Timing Is Everything

While putting the finishing touches on my latest script, I came across a wrinkle in which no amount of ironing would smoothen.

The script, like another script I recently completed, is a process which hangs out in the background and watches the goings-on of nearby NPCs.  The function of this script needs to know if the NPC is busy with a player.

I tested my script on my test server, and overall the script is looking sturdy.  It did fumble a little bit on the task of checking the availability of a NPC: the script could not seem to recognize that a player was bumping into a NPC.

As with the combat script, I think this too is a matter of bad timing on my part.  My derpy script is looking blindly for bump flags which may or may not have been set.  I think that I am checking too early in the clock cycle – way before the NPC/player bump has been processed.

So I have rigged a hack-ish solution.  It's not very pretty, but it looks as though it will get the job done.  Maybe.  I will test it and confirm that it works.  Or I will confirm that it does not work.

As the old saying goes, timing is everything.  I seem to have a genius for bad timing.