Pausing Guards and Secret Doors.
By Koobze

I. Secret Doors

First off... You have your default room, right? Make a starting point (->fnord->marker, and under links make flavor PlayerFactory, the from the Marker's ID and the to "Garrett").Add another room, a small one perfectly 4 wide, 8 high and however deep you want (preferably 4 or more.) Add another room about 16 wide by 16 high by 50 deep. Connect them all, so you start in the original DromED supplied room, then there's the 'doorway' and the other room. Light them as you wish, and make them rooms (shift+ins.)

In the objects hierarchy, add physical -> terrainlike -> doors -> slidy_door -> 4x8secret_door. Place it in the doorway, perfectly aligned with the wall of your starting room. Under it's properties, add ->door->spinny_door (or slidy, but i haven't tried that yet) and in the windows you get, set Closed Angle to 0 and Open Angle to 90. Portalize and everything, and go into game mode. Go up to the door and try to open it. (It should open ok) Go back into editor mode, and if the door had opened away from you, that's good, but if it opened towards you, rotate it 180 degrees. Hit Alt-T and look at the texture you're using for the wall the door is supposed to blend into. Note the path and filename (when you click on the texture you want, the filename is in the middle of the status bar at the bottom of the DromED window. Go under the door's properties, and add -> Shape -> TxtRepl r0. In the window that pops up, type in the path and filename, ex: "fam\bafford\b22" and click ok, done. Back in the 3D view, the door's texture should look like your wall. If not, reportalize and go ingame.
 
II. Guards Who Pause On Patrol

In the long room, at one end, create a normal Guard. Add -> Ai -> Ability Settings -> Does Patrol. When the window pops up, click on the check box so that it is checked. Then add -> MetaProperty ->Ai Behaviors ->AI_B_m2 -> M-Front Gate Guard. Exit all the windows, and add a hammerite guard (or any other object.) If it's a human, add the same Front Gate Guard Property. Place the guard near the middle of the room. Add a ->fnord->marker->TrolPnt and place it near the normal guard, not the hammerite. Write down it's ID number. Let's say it's X. Add another TrolPnt near the other end of the room, so that to get from one to the other, the guard must practically walk through the hammerite. Check this one's ID num, let's say it's Y. Under TrolPnt X's links, add AiPatrol with from as X and to as Y. Do the same in Y's links, with Y as from and X as to.

Update Pathfinding database, AI Room Database, etc... and go into game mode. You should start out in the main room. Open your door, go through, and you should see your guard patrol, and the hammerite should just be there, maybe whistle, etc...  They will probably ignore you  (because of the m-front gate guard property.)

Go back into DromED, and click on the normal guard. Under links, add AIWatchObj. Your resolution should be 1024x768 (at least) otherwise you won't see the top drop down option box. In that option box, select "Self Entry." In radius, type in 10, although increasing and decreasing this number might be needed. In height, put 10 (i haven't tried any other values yet.) Then in Reuse (a bit lower down the window) put 5000. Under that, in Reset, put 500 as well. This is how long after entering, the values will reset. So if it's 0, as soon as he finishes doing what we'll tell him to do later, he'll do it again, and again. Under Response 1, select Face. Type in the ID number of your hammerite in Argument 1. Making him look at something works better, because just using wait makes him freeze exactly as he is. Then, under Response 2,  select wait. Under Argument 1 type in 2000. This is the time in milli sec. that he'll wait, so 1 second. Hit enter if you don't see the OK button, or just click it if you do. Hit done, etc... until you get rid of all the windows, and go into game mode. You should see him walk up to the hammerite, look at him, pause for 1 second and continue. In my demo level, I have added another AiWatchObj in the guards properties, so that if he sees you, he'll get hostile and lose the m-front gate guard metaproperty.



III. Links

Here is Koobze's tutorial, included with a .mis file example. Kudos, grab it at  http://members.xoom.com/koobze/temp.zip
Koobze's site also has Thief related stuff, like pics from upcomming levels.   http://members.xoom.com/koobze/

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