How to Set Up Equipment Packs

Overview

This tutorial will show you how to give weapons and equipment items to AI entities and to the player. You will learn how to carry the inventory of the player from one mission to another, as well as giving the player individual items. 

Weapons and equipment

Editing equipment packs

Open the Equipment Pack window using in the Mission menu. 

Select one of the Equipment Packs using the drop-down menu. 

Or create a new pack by clicking on the Add button 

Add Weapons and Equipment items to the Equipment list using the << or >> buttons. 

Enemies can be set up to have unlimited ammo so you don’t need to specify the amount of bullets. 

Editing enemy equipment packs

You can also access the equipment pack editor by clicking EquipmentPack in the properties of a character with a weapon. 

Changing player equipment packs

The flowgraph equipment packs from the last mission can be reused by setting these flowgraph nodes: (Note: to test a mission, or to give the player a bunch of weapons at level start use the ADDEQUIPPACK node and connect it to the start node.) 

• Open the Flow Graph view pane (View/Open View Pane/Flow Graph)
• Drag a Mission Objective entity to the perspective viewport and click Add Selected Entity in the Flow Graph window
• Ensure that all components are active (View/Components)
• Add a LocalPlayer node (Add Node/Game/)
• Add a Start node(*Add Node/Misc/*)
• Add an AddEquipPack, RestorePlayerInventory*and *StorePlayerInventory node (*Add Node/Inventory/)
• Add an EndLevelNew node (AddNode/Mission/)
• Connect the entityID to the input field of the Inventory node
• Connect the Start node output node to the Trigger event on the Inventory node (connection not displayed in following screenshot as usually you should use the Restore Players Inventory to load previous missions inventory)

Giving the player individual weapons and items

To give the player individual weapons and items, the Inventory flow graph nodes should be used. Right click in the flow graph window: 

AddItem: Adds a item/weapon to the players inventory 

HasItem: Checks if the player has a specific item 

ItemSelected: Checks if the player has selected a specific item 

RemoveAllItems: Removes all items from the players inventory 

RemoveItem: Removes a specific item from the players inventory 

SelectItem: Selects a specific item in the players inventory if available 

Use the Add Node/Misc/Start node to give the player a GaussRifle at level start: 

Result

When the player starts the mission he has the GaussRifle right at the beginning: 

Some things to experiment with: 

Play with your equipment packs to give the player an interesting setup at the start of your level, or to create a unique and varied feel to your enemy types. 

If you’re working with multiple level setups, it’s a good idea for testing to give the player appropriate weapons. However, when streaming between levels, it’s a good idea to make sure you don’t give your player new weapons for free, or to take any away.