[Scripting Question] How to track players steps with a script

[mezz8118]

So I'm trying to make a large part of my project based around how the player spends their time, and make various events trigger after a certain number of steps (e.g. after the player enters a building, x steps later security guard npcs will be alerted to their presence and the building will go into lockdown). As a understand it, the simplest way to achieve what I want would be to have 1 event on a map autorun a script counting steps, then after x steps it will return true for a conditional branch, allowing me to put any other script (such as changing switches) within that branch so that after x steps it will trigger.

So for example a script like

pbCountSteps(100)

that tracks the number of steps the player takes then returns true once they've taken that number of steps.

Does anyone know how I would go about having a script track these steps and return true after a certain number of steps? I've tried looking into the safari zone code but i really don't understand which part of it tracks the steps.

 

[Vendily]

Safari zone has an instance of a class SafariState, which tracks a number of safari zone related variables. The only one you really care about is steps, which is set to the number of steps allowed in the safari zone.
pbSafariState returns said instance of the safari zone, or makes it from scratch if it doesn't exist yet

then it's just a matter of an onStepTaken (or its variant onStepTakenTransferPossible, which allows you to warp the player away)
If you head over to script section SafariZone you can see the onStepTakenTransferPossible which counts down the steps variable if the safari zone is active, and it's actually a step bound safari zone in the settings. when the steps are up, the condition activates and the safari zone kicks you out.

If you're in the mood to be exploratory, you can even look at the bug contest, which has an actual timer that runs out instead of steps, though that's a bit more complicated to read through, using an onMapUpdate to check if the timer is expired.
It's very fun to mess with actually, I used both the safari zone step counter, and a modified bug contest timer in my game.

 

[mezz8118]

Thanks for the help, I've managed to get a working tracking script that can show a message and kick the player out of the area.
I'm still unsure how i'd go about being able to make the script trigger an event when the player reaches 0 steps however

Do you have any idea how I'd go about having it change a switch when the counter reaches 0? preferably a way that lets me choose which switch it changes as part of the event call?
My current script is in this spoiler if that helps

Spoiler:

class PTracker
attr_accessor :decision
attr_accessor :steps

def initialize
@start = nil
@BeingTracked = false
@steps = 0
@decision = 0
end

def pbReceptionMap
return @BeingTracked ? @start[0] : 0
end

def BeingTracked?
return @BeingTracked
end

def pbKickedOut
if $scene.is_a?(Scene_Map)
pbFadeOutIn {
$game_temp.player_transferring = true
$game_temp.transition_processing = true
$game_temp.player_new_map_id = @start[0]
$game_temp.player_new_x = @start[1]
$game_temp.player_new_y = @start[2]
$game_temp.player_new_direction = 2
$scene.transfer_player
}
end
end

def pbTrack(steps)
@start = [$game_map.map_id,$game_player.x,$game_player.y,$game_player.direction]
@BeingTracked = true
@steps = steps
end

def pbStopTrack
@start = nil
@BeingTracked = false
@steps = 0
@decision = 0
$game_map.need_refresh = true
end
end



Events.onMapChange += proc { |_sender,*args|
pbPTracker.pbStopTrack if !pbTrackMap?
}

def pbTrackMap?
if pbPTracker.BeingTracked?
# Reception map is handled separately from safari map since the reception
# map can be outdoors, with its own grassy patches.
reception = pbPTracker.pbReceptionMap
return true if $game_map.map_id == reception
map_metadata = GameData::MapMetadata.try_get($game_map.map_id)
return true if map_metadata && map_metadata.safari_map
end
return false
end

def pbPTracker
$PokemonGlobal.PTracker = PTracker.new if !$PokemonGlobal.PTracker
return $PokemonGlobal.PTracker
end

Events.onStepTakenTransferPossible += proc { |_sender,e|
handled = e[0]
next if handled[0]
if pbTrackMap? && pbPTracker.decision==0
pbPTracker.steps -= 1
if pbPTracker.steps<=0
pbMessage(_INTL("PA: Test complete!\1"))
pbMessage(_INTL("PA: You are no longer being tracked!"))
pbPTracker.decision = 1
handled[0] = true
end
end
}