Effect
From GenieWiki
An effect is part of the conditional statement that makes a trigger. Effects fire once their requirements, or conditions are met. In Age of Empires conditions were used in an individual victory conditional system in which all resulted in victory. In Age of Empires II and many other more recent games the trigger system was developed which allows each condition to have a range of possible outcomes, such as displaying a message, or destroying a building. Global victory can be seen in AoK as a remnant of the simpler system, where conditions are still used but the effect (victory) is fixed. In all circumstances the game engine checks the conditions periodically during play, and if they are met the effect(s) are run straight afterward. Triggers that are turned off are ignored, meaning the game engine does not look to see if their conditions are met. Each trigger can have multiple effects, and their order can also be important (e.g. create object/destroy object will work if used in that order, but placed as destroy/create the object will only be created. It's also important to note that a trigger need not always have a condition, but must always have an effect. The effect is the action part of a trigger - without the effect nothing would change, and the condition would be meaningless. If the designer wishes there to be a delay before an effect fires they will need to use a new trigger (with activate trigger/timer) to achieve this effect, as there is no built in 'delay' function. For a random effect (e.g. destroy building A or B) a workaround will be needed (e.g. using two triggers that are each active for short periods, and switch the other on as they are turned off).
See also
- AOK:Effects (Age of Kings effects list and descriptions)
