This screen, called from the events screen, allows you to create a new text event or edit attributes of an existing one. The details of each event attribute are defined below.
New/Edit
Event
Screen Elements
New Event Text
Field
Enter the event text here. Let’s say you wanted to do something whenever you saw the text “hey there” come across your screen. You would then put the text “hey there” in this field. Events can be a maximum length of 60 characters. Each * you enter in this field will be used to populate a variable. If you entered “* tells you” as the event text, this tells the program “I want whatever appears in place of that * to populate the variable I choose.” The variable will be populated by whatever appears, be it “Bob” “Barry” etc. Here’s a couple points to remember about *’s in event text.
·
*’s can be placed anywhere in the event text
·
Double *’s (**) are not allowed in the event text
·
Each * will require a corresponding Portal© variable to populate
·
A * at the beginning of the event text will return only the first
complete word preceding the event text
·
A * at the end of the event text will return the entire string of text to
the end of that line, even if it contains many words. If you only want the first word following the event text, leave
an extra space after the *
Note: You can also use
the ^ character as the first character in the event to indicate that you only
want the event to fire off if it is located at the beginning of the line. That means that if you had the event "You
say" it would fire anytime it appeared in any line. If the event was "^You say"
instead, it will only fire if the "Y" in "You" is the first
character in the line.
This read-only
field displays the variables to be populated, in order shown, by the *’s in the
event text. To change the variable
population, press the @ button or click in this field.
@ Button
Press this button
to designate what variables get populated and where by stars in the event
text. This brings up the Select Variable
screen, which has its own help file.
Please refer to that for help on selecting what variables to populate
for the event.
Selects the group
the event will be placed into.
Attach a Sound to
This Event Button (small loudspeaker icon)
This allows you to
assign any .WAV file anywhere on your computer to the event. Once you select one, that sound will play
when the associated event text comes across on the display.
Sound Field
The name of the
.WAV file for any associated sound file will appear here. If there is no sound file associated, this
field will be blank. If you pass your
cursor over this field while there is a sound file attached, the full path of
the sound file will appear in the status bar at the bottom of the screen.
Play Sound Button
(musical notes icon)
If you have any
sound file assigned, pressing this button will play it.
Clear Sound Button
(small loudspeaker w/eraser icon)
Pressing this
button will clear any sound attached to the event.
Event Text
The Event Text
Button allows you to choose the color the event text will appear in. You can choose any foreground and background
colors you desire. The entire event
text will be colored accordingly when it comes across the display. This will help you identify when exactly
some events are occurring.
If you check off
the Original Checkbox, the event text will appear in the original color as it
comes across from the MUD.
Case Checkbox
If this box is
checked, events will check to make sure the character case of the display text
exactly matches that of the event text.
For example, if the event text is “hello” and this checkbox is checked,
the event will fire only when it sees “hello” (all lowercase). If this box is not checked the event will
fire on hello, Hello, HELLO, hElLo, etc.
Filtered Checkbox
This box determines
whether or not the event is "filtered" or not displayed on the main
screen when it comes across. The Retain checkbox determines whether or not
the text is retained for later viewing in the system
messages screen or simply tossed away.
Note: You can only filter events that don't use any variables (*'s).
Terminal Checkbox
This box determines
whether or not the event is labeled as “terminal.” You would set an event as terminal when you want to stop other
events from firing if that event fires.
Please see the section below for more information on Terminal Events.
Disabled Checkbox
If this box is
checked, the individual event will be disabled and not used. Disabled events will appear in the Events
Grid italicized, and in silver text.
You can also disable/enable events by right clicking on them in the
Events Grid.
Create New Button (only appears when creating a new event)
Creates the new event.
Create New Event/Save Button (only appears when editing an existing event)
Saves changes made to the edited event.
Terminal events
allow you to instruct Portal© that “if this event occurs, don’t fire off any
events after it.” The Terminal Order
determines which events are defined as “after it.”
The Terminal Order
is the order in which events are displayed in the Events Grid. An event in the grid is considered “before”
the events below it. If an event is
marked as terminal, and that event fires in a line, all events “after” it in
the Terminal Order will not fire. All
events “before” it, however, will behave normally.
The Terminal Order
of a specific event is local to the group that event is a member of (the BASE
group, for example). The Group Terminal
Order is specified in the Setup Groups screen and determines which group’s events
will be checked first.
If a terminal event fires, NO other events below it will fire. This includes all events in all groups after the group in which the terminal event resides. For example, if you listed the BASE group before the TEST group, and the BASE group had a terminal event that fired, not only would the events below it in the BASE group not fire, but no events at all in the TEST group will fire either.
BASE hits you very hard ;process @veryhard++
BASE hits you hard ;process @hitshard++
BASE hits you ;process @hitsyou++
Without terminal
events, if the text “hits you very hard” comes across, it would increment
@veryhard AND @hitsyou. You wouldn’t
want this to happen as you only want to increment @veryhard. To accommodate this, you would mark the 1st
event as terminal, leaving all events in the order you see above. This means when the “hits you very hard”
text comes across, you have told the system “Don’t process anymore!”