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[Mikael]

I'm creating a template for a first person game here, and I still have some basic things to figure out.

1) To get rid of the actor, I put "actor.Active = false;" in the scene.init_script file. Is there any way that I can implement this in the game script, so that I don't have to do this in every single scene?

2) Is there some way to make the scale levels and regions invisible when I load the Scene editor, so that I don't have to uncheck them in the properties tab in every scene?

3) I've touched upon this subject in an earlier thread, but I really have to know before I start my project. The reason that I'm asking is because several of the other game engines I've tried fails considerably in this department: My game will consist of approximately 1,200 "frames", in other words 1,200 scenes. Do this large amount of scenes slow down WME a lot?

Thanks in advance!

Regards,

Mikael

[TheDerman]

It's probably better to not use the actor.Active=false; for a 1st person game, mainly because the actor can't speak if he's set to false, so you need something else to speak for him, in order to have subtitles.

I recently read this thread:

http://forum.dead-code.org/index.php?topic=2009.0

...which offers some advice for creating 1st person games using an entity for the actor.

I think you could also just use a 1x1 pixel transparent actor in place of Molly, so you can then use actor.Talk etc as normal.

In my 3rd person demo, I have a 1st person scene, so I basically just kept the actor loaded but put him offscreen, out of view, and since there were no walkable areas, he doesn't walk anywhere, so he's basically just sat out of view doing nothing, but it allows me to use actor.Talk, and also have that 1st person scene. I guess you can do pretty much the same with the 1x1 pixel transparent actor.

I know I said previously 1st person game are easy in WME, and they are, but also, I think WME is really a 3rd person engine, so 1st person games take a little more creativity and work in the setup. 

I'm not sure about the other two questions.

[Mnemonic]

1) To get rid of the actor, I put "actor.Active = false;" in the scene.init_script file. Is there any way that I can implement this in the game script, so that I don't have to do this in every single scene?

As TheDerman said, you'd better not deactivate the actor, but rather use a transparent entity instead. Check the Mystic Triddle or Beyond the Threshold sources, both games use this approach.

2) Is there some way to make the scale levels and regions invisible when I load the Scene editor, so that I don't have to uncheck them in the properties tab in every scene?

The simplest way would be to modify the new scene template used by ProjectMan. Go to the WME installation directory, find "template\scene\Empty scene 800x600" subdirectory, open the "$$NAME$$.scene" in some text editor, scroll down to the bottom of the file and delete the two SCALE_LEVEL sections. Next time you add a new scene based on this template, it won't contain any scale levels.

3) I've touched upon this subject in an earlier thread, but I really have to know before I start my project. The reason that I'm asking is because several of the other game engines I've tried fails considerably in this department: My game will consist of approximately 1,200 "frames", in other words 1,200 scenes. Do this large amount of scenes slow down WME a lot?

WME only keeps one scene loaded in memory, so the number of scenes doesn't affect perfomance (almost) at all. The only exception is, that WME stores the scene state information for each scene (which entities were active/inactive, what were their captions/sprites). To limit the amount of info than needs to be stored, you can uncheck the "Remember nodes states" check-box in SceneEdit for scenes which don't need this functionality.

[Mikael]

Thanks The Derman and Mnemonic.

Mikael

[noxis]

Is there a way to have a narrator box?  An example would be say a Sierra On-line game or a really good example is in the Access Software games Amazon: Guardians of Eden or Martian Memorandum where you could have a re-sizable box for the text.

So you could have these box's rather than dialogue text .. is this possible.  I find that when using speech text in first person mode it is a bit unpredictable even when you choose the coordinates of the character.

[metamorphium]

much better than actor for this is to have an Entity which also contains Talk.
You can for example then make some method (either Game.Talk or whatever you like)

then you can draw an inspiration from something like this (simplified version of what I use):

var talkEnt = Scene.CreateEntity();
talkEnt.SubtitlePosRelative = false;
talkEnt.SubtitlesPosXCenter = false;
talkEnt.SubtitlesWidth = [SOME WIDTH];
talkEnt.SubtitlesPosX = [SOME X POSITION];   
talkEnt.SubtitlesPosY = [SOME Y POSITION];
talkEnt.SetFont([SOME FONT]);
talkEnt.SoundPanning = false;
talkEnt.Talk(srcString, null, "", "", 0);
Scene.DeleteEntity("talkEnt");

This would be very easy to enclose in some window and voila - your Sierra interface is working