We’ve talked a bit about how to do fairly simple things with EZScript, so I thought I’d take some time tonight to talk about getting just a bit more fancy. There are a few fairly common types of missions whose creation in EZScript may seem a little difficult to figure out when you’re just beginning. One of the things that I wanted to do when I was first getting started on the DCUG was figure out how to create a mission where success or failure depended largely on the player’s ability to be stealthy. Do y’all remember the stealth mission from the original FF campaign, the one where Minute Man had to sneak past a bunch of thugs who would trigger an alarm if they saw him? Well, that gave me the idea, and since I was working on a Batman campaign, it seemed like a perfect fit!
But, how should I go about it? Well, thanks to M25’s pointers, I finally worked out what I needed to do, and it is a system I’ve used for several missions since then. To illustrate it, I’ll create part of a Ninja Turtles mission in which the Heroes in a Half Shell have to slip past the police without being seen, while at the same time searching the city for clues. We begin with a simple cutscene, and take advantage of the “Next:” field to spawn several encounters at the same time.
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Encounter: Intro1
Type: Cutscene
Next: Punk1, Punk2, Punk3, Guard1, Guard2, Guard3Start Cutscene:
narrator says, “After rescuing a plucky reporter from a gang of thugs out to ‘send her a message,’ the Turtles joined April O’Neil in pursuit of a story that would prove that they had not been behind a number of recent robberies around New York.”
narrator says, “While the boys stopped for a pizza, April continued her investigation, following her nose right into a trap!”
Cinematic camera on leonardo to raphael
leonardo says, “April’s disappeared, dudes!”
raphael turns to leonardo
raphael says, “Don’t worry Leo, she’s a big girl. I’m sure she can take care of herself.”
Camera on donatello
donatello says, “I’m not so sure guys. I mean, those creeps are probably still looking for her. What if they found her again?”
Cinematic camera on micaelangelo to leonardo
michaelangelo plays animation melee
michaelangelo says, “Well dudes, we gave those losers a pounding once, we can do it again!”
leonardo says, “Right Mikey, let’s hit the streets and see if any of the local riff-raff know anything. But remember, let’s act like ninjas and stay out of sight!”#——————————————————————————-
Now, there are two things I want to point out about this. First, you’ll see that I’m calling for six encounters to begin, but they are all encounters that won’t actually start RUNNING until you move characters close to them. The characters in them will spawn, but they won’t take up too much juice just sitting there. Something like this gets a lot more demanding when you are triggering encounters that start immediately, and that is something to keep in mind if your machine is a little on the older side. Second, I forgot to talk about the difference between “Camera on” and “Cinematic camera on” commands in my last EZScript post. Camera on points the camera more or less straight down at a single character, at a moderate height that will include a good deal of background. Cinematic gets you in a little closer, and can be good for dramatic moments. It is also good for FOLLOWING moving characters. I tend to alternate the two, so there aren’t any jerky camera transitions. Also, you can tell the game to stretch a shot from one character to another with the Cinematic camera, and that can be good for creating the illusion of a conversation or a face-off.
What’s next? Well, the three encounters where the Turtles are looking for clues are all just variations on the same theme, stop a mugging, catch a thief, etc. I’m going to make one of them an interrogation, though, so that our heroes can get some information pointing them to the final encounter. I COULD make this clue encounter both an interrogation AND something else using a Custom Encounter, but we’ll talk about those another day. Punks 1-3 won’t have a marker specified, so they’ll be random. The player will have to search for them. Guard 1-3, however, have to be tied to a specific location if we want them to look right. Let me show you what I mean:
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Encounter: Guard1
Type: Flee The Scene
Villains: cop, cop
Marker: post1
Next: If All Escaped: Alarm1
Next: If Some Escaped: Alarm1
Next: If None Escaped: NoneAlert Cutscene:
Camera on leonardo
leonardo turns to Villain1
leonardo says, “Uh-oh brothers, we’d better stick to the shadows. We can’t afford to be seen, but I’d really rather not hurt innocent policemen.”Start Cutscene:
Cinematic camera on raphael
raphael says, “They’ve spotted us! Let’s take ’em!”
donatello says, “But…they’re the good guys!”
raphael says, “Better that they wake up with a headache than we end up in a lab somewhere!”Villains Escapes Cutscene:
Camera on donatello
donatello says, “This can’t be good…”None Escaped Cutscene:
leonardo says, “That was too close…we must be more careful. Remember the lessons Master Splinter has taught us.”#——————————————————————————-
You see, the base for this kind of stealth mission is simply a “Flee the Scene” encounter, and you could technically do that without calling for a marker, but if you want it to look like that Minute Man mission, where your flunkies trigger an alarm, you’ll need to do a little extra work. See, having a specific marker, in this case “post1” allows you to place another marker “post1_end1” which will tell the villains where to run. That may not really seem that helpful, but if you were to place the alarm bell from the Nazi base map over that marker, then you’d see these cops run for that alarm, rather than for a particular edge of the map. Now, you’ve got a few options as to what to do once the alarm is tripped. If you want stealth to be absolutely vital to the mission, you can simply put “lose” after the next entries for characters getting away. What I like to do, however, is force the player to face a boatload of reinforcements if they can’t slip past the guards. The next step is the key, though, as getting the right look is only part of the issue.
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Encounter: Alarm1
Type: Hunt
Villains: cop
Minions: cop
Marker: post4Start Cutscene:
michaelangelo says, “Look out, here comes the cavalry!”#——————————————————————————-
You now have to tell the game to summon reinforcements for the shocked cops. Here, we place a “post4” marker next to a doorway nearby, and use a hunt encounter so that these policemen will chase after the Turtles. Thus, if the alarm is tripped, it will seem like the cops have called for backup. You can even add in more dialog to indicate exactly what is going on.
And there you have it. It is really simple in the execution, but it took me quite a while to figure out. I like to think that the result in game is actually pretty neat, and a nice variation from the standard fare of “punch this guy.” I hope that was useful to someone out there!
The Greylands 
