17/02/16

Some newcomers don't really know how triggers work - and this thread is for people who want to learn more about triggers.

TRIGGER BASICS

Triggers are an essential part of the game. They are the elements that "program" the events, causing things to happen.

There are mainly two types of trigger in Below Kryll:

Momentary trigger: Most triggers activate momentarily, like a tap in the light switch. They are active for a fraction of a second, and deactivates soon after. Examples: pickups, talking, killing enemies, breaking barrels, etc...

Permanent trigger: Few triggers are permanent as long as you keep them pressed, like pressing and holding a light switch. Those will send a pulse constantly. Example: koyo flowers, goblin wheels, teon buttons.

In addition to types of triggers, some items have different "modes" that react with the trigger:

OPEN: The item starts out deactivated, and once it detects the trigger, it will activate forever.
CLOSE: The item starts out activated, and once it detects the trigger, it will deactivate forever.
SET: The item activates and deactivates according to the trigger.

Keep in mind that Momentary Triggers will work well with OPEN and CLOSE modes, as the single "tap" will activate the item. However, SET will most likely depend on a Permanent trigger in order to be fully usable.

Also, don't forget that trigger names are case sensitive! "Trigger", "TRIGGER" and "trigger" are three different things! Be extra careful when naming triggers.

---

LOGIC GATES

Logic gates are useful tools for causing logic tests to happen. Basically, depending on the output of the triggers, you can get different results.

The available Logic gates are:

AND gate: if A and B are activated at the same time, C will activate. If either A or B stops functioning, C will stop functioning, too.
OR gate: C will activate if either A or B are active.
NOT gate: if A is deactivated, B will be activated, and vice-versa.
S/R gate: C will activate with A, and deactivate with B.

Logic gates use Permanent triggers for most of their functions. Thus, if you collect pickup A and kill an enemy B, the AND logic gate will not activate trigger C because neither A or B are active at the same time.

Mental note: you can make a Permanent trigger with logic gates.

19/02/16

Didn't have you have a level somewhere that teaches you about this?

19/02/16

that would be the Gors' Museum - but that only deals with contraption designs and not the actual behaviour of the triggers.

• Edited on 19/02/16

20/02/16

i think i understand the general principles of how gates and triggers operate but i cant seem to get them to connect to items eg

i want to connect a shuriken and a bonon together to activate some spikes . how do i assign inputs to the two triggers ?
there doesnt seem to be a way i can find but there must be ...

cheers

20/02/16

The issue is related to both the kill and the shuriken being only momentary triggers. So using 'And' won't work, as the moment you kill the bonon the shuriken trigger is not active anymore. So 'And' does only recognize the bonon part (the moment you kill it) and is not fulfilled. (Same the other way around.)
It seems that you have to build workarounds to make such stuff work. See at my Kryllsylvania 1 level for one example. The toad statue in the upper right is a clue counter for the 3 clues. As each clue is only momentary, I made each clue move one of the 3 platforms. ('Start', not 'set'! 'set' does not work with momentary triggers). Once all 3 are obtained, the toad presses the flower and thereby causes a workaround 'And' condition. There are many other ways to "remember" momentary triggers even after they happened, this is just one of many examples.
For example it's pretty common to make a momentary trigger open a pine gate ('open', not 'set'), which lets then a bonon on a flower to press it permanently.

• Edited on 20/02/16

20/02/16

Since you hardly can spark the light for both triggers at the same time, you need to find a way to keep that light on.
With phisical objects, as Scheuchevogel suggested or, as Gors mentioned, with logic gates.

E.g. you can use and OR logic, to use an input trigger (A) to activate the output (A).
This way after the momentary spark of bonon death or shuriken picking, it will be permanently self feeding itself.

But you maybe need to stop it, in case of respawn or reset. S/R gates are very useful for that, because the Output don't need to be self feeding as OR gates, the output is kept on by itself.

E.g. you want to want to kill a bonon to open a door, but you don't want a floor full flower buttons to be pressed.
Bonon is the ON input and Flower is the OFF input wiht Gate as the output (so the gate can be open or closed by its set trigger)

In case you miss objects, like they're not advailable in that floor, you may need to find a way to do what you need.
Like in floor 1 there aren't flowers, but you want to push a statue to a certain point.
I figured I can hide a sequence of pickup keys behind the statue to have a hidden push the block positioning puzzle

20/02/16

jus, as you've been already told, some triggers are not permanently and they just trigger once and then go off. This can be a bit confusing if you're not used to it. In particular for death triggers function this way so if you want to make them permanent you need to use a Set/Reset logic gate.

