Prevent Objectives' states from going back?
Hi
I'm having some trouble with objectives. Let's say I have a situation like this:
- Get hired to kill a vampire
- Gather intel on how to enter the castle
- Go to the castle
- Chase the vampire into the woods
- Stake the vampire
- Completed
When I talk to any of 5 NPCs, they tell me how to enter the vampire's castle, and I set the objective active state to 2. "Go to the castle." Then I find the vampire, have a cutscene and chase him to the woods. Now, in the woods, with the vampire cornered, I'm in state 4. "Stake the vampire." But then I realize I need health potions so I return to town for some, and there I talk to one of those 5 NPCs, so now my state is back to 2.
This breaks the logic as when I return to the woods to face the vampire, my state should be 4. "Stake the vampire", but that random conversation with the NPC set it back to 2 "Go to the castle".
So far, the solution I use is far from ideal, as I have to create a lot of checks everywhere. Like having the NPCs only trigger the jump to state 2 if the state is 0 or 1.
Isn't there a simpler way? Like a way to prevent the state from moving backwards? Maybe an Objective.setState action list node with a condition (like setStageIfCurrentStateLower)?
Basically, I’m trying something like the technique from this GDC talk:
From the talk I gather that having the states (objectives) be high water marks (a state implies that all previous states conditions have been met) reduces complexity and bugs immensely.
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Comments
Having a per-Objective option to only allow the active state to "move down" the states list might be worth adding. I'll give this some thought.
Quick note on your intel state: are you using sub-objectives? That lets you automate the switching to state 3 when you have a number of NPCs that you can potentially talk to - see the tutorial here.
That would be great!
The intel state in question was just a simplified example to illustrate a situation im having that is forcing me to have checks every time i use setStage. Its very easy to mess up the state of objectives.
Yes, I'll include this in the next release.