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SCI Community How To's & Tutorials / Re: SCI1.1: The joy of Polygons
« on: June 03, 2015, 08:36:38 AM »
Here's a quick overview of the four different polygon types. For convenience, I'll describe them in terms of a user moving Ego around with the mouse.
Barred access An area that Ego cannot enter. If the player clicks inside such an area, Ego will move as close as possible to where the user clicked, without entering this barred area. Special care is taken with polygons on screen borders to make sure that Ego won't accidentally leave the room.
Contained access An area that Ego cannot leave. If the player clicks outside of this area, Ego will move as close as possible to where the user clicked, without leaving this contained area.
Total access An area that Ego can freely enter, but should only do so when the user specifically clicks inside it. One example here would be a room with a hole in the ground. As you move Ego around the room, you don't want Ego to accidentally fall down into the hole because the pathfinder's computed path happened to cross it, but you do want Ego to fall down into it when the user actually clicks on the hole.
Nearest access Like total access, with the added restriction that Ego should approach his destination from the nearest border. For example, imagine a room with a pool of water in the middle. Ego can enter this water but when he does, he moves a lot slower. If you're on one side of the pool and click in the water near the other end of the pool, you want Ego to walk to the other end first before entering the water, rather than slowly wade across the whole pool of water starting from this side. If Ego starts his path inside such a polygon, he'll first walk to the nearest border to leave the polygon. This happens even if his destination is also inside that same polygon. This can lead to some strange behavior (you can see this in action in the water of the starting room of KQ5 floppy).
Barred access An area that Ego cannot enter. If the player clicks inside such an area, Ego will move as close as possible to where the user clicked, without entering this barred area. Special care is taken with polygons on screen borders to make sure that Ego won't accidentally leave the room.
Contained access An area that Ego cannot leave. If the player clicks outside of this area, Ego will move as close as possible to where the user clicked, without leaving this contained area.
Total access An area that Ego can freely enter, but should only do so when the user specifically clicks inside it. One example here would be a room with a hole in the ground. As you move Ego around the room, you don't want Ego to accidentally fall down into the hole because the pathfinder's computed path happened to cross it, but you do want Ego to fall down into it when the user actually clicks on the hole.
Nearest access Like total access, with the added restriction that Ego should approach his destination from the nearest border. For example, imagine a room with a pool of water in the middle. Ego can enter this water but when he does, he moves a lot slower. If you're on one side of the pool and click in the water near the other end of the pool, you want Ego to walk to the other end first before entering the water, rather than slowly wade across the whole pool of water starting from this side. If Ego starts his path inside such a polygon, he'll first walk to the nearest border to leave the polygon. This happens even if his destination is also inside that same polygon. This can lead to some strange behavior (you can see this in action in the water of the starting room of KQ5 floppy).