Give it a try, experiment a little and I'm sure you'll understand how it works.

20/02/16

thanks guys , ive had a mess around today and managed to get some moving platforms to trigger from 2 bonon kills so thats a start ...

im wondering if its because what im building is on a level 4 or 5 , and triggering spikes or shurikens is not actually allowed there ? or i dont have enough of something to allow me to do it ?

when i place a set of spikes or a shuriken anywere there is no box appear on the right of the screen to allow you to name inputs , outputs or triggers to go with them , like there is with other stuff .

will keep trying !

20/02/16

Didn't know that OR remains active even after its source is not anymore. That makes things a lot easier.

It's not possible to trigger Shurikens as far as I know. But you can always put them behind a gate or log.
To trigger spikes, choose magnifying glass and click on the spikes. By default they are open, but you can change that at any level.

21/02/16

thanks scheuchevogel , going to try that now - only just realised how the magnifying glass works , lost a lot of text because of that !

its a learning process ...

21/02/16

jus, you're right, when placing spikes the config box won't appear (is it a bug or intentional?) but you can select the spikes by holding the Ctrl key and then clicking on the spikes to configure the triggers.

Also, keep in mind that you don't have to do that manually for every spikes item. If you want to link a bunch of spikes to the same trigger, you can configure one spikes item and then, while that item is selected, you can hold the Shift key and click to make a copy of that item with all and its configuration settings.

21/02/16

i think it's because spikes are usually just placed to be constant spikes with no triggers, so it's easier to just draw them in a line and such without the config window showing every time...

you also might want to try and 'inspect' items just to see if they have some cool config - for example, if you inspect a golden shuriken you can configure a trigger for it!

• Edited on 21/02/16

21/02/16

Yeah, took me quite a while to find out how to create those "strange orange shuriken". XD
(I think though jus is looking for a way to make shurikens appear by a trigger, and that does not seem to work.)

17/03/16

Could someone help me?

This is the situation: http://i.imgur.com/YPA9KU3.png

I have two switches that control the bridges; one closes it, one opens it. The thing is that I need the bridge to be open by default (when the Mitsu enters the area, since the cubes need to fall down through the bridge) and stay open until the player reaches the close-switch. Im not sure how to do that... anyone have any ideas?

• Edited on 17/03/16

17/03/16

I think you first need to set the bridges on SET and add a NOT gate like (x , gate)
With x being a permanent trigger, different from Open or Close, to avoid to automatically reopen the bridges

• PS: { { http://... } } is an good tool you can find in the toolbar over the comment box (without any spaces here "{{" or in the link address)

• PPS: I've figure your idea of ON/OFF switch. Not the most elegant or effective maybe, but at least the button is a safe press (press=ON hold=OFF)

There is flower button behind those log & blast gates. The hard part it putting it there, cause you need to position the gates on CLOSE first, then the flower and switch the gates on SET (so the Unset/Not Set can do it's work)

• Edited on 17/03/16

17/03/16

If I add the NOT gate, the Close trigger doesn't work anymore. Like so:

That lever switch looks awesome, you should integrate that into a real level!

• Edited on 17/03/16

17/03/16

Okay so Teb showed me the solution:

24/03/16

Are there any special trigger commands which are not obvious? One is "hidden" in the shuriken description, so maybe there are more. That one is named pretty misleading, though. The trigger called 'all_pickups' is NOT activated when having gathered all pickup items. But only when you have gathered all shuriken. Even if there are still actual pickups not collected. So it is actually a 'all shuriken' trigger. Is there one that actually activates based on all pickups instead? Or are there any other pre-defined trigger sets?

24/03/16

The all_pickups trigger was available way before the pickup items were introduced in the game but yeah, now it may be a bit misleading. Changing it might break levels using it, though.

For actual pickup items, I guess there is not a trigger for collecting them all unless you use the pickup rush item.

24/03/16

Aside from pickups: So there are no other pre-defined triggers at all?

• Edited on 26/03/16