SnapMap Tutorial #2 - Dynamic Looking Stores

Noice shopkeepin' there, mate.

Great, you made a store. It looks spruced up, with relevant information for players to see. But sometimes, Interactibles just won't cut it - you may need a better visual cue, or simply want to add variety to your map.

This is where the wonder of Volume Triggers come into play. These wonderful buggers will ensure that people can activate stuff on a certain space, and when set up properly, can be as discrete...

Or audacious as it can...

Or something in the middle. In order words, here's your chance to get really tingly in the brain pan.

The Ingredients

• The shopping counter. Volume trigger is what we want in this circumstance. I suggest using the Cylindrical Trigger, with at least 180-unit radius, of jump height (around, say, 64-96 units). Since we need a visual cue now, you need to design something from the Large/Small Objects menu, but make sure that they are small enough to fit inside the circle without blocking the player
• The cashier. A resource - Player Resource or Team Resource. Like the last tutorial. Again, Player Resource for individual stuff.
• The item to sell. Again, Inventory, Vitals, Pickups... it's all up to you. In this case, we're doing weapons, so we'll be sticking with Inventory.
• The bells and whistles. Messages, World Texts and/or FX, in combination with 2D/3D Speakers or announcer Speakers. Or use Callouts.

Store Front

1. You get to be more flexible with this one. This is what I used on my map in progress...

Mmmmm... sexy crates.

I want something that contrasts on purchase so I used Crate 03, Crate 03 Open, and Crate 03 Lid. I'll put both closed and opened crates in the same spot later, with the Open version and the Lid being hidden from start. The weapon on top serves as an indicator.

Again, if you don't want to accidentally pick up the items, configure your Pickup 'setpiece' with an "Any AI" filter.

2. We now set up our volume. Right now, it's nothing more of a volume existing in a world space - no function whatsoever. So we press 'X' on the volume, and adjust the properties. Remember that you need to set the 'Colors' to 0, 0, 0 in order to "hide" the volume, set the 'Make Usable' to True, and adjust the cooldown by about 5 seconds to stop the players from being spammy mcFspam.

You can be as discrete or outright as you want - personally, I like taking the discrete approach 
and let the presentation do the work.

3. The layout would be the same as the last time. We'll still use Spend as our output.

By now, you should know the drill: 
Tap X when placing objects until everything aligns to the grid.

Configure Spend as needed.

4. We then use the input On Spend Resources Succeeded when the purchase succeeds. But instead of doing output on Vitals, this time we output on Inventory using Give Weapon, and choose the appropriate weapon on its Properties.

Some weapons can have mods installed. Choose wisely.

And we set the On Spend Resources Failed with a message. Standard.

Now this is where the beauty of Volumes come in - we now try to 'animate' the store.

5. Remember that we've set the Crate 03 Open and Lid to Hide on start? We will now make them 'appear' when the purchase has been succeeded, and replace the closed one in a single, unnoticeable tick. To do this, we need to link On Spend Resources Succeeded input to Hide the closed Crate 03, and Show the 'opened' Crate 03 and Lid! Remember to multicast!

Complete the illusion by showing and hiding elements. Similar items with stark contrasting 
properties work best; but you can also work with World Texts, lights and sound effects.

And the finished product, with the cylinder trigger in place and Crates aligned:

Doomguy approved!

Final Notes

• You can show and hide elements to change the way your shop looks before and after purchase. Plasma, Steam, World Texts, Hell Props - get creative! 
• You can make a 'template' of shops and just copy and paste them anywhere on your map. Saves a lot of time and effort! Don't forget to change accordingly.
• Aligning nodes along the grid will help you debug when something goes wrong. In contrast, a shoddy node network results in frustrating debugging.

Thanks for reading! Be sure to check back often for more SnapMap!