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Development Forum EMIT / ALTR / PROP    Geek2Nurse        5/21/2012 Trying to get my head wrapped around these...I can't find a lot of info on them, so I'm going to post my take here and hope y'all will straighten me out if I've gone wrong anywhere: EMIT emits a steady stream of something for the whole time the agent exists, which implies it would gradually/continually raise the level of that CA in the room and those surrounding it. Is it true one agent can only EMIT one CA? ALTR makes a one-time adjustment to the level of CA, so it strikes me as being more of a temporary effect...how long will this typically last? Seconds? Minutes? Hours? PROP sounds like it permanently changes the base setting of a CA value for a room...so if you used it from an agent script, like, say, a statue casting a shadow and darkening the room, you'd have to set it back when the agent was removed. Am I on the right track? --- Optimist: the glass is half full. Pessimist: the glass is half empty. Engineer: the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.   Moe     5/21/2012 EMIT: Agents can only emit one CA, yes. But you can change what CA it emits during scripts, I believe. ALTR: ALTR mods the value of a CA. If you ALTR a room with a CA by .5, you'll add .5 to the room. -.5, will subtract. It's not permenant, and how fast it dissipates depends on the value added or subtracted, and how fast that particular CA diffuses in that particular roomtype. PROP: Like ALTR it changes the CA values, but instead of modding the value, it sets it. PROP a room by .5, and that room's value for the specified CA becomes .5. Again, this will spread and diffuse through adjacent rooms depending on how the CA spreads in the rooms. Think of it like variables: ALTR is addv -adds value PROP is setv -sets value To cast a shadow, you'd need EMIT to emit light at a negative value, or a timer script that ALTR's the CA in the specified room every so often to remove a certain amount of light. Neither method is very effective, and Norns don't really perceive light enough for it to matter. They can navigate solely by smell and automated targeting processes to find things "in the dark". Light is optional. Hope this helps!   Geek2Nurse     5/21/2012 Thanks, Moe! (Your room changer has really helped me with learning about CAs and room types, by the way!) I'm thinking more of plant / critter / bug agents, in a world where the ecology is actually in use. For instance, I'm planning to modify my flower agents to determine rate of growth based on availability of light/nutrients/moisture, to make things more interesting. I won't go so far as not have them NOT grow in poor conditions, since not all rooms have the necessary settings and that would take all the fun out of it. They'd just take a lot longer there. Since I've been building decorative agents lately, I'm working on adding appropriate CA effects to them too. The lamppost emits light, and future versions of the statues will affect both light and moisture. I have plans for decorative trees, too -- not so sophisticated that they grow or anything (I need to get a lot better with graphics first!); more like the statues, except I plan for them to have timer scripts that will drop occasional leaves to help boost the ecology by providing food / debris. UPDATE: I hope editing messages resets the "unread" flag on the forum, 'cause I know Laura doesn't like double-posting, but I need some input here... I'm not having any luck changing the EMIT level of an agent. Seems like if you don't set it when you create the agent, you can't add it later, and if you do set it at creation, you can't change it later. Is this consistent with what others have found, or have you been able to change EMIT levels? Also, the amount being emitted doesn't correspond to the change in room CA readings, which confuses me. According to the PROP command, the Comm room light level was .217 before injecting my lamp, which at that point was starting off with EMIT set to .001 for light. The level in the comm room after injection jumped to .301. Does Shee math work differently from Earth math? Anyone have any enlightenment to offer on any of this? --- Optimist: the glass is half full. Pessimist: the glass is half empty. Engineer: the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.   Malkin Manager     5/21/2012 I'd thought that it was possible to set EMIT in a timer script? It might help if you had dmap switched on to show you the individual rooms. When your lamp is switched on, the light CA begins to fill the rooms the lamp is in, and the room continues to lose that CA to other rooms at a certain rate. As the room continues to lose CA to the rest of the ship, the 'jump' will seem less obvious. (In DS, only the norn meso has any CA emitters at all - the rest of the ship is warmed, lighted, etc. by the norn meso.) My TCR Norns   Moe     5/21/2012 If I make an agent emit water at a value of 1 in the center of the DS hub, the value will only climb to about .4 The reason is, yes, Shee math works differently than ours. That's because it's diffusing to other rooms. It's also compounding a bit. EMIT is like ALTR in that regard, and it adds values to the room quickly (quicker than the game updates CA's, even, so you don't see it until it's already stacked up a bit) but diffusing and loss are so fast that you don't get exact values. However, you should be able to change the emit CA and value whenever you wish. I tried it with the pointer and all was well. Note that some CA's won't inject at all in certain room types. Try adding water to the desolate corridors of the Hub, and you'll get nothing.   Geek2Nurse     5/22/2012 Hmmm. I am working with DMAP on, and started out using the Room Changer to read values, then switched to debug commands. I'll go experiment a bit more...thanks for the input! EDIT: Hah! N00b stupidity strikes again. I just needed a break and some Mediterranian pizza before I could figure it out. I had the EMIT changing in the activate scripts, but not in the click script, and I was activating it with the hand, which apparently does not trigger the activate script. Final outcome: You CAN change EMIT levels in scripts. Yay! --- Optimist: the glass is half full. Pessimist: the glass is half empty. Engineer: the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.   Malkin Manager     5/22/2012 The meerk toy uses CLAC to let the hand 'push' and 'pull' the toy. Hope this helps. My TCR Norns   Geek2Nurse     5/22/2012 Ooh...so I should have put my click script stuff inside the activate script...that makes so much sense, now that you've spoonfed it to me. Thank you! --- Optimist: the glass is half full. Pessimist: the glass is half empty. Engineer: the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

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