Sandbox Features question

[Baconius]

*(I had posted this on the Blood Frontier site as well, though I'm thinking Sandbox may be a better option due to NPC versatility and lower violence)

Hello, I am currently looking for a good engine that supports efficient mapping for a thesis project involving tutorials/help systems in games. In my search for open source content I came across Cube/Cube 2 and now Sandbox. My other engine considerations were: BUILD, Source, Cry. I find the actual world editing to be much more intuitive and efficient for Cube than any of these 3. I am wondering if Blood Frontier is able to support the following features without extensive knowledge of coding:

-Record Data for each level in an episode (even basic parameters like: time to complete, magic used, secrets discovered, enemies killed, xp gained etc.)
-Could this be output into a log file?
-Could users enter a player name or tag before the episode begins?
(Data recording/collection is probably the most critical factor for this experiment)

-Create triggers that would allow for implementation of various help systems. For example, hitting a switch or stepping onto an indicator and playing a sound file, showing a brief gameplay video, or displaying informative text).

-Basic trigger scripting to allow users to find secrets, open doors, gain power ups, etc.

-Restricting certain features within an episode. Basically, turning off accessibility to key bindings.

If I'm able to use Blood Frontier for this project I would have no problems releasing the tutorial(s) after the experiment is finished. I attend a public university, so all data can be made public as well. If this would require programming knowledge I will not ask anyone to perform coding for me. Thank you in advance for your time.

[As a side note, I'm also having trouble opening the village map to investigate triggers. It gives me a message saying "cannot open village.ogz"]

[Mike]

For your section regarding the XP for monsters, that is beyond me but maybe Hirato could help you out. He did write a way to record how many secret passages you found after beating the level, so maybe that is related to what you are looking for.

For example, hitting a switch or stepping onto an indicator and playing a sound file, showing a brief gameplay video, or displaying informative text).

Definitely possible and not too complicated, except the gameplay video, though just look in our dev version at the texture animation tutorial and it shows how to make an in game movie that is triggered. I do plan to release the new version by this weekend if possible.

Power ups are certainly possible and some even already exist in the code. Not sure what secrets entails but there are a ton of opening door options.

You can turn off and change key bindings in data/defaults.cfg You need to delete the configs in the top level of Sandbox though to see the effects. I would be very interested in being posted with updates on this project. Take care!
-mike

[Baconius]

Thanks for the response, it seems like the feature set in Sandbox is very encouraging and will hopefully be workable for my purposes.

I see that Sandbox has a wiki, would this be the best place to look to start learning how to utilize triggers and scripts? Also, where would be the best place to look for Sandbox data recording -> basically, is this possible with the current engine or would it require a mod? Or more precisely, would it be possible to set up a level or campaign where stats could be recorded to a text file when the player finishes (or even in real time)?