ferret on 18/11/2002 at 19:30
Gauntlet thrown down.
Okay, I've loaded up the training mission. Firstly, I ghost into the the room with Reyes and Simons, and summon a WeaponSword (not the blowing glue one, the normal one).
Oh dear, they seem to be invincible. Set JaimeReyes Health 0 | Set WaltonSimons Health 0 - now they go down in one hit. Nice. I kill the other things here too.
Interesting! Flags set: "_Dead" and "WaltonSimons_Dead". I believe this is automated script, there is a property bImportant, which means they get logged as dead if dead, and then the game refuses to make them later in this scenario or something. I never knew that before. :D
Oddly though, the _Dead one is set to expire as soon as this level is left, so if I reload the level straight away Mr Reyes is now reincarnated, but Mr Simons is not.
Now, onwards... another Jaime Reyes to kill, but no flag changes. This one isn't invincible, since I set his health to 0 along with the other one. Now two unimportant scientists, no problem.
Ooh, interesting. I ghosted into the room and tried to kill the Munitions guy, but he took my sword. So I summoned a new one and took him out, and look what he had on him!
(
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~worc1588/munitions.jpg)
A lovely stash. Onwards! Okay, a few more useless scientists, and now we're at the room with the dirty harmful water. Overlooking here are several people, including a Jaime Reyes, a Joseph Manderley, and his dashing secretary. All die easily, including Manderley who is in fact armed. Shame. Two flags get set, a JaimeReyes_Dead and a JosephManderley_Dead. Looking in the editor, you can see that *this* Jaime Reyes has been made bImportant. How nice.
Another munitions guy, this one has only standard trooper weaponry. Now load the next level.
Two more muniton guys, one with loads of weapons, one without. Then three more... then the next level.
Now some interesting stuff - a Bob Page is watching you attempt the bit with the robot and the bridge crossing. Interesing... I now have a flag "BobPage2_Dead" set to true. Okay, that's that done, now I use LEGEND to load 01_UNATCO_Island. Ah, the seagulls, the bell, the pier... such lovely memories. And so many interesting people to kill! Let us proceed. Set SecurityBot2 Health 0 | Set PaulDenton Health 0, and they both die nice and easily. We now have a PaulDenton_Dead flag set. Kill Corporal Collins to get a CorporalCollins_Dead flag too. Btw, I'm cleaning up the less necessary flags as I load new levels. I only want to know the effects of these "_Dead" flags, not much else.
Now let's just ghost over and kill Gunther, and the guy at the top of the statue. Killing Gunther causes me to get a "GuntherHermann_Dead" flag, and oddly enough a "GuntherFreed". I think this might have been because a UNATCO soldier opened the door, so I deleted this flag. I killed the Commander and the UNATCO trooper at the top of the statue of course, and so I also have "TerroristCommander_Dead" and "CustodyTroop_Dead". Next on the list? Harley Filben, then Kaplan (the guy selling ammunitions), and then Lloyd. Out of this lot, I only get "PrivateLloyd_Dead" of any real interest, although rather cutely Filben actually has a key to the statue on him. Anyone with a tendency to kill people selling things will know that they usually don't have these items in their personal inventory. Maybe keys are an exception, or maybe this was early in the development cycle and so they were just getting used to the whole game system when making this level. Who knows.
There is no Paul Denton outside of UNATCO HQ. How sad. From now on I will be talking to people a bit more, to see what changes are being made...
Lovely. I go into UNATCO HQ and there is Anna, sitting all by herself. I'm going to save it here, because this looks suspiciously like somewhere the game might crash... although I wouldn't be surprised if the game makers coded the conversations so that if any of the people in them are dead/nonexistent, they just won't happen. I'd be deeply surprised if they didn't do this, in fact.
Yup, as expected. She's the silent type. She's not totally mute, I can throw things at her, and she gets mildly irate. At this point, my character has suddenly started hopping up and down very slightly, every second or so, for no apparent reason. It's quite amusing. It only happens when in conversation radius of Anna, and the conversation music starts playing. It's probably some positioning thing in the conversation script preventing you from conversaing when in midair, ducked, or forcibly ducked. The check for presence of all conversation parties must be after this then. No problem, really. Time to kill Anna? I think so too.
