statistics you want since it won't actually be attacking. The point of this monster is to make it look, however, like it is attacking. I don't leave passwords on my scenarios, so if you look at all of my scenarios from Echoes on up with very few exceptions, you'll see monsters with names like "WasazoreRA" or "Vic SniperLA". Those are monsters with no stats, but their pictures are of Wasazore attacking to the right and Vic Sniper attacking to the left respectively. If your good wizard has a Monster Picture of 1000 and is attacking the evil wizard to the right, then create a monster named "Good Wizard RA" (the R meaning Right, and the A meaning Attack. You don't have to do it, but I do to keep things more organized). This monster will have a Monster Picture of 1002; Any value plus two will be that monster's right-facing, attacking-version picture. Place this monster right above the good wizard in the place where the good wizard destroys the evil wizard, and place it in Special Encounter Group 7 (the number doesn't matter, all you want to do is keep it straight). If your good wizard uses a default graphic, then open Blades of Exile Graphics in ResEdit (for Mac users) or find the .bmp file where its graphic is (for PC users) respectively. Copy the wizard's attack graphic and paste it into your graphics sheet. Give the Good Wizard RA that Monster Picture. You're done with this part! It's easier than it sounds once you get the hang of it. 2) A corpse terrain. If your battle takes place on cave floor, no work required! Just use the corpse terrain provided by default. Other graphics sites have corpse terrain graphics that work well. That's about it for before calling the node sequence. At the end of the battle, you can even have the good wizard teleport out- just destroy Good Wizard RA, and then call a Teleportation node on where he was earlier. The node sequence itself should look something like this: 0 - Display Dialog (Monster pic), GOTO 1 1 - Display Dialog (Monster pic), GOTO 2 // Because no wizard battle is complete without them taunting each other. 2 - Destroy Monster, Extra 1a = 255, GOTO 3 // This is destroying the non-attacking wizard. 3 - One-Time Place Town Enc., Extra 1a = 7, GOTO 4 // This is placing the Good Wizard RA. 4 - Destroy Monster, Extra 1a = 254, GOTO 5 // This is destroying the Evil Wizard. 5 - Change Terrain, Extra 1a = 26, Extra 1b = 30, Extra 2a = 102, GOTO 6 // This is creating a corpse on terrain 26,30, where the evil wizard was. 6 - Place SFX, SDF = 200,2, Extra 1a = 30, Extra 1b = 26, Extra 2a = 30, Extra 2b = 26, GOTO 7 // This is placing a large blood stain (2) with a 200% chance of occuring (200) on terrain 26,30 (Remember- rectangle values are coordinate values SWITCHED). 7 - Do sfx Burst, Extra 1a = 26, Extra 1b = 30, Extra 2a = 0, GOTO 8 // This is blowing up a fireball on the evil mage. As the fireball erupts, the good wizard will appear to be attacking, the corpse will appear, as will the blood. The screen is "updated". You can place a node inbetween nodes 6 and 7 to call sound 25, the mage spell sound, if you want. 8 - Destroy Monster, Extra 1a = 253, GOTO 9 // This destroys the Good Wizard RA. 9 - Do sfx Burst, Extra 1a = 22, Extra 1b = 30, Extra 2a = 1, END // This "updates" the screen, making the Good Wizard appear to have teleported out. Awesome! A working animation of a good wizard killing an evil one. Sweeping, vengeant, objectified morality : 1 Independent thought : 0 But that's not all! I'm going to toss in two moderately-neat examples in for FREE! Yes, you heard me, FREE! Another way to use the SFX Burst is in rituals of sanctification. An example chain would look like this: 10 - Ritual of Sanct. Block, Extra 1b = -1, GOTO 16 // This ends the chain if the node is not called through a ritual of sanctification. 11 - Terrain this type? (Town), Extra 1a = 8, Extra 1b = 41, Extra 2a = 84, Extra 2b = -1, GOTO 12 // This is checking if the portcullis destroyed by the sanctification still exists. If it does, the chain continues. You could use an SDF check (or any other type of check, for that matter) here if you like. 12 - Change Terrain, Extra 1a = 8, Extra 1b = 38, Extra 2a = 84, GOTO 13 // This changes the altar into rubble. 13 - Do sfx Burst, Extra 1a = 8, Extra 1b = 38, Extra 2a = 0, GOTO 14 // This triggers an explosion on the altar, "updating" the screen, now showing it as rubble. 14 - Change Terrain, Extra 1a = 8, Extra 1b = 41, Extra 2a = 84, GOTO 15 // This changes the portcullis into rubble. 15 - Do sfx Burst, Extra 1a = 8, Extra 1b = 41, Extra 2a = 0, END // This triggers an explosion on the portcullis, "updating" the screen, now showing it as rubble. You can set SDFs, give the party EXP or do whatever you please with this chain. It's fairly useful. Another interesting use of nodes that most people will probably never use or see is an interesting special spell called Tsunami from Echoes (not worth playing the scenario to see, BTW). In it, the entire room is composed of two basic terrain types; how it's used, the terrain types are the default floor and rug, but you can obviously use whatever you choose. To use it, you will need both the default water terrain and another water terrain of the same picture. It goes like so: 16 - Swap Rectangle Terrain, SDF = 170,71, Extra 1a = 0, Extra 1b = 0, Extra 2a = 43, Extra 2b = 43, GOTO 17 // This is swapping the Floor terrain (170) with the Water (71) terrain. 17 - Swap Rectangle Terrain, SDF = 204,252, Extra 1a = 0, Extra 1b = 0, Extra 2a = 43, Extra 2b = 43, GOTO 18 // This is swapping the Rug (204) terrain with the second Water (252) terrain. 18 - Do sfx Burst, Extra 1a = 38, Extra 1b = 40, Extra 2a = 2, GOTO 19 // This is "updating" the screen, something you should be familiar with by now. 19 - Swap Rectangle Terrain, SDF = 170,71, Extra 1a = 0, Extra 1b = 0, Extra 2a = 43, Extra 2b = 43, GOTO 20 20 - Swap Rectangle Terrain, SDF = 204,252, Extra 1a = 0, Extra 1b = 0, Extra 2a = 43, Extra 2b = 43, GOTO 21 // This is returning the room back to normal. 21 - Do sfx Burst, Extra 1a = 38, Extra 1b = 40, Extra 2a = 2, END // This is to "update" the screen, revealing it to be normal. Obviously, the uses for the Do sfx Burst node are limited mostly by your imagination. You can have cutscenes in your scenario, or even have movie-like scenarios using "Burst Animation". By properly using SFX Bursts, you can make your scenario look tastefully realistic and cool. Overusing them isn't encouraged (and I've probably done it once or twice), but they're a valuable tool that a designer shouldn't ignore. |
| Back: Occam's Blade of Exile | | | The Designer's Forum | | | Next: Simple Innovations |