Scripted or Subscripted?

[DooMBoy]

Scripted event: Something that happens after you go a certain distance, kill a certain enemy, pick up a certain weapon, etc. Example: in Turok 3, you're walking your way through some tunnels. There's an old man there. He tells you to not shoot him. You ask him how to get out of there. He says, "Follow me. It's right up here!", he climbs the ladder up to the very top. He is promptly ripped in half by one of those spider-looking creatures.
This gets very old very fast.
With subscripts however, you can create an infinite number of these kinds of things.
What do you think?

[Doom-Child]

What exactly do you mean by "subscripted"? I don't understand the difference.

DC

[DooMBoy]

Scripted means it's going to happen regardless of what you want or what you do to avoid it.
Subscripted means that a near infinite number of scripted events can happen.
Does that clear things up?
And with Doom, the possibilities are near endless. :)

[maga]

dammit, give an example....

[DooMBoy]

Well, for example:
You are walking down the dimly-lit corridor, aware that something is about to happen.....and pretty soon it does. The wall on your right-hand side suddenly breaks open, and out storms a pissed-off Baron of Hell.
That's an example of a scripted sequence. It would be all right the first few times you saw it, but would become cumbersome and tiresome over time.
Example of subscripted sequence:
You're walking down the same dimly-lit corrdor, aware that something is about to happen.....and pretty soon it does.
Only this time instead of a Baron of Hell popping out of the wall, this time about 5 or 6 angry Imps smash through the wall. It wouldn't even have to be the wall in question!
Instead, the demons could come smashing through the ceiling, or even out of the floor!
Just imagine this happening again but with BullDog Demons, or Knights of Hell, or some other such demon.
How's that?

[maga]

hey, it's cool, but I think this is better :

You're walking down the same dimly-lit corrdor, aware that something is about to happen.....and pretty soon it does.
The wall breaks and some demons appear. (now you have 2 choises)

-run on the left hallway - the floors breaks and you have to jump the rest of the way

-run on the right hallway - the lights go off, some imps appear, massacre, you finnaly reach the door.

now, think about it, only one of the choices will be made...the other one will be zeroed once you step in the right or the left hallway...

[DooMBoy]

And with subscipts, it would be different nearly all the time!

[maga]

I'm just saying this : "That'll be the day"

[DooMBoy]

The Day is not to far away.

[maga]

it's one year away, at least

[DooMBoy]

Not too far, considering that they're putting all this new-fangled stuff into it. I would have thought that the Day would be about 4 years from now. What a marvelous age we live in.

[Doom-Child]

The problem with that approach is this: the game has to make a decision on how, when, and where to perform one of these subscripted sequences. Now, the level designer could specify an area, say, in the length of this one dimly lit hallway, a when, such as when the player enters the hallway (or at a random time between his entrance and exit, but again, how do you decide?), and let the computer decide the how. But that's a lot of decisions to be made by the computer, and that would require a pretty intelligent engine. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying it's more work than anyone's probably willing to do just yet.

DC

[Zaldron]

Doom-child is right.

This things should be better applied on the AI, leaving the monster with enough will to shape the scripted sequence (example : pummel throught this wall) as it fits best.

For example, a very capable AI will wait until you're near the wall, so it can hit you with the rumble. Or it could wait until you're on your back. Or not go throught the wall and find another way. Or break the wall but not show yourself, or break it and run away, and return later. Or hit it to scare the player.

The next thing in scripting and AI. Scripts that only define the baseline of the action, while the AI adapts to every possible action of the player.