Hi,

I'm starting my first game, a simple exploration game with some basic NPC dialogue, and lock and key puzzles. I've spent a couple of hours in the editor, and I'm comfortable with modelling and simple animation now, but I can't figure out how scripting works, so I'm struggling to get an idea of what you can or can't tweak.

For now I'm happy making levels, but I'd really appreciate it if someone could just let know if the following things are possible, so I can uh, adjust my vision accordingly...

• Disabling weapons, or editing the starting weapon into some kind of short range "interact with" function
• Converting the HUD into a dialogue box for that "interact with" function
• Having a "lost" NPC follow you after initiating dialogue (hitting them or bumping into them)

That's it really. I know the implementation of this stuff might change for the easier any day now with 3.5 being just around the corner, but I'd like to make this as part of a Christmas present, so I can't really put it off any longer. So, yeah, any advice would be gratefully received!

Cheers,
Jay

I'm no expert on scripting, but I may be able to help with the first two requests.
For disabling weapons, you can select the player (hit the icon on the top of the screen) and then make the legacy weapon none.

I wouldn't know how to make the "interact with" weapon. But, in the triggered by property of an object, you can make it triggered by "some actor player distance < whatever value you want". So you can make something, such as text/dialogue, display when the player is near it. I don't know how to make it disappear when the player is far away from it though.

I did not test it much, but perhaps you could make no hud visible (under the editing room on the top right of main design screen). And then make a large object (like 64 by 64 by 1) and write the text on it. I think you'd have to rotate the object towards to make it vertical, though I have not done this in my games. I am hesitant to recommend this because I do not fully understand displaying objects towards the top of the screen in voxatron. Sometimes they don't display. It seems like a potentially frustrating thing. You could probably do something similar but just display it lower.
If you want to write text to objects more efficiently, try this video. (digital monkey school working with fonts).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPi2UvgxXiM

The way I did it in my games was by making the text appear on the ground (if you make the text appear on the ground, then there's probably no need to rotate it towards). Though I wasn't aware of that Digital Monkey video- I just put a ton of individual font letters. Some other options I can think of are that text is displayed in the HUD when you pick up an item (like Pineapple 73). Maybe you pick up an invisible item that reads the dialogue (make sure it announces, and adjust the name of it). This is a pretty small amount of text though- longer text gets cut-off.

If you want to make an object follow you after the text appears, you can likely put a modifier on the monster. I'm not too familiar with them though... My understanding is that a modifier, when activated, can adjust the properties of an object.
Perhaps this page is helpful? It's for an old version though, but I do not think that'd make a large difference.
https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=1448

Anyways, good luck and happy holidays! I am not sure these ways are the best, but they're what I have done.
Also, make sure to save your files in a safe way. I think Voxatron may keep a one-time backup of files, but I still try to save things like game 12/6, game 12/7, etc... The software crashes sometimes, and I've had some almost catastrophic misclicks.

Thanks so much! You've been a huge help. : )