Create a second room

So a one room game is a good start, but your adventure game will be a lot more interesting when there are other rooms to travel to. Let’s create a park scene and link it to the pub scene so we can walk between them.

As we’ve already created the first scene, follow the same steps you used on the create a room page to create this scene.

• Create a new folder in your rooms folder and call it “park”

• Create a new Godot scene and set ESCRoom as its root node. Save the scene as “park.tscn”. * Note that you could call the scene something other than “park.tscn” - “room2” for example. Make sure you name things in a way that makes sense to your game.

• Give the room a global id (park)

• We still want to play as Graham in this scene, so select it as the player scene parameter.

• Add an ESCBackground node for the room graphics as a child of the root node.

• From backgrounds.zip, copy the park_bg.png file to the rooms directory and set it as the texture parameter in the ESCBackground node.

• Create a walkable area for the character. Add an ESCTerrain node to the ESCRoom node. Add a NavigationPolygonInstance node as a child of the new ESCTerrain node.

• Create a NavigationPolygonInstance resource for the Navpoly parameter.

• Use the editor window to draw a polygon. This polygon is the area in which the character can move around freely.

Creating a light map

For this room we’re going to use a light map. As mentioned previously, light maps are used to shade different areas of the room differently. In this room, we have a lamp, so we want the player to be brightly lit when under it, and less brightly lit when away from the light source.

The example light map provided is a very simple one with just 3 colours to make it easier to demonstrate how the light map changes how the game character looks, but you could replace it with one that uses a gradient to fade nicely from white to mid-grey. Coloured ones can also be used to simulate things like concert or traffic lights.

Copy the park_lightmap.png asset (link on the main step-by-step page) to the “park” folder.

In the Godot GUI, select the ESCTerrain node, and set its light map to the park_lightmap.png texture.

Room exits in Escoria

To link room 2 (the park) to room 1 (the pub), you will need an exit node. When the player clicks this, it tells Escoria that you want to change rooms. Each Escoria room can have multiple exits.

There are 2 different nodes for creating exits in Escoria. The first is an ESCItem. By selecting the “Is Exit” checkbox when you create an ESCItem node, Escoria will look for a “:exit_scene” event in the attached script file. Any commands you place in the “:exit_scene” event will be run when the player chooses to “use” the exit - for example, saying a goodbye, or running a cutscene. Place a “change_scene” command as part of this event to move the character to the next room.

For exits that don’t require scripts, the ESCExit node is provided. The only things you will need to configure on the node are the target scene to change to, and optionally, a “switch sound” (the sound to play when changing rooms).

For both ESCExit and ESCItem nodes: * A child CollisionPolygon2D node is used to define where the player needs to click to activate the exit. * When the exit is activated, the character will automatically walk to a ESCLocation node that is a child of the ESCItem / ESCExit node.

Hint

ESCExit nodes (or ESCItem nodes with Is Exit selected) only tell Escoria to change rooms. It doesn’t tell Escoria where to place the player in the new room, or anything else about how to set up the new room. This configuration lives in setup or ready events which will be explained shortly.

Create a doorway back to the pub room

• Create an ESCExit node as a child of the room and give it a “Global ID”

Under the ESCroom node, create an ESCexit node.

Set its Global ID to “exit_to_pub”.

• Create a CollisionPolygon2D for the exit

Create a CollisionPolygon2D as a child of the ESCexit. Use the editor window to draw a rectangle covering the left-hand-edge of the park background. This polygon is the area which will act like a “door” for the player to click on to change rooms. (If the room had a doorway, you’d draw the polygon around the door instead).

• Create an ESCLocation

When the player clicks on the exit’s collision polygon, Escoria needs to know where to make the character walk to in order to leave the room.

Create an ESCLocation as a child of the ESCexit. Give this location the Global ID of “park_exit”. Move the ESCLocation to the left hand side of the park somewhere on the road/path. This will be where the character walks to to leave the park.

Hint

Make sure the ESClocation is inside the walkable area navigation polygon.

• Set up the tooltip for the exit

When you put the mouse over the exit, you want the tooltip in the UI to tell you what object your mouse is over. Additionally you want to set the interaction with this exit that will happen by default to make the experience better for the player. Under Tooltip name put “Exit to pub”, and under Default Action put “use”.

• Set the destination scene for the exit

Further down in the ESCExit’s settings, select the Target scene. Clicking this will take you to a file explorer where you can choose the room you want the character to be sent to when the player clicks on this exit. Locate the pub scene and select that. (If you had a noise to play like a door closing when the player used this exit, you would use the “Switch sound” parameter to set it).

Set up a doorway in the pub room

If you played the game now, you’d find it was a bit broken. The game would start in the pub room, but you’d have no way to leave it to get to the park. If you were somehow able to get to the park and tried to get back, the game wouldn’t know where in the pub to place your character.

Lets fix this by creating a doorway in the pub and make it so that using it takes you to the park, and clicking on the edge of the park brings you back to the pub’s doorway.

The process here will be the same process we followed in the park.

Load your pub.tscn scene in the Godot editor.

Create an ESCexit as a child of the ESCRoom. Give it a Global ID of “pub_door”. Set its Target scene to park.tscn. This will send the player to the park when they click the door.

