Latest revision as of 22:15, 9 January 2021

Zones are description files for areas. The dungeon is a zone, the ice themed cave is a zone, the overland map is a zone, the town is a zone. They can be relatively simple or complex, and can be interconnected in various ways.

What are zones

To the local adventure, a zone is a hangout. To a module writer a zone is a directory in /data/zones containing 5 files in it:

The files grids.lua, npcs.lua, objects.lua and traps.lua are used to load or define the features available in the zone.

Zone description

The primary file in a zone folder is zone.lua. It defines the zone itself.

Loading code

The simplest way of loading code is to call load() against a file already defined in /data/general/. As an example, let's say I want to have kobolds in my zone, I would add load("/data/general/npcs/kobold.lua") to npcs.lua.

Zone specific features can also be defined, such as placing ice tiles in an ice cave or having a boss that only appears in that zone. This is also one of the main reasons for segmenting your definition files.

Generators

Generators are used to create dynamic maps in zone.lua. In addition to grids, they define how many Enemies/Items/Traps spawn in the area. You can only select one generator of each type per zone, though you can override this in the levels variable.

Maps

The engine.generator.map namespace has multiple generators for use. You reference them by attaching them to the namespace like so engine.generator.map.Cavern

Example

In zone.lua you'll define the map as a property of the generator.

generator =  {
    map = {
    class = "engine.generator.map.Roomer",
    nb_rooms = 10,
    rooms = {"simple", "pillar"},
    lite_room_chance = 100,
    ['.'] = "FLOOR",
    ['#'] = "WALL",
    up = "UP",
    down = "DOWN",
    door = "DOOR",
    }
}

Actors

Actors are the NPCs (friendly or otherwise) that spawn in the zone. (Fact check me) Generic and special NPCs for a are defined in npcs.lua. Generic are usually loaded from the base game files predefined in the base game files

nb_npc defines how many enemies will spawn, given a min/max of possible values.

guardian defines which guardian (if any) spawns in the zone.

Example

In zone.lua you'll define the actor as a property of the generator.

generator = {
    actor = {
        class = "engine.generator.actor.Random",
        nb_npc = {20, 30},
--	guardian = "SHADE_OF_ANGMAR", -- The guardian is set in the static map
    }
}

Objects

Example

In zone.lua you'll define the object as a property of the generator.

TODO: Add example

Traps

Traps are traps. Traps only have one generator engine.generator.trap.Random. They're grouped based on similar properties or purposes. Since there aren't too many, we can list them here.

Example

In zone.lua you'll define the trap as a property of the generator.

TODO: Add example

Travelling between zones

TODO

Word of DarkGod

On level_scheme and level_range

max_level is the "physical" depth and level_range is the range of levels allowed.

If the level_scheme is set to "fixed", or not set at all, actors will only have their natural level. If the level_scheme is set to "player" then the zone calls game:getPlayer() to get a player, takes its level and uses it to select a level for the zone.

Imagine you have a zone with max_level = 5; level_range={10,20}. If a level 12 player enters, the zone will power up to level 12 for the first level and then one more per level. Basically it means that you can have zones that level-up with the player, to provide a challenge even if the player is not at the exact right level.

Actors are always created as level 1, then they are leveled up to their minimum level (their own level_range) then the zone force level-up to the selected level using the actor_adjust_level field of the zone. That field is calculated with this function

function(zone, level, e)
    return zone.base_level + e:getRankLevelAdjust() + level.level-1 + rng.range(-1,2)
end

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