Tutorial: Fences (selling stolen goods)

David on 7/11/2004 at 18:07

This is a tutorial for creating a place to sell items you have stolen, not the kind of thing you find in your garden!

#1 Create an air brush wherever you like. Please note, you'll be teleporting the player inside this room so it does not need to be in the "correct place" in your map. Decorate and light this room as you wish, but do not populate it with AI.

#2 Place a PlayerStart inside the room (Marker > Keypoint > NavigationPoint > PlayerStart) and face it towards the position the fence AI will be.

#3 Edit its properties (select it & press F4) and add Teleport > TeleportDestName to it. Set this to Fence

#4 Add a single AI of your choice and face them towards the PlayerStart you created earlier. Edit the AI's properties (select & F4) and add AIPawn > SensoryModelClass > DisabledSensoryModel to it. This will stop the AI responding of it's own accord.

#5 Still in the AI's properties add AIStore > FenceDontBuyTypes. This is pretty simple, just tick the items you do NOT want Fence to purchase from the player. It appears you must select at least one of these for the Fence to work.

#6 Add and customise the following too, all under AI Store.FactionForStoreBark, FictionForStoreBarks and MissionForStoreBarks. These affect the things the AI will chat about, customise these as you wish.

#7 Finally, if you would like the the AI to comment on the (large) amount you've spent or sold when you cross a set threshold, add LargeTransactionThreshold, which is also under AIStore

#8 Add LoadFilter > ObjectLoadFilter to the AI and check items 0 through 9. I don't know what this does yet, but I couldn't get the Fence to work without it.

#9 Note down the AI's name, it appears in the title bar of the properties window in brackets, you'll need this later.

#10 In the main section of your map add a door where you want your Fence to appear. Add Lock > blsLocked to the door and set this to True.

#11 Add Scripts > TriggerScripts to the door and delete all the current entries. Add the TriggerScript CitySections > StoreScripts > EnterFence.

#11 Select the door and right-click it. From the menu pick Actor Links. Click Add Link and select TriggerScript from the Link Types. In the TO text box add the name of the AI you created in the store and click OK and Done.

This should be it, you should now be able to sell items you've pinched by frobbing the door.

I have been unable to get two fences working in the same map, this could be a downer for those hoping to stich The City back together. When I had two they would inherit their properties from each other and behave weirdly. Also I was unable to switch between the two at will, I was always sent to the same one. This appears to be down to the naming of the TeleportDestName, which needs to be set to Fence to work.

[edit] You can have multiple fences in a map, each one just needs its own EnterFence script where the Teleport Player to DestinationTeleporter is customised for each of the Fences' PlayerStarts [/Edit]

David on 8/11/2004 at 18:32

Playing without sound is a bitch when you find out the AI start asking you what you're looking at and what you want.

Add AI > bAmbientAnimsDisabled and bAmbientBarksDisabled.
Additionally you need to add a fence voicetag (Actor > Voicetag). I've been using fenceperry, but I have so far had trouble getting him to shut up about having the bloodline opal, which is obviously very annoying as few FMs will have those being stolen.

David on 8/11/2004 at 19:25

Bah, I still haven't managed to get Heartless Perry to shut up about the Opal.

However, I found it was easier to set the voicetag to fencehenry who is the guy from Audale. He doesn't have any mission specific chatter, so he is ideal!

Harwin on 8/11/2004 at 21:49

A) I believe LoadFilter says which CityDays he's valid on. If you're there on a day he isn't (because you've filtered him out), then he won't work.

B) I'm hoping to get a separate download with soundfile editing etc after the first editor release. The reason they're not together is the soundfile editing release is *HUGE*, since it has to include all our .wav files.

--Alex

David on 8/11/2004 at 22:21

The sound editor is certainly something needed. You can't add ambient sounds and the like without it.

I did like what I saw of the sound tool though :)

Harwin on 8/11/2004 at 22:53

Quote Posted by David]

I did like what I saw of the sound tool though :)

Thanks for reminding me about that. I had forgotten we still had that... icon... in there.

--Alex

David on 23/2/2005 at 23:56

Bump!

Twist on 24/2/2005 at 07:54

Quote Posted by David

The sound editor is certainly something needed. You can't add ambient sounds and the like without it.

May I assume this means we can expect some more editing goodies at some point in the not-too-distant future? :D

David on 24/2/2005 at 08:00

No, the editor was reworked to allow you to use the inbuilt sounds. A few sounds (50Mb worth or so) shipped with the editor, but not all of them.

I imagine someone will write a tool to extract the sounds from the compressed archives if the need arises.

Twist on 24/2/2005 at 08:06

Ah, cool. And thanks again, David. :)