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Wizard Joined: 26 Mar 2008 Posts: 1547

As I've made scripts, I've run into a lot of situations where I want to turn on a trigger for a short time to capture a line of text. If the line of text doesn't appear, then I want the trigger to shut off. Currently, the only way I've been able to manage this is with two triggers. Trigger 1 captures the pattern I'm looking for, runs what it needs to and then shuts itself off. Trigger 2 is an alarm trigger which is turned on in conjunction with Trigger 1 solely for the purpose of turning off Trigger 1 after a certain amount of time if Trigger 1 doesn't already turn itself off.

What I would like is a way to simple have a "Timeout" option on Triggers which would cause them to turn themselves off after X seconds if they haven't already fired. It's mostly a convenience issue, but also reduces some of the clutter of excess triggers and makes the process a whole lot more elegant than it currently is.

If you really wanted to be fancy, you could include a separate box of scripting or what have you for if a Timeout occurs as opposed to it firing on the pattern, but this might be a bit complicated and I could understand wanting us to simply use two triggers in this scenario. Alternatively, you could even do something like make a predefined %timeout variable which tells you if a timeout has been fired and then have a separate sub-option of the Timeout which would be "Fire Trigger on Timeout" thus users could check to see if a Timeout had fired it (and thus not the pattern) and run a script within the trigger, in the normal pattern box, for the event of it timing out.

Wizard Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 2320

Perhaps you are looking for the Duration trigger type? Have your first trigger state fire on whatever text or command you want for activating the potential capture, and have the substate be of type Duration.

Wizard Joined: 26 Mar 2008 Posts: 1547

I never noticed it disable the trigger with the Duration option, how does it effectively operate?

Apprentice Joined: 10 Apr 2009 Posts: 145

How about something like.. Make a multistate trigger, the first state does nothing and the second state is your actual trigger. Set the second state as type "duration". Then instead of activating the trigger, use #state to change it to the second state. You'd probably need to use #state to change it back, too, if you only want it to match once.
It seems that a "missing" trigger type is "Within Time"...

[edit] I was beaten to it while writing my post.

Wizard Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 2320

A Duration type trigger state will remain active only for the specified amount of time, and then it will automatically go to the next state (or the first state, if the Duration state is the last). It is exactly designed for what you suggested. It is used as a substate. So, you just have your first state to trigger on whatever it is you want to "turn on" the Duration state.

Posted: Sat Feb 19, 2011 8:07 pm

I think you could also just use #WAITFOR in your first trigger state, since that also has a timeout if memory serves correctly.

Wanderer Joined: 01 Mar 2008 Posts: 64

so how would that be scripted?
like.. I want to cast a spell, and 1 of three things happen.. 1. successful message, 2. you failed, 3. no message. What I need to happen, is on successful message, cast a spell, on failed message, cast spell, on nothing cast spell
Cast 'unravel defense'
trig - 'your defenses are unraveled' 'cast dispel magic self'
now the trigger..
Cast this on yourself? Okay...
one message is "You wave your hands on your body".. dispel successfully cast,can move on to 'cast unravel defense'..
another message is "You failed".. recast spell or move on..
the kicker message - none.. spell successfully cast, but no message other than an advance to a prompt....
any one of these will happen within 3 lines (or 3 seconds)..
I have this, but it doesn't seem to work right, so obviously, I'm doing something wrong...

Wanderer Joined: 21 Aug 2008 Posts: 85

[edit][/edit]

Wanderer Joined: 01 Mar 2008 Posts: 64

here are the three responses, from prompt to prompt.. (sometimes, the cast line will be next to the brackets, sometimes on the next line.. just luck of the draw depending on

Success full cast with 'pass hands' text recieved..

<505/626hp 221/428m 450/450mv 14,488,572gp 816 S [365wt] 1,806,329tnl New Darkhaven >{||} cast 'dispel magic' self
Cast this on yourself? Okay...
You pass your hands around your body...

<505/626hp 206/428m 450/450mv 14,488,572gp 816 S [365wt] 1,806,329tnl New Darkhaven >{||}

successful cast with no response..
<515/626hp 216/428m 450/450mv 14,488,572gp 816 S [365wt] 1,806,329tnl New Darkhaven >{ } cast 'dispel magic' self
Cast this on yourself? Okay...

<515/626hp 201/428m 450/450mv 14,488,572gp 816 S [365wt] 1,806,329tnl New Darkhaven >{||}

there is always a blank line before the prompt.. more a spacing thing with zmud than a blank line from the mud, I think.. will the ^$ still fire from this?

Wizard Joined: 26 Mar 2008 Posts: 1547

^$ is the syntax used specifically to refer to a blank line, so yes, your situation is ideally suited to a ^$

I'll have to read up on Duration triggers, since the fact that they don't disable when they timeout makes it sort of funky to work with. My expectation was a trigger that turned itself off, not one which looks on but is really off, that's awkward.

Magician Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 430

As far as I recall, Duration was a trigger type, hence you can't really make an individual trigger off of it. What you can do is a regular pattern matching with secondary dummy state which is empty but which type is set to duration.

In the value of this trigger state, then, you'll set all the things you'll want to do once 1) pattern is matched, and 2) set interval has passed.

Makes quite a bit sense to me. Otherwise, if time is of paramount importance and you dislike trigger states, just do an alarm.

Apprentice Joined: 22 Mar 2009 Posts: 149

Your second trigger doesn't have any pattern.

Try this:

Wizard Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 2320

Chamenas, the point of a Duration trigger is that it is a single trigger _state_. The trigger will be in one of two states--State 0, waiting for the text which causes it to start the Duration state, and State 1, the Duration state itself. While the trigger is in State 0, the Duration state is equivalent to disabled, and become active only when the first state fires. I'm not sure how you think this is very different from using some other trigger to enable it.

Wizard Joined: 26 Mar 2008 Posts: 1547

I never said it was very different, I actually said it was the same which was the problem. I'm not looking for something which works exactly the same way, just something that works more efficiently, with less named objects to do the task. In any case, I suppose the reading I'll have to do is on how trigger states work, as opposed to Duration triggers (since there's not much info there). I've never really played with trigger states before.