Create a CollisionPolygon2D as a child of the ESCExit. Draw the polygon around the doorway. This defines where you can click to activate the exit to leave the pub and go to the park.

When you created the pub room you set an ESClocation for the characters starting point (e.g. at the bottom of the stairs). If the player comes back into the pub from the park scene, they should be at the doorway rather than appear at the bottom of the stairs. We therefore need an ESCLocation at the doorway that we can send them to.

Create a new ESClocation as a child of the pub’s ESCExit. Set its Global ID to “pub_exit”. This will be where the user appears when they come into the pub from the park. Place its marker just under the doorway. This wil also be where the character walks to when you click the door to leave the pub.

Hint

Make sure the ESClocation is inside the walkable area polygon.

Configure the change between rooms

What we now need is to tell Escoria to move the character to the correct location when they change between rooms. For this we will use a script that will run when the room first loads. It will check which room the player has come from and immediately send them to the correct ESCLocation.

Setup and Ready events

To finish the switch between rooms, we need to explain how the room change works. When you activate an ESCExit (or ESCItem with “is exit” selected), you use the change_scene command to tell Escoria to replace the current room with new room. It doesn’t tell the Escoria anything about how to set up the new room or where to put the player - this is the responsibility of the new room.

Each room’s root node is an ESCRoom node, and the script attached to this (if there is one) is responsible for setting up anything dynamic in the room. When change_scene loads the room, it will look in the new room’s script for a setup event. Any commands you put in this script will run before the player sees the new room - use this to reset any movable objects to their start positions.

After the setup event completes, a transition will run (there is a default one set in the Escoria configuration settings), but typically the transition will be some sort of nice fade-in effect to show the room. Once the transition in runs, Escoria will run any commands in the ready event. Place any commands in here that will tell the next part of your game’s story (e.g. make the player walk to the window and comment on how it looks like a storm is approaching.)

Hint

If you do not have a script attached to your ESCRoom the player will automatically be placed at a start location called player_start if you have created an ESCLocation with this name as part of the room. If an ESCLocation with this name does not exist, the player will start as close to coordinate (0,0) as possible.

Hint

There can only be one of each type of event per script. If you want multiple steps to run as part of an event (the ready event for example), place all the commands within the one event block.

Hint

Transitions are run by default as part of the change_scene command, but this can be manually overridden if desired.

For more detail on the order of events in Escoria, see : https://docs.escoria-framework.org/en/devel/advanced/escoria_architecture.html#game-start-sequence

Setting the character’s start position in each room

Create a new ESC script “room_pub.esc” and attach it as the ESC script on the pub room’s ESCRoom node. This is the script the room will open when it starts.

Add the following code to room_pub.esc

:setup
 > [eq ESC_LAST_SCENE park]
    teleport graham pub_exit
    # Set player look left
    set_angle graham 180

This code says 1) Run these steps when setting up the room 2) Check (“>”) if the global_id of the last room you were in (ESC_LAST_SCENE) was (eq) “park” 3) If so, teleport the object “graham” to the ESClocation called “pub_exit” 4) Finally make the player face left

Hint

If the last scene wasn’t the “park” scene, the condition check will not be true, so the code (“teleport” and “set_angle”) will not execute. If you don’t have any other code to tell Escoria where to place the player, they will be placed at the “player_start” ESCLocation or coordinate (0,0) as described above.

Now follow the same process to create an ESC script called “room_park.esc”. Load the park scene and configure “room_park.esc” as the ESC script on the park room’s ESCRoom node. This is the script the park room will open when it starts.

Add the following code to room_park.esc

:setup
 > [eq ESC_LAST_SCENE pub]
    teleport graham park_exit
    # Set player look right
    set_angle graham 90

Test the scene. You should now be able to click on the door to leave the pub - you will appear in the park. If you click on the left hand side of the park you will appear in the doorway of the pub.

Additionally, due to the light map configured for the park scene, you should be in shadows when you walk in the park, and get lighter when you walk under the light.

Hint

To stop any further commands from running in a script as part of any event (at the end of an “>” conditional statement for example), add a “stop” command. All following commands will be run until either a stop command or the configuration for a different event is encountered.

Creating an exit using an ESCItem instead of an ESCExit

As mentioned earlier, for more complex exit sequences, an ESCItem is used rather than an ESCExit.

If you wanted to create the pub door using an ESCItem you would: * Create an ESCItem as a child of the ESCRoom. Give it a Global ID of “pub_door_item”. * Create a new ESC script file and call it “pub_exit.esc”. Where you place this file is up to you and how it makes sense with your project. You might choose to store it with the room, or keep all your game’s scripts together in a “scripts” folder. * In pub_exit.esc, add an :exit_scene event to our ESC file and within it, use the change_scene command to make the game switch from this pub room to the park room when the player “uses” the exit. You would add any other animation / dialog / etc to this script that you want to be played when the player activates the exit. e.g.

:exit_scene
say graham "I'm leaving now."
change_scene "res://rooms/park/park.tscn"

• Change the “Esc Script” of the ESCItem to point to your script so Escoria runs the code you’ve just written when the user exits the scene using this node.