Scenario Creation Problems

[StarFoxFan11]

I'm working on a map based on a show and I'm having a rough time with the Events. What I'm trying to do is have access to two territories restricted until a certain year, have a certain amount of passengers delivered to all the cities, and deliver coal and steel for two of the medal achievements. Any suggestions?

[Blackhawk]

Well I can't say for certain as it's been awhile since I've written an event since I took a break from RT3 for a few months, but you'd need a separate event for each territory you want to open up.

Condition:
Force Test against territory
Force test against company or use company ID = # of the company you want to get access
Game Year = XXXX

Effect:
Company access to territory = True
also set the territory the effect will be on to the territory you want to grant access.

As far as I know there is no way to track how many PAX have been hauled to each city, you can only check territories.

As for the coal & steel requirements. It's unclear if that's just total coal and steel hauled, or coal/steel hauled to or out of a specific territory. If you are only doing a couple things in the same territory you can just test this all in one event. If you'll have lots of things required for victory, often times scenario writers use variables. Ex. IF Steel hauled to territory > 1, then the effect will be Game Variable + 1. Then in a Medal event they'll have something like Game Variable >= 1.

Depending on what exactly you're looking for and if there are any AI players the way this event is written could vary.

Condition:
Force test against company
Force test against Territory (Set the territory the cargo is supposed to be hauled to)
LTD company Steel Hauled to Territory >= 100
LTD company coal hauled to territory >= 100
Game Date <= 1925

Condition:
Gold Victory

These are just rough examples as I don't remember the exact terminology of some of the things, and didn't go into every detail as I don't have RT3 on this computer to double check everything. But this should be a decent start for you to work with and test out. If you have more questions just ask. Also if there is something you liked in a scenario you played you can always check the events on that map to see how they worked.

[brunom]

To add to Blackhawk's perfect answer, I'll help with the issue of counting passengers (normally called "PAX"):

You should paint a small territory encompassing the city. Then, in the window where you specify access price for each territory, untick the "Borders are visible" box, and choose to remap it to the surrounding territory.
This will hide from the player the fact that the city is a separate territory, but the game still treats it as such. After doing this, treat pax count the same way Blackhawk specified for steel or coal.

2 extra notes:
- if borders aren't visible the access to that territory cannot be specified different than the one it was remapped to (you cannot "close" the city this way, for example)
- mind that the player won't see any borders, if the territory you painted is too small, he may lay the city station outside those invisible borders - the pax count would remain zero..

B

[StarFoxFan11]

Thanks guys, I'll try this out and see what happens! Oh, and if it helps as well, I could always post what I have right now, if you want to get a better look over. Just an idea.

[Blackhawk]

It's up to you if you want to post something or not if you still have questions or want to make sure things are going okay. Generally the best way to do it is to just make it, and then play test it and see how it goes and if things work or not. Then either in another copy of RT3 make the changes immediately as you go along, or keep a list of what you need to go back and fix so you don't forget. If you didn't know Shift + E gets you into the editor during a game, which you can use to see if something's been triggered or if a variable was changed correctly etc. You'll want to close the editor though while actually running the game as an event may not run correctly if you're running it with the editor open.

[StarFoxFan11]

Ok, I'm going to show you what I have. The most recent one is one of these two files. It's embaressing that I can't remember which one it is. ^^; I think the only problem I have left is in the status screen......I think. http://www.mediafire.com/?fhri17a3jwak6p3 or http://www.mediafire.com/?qz6c4k7qu9i81hj

[Hawk]

You could make it a lot easier to download the maps if you zip them up individually and attach them to a post here.

[StarFoxFan11]

Took your advice. Both files are in the zip folder.

[Blackhawk]

Well a quick look at things. I'm not sure how long your scenario will end up lasting. I see it starts in 1900 but then you have an event triggered for 1947 and 1985. Generally it becomes difficult to keep the player's attention after 30-40 years on the same scenario, it can happen occasionally but it's difficult. Being that you've already given the player access to all the engines from the start it makes it so there's even less for the player to look forward to if you planned on having the scenario last 50-90 years.

I noticed you've got the bronze win event triggered after you connect 6 cities. One thing you can't do with the gold/silver/bronze victories is award them progressively. The second you award one the scenario is over. That's why in scenarios you'll see the gold victory is listed first and tested, then below that is the silver, and then below that is the bronze as the game goes down the list in its order of testing events.

An example of writing victory conditions:
Gold:
game year <= 1950
Cities connected = 20

Silver:
Game year = 1950
Cities connected = 15

Bronze
Game year = 1950
Cities connected = 10

Notice the difference in that the gold will use a <= rather than an = so you can end the scenario early if you finished all the conditions, where as the silver and bronze would only test in the final year of the scenario.

Back to the events. You've got hauled coal from territory in your silver event, but then in your ledger status event you've got hauled coal to territory.

Other than that it looks like you're getting the hang of writing events. I'm not sure how much of a scenario you'll be able to have with only 6 cities but once you get the ability to write the events down it becomes a matter of fine tuning things and seeing what works and what doesn't work and what other changes need to be made in your play tests.

[StarFoxFan11]

Yes, I agree that it'll be a bit of a strange scenario with only 6-8 cities, but, sadly, that's all that there is in Equestria, at least from what I've gathered. On to the victories: So, haveing awards given progressively is a no no, huh? Well, how about having one single award for doing all the requirements? Would that work? As for why the player has all the engines, two words: Different Dimension. Having access to every engine, I thought, would give the player a variety of how they want to run their railway. Plus, (I'm not sure if the player's icon and description was in your copy) it says in Princess Celestia's little bio that, and I quote, "Her knowledge of the rails is a bit sketchy." So, following some logic I guess, she'd choose to bring every steamer to Equestria. And finally, the events triggered in 1947 and 1985 were just two random dates that I chose for testing, they're not final. And thanks for pointing out my error on the coal condition, I didn't even notice that. ^^; Sorry if I sounded a bit rude, I do appreciate the advice and all the help you've provided.