Okay, and now after loading that save and putting god mode on this time (hehe, the explosive bint), I now have a flag "AnnaNavarre_Dead", as expected. A litte later, and I have "JaniceReed_Dead" and "Shannon_Dead", poor things. There appears to be no Manderley, and Reyes is sadly missing, of course, since I have killed him like four times already. Alex and Sam don't put up much of a fight - "AlexJacobson_Dead" and "SamCarter_Dead". Isn't that, like, nearly all the "first-half of the game" characters killed already?
Okay, it's now impossible to finish this mission without summoning me some new characters (As a point of interest: when you start out this mission, you can summon a SamCarter, a JaimeReyes, a PaulDenton and a JosephManderley and try to complete the whole mission right here, but unforunately you can't summon a JaniceReed - she's a special sort of Secretary, and will only talk to you if she has the right name. You could set this there and then, but that's going a little too far :p). Use the LEGEND cheat to open 02_NYC_BatteryPark. Interestingly, You see Anna running towards you for a fraction of a secnod, until the game realises she's dead. Then she disappears, heh. Nothing else of interest in this mission, onto the streets via the subway.
Paul isn't there. At some point in the battle on this level, you get a "Terrorist_Dead". This is to accomplish the little things next time you go to UNATCO HQ, saying if you helped or not, and if "my buddy" got killed in the fighting, I suppose. Ooh, now the hotel level, loads of important-type people to kill there. I get a "GilbertRenton_Dead", a "GilbertTerrorist_Dead" (not sure what that's supposed to do exactly, probably just change the Gilbert conversation a little), "MaleHostage_Dead", and "FemaleHostage_Dead".
Just out of interest, all this time I'm getting datalinks from Alex, who is in fact dead. That doesn't quite work then, but since he's supposed to be totally unkillable through the whole game, and his datalinks are vitally important, I can see why this wouldn't happen. Okay, I've killed Ford now, getting the "FordSchick_Dead" flag, and gone over to Smuggler. He seems quite sad about it, and won't even sell me stuff. Eat sword, bitch. No flag set for Smuggler's death though. o_O
Okay, got "Pimp_Dead", "SandraRenton_Dead", now to the bar. "Jock_Dead", "JordanShea_Dead", not particularly interesting. I didn't talk to jock, I thought I'd see what difference it made to the helicopter later. I then went on to the warehouse, destroyed the machinary, went up to the helicopter. No Gunther, of course.
Next mission! This one's a bit boring: No Lloyd, no Joseph, No Walton, No Anna, No Jaime, no Sam, no Janice, no Shannon, heh. It's all UNATCO troopers...
Then off to Battery Park again. I had to cheat to get there again. There's a Harley Filben, if you remember I killed him at the dock but got no flag. I don't get one this time either. The only flag I get in this whole level is for killing the drug dealer ("Bitch I ain't going back to jail") - "DrugDealer_Dead". Oddly enough I went right up to El Rey and killed him, but no-one seemed to mind. Oh well. Interestingly, this gang is known in the scripts as "Jughead gang". Lmao.
Nothing else interesting for a while: you go to the 747, get the datalink from Paul, then he's not there. Tragic. I go into the 747, walk down the corridor, and then suddenly get a datalink from Alex saying "Jesus, JC, that was agent Navarre!"
Back at HQ, Shannon is back, and Janice, although they both have triggers telling them to be dead. No-one else of consequence there. Going then to NYC, Smuggler is still there, and killing him still doesn't create a flag. Seems he's kinda unimportant.
Okay, at this stage my computer did a BSOD and I lost the progress after here. I hadn't gone much further, you can generally see the pattern going on and I'll be surprised if anyone reads this far. It might have been easier just to find the code that checks the importance of someone when they die to set the flag, and the code for summoning someone that checks the flag.
