[karajorma]

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=66502.msg1313166#msg1313166

That should explain the difference.

[Aginor]

Ah, thanks a lot.
Perfect answer, as always.
I'm not sure why I couldn't find it in the wiki yesterday, but whatever, now it is bookmarked .

[Aginor]

I'm back!
I solved my problem on a completely different way, since the solution I had before worked for one wing, but had problems when other wings were involved.

Now I have three events:
- One tracks which capship is nearest to Alpha and saves its name in a variable.
- Two watches if a ship on the list is destroyed and compares it with the name in the variable. If they are identical Alpha runs away. It also creates a second variable for keeping the name of the exploded ship.
- Three notices when Alpha runs away based on yet another variable and resets the variables and the goals for Alpha after 15 seconds.

Result:
I have a moderately easy to use method to make ships run from capship explosions. I just have to change one ship list.
There are still some small issues (for example if Alpha attacks two different ships in the list at once) I need to sort out but for most of my missions I should be good to go. Also I will need a bit of tweaking with the distances for deciding whether Alpha is indeed near a capship.

Originally I wanted to change the event so that it works for every wing but that would be too complex I think. So at the moment I have to add those three events for every wing that is supposed to run away from capship explosions.

*****

Now I'm back to FREDing missions for my campaign. Mission 2 progresses nicely, I think I will finish the first draft today or tomorrow so I can move on.
Also the story grows and becomes more detailed. I'll not write a book and I'll keep the fluff texts out of the missions so that the amount of story doesn't have an impact on the gameplay that much) but I want to have some flesh on the bones and I'm making progress in that direction, too.

I'm still looking for HUD art and main hall ideas, so If anybody wants to help me with that please send me a pm or post in this thread.

[Aginor]

Ok, next thing (it seems I won't stop anytime soon )

After completing my second mission so far I went back to the HUDs.
After some problems with the palette I now created a central HUD part for my Darket. Looks ok so far but I noticed some things:

The reticle is not in the middle. No problem since I found out how to move the central reticle ani for each ship separately. Looks ok, it is barely visible that it is not really in the middle.
But unfortunately the other gauges show it. The "speed arