Advanced Features

level starters | advanced features | extra

Advanced Features
(taken from http://www.editor23.co.uk/) (E-mail author Lara Severi)

~Baddies & AI~

If baddies aren't given a special behavior they just go after Lara as soon as they are triggered. To give a baddy a special behavior you need to place an AI object on the square with the baddy whose behavior you are modifying. Not all baddies are programmed to work with all the AI available…a little experimenting is required. The following is a rough guide only:

AI_GUARD - Makes the baddy move his head about, looking left and right, with a 180 degree field of view. Drop an AI_MODIFY on the block as well, to make the baddy look straight ahead only. Baddies begin attacking once Lara shoots at them, or in some cases, when she comes into their view and gets within one block of them.
AI_AMBUSH - Makes the baddy run to a designated square by dropping an ambush object on his square and another on the square where you want him to go.
AI_PATROL1 & 2 - To make a baddy run a patrol between two points, drop an AI_PATROL1 object on his square, drop another AI_PATROL1 object somewhere else on the map, and
finally an AI_PATROL2 in another location. The baddy will go from the (second) AI_PATROL1 to the AI_PATROL2 and back again. Conditions for chasing Lara are the same as the Guard
behavior.

AI_MODIFY - Drop an AI_MODIFY on the block with the AI_GUARD, to make the baddy look straight ahead. AI_FOLLOW - Baddies with this behavior are probably 'goodies'. To make a baddy wait for Lara to follow him to a specified point on the map, drop an AI_FOLLOW object on its block, and drop another AI_FOLLOW on the map where you want the baddy to go. Use this to get 'baddies' to show Lara a switch or a secret room. If Lara attacks the baddy, he will immediately forget about the follow behavior and attack her instead (except with the Guide in "Tomb of Seth", Lara can't kill him and he will not attack her).
AI_X1 - AI_X2 - Drop one of these on the SAS Guard baddy square to make him fire grenades (if you drop an AI_X1 on a different Baddy, and he is triggered first, the AI_X2 baddy will not fire grenades).

NOTE: If you put a HEAVY trigger under an AMBUSH or PATROL AI point, the baddy will trigger it when he gets there.

General rules to bear in mind:

A baddy is never visible until triggered.
A baddy's zone is basically the area that he can get to and is dependent on what animations he has.
The AI in Tomb Raider in principle allows any baddy to follow Lara from one end of the map to the other. However, for game play and memory reasons, most baddies do not have the
animations for climbing up or down blocks or for jumping very far. In fact, the 'average' baddy can only go up or down 1-click changes in height.
With a slope, if the change in average height from one block to the next is more than 1-click, then most baddies won't be able to go up or down it.
Baddies can never (even if they're jumping or flying) pass over an illegal slope (i.e. one that Lara would not be able to stand on).
Box zones (splitter boxes) are placed where you want to stop baddies from traveling. These squares appear gray once assigned (use them Sparingly!). NOTE: Flying enemies cannot be stopped this way.
You can place a pick-up item (ammo, weapons, medi-paks) on the same square as a baddy, and a pick-up will be left on the same square where he dies. This method could be overused and of course, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to shoot a scorpion and watch it turn into a large medi-pak…or would it!?

~Flip Maps~

Flipmaps are used to create events or changes of state. They are great for floods, Earthquakes, changing water currents, making doors disappear, turning lights on or off, and so on. Flipped rooms are basically copies of an existing room that can be triggered to turn on and off. Generally the triggers for flipmaps are set up out of sight of the actual flipmap room because you don't want to see the map flip from one state to the other.
To create a flipmap room, click on the "F" button under the PLAN VIEW grid or choose "flipmap" from the Drop Down Menu under "Rooms". The white background of the Editor Window turns black when you are in the flipped room. Make whatever changes you want, then use the ALT + F key to get back to the un-flipped room. Select a square where you want to set the trigger and click on the trigger button. Set the trigger to "flipmap". You can type a number in the box next to the "F" to control which flipmaps turn on at what time (make sure the same number is entered next to "flipmap" in the "set trigger type" window). All corresponding flipmaps will turn on when activated by one trigger.

