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Mission editor help

Oct 11, 2006 stewhites link
Could anyone explain to me how to count kills of bots please?
Like in BP, where the mission counts 15 kills then completes
Oct 11, 2006 FatStrat85 link
Well, you can spawn 15 bots. They'll be labeled npc_1, npc_2, etc... Then make a stage with 15 objectives, all being 'destroy one ship'. Make each objective destroy npc_1, destroy npc_2, etc... When all of the bots are killed, the stage will complete.

Or you can spawn an npc group of however many bots you want. Make the objective destroy N in group, where N is 15. When you kill 15 of the bots in the group you spawned, the stage will complete.

I don't think the editor supports counting the deaths of bots that you don't spawn yourself. Although, that feature may be added later.
Oct 11, 2006 stewhites link
Thanks m8, i'd thought about those, though i was hoping there'd be a more elegant way. I'm a bit worried about having too many stages in the missions i'm working on as it could spawn one of 24 or so possible groups, of up to 20 bots
Oct 11, 2006 FatStrat85 link
Well what I said doesn't require any extra stages. The second suggestion is pretty elegant.

I guess I don't know what you mean by 1 of 24 or so possible groups.
Oct 11, 2006 incarnate link
In general, if you're spawning bots and requiring the player to kill them for mission success, I would recommend only requiring them to kill a percentage of the bots. Like 8 out of 10 or some such. The problem is, during combat some bots will explode and perhaps kill other, nearby bots who were already damaged. This "kill" then goes to the bot who exploded instead of the player, making it impossible for them to succeed in killing all the bots.

I ran into this when I made my TPG mission tree, and ended up only requiring the user to kill a smaller subset of the total bots spawned, but still generally telling them to "kill these bots".
Oct 12, 2006 stewhites link
Should've explained myself a bit better, was on my way to bed tho ;)
The problem with the second way, is as incarnate said accidental bot deaths would effectively hang the mission, waiting for the player to kill bots out of a group that may have already died due to splash damage, other player intervention etc.

What i'm working on is this, a mission series that allows the player to choose type and number of bots to kill, starting with "Assault" type bots.
So given that you could choose between spawning 5,10,15 or 20 of type 'x' i've found that makes over 24 stages, just to get the bots out into space with the player and check for that particular group being killed, assuming that the player gets all of them.
Now i can see the way though, thanks each
Oct 12, 2006 Professor Chaos link
What if there were a way for the mission to just check to see if any bots are left alive, and not care who killed them?
Oct 12, 2006 RelayeR link
That would allow exploitation by letting those not involved in the mission assist the player that is.
Oct 14, 2006 terribleCabbage link
On the other hand, arbitrarily declaring that the player is successful because he/she killed 8 out of the 10 bots allows exploitation because some idiot can come along and zap half the bots you were supposed to kill, leaving you unable to finish the mission.
Oct 14, 2006 RelayeR link
That's not an exploit... that's player interference.
Oct 14, 2006 moldyman link
Welcome to the MMO part of this RPG game. Just make sure you don't tell lecter where you are so he can screw with your head.
Oct 16, 2006 a1k0n link
The problem is, during combat some bots will explode and perhaps kill other, nearby bots who were already damaged. This "kill" then goes to the bot who exploded instead of the player, making it impossible for them to succeed in killing all the bots.

This is no longer true. In fact it hasn't been for a while, if the code I wrote months ago works at all. If one bot's explosion kills another bot, the second kill is credited to whoever killed the first bot.

But the mission objective where you need to kill a group of bots definitely needs work, and I'm open to suggestions. The most general idea I had was that the objective only completes when the entire group is dead (or N of the whole group are killed) but the player must have killed at least M of them, so the objective fails automatically if groupsize-M are killed by external forces.

We also need to add a list of objectives you're supposed to complete to the mission log, and have it update the number of bots left to kill after you kill one. Or at least throw an objective event with some variables defined, like the number of bots left to kill, so you can write stuff to the log in the meantime.

Anyway, I don't recommend trying to recreate Waylon's old missions in this system. It's just not powerful enough to do it. In general we want missions that are telling you a story, where you perform some work or solve some puzzle. Picking what type of bot and how many is how our old missions work, and it's why they're so boring.