The following screenshot comes from the team's design documents and shows some of the principles of the editing tools. The tools are evolving as the team work on them, so this image is a little out of date. However, it serves well for this article.

In our example we have a scenario composed of a fauna system, a Kitin lair, a bandit camp, a group of patrolling guards and a new group of NPCs who are being worked on.

The new group is composed of Bob (the leader), John and Paul. John and Paul are linked to their leader by lines in 3d in the scene. Bob is highlighted and has a context menu displayed over him, because the user has just clicked on him with the right mouse button. In the bottom left corner of the screen, we have a set of buttons that change depending on the 'component' that is currently being worked on. In this case, the component is an NPC group, so there is a button to create new NPCs.

In the top left corner of the screen, there are a few classic 'tool' icons. These change in function of the object that's being edited. Here we see the tools that can be used on NPCs.

In the middle of the screen we see the game map. The R² tools use this map to give a complete view of the scenario contents.

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One of the core objectives of R² is to give real power to players running their own scenarios. This means that we provide as much freedom as possible to role play, to trigger events and manage the flow of the scenario and to adapt it to the players as it progresses. This is a tall order when you have to keep the game balanced and prevent exploits. More detail on the possibilities for running scenarios will be covered as we release deeper articles on different aspects of the game.

The following screenshot has also been drawn from the R² design docs. It represents the view that the Pioneer has while an event is running.

The 'component' concept is quite new and worth illustrating with a little example. The Nevrax team will supply a small set of pre-defined 'components' with the launch of R². One of these is called a 'Kitin Incursion'. It works something like this: When the Kitin incursion is activated in a running scenario, a mound appears at a pre-defined location in the map. Kitins of different types can spawn at this mound and perform different activities. The 'component definition script' defines the following categories of Kitins:

• Workers who scurry backwards and forwards between forage zones and the mound.
• Scouts who run out from the mound to fixed positions and act as lookouts
• Flying patrols that flit from one forage spot or sentry point to another to protect the workers and scouts.
• Guards who spawn and run to the aid of sentries when they're in danger.
• A boss and set of guardians who spawn when the mound is attacked.

To use a Kitin incursion in a scenario, one must install the 'Kitin incursion component definition script' file in the 'component definition scripts' directory on one's computer. The component is now available and is displayed in the 'components' tab of the palette interface. One click on the corresponding palette entry and a Kitin Mound mesh appears linked to the mouse cursor. A click in the scene and the mound is placed. A set of buttons also appears in the bottom left corner of the screen, to allow you to add different types of Kitin to the incursion, and the Properties Wizard window pops open.

Clicking on the different buttons at the bottom of the screen pops open the palette in the 'entities' tab, with a filter applied that allows one to select creatures that correspond to the different categories. One selects a creature and clicks in the scene to add it to the incursion and give it a position. The position that one places a scout at, for instance, will be used as their sentry point, and so on. The Properties Wizard allows you to set up component-dependent options to define things like whether the incursion should be activated automatically when the scenario runs or whether it should require manual activation at a moment chosen by the Pioneer and so on. In some scenario types the wizard includes properties such as the number of creatures to spawn, allowing one to create invasions or large groups painlessly.

The following screenshot shows the basic principles.

The Pioneer has a set of special options for manipulating Kitin Incursions in running scenarios. These are of course scripted in the 'component definition script'. I won't give a complete list of these options here, as I'm sure that they'll evolve as we test. This said, one can imagine that they are likely to include provoking the spawn of the Boss with or without guardians, calling the Kitins back to the mound, provoking their de-spawn and so on.

This article must raise as many questions as it answers. I have introduced a number of key concepts but left a lot of things still unexplained. Subsequent articles will dig deeper into the different possibilities that R² proposes and the different options that will be open to its players.

-Article by Daniel Miller (aka Sadge), Nevrax

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