The following are some tips for building flipmap rooms:

w Always totally build, texture and light a room or rooms that are intended to be flipmap rooms, it saves a lot of time.

w Make sure that the entrance and exit rooms have been connected before you flip the rooms - you won't be able to link doors from an un-flipped room into a flipped room.

w In a flipped room, opacities can be freely changed, as also can 'water room' status.

w Only non-static objects can be placed in a flipped room…this means basically you can only place things found in the plant, rock, architecture and debris slots. However, you can place enemies and other types of animated objects such as flame emitters in the regular room and then trigger them from the flipped room. They will appear in the flipped room once triggered.

w Enemies sometimes don't work very well around flipmap rooms -they can be placed but sometimes the collision gets confused. A bit of trial and error is required.

w To delete a flipmap simply press the "F" button while in the flipped room. A box will pop up asking if you really want to delete the room. This deletes the flipped room only. There are plenty of great examples of flipmaps throughout the example levels. When you go to check them, remember, you can't directly select a flipped room using the select button. You'll see the flipped room listed but you must go to the original room then use the ALT + F key to get to the flipped room version. "Tomb of Seth" rooms 109 and 107 provide good examples of water turning to lava and room 72 creates the illusion of a sand "fall" filling up a room.

FLIPEFFECT Flipeffects are a way of triggering things without having a specific controller. They are one offs - e.g. Shaking the screen or playing a sound effect on a particular frame of a baddy's animation. However, many of these effects are "hard-coded" and not able to be set up from within the Level Editor. Like the CD trigger, you have to assign the flilpeffect number. Enter it in the box next to FLIPEFFECT. A list of flip effects are in the Reference Section of the manual.

Effect
Number Description.

2 Plays a flooding sound effect (providing the sound is assigned to the level)
4 Used for ending the level.
7 Activates any earthquakes on the level.
10 Will play the sound effect number that's in the 'timer' field.
11 Will play an explosion sound effect.
28 Set's the RGB color of the fog in the PC version to the value in the 'timer' field - (see table in reference section of manual) This effect can only be seen when "Volumetric FX" is turned on in the game Setup menu.
30 Used in the training level and with the GUIDE to track Lara's "progress."
31 Kills any scarab beetles that are currently active. There are plenty of examples of flipeffects…check Cleopatra's Palaces, rooms 124, 125, 39; Catacombs rooms 167,143, 40; Tomb of Seth, rooms 30,121,147.

~Mirror Effect~

Yes its hard, and if you do it wrong you will scream but in the end mirrors are a great effect and are worth the time!

Create two rooms of equal size, texture them the same and place the objects that you want in both rooms in the same locations.
Then connect the rooms together with a vertical door, make the door the full length of the room then highlight the portal in the plan view grid and click toggle opacity 1 and transparent and double sided. Apply the glass texture to the portal making sure to do this in the room on right. (The one Lara will walk in).

Now click the blue square in the upper left corner of the right side room and look in the details box for the x value. Add 1 to that value and multiply that number by 1024. Now you have to convert the answer to a hex value, to do that use the windows calculator and set it to scientific mode. Enter the answer and click on hex mode, make sure you write down the number and don't forget make a note of the room number where you got the x value.
Now open the script.txt file in the script folder of the trle root directory, find the level that you are working on and after the puzzle lines enter mirror= followed by the room number, a comma, a dollar sign and finally the hex number. Save the edited script file.
At this point output your wad and build your level. Then open Easy Life and run it. When Easy Life confirms it is finished, close it and run the Tomb Raider 4 programme to see your mirror. Phew!

~Editing Script~

Changing The Load Camera Co-ordinates

You can replace the Level Load screen and the level reload screen by relocating the camera
and changing its angle. Here's what to do:
Temporarily place Lara in the room you want to use for the load screen.
Make a playable TR4 file.
While in-game, use the "look around" key to find the camera angle that best displays the view.
Press the F1 key - the coordinates for the position, target and room of the camera will appear in the upper left corner of your screen. These coordinates will only appear with "Fly cheat" enabled in the script!
Now type the coordinates into the script (loadcamera=your co-ordinates) and don't forget to add the room number! This information is required in the script for loading the images between levels. Then run 'Easy Life.'

