Yet another bootstrap question

[Lord Magus]

Sent!

[Aaron]

I made a few changes and sent the file back to you, but I wanted to reply here on the forums as well, so others might learn too.

Alright, so the issue was that your "Foe of the Giants" ability was "Unique", and things with a uniqueness of Unique can't reliably access their bootstrap (the "root"), because there is only ever 1 of them on a hero regardless of how many different things bootstrap it. An example might be helpful.

Say there was a racial ability called "Tastes Great, Less Filling" and it is on some race you made (the "Cupcake Golem"), and some magical armor (call it "Taffy Plate") when the user equips that armor. If it's Unique, then that causes issues.

For a hero who is a Cupcake Golem, the "Tastes Great, Less Filling" ability is bootstrapped without a condition and shows.
For a hero who has just the Taffy Plate, the "Tastes Great, Less Filling" ability is bootstrapped with a condition and doesn't show until the user equips the armor.
For a hero who has both the Cupcake Golem Race and the Taffy Plate armor ... you'd think "Tastes Great, Less Filling" would show regardless, but in fact it won't show until ALL different places that bootstrap it have their conditions satisfied. That is, it shows only when the Taffy Plate is equipped, even though the race should grant it regardless.

Now I'm not 100% sure, but I think the problem is, if "Tastes Great, Less Filling" were trying to access it's root, it couldn't be sure of it's live/non-live status because there is only one of it and each thing that wants to bootstrap it could have a different set of conditions. This is apparently dangerous enough that HL won't even let you attempt a root transition on a Unique thing.

There is almost never a cause to set something to Unique, in most cases Add Once is preferable if you want it to show up only once. In this case, I would say set the uniqueness of "Foe of the Giants" to "No", that way it can be reused if you want on a different weapon, and the user could then dual wield them and both could be activated independently.

[Lord Magus]

Thanks a million times for your efforts and those detailed explanations!

[Mathias]

First/1000 was the timing for the bootstrap condition, not the script. Leave the script in pre-levels.

[Lord Magus]

Originally Posted by Mathias

First/1000 was the timing for the bootstrap condition, not the script. Leave the script in pre-levels.

Got that!