Anyone want a little help?

[WALP]

I certainly need help with lighting, I have no idea how I can make it look like lamps are shinging and crap... The box, spot, and point light are hard to work with. and how in the world do I get the proxies to spawn? they never do in my custom maps. maybe I have to use an area to spawn a monster once you touch the area? in hpl2 it was script but there isn't one in hpl3.

As always, looking at how Frictional did it is the best way to go, in this case opening maps in editor to see how they set it up. Looking into the .hps files you can get inside into how Frictional scripted the enemy encounter and what functions they used.

As for my own knowledge on the matter.

Scripting an enemy in SOMA actually works very similar to HPL2, except you now have a lot more extra control, and that a lot of scripts have been renamed. You should however easily be able to find out these functions if you have your Codelite setup correctly so it auto-completes functions. As well you want to check out helper files such as helper_ai.hps, where you can find a lot of functions you need, with a little bit of documentation alongside them as well.

For your convenience heres some of the most basic functions for controlling enemies in SOMA, but you will have to figure out the parameters yourself:

Entity_SetActive();
// this will enable disable the monster/entity. there is also a checkbox on entities in editor where you can set if they are active or non active on map start.

Pathfinder_Track_Clear(); //this clears all pathnodes from the monsters Track, I think it might be good to use before adding any pathnodes for the sake of stability, and being sure that no pathnodes it might have gotten previously(fx if the player died and script got triggered again) do not mix up with the newly added ones.

Pathfinder_Track_Add();

//This one is for telling the enemy to walk or patrol to a certain pathnode you placed in the map. You can place multiple after one another for a complex track.

Pathfinder_Track_Start();

//This one is making the enemy start following the track, and I dont think Pathfinder_Track_Add will work unless you add this after. You can also decide if you want the track to loop like a patrol or be done only once.

oh and note that some of the functions you come across may be using functions from the custom_depth folder, which among other things contains a ton of custom_ai scripts, like fx the puppet hunt mode function.


As for lighting it is definitely not my strongest area, but basic knowledge would be:
Box lights should be used with a dark color, so the map does not go from bright to pitch black where the is a light, and you can also give the map a general tint of a color with it.

Pointslights are your most common lights, and can be used to illuminate most rooms in a smooth circular manner.

Spotlight I have not used a lot, but they are good for areas with a lot of contrast and shadows. They also offer a lot more control about the direction of the light, as opposed to the circular pointslights.

Finally you dont just want light to be on their own, making sure they work well with their sources and have details like billboards setup makes a huge difference.


Thats all I can offer you at your current level, from here its practice practice practice. For getting critique and info on where you can improve I recommend posting in one of these 2 threads:
https://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-30901.html
https://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-30794.html