The Test of Disorder [Open]

[Seniosh]

[1ST]T[/1ST]
he test of disorder is one of the four "entrance exams" required by the dwemer to enter their city.

The test of Disorder involves... disorder

First: DON'T PANIC! This is actually easier than it sounds

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Overview

The test of disorder is much like a puzzle, and it should require a lot of thought for the player to complete. The basics of the test are thus:

The player enters a room which is filled with pipes and levers. Each lever controls a certain pipe. The player has to figure out which levers to pull to connect the pipes, and then open the door.

The catch is - each lever controls more than one pipe, so the player character will have to do a lot of thinking.

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Modding-wise

Here's what you as a modder would need to do for this.

First, make a medium-sized room with pipes and levers. We should have all of the pipes necessary, and i have a re-textured lever available for whomever decides to take the claim.

There need to be two doors in the room. The shape of the room is up to the modder.

Once this is accomplished, scripts need to be made which connect the pipes with the levers. I would suggest a script where the pipes, upon activation, rotate 90 degrees, and each lever activates 2-3 levers.

IF you have no clue what this means, do not worry! I will help with the scripting if need-be.

Finally, a script needs to be made which tells the door when to unlock. This will also be determined by which position the pipes are in, and again, I can help with it!

For any more information, visit This thread to see what has already been discussed. Alternatively, drop me a PM, or post here.

[Hegemege]

Okay I'll give this one a try, but I've never used Rotate, so if you could help me a bit with Rotating the pipes?

And I'm also having problems with all the Dwemer tileset pieces and machines, I need those .nif files.

EDIT: I made a little layout for it, tell me what you think

E2: player walks through two "non-connected pipes" only

[Seniosh]

That's actually a very interesting concept - previously, we hadn't considered the pipes themselves being an obstruction to movement.

Perhaps to explain a bit more, the player was quite able to get to the door in TES3, but it wouldn't open until the pipes were connected. Your version of things is different, but i think it would really work well.

The one thing you have to make sure of is that the player has to do everything in the right sequence, and that he has to figure out that sequence. I have PM'ed you the required files, so if you want to get started right away, feel free to do so.

About rotate - the CS Wiki article on it is here

In addition, i'll look into making a model of the pipes which rotates on activation, because the Wiki says that things can get strange sometimes.

[Hegemege]

It seems like CS Wiki is temporarly shutted down, can't open it with IE or FireFox. But I read that article last night so I remember how it works

I'll post some screenshots when I make the layout!

EDIT: About that 6-minute paint picture, it shows that the pipes are connected, there are about 5 pipes per pipeline to every direction. I think you misunderstood that. I'll maybe think of a new layout, possible a circle?

[Hegemege]

One Question

What "levers" I'm supposed to use, is there any particular model?

I changed my plan and made the layout like this (S)

EDIT: the link works again

3rd (S) = Complete Order
4th (S) = Complete Disorder
5th (S) = Possible starting Disorder?

[Seniosh]

I like the look of it as it is now. I'll PM you the lever model in a moment, though the scripting will have to be done once you put in in-game.

I like the two-layer design of it, you can see everything laid out nicely. My only question is what is supporting the pipes? It looks like they're in the air, and if that's the case, they should logically have some support.

You could probably place the pipes on the ground floor, only slightly raised, so that they aren't suspended in mid-air.

Or i could modify a pipe model to have a support beam structure.

[Hegemege]

I would like the support beam, the same model can be used for pipes in ceiling and the pipes on ground floor, I'll make new layouts, the previous was just one of my quick ideads

What are those dark boxes in the discussion thread screenshots, which are under the levers?

I would also like to see a Isometric view of it, not the top view

I don't have MW to check it from TES 3 ST version

EDIT: I changed the layout(totally new tileset for me so I'll test everything and I think that it works now very well. The pipes are going to run on the bottom floor and when they hit some geometrical order, a loud unlocking sound plays and the door will open.

I thought also the pipes see (S)

[Hegemege]

Nevermind, if the pipes are just bit over ground, they won't need the support beam.

About the scripts.

There are 12 levers, should I make 12 objects too because every one of them must have own script?

Do I need to make every pipe transition their own Reference editor IDs, I think, yes? And every levelr also?

EDIT: I made the script for one test lever, the lever animation works nicely, but the rotating transitions are the problem. First, the rotation won't stop with everything I can do. I tried GetAngle and other stuff but it won't work. Secondly, the pieces are normally heading upwards, so it's hard to determine the rotation.

When the straight transition's y axis is set to near 0 it will rotate well, but if it's set near 90, it rotates very strangly. the 3-way trans. rotates nicely whether it's y is 0 or 90

It would be easier if you can make animations for the transition pipes.

In the script i used XXX.rotate y 45 (45 is degrees/sec so that's why it won't stop)

If you need the file, I can attach it.

EDIT: I got the transitions rotation to work, just turning the whole room 45 degrees

[Seniosh]

Ahh, i see what you're doing with the puzzle - transitions moving instead of pipes and all.

The only question is whether or not there are multiple paths to the exit...

Here's the other thing. It's actually more simple scripting-wise, and more complex from a puzzle standpoint if each lever controls three pipe transitions or so.

That way, they really have to carefully plan which levers to pull, because every lever moves three different pipes (and two levers could move the same pipe as well).

Another thing you might want to do is reduce the number of pipes which aren't actually moving, and make everything more interconnected.

About the rotating - i am going to attempt to add in animations for these pieces, so that you don't have to go through scripting hell. That'll be this weekend. In the meantime, you can finalize the layout, which pieces you want to actually move, and even start cluttering the room a bit once all that is done.

[Hegemege]

Maybe you can see it: there is only one possible route for it... if you follow the route from one corner piece to another, you can see that there is actually just one route...

Like in the pic there are 12 levers and I thought to make it like 24 moving transitions so every lever gets at least two transitions to move.

Some levers will move about 40 % of the puzzle, so player must avoid them

The thing is that 9 levers switch the pieces which are on the route and in total you need 3 or more lever-turns to make the route complete. Just like it was in TES 3 version, in final you just needed 3 levers of many.

I'll finish the layout and make Reference editor IDs for every level and transition which moves.

The question you didn't answer: Do I need to duplicate total of 12 Activators to the Object Window? Becuase otherwise the levers use same scripts. And then I can make every lever own name so like "Pull Lever 4" will be shown in-game and the diary is much easier to read

It's not big deal, just copy-pasting the base-script and little bit of clickin'

TIA