slavatrumpevitch on 17/12/2015 at 20:18
Hi all,
typical elevators in thief work as follows:
click a button, the elevator goes to that floor. If you're in motion to a particular floor, and then press another button, that instantly becomes your destination, and the prior destination is discarded completely.
real elevators work very differently. You enter a collection of destinations and then visit each one (pausing briefly). Typically, the elevator visits destinations in strictly increasing or decreasing order.
Is there a way to rig up an elevator like this? Are there any FMs with such an elevator?
If that's too hard, here's a compromise solution I'd be satisfied with:
destinations enter a "queue." You click a sequence of buttons and the elevator visits each destination in the order pressed. (No monotonicity restriction.)
A frill that would be nice (but unnecessary) to add: buttons that light up when they're in the queue, and then go dark after they're visited.
Thanks!
LarryG on 17/12/2015 at 21:26
I can envision a setup with a qvar, assuming no more than 9 stories in the building. The qvar would hold a LIFO stack (Last In First Out). Each button adds a low order digit to the qvar. As the elevator goes to a floor it pops the low order digit by right shifting. Digit 0 is reserved to indicate no further destinations to be popped. It would be a bit tricky, but not impossible.
But, I challenge your assumption that "real" elevators have a single operating mode. The multi-button setup is fairly recent. More realistic for the the steam-punk universe of Thief would be the up-down lever type control.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]2236[/ATTACH]
No saved locations. it just goes up and down for as long as you hold the lever in the appropriate position. That's it. Automatic elevator controls only began to replace the manual controls in the 1930s. Way too late, historically, for the Thief universe IMHO.
Implementing a manual control, wouldn't be too hard with NVJointControl and a cycle from Neutral to Up to Neutral to Down to Neutral for each frob. I can also imagine a setup with buttons that look like arrows on the jointed lever panel, the player looks at an arrow and the lever moves to the arrow and the elevator starts moving accordingly, no frobbing ... But that's not what you want.
slavatrumpevitch on 17/12/2015 at 21:54
Thanks for your feedback. I'll try to play around and see what I can accomplish, but I'll admit that some of your response is beyond me, at this point. I'd probably need more hand-holding, as I'm fairly new to all this stuff. (I've enjoyed creating architecture in dromed, on and off, for over a decade, but I've never seriously considered releasing a mission, and have therefore never taken the time to learn the subtler aspects of animating a level. But the novice contest has reignited my interest!!)
And I take your point that "real" is not the proper word :angel: Perhaps "modern" would have been the better choice.
That said, "realism" is not ultimately what I'm after. Rather, I can think of some fun gameplay implications such an elevator would allow. I hadn't thought about the manual version before, but it occurs to me, that could be pretty neat as well! I'd need to think a little harder about what exactly it would buy, from a gameplay standpoint.
Yandros on 17/12/2015 at 22:12
We will have a 1940's elevator in our upcoming noir mission which looks much fancier and more modern than the usual Thief lift (I think it has at least a dozen attached objects), but still functions like the usual Thief lift (goes directly to a floor when its button is pressed, even while moving), although in our case there are only three floors.
LarryG on 18/12/2015 at 00:44
Mine is still victorian in style, but has a complete cage and working double doors. There;s a call button on each floor, and three floor button inside the elevator cage.
[video=youtube;eGKEvjQqZ00]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGKEvjQqZ00&feature=youtu.be[/video]
Yandros on 18/12/2015 at 01:58
That's really impressive, Larry! Ours is similar in detail level, but of course early 20th C. instead of Victorian. I like yours better, but that's not surprising.
redleaf on 13/1/2016 at 16:14
I want that elevator - :sly:
