Posted March 09, 2020
When modding a game, sometimes the developer of a mod will want to make something interesting happen that would not happen out-of-the-box. For example, maybe when the player reaches a certain spot, a wedge of cheese is to fly at the player character from thin air, possibly hitting the PC and doing a small amount of damage (and possibly be picked up by the player). Now, there are two ways this could be done:
1. Contraption method: Use the objects that the game provides to cause this to happen. For example, maybe there's some invisible enemy that sees the player, shoots at the player, the arrow lands on one side of a see saw, the other side of that see saw moves, flinging the wedge of cheese at the player.
2. Script method: There's a script object at the spot, and attached to this object is a script that creates the wedge of cheese in mid-air, sets its velocity, and then has it flung at the player.
Which approach do you think of is more interesting? Which approach would you prefer to use if making a mod, and which approach would you prefer in mods that you play?
By the way, some examples of real contraptions in commercially released games:
* In Chaos Strikes Back, there are gigglers in inaccessible areas whose random movements determine the placement of various random treasure in the game. It's actually a rather elaborate contraption, where the gigglers trigger switches that teleports them, causes other gigglers to fall into pits to their death with their items landing on teleporters, and also causes a launcher in an inaccessible hallway to shoot items into a teleporter that's temporarily activated by the switch.
* In Fallout 3's third DLC, the train is actually pieces of equipment. There are some reports that there's an NPC who has the train equipped as a helmet but moves very fast, though another source claims that it's actually an arm piece that a script equips on to the player character and that grants them very fast movement,
* In Super Mario Maker and its sequel, there's no scripting, but because of the many ways objects can interact with each other, level creators have come up with plenty of contraptions to get things done. (They're especially common in troll levels, and are also seen in mini-game and automatic levels.)
Your thoughts?
1. Contraption method: Use the objects that the game provides to cause this to happen. For example, maybe there's some invisible enemy that sees the player, shoots at the player, the arrow lands on one side of a see saw, the other side of that see saw moves, flinging the wedge of cheese at the player.
2. Script method: There's a script object at the spot, and attached to this object is a script that creates the wedge of cheese in mid-air, sets its velocity, and then has it flung at the player.
Which approach do you think of is more interesting? Which approach would you prefer to use if making a mod, and which approach would you prefer in mods that you play?
By the way, some examples of real contraptions in commercially released games:
* In Chaos Strikes Back, there are gigglers in inaccessible areas whose random movements determine the placement of various random treasure in the game. It's actually a rather elaborate contraption, where the gigglers trigger switches that teleports them, causes other gigglers to fall into pits to their death with their items landing on teleporters, and also causes a launcher in an inaccessible hallway to shoot items into a teleporter that's temporarily activated by the switch.
* In Fallout 3's third DLC, the train is actually pieces of equipment. There are some reports that there's an NPC who has the train equipped as a helmet but moves very fast, though another source claims that it's actually an arm piece that a script equips on to the player character and that grants them very fast movement,
* In Super Mario Maker and its sequel, there's no scripting, but because of the many ways objects can interact with each other, level creators have come up with plenty of contraptions to get things done. (They're especially common in troll levels, and are also seen in mini-game and automatic levels.)
Your thoughts?
