[Reprobator]

Hi all,
Well if my suggestion is judged too stupid or useless to justify this topic, you can delete it.

With the intention to help beginner's fredders and more experienced fredder's who can lack of times i was thinking  a Sexp template's library wich would give a real + to the community in my opinion :

How should it looks like ?
well i as thinking about a list of function who can be usefull for mission like :
Player's docking sequence sexp
Boarding party sequence's (that verify with variable the number of ship that board enemy's fleet) etc...

The sexp sequence would be rather template so it should stay rather minimalist (the fredder's would be able to improve it by himself)
and should be presented by the sequence as you see it in the notepad when you open the mission :

example :

Code: [Select]

$Formula: ( every-time
   ( and
      ( <
         ( distance "GTT Argo 2" "alpha 1" )
         500
      )
      ( key-pressed "d" )
   )
   ( change-ship-class
      "Tf-Litebdock"
      "alpha 1"
   )
   ( player-use-ai )
   ( add-goal
      "alpha 1"
      ( ai-dock
         "GTT Argo 2"
         "Docking Point"
         "front docking bay"
         89
      )
   )
   ( modify-variable @Dockvariable[0] 1 )
   ( key-reset "u" )
)
+Name: Dock
+Repeat Count: 999999
+Interval: 1
+Team: 0

$Formula: ( every-time
   ( and
      ( key-pressed "u" )
      ( = @Dockvariable[0] 1 )
   )
   ( player-not-use-ai )
   ( modify-variable @Dockvariable[0] 0 )
   ( key-reset "d" )
   ( change-ship-class
      "Tf-Litebringermk2"
      "alpha 1"
   )
)
+Name: Undock
+Repeat Count: 999999
+Interval: 1
+Team: 0

Just an example as it's not debugged yet , but this presentation would allow direct copy//past to the mission file.
For each article of that library , when Someone got something that improve /optimise etc...  he can update it after validation.
Each article of the library must work to make it interesting.

Good? bad?

[Rodo]

as I said before

the first place where I look for info is in the wiki and having chunks of fred-code potentially hard to come around with will be a good boost to fast fredding, it could all be stuck in one same entry to save searching time.

[Reprobator]

ah i forgot :
And anyway there should have explanation of what the sexp do and how, if it use some tricks, that 's good to explain which one .

I think it can help everyone to save time.

[SypheDMar]

If Sexps have pages, then the Veteran Comments may serve a fulfilling purpose.

[eliex]

Basic things such as docking perhaps shouldn't be included - it is covered in the retail FRED2 Walkthrough already. Although karajorma has released an updated FRED2 Index to account for SCP changes, there are no examples of complex SEXP usage nor SCP additions such as cutscening aside from karajorma's and Centanu's Advanced FRED Lessons.
It would be good to have a page showing SEXP usage like that based on your idea.

[Rodo]

first ones that came to my mind:

- Allow/disallow departure at a node depending of the distance to it.
- Define the arrival/departue of a support ship into a cap ship hangar.
- Allow beam turrets in periods of time

Most of these take time to make, test and retest, I've done them myself in the past and they were quite useful for me those days.

[karajorma]

If Sexps have pages, then the Veteran Comments may serve a fulfilling purpose.

Veteran comments can cover some of the obvious gotchas with certain SEXPs (hits-left-subsystem doesn't do what you'd think it would do with turrets, don't use is-event-true-delay in directives without the 3rd argument, etc) but Reprobator was on about something that isn't just down to a single SEXP. This is about teaching people how to combine SEXPs to get the effect they want.

This would be a page of examples of how to do more complicated things in FRED. So if someone wanted to make it so that the player could only depart from a node he wouldn't have to figure out how to do it himself, he could just go to the wiki, scroll down the list and find an example of how it is done.

I started doing something like that in the FRED Cookbook section of my FAQ, it would be nice to have someone expand on the idea on the wiki.