[Sesquipedalian]

Just wondering, since no updated FRED2 version has been released (or if so, I missed it), what new SEXPs have been added, anyway?

[phreak]

no and none yet.

[Galemp]

Actually, DTP released a new FRED soon after the intial source release, making the Run Freespace link on the file menu point to FS2.exe instead of FS.exe. Nothing new since then, AFAIK.

[Righteous1]

I have this bad habit of asking questions I later wish I had never asked...but since you brought up the topic of SEXP's...

What new SEXP's are wanted/needed?

Are there any mission features that are used repeatedly that require several SEXP's that might be worth creating a new SEXP(s) to do the same function(s)?

[DragonClaw]

This has been mentioned before but I'm sure everyone would rather have an option to have the mission start out with every ship beam-free'd, or perhaps a 'beam-free' checkbox in the ship info button in FRED2, instead of having to type in SEXPs for everything.

[Inquisitor]

we released a companion fred2, no new sexp's but stuff to support things liek the fighter beams and glow points.

I just realized that I never put a link on the warpcore site, bad me, I will fix that.

[Bobboau]

I don't think those two needed anything in fred, but some of the SSM things and texture tileing/translation for beams would give normal fred2 a tummy ache

[Fry_Day]

how about a reset-sexp SEXP? basically it's if-, reset SEXP , so stuff like the Robotech TC could make a SEXP that changes ship form if you hit a key, and it wouldn't be single-use.

[Inquisitor]

Bobboau: I actually forgot what WM added (ship trails and something else as it turned out), but i bumped the thread that he released it in.

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,9581.0.html

[Sesquipedalian]

Most important/popular requests (as best as I can remember) for sexps included:

Repairs to the following sexps (i.e. they don't actually work right now):

• orders (meant to return true when a specific order has been given to wingmen)
  
• is-tagged (meant to return true whenever the ship in question is tagged.  Different from has-been-tagged in that has-been-tagged returns true once, and stays that way ever afterwards, where is-tagged chages back and forth as the ship is tagged and the tag then wears off)
  

Addition of:

• end-mission (Probably the most sought after new sexp.  Automatically end the mission without red-alerting, so that one is taken to the debriefing even though one did not enter subspace)
  
• player-to-ai (Gives control of the player's ship to ai.  This will need an opposite sexp as well.  Proposed as a means of solving a number of issues)

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Sesquipedalian

Addition of:

• end-mission (Probably the most sought after new sexp.  Automatically end the mission without red-alerting, so that one is taken to the debriefing even though one did not enter subspace)
  [/B]

I have some crude but usable code for this one....although I haven;t been able to figure out how to get Borland to work to actually test the damn thing.... but the red_alert code already includes some commented out code that takes the player to a debrief if it's the last mission in a campaign...I think adapting this is piss easy, from the looks of it.

If someone gives me idiot-proof instrucitons on dling and installing a compiler, I'll try it out.

EDIT - here it is (midway down thread);
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,8949.0.html

I intend to give the SC a bit of a try sometime - not sure when - but hopefully I could do this and maybe learn a bit of how the camera code works and utilise that.... i'm a major novice at C/C++, but i've got a decent amount of textbooks and stuff to help me, so fingers crossed

[Righteous1]

Orders Sexp

Mmm, good reason this doesn't work...it doesn't do anything
Thinking cap is on to figure out how to make this one work.

is-tagged
looking at it.

end-mission
doesn't sound like it would be hard to do.  The hooks all seem to be there, just a matter of stringing them together.

player-to-ai/ai-to-player
Can you give more details on how these should work?  i.e. what are you wanting to do with them?  Would this be sort of like a Cap ship taking control to dock the players ship to something then releasing control back to the player or something else?  What parameters should the sexp take?

[Sesquipedalian]

It wasn't mine.  As far as I understood it, it was meant to simply give the player's fighter over to an ai (presumably to do things like force it along waypoints, or use it for ending the mission by returning to the capital ship, or other stuff, i dunno.  I'm just remembering things i saw requested.)

Here's one that I personally requested a while ago:

toggle-shields

Basically, this would activate/deactivate the shields on a ship.  It would work much like the "Has Shields" property checkbox in the ships editor, except as a sexp it could be triggered in the middle of a mission instead of being a permanent thing.  I know I could use it when, say, a shielded capital ship's reactors are destroyed and the shields are thus dropped, and other uses can certainly be thought of, too.  

[Sesquipedalian]

There was a sexp request thread a way back somewhere that had more stuff in it.  A search should turn it up.

Edit: here is one such thread with several good suggetions in it. http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,8949.0.html.   Pegasus' and karajorma's suggestions seemed especially good (although karajorma's might also involve some AI work as well as sexp creation).

Edit2: Oh hey, looks like EdrickV already figured out how to fix the is-tagged sexp.  I guess it never got commited, perhaps?  http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,7573.0.html

[aldo_14]

IIRC, the player-to-ai, etc, was for use in 'holding' the player in position for in-engine cutscenes, et al.  Or if you need the player to be in a certain place at a certain time.

[EdrickV]

Originally posted by Fry_Day
how about a reset-sexp SEXP? basically it's if-, reset SEXP , so stuff like the Robotech TC could make a SEXP that changes ship form if you hit a key, and it wouldn't be single-use.

The RT mod is beyond using SEXPs for transforming Veritechs. We've been using source code changes that are configurable using the normal key binding stuff. It's just not quite ready for release yet. (Hopefully, if we can get it converted to using table info, we'd like to merge it with fs2_open, but we started off with a clean copy of the code and some of the changes used for the early ship transformation code would break backwards compatability.) Ronin's done most of the coding, since I couldn't compile his copy of the code and, as I've said, can't compile the fs2_open version now either.

[Sesquipedalian]

Bump: Just wondering if anything further has been done with this.

[CP5670]

It might be occasionally useful to have something that merges key-pressed and key-reset into one operator. At the moment it is only possible to toggle a key "pressed status" a finite number of times as far as I can tell, so this new one could work something like what was mentioned earlier about is-tagged. (a dynamic true/false switch)

The other thing I would like to see is an operator that tells AI fighters to move to a waypoint as if it was an enemy, or in other words, afterburn to a waypoint. Currently they simply cruise to waypoints, which can be annoying if the waypoint is really far away. They go very fast when moving in to attack something though, so perhaps this same code can be put in for the waypoint code.

Actually, there are a number of small mission file enhancements I had in mind, but those are not exactly sexps.

[Sesquipedalian]

If I understand you correctly, CP, I get around such things by simply giving such an event a ridiculously high repeat count.

Event 1 (repeat count 999999999, repeat delay 3)
-when
--key-pressed
---
--
Event 2 (repeat count 999999999, repeat delay 3, chained, chain delay 2)
-when
--true
--key-reset

If I need something to happen after, say, the fourth pressing of the key, I use a variable to record the data, and reference it in the trigger of the event where the stuff is supposed to happen.

[CP5670]

Does the repeat count just cause the event to fire over and over again based on the time delay or does it actually check for the truth of the conditional every time?