decisions-and-time.md

Decisions, chance, and timing

Your scripts become much more interesting when they can wait, check the game, and choose what happens next.

Let us turn the Surface warning into a dramatic—but safe—admin event.

Practical script: Surface Smite

Create surfacesmite.ser:

!-- CustomCommand surfacesmite
-- description "Kills a random player currently in the Surface Zone."

Countdown @all 10s "A random person on surface is going to be killed in %seconds% seconds!"
wait 11s

@target = Take @surfacePlayers 1

if {AmountOf @target} isnt 1
    Broadcast @all 5s "No players found in the Surface Zone!"
    stop
end

Kill @target "The surface is no longer safe."
Broadcast @all 5s "Eliminated {@target -> name} from the surface."

This is the build-validated surfaceSmite.ser example. Test it away from a public round: its successful path really kills a player.

What the new pieces do

wait 11s pauses this script only. The server and every other script continue running.

Take @surfacePlayers 1 selects at most one player. If Surface is empty, it returns an empty player value.

The if statement protects the property and Kill calls:

if {AmountOf @target} isnt 1
    Broadcast @all 5s "Nobody was selected."
    stop
end

stop ends this script immediately. end closes the decision.

Add chance without doing mathematics

The statement form reads naturally:

chance 25%
    Broadcast @all 5s "The rare outcome happened!"
else
    Print "No rare outcome this time."
end

Use the returning form when chance is part of a larger condition:

if {Chance 25%}
    GiveItem @all Coin
end

Wait for the game, not a fixed clock

wait_until pauses until a condition becomes true:

Print "Waiting for every SCP to leave play..."
wait_until {AmountOf @scpPlayers} is 0
Broadcast @all 5s "No living SCPs remain."

After a long wait, remember that players may disconnect and item or room references may become invalid. Recheck important state before using it.

Try one change

Turn Surface Smite into Surface Mercy: keep the countdown and safe empty check, but replace Kill with TPRoom @target LczToilets and change the messages.

You now know enough control flow to build a real repeating event.

Next: build Hot Potato.