Changing the Initial Audio Track

The last line of the script for each level segment is, for example, Level = DATA \ CITY, 105. The number refers to the background audio loop for that level - you can change this by entering the number of the new track you wish to play, after the level name as in the example. If you want no sound, type in a track number that doesn't exist e.g. 046. Don't forget to run 'Easy Life!'

Adding a Legend

You can't ADD a legend you have EDIT an existing one. E.g. if you wanted a legend in the City level you would have to:
Delete the Tut legend in the English.txt
On the same line, type in your new legend.
Copy and paste that line onto a new line, after the level name in the script.txt. (Legend=this is my legend).
And run 'Easy Life'

Changing the Name of Your Level

Find the name of your level in the script.txt NAME= the name and change it to what you want. Copy your name. Find the same level in the English.txt (on the list of levels) delete the old name, and paste your name in. Then run 'Easy Life.'

Enabling / Disabling the Fly Cheat

In the script.txt, find the line - Fly cheat=disabled / enabled. Simply type in what option you want. Then of course, run 'Easy Life.'

~Special Effects~

Fog Bulb - You can create some great volumetric fog with this special effect, but it will not show up at all unless you have the "Volumetric FX" setting turned on in your initial game Setup menu. The Fog Bulb is used in conjunction with Flip effects only. You must enter the number 28 in the upper right box of the trigger window for the fog effect and a number in the "Timer" box for a specific color from the Flip effects Fog Color Chart (found in the Reference Section of the official manual, on the Editor CD). The flip effect trigger is in Tomb of Seth, room 30 (activated by the flyby camera) to turn on all the fog in the level. This fog effect works well with light shafts as seen in room 36.

Sinks - Sinks are used in water rooms exclusively to create currents to either pull Lara to a different spot or prevent access to areas not intended for her to go. Once placed, you can set a sink's strength by calling up the "O" menu and clicking on the numbered buttons 1,2,4,8 or 16. You can combine buttons to set different strengths. Triggers must be set and most often; a zone of triggers is used. You can stack triggers on one square to increase the strength. Check the sinks in Karnak, rooms 47, 41,120 and Coastal Ruins, rooms 40 and 12.

Toggle Opacity - Windows, floor grates and such You might think you can just throw on a texture with transparent background to create a window effect between two rooms, but not so! When you want to create a transparency effect between two rooms such as barred windows, fences, floor grates and such, but don't want Lara to pass through the opening, use "TOGGLE OPACITY". This will allow transparency but NO passage. You must apply it from both sides, unless it is a situation where she can only pass through from one direction. Check Catacombs room 125 and 38, Tomb of Seth room 36

Cobwebs

You learned successfully to create water using Toggle Opacity 2. If you recall, this allowed the placement of textures on an opening, yet Lara could still pass through it. The cobweb effects are created about the same way as water, but they are on horizontal (well, most of them!) rather than vertical openings. Check room 36 in Tomb of Seth to decode some of these spooky passages. Remember, to toggle opacity, from the Plan View grid you click on the portal opening to select it (the green highlight), then press the "Toggle Opacity 2" button. After this, you can apply the textures with the TRANSPARENT and DOUBLESIDED buttons ON. If you have checked out these cobwebby portals already, you noticed the gray transparency color again….the areas of the portal that don't require the cobweb texture would appear opaque if you didn't assign transparency...and just as with the triangle "vestiges" you must use the gray transparency color between rooms.

Mist

By now you can probably guess how to create the mist in room 56 of City of the Dead. Again, this takes some planning ahead since you must build a separate room beneath in order to create the "portal" to which you apply the mist textures (TOGGLE OPACITY 2 with the TRANSPARENT and DOUBLE-SIDED buttons ON). The mist room (akin to the water room) must be fairly shallow since Lara would look a little odd walking through eye level mist. If you make a larger area of mist and want to poke some "islands" through it, you build the top portions of the "islands" on the upper of the two rooms before you make your portal opening. And, to create an effect of mist over water build a shallow mist room above the water room…some effects are worth the extra work! Click on the "M" (mist) button and assign a value for special "mist" effects (Check citytext.tga to see what the mist textures look like).