[Blackhawk]

No problem. It's not uncommon for even the best scenario writer to accidentally put the wrong direction for a cargo haul (TO rather than FROM) or do LTD when they meant YTD etc.

Giving all the steam engines is fine, I was just referencing that if the scenario played 50 years it would be better to space it out but if it's only a 20 year scenario it's fine.

Yes you can use just 1 scenario for all the events and just say that's the gold medal and there are no other medals available in the scenario. You could also use variables too. Ex. Rather than 6 cities connected get you a bronze medal, you can make it 6 cities mean Game Variable 2 = +1
Then I can't remember the other events right now but your silver event now is something like LTD 300 steel hauled gets you a silver medal. Instead you can change this to GV2 = + 1
Then your current gold event change to LTD 50 coal hauled triggers GV2 = + 1.
Then add a few new events which would trigger a stage of victory depending on what the variable was.
Gold -- Year <=1950, GV2 = 3
Silver Year = 1950, GV2= 2,
Bronze -- year = 1950, GV2 = 1,
Lose -- year =1950, GV2 = 0.


But there's nothing that says you have to have all 3 medals in a scenario. There are some which have just a gold medal and that's it.

I forgot to mention I didn't really try building too much track but I did try to build up to Cloudcity and it seemed excessively difficult, if not impossible to build the track up that mountain so you may need adjust the elevation to help build track up it.

As for only 6-8 cities. It might be able to be done assuming there was a lot of industry/farms in the area between cities, but if it's only 6 cities and it costs 1 million to build between the cities I'm not sure how well the scenario will run.

[StarFoxFan11]

It is possible to build to Cloudsdale. That little outcroping will take you up, then you just build up and right until you get to the top. Oh, and thanks for sorting out the game variables. That's one thing that should have been explained better in the manual, what each variable means and what it can be used for. But, I digress. *EDIT* This picture shows how I did it.

[Blackhawk]

I tried to use that little ramp up on the side. I got about 60-75% up and got stuck and it kept wanting to build a tunnel through the mountain. I thought it might be possible but I didn't have too much patience in building track and my cursor was jumping all over the mountain while trying to build the track so I gave up.

As for the variables. The basics.... there are 4 game variables total (these are the easiest to work with). Then 4 company variables for EACH company, 4 player variables for EACH player, and 4 territory variables for EACH territory. The GV's are easy to work with. The others sometimes have some difficulties to work with depending on what exactly you're doing. For example if you wanted to compare compare TV1 of Cloudsdale with TV1 of City B you can't do that since they are in 2 different territories. You would have to use another event to set one of the TV1s to another variable like GV1. Then you could compare Cloudsdale TV1 to GV1 (which was originally TV1 from City B) With TV/CV/PV's make sure you have the appropriate trigger in the event. So for a TV you should be force checking against territories and set that territory, just like you have to make sure its testing against the player/companies you want for a PV or CV.

The same is true for comparing variables like that with players and companies. Generally this is not an issue as it's really only in complicated situations/formulas where this comes up. In a scenario which I didn't fully complete for TM, I had a complicated way of fining the player if they took more wool from a territory and didn't return at least 60% of it back as textiles/clothes the following year, as the "territory's people" started to feel exploited. So I had to use multiple variables for total wool out of the territory last year, wool out this year, textiles into the territory this year, 60% of the wool out from last year.. I can't remember what exactly I did but it was complicated and used a variety of variables.

The biggest thing is if you start using variables, be sure to write down a list somewhere of what each variable represents and when it's used. (In long scenarios it's not uncommon to end up reusing a variable after it's first purpose was finished)

[StarFoxFan11]

Thanks for that! One last thing (I hope) I also included a newspaper event to trigger in 1947, along with the territorial access. When '47 rolled around, no newspaper.

[Blackhawk]

Try changing that to Game year = 1947 rather than current game year = 1947. I didn't realize you've used current game year in a couple of your events. I don't think I've ever used the current game year trigger, I've always used game year.

[StarFoxFan11]

You mean Game Year - Month? Because I don't have one that says just Game Year.

[Blackhawk]

Sorry I was thinking something else. I've used current game year before. I ran that same event but changed the year to 1901 rather than 1947 just to see if it would trigger and it did. Did you have the editor open while you were trying to see if it would trigger? if so that's probably why it didn't come up. Currently Game year/month is useful if you want a newspaper to appear in the middle of the year rather than at the start of the year.

[StarFoxFan11]

As far as I know, I've kept the editor closed unless I was changing something.

[Blackhawk]

I'm not sure what to say cause it looks like it should trigger, and if i change the year to 1901 to check if it triggers it works for me. One of the things I like to do in testing my events is to put a year shortly after the start so I can just start it up and see if it works. Then if it works then I'll change the year to the actual year i want it to trigger.

If you still have that game open where it didn't trigger for you, you can check the event debugging and check and see if it's got a 0 or a 1 in times triggered. Otherwise I'd say try running through it again and seeing if it works or not. You could also set the default start year as 1946, save it, and go start the scenario and see if it works.

[StarFoxFan11]

What about the occurance, like yearly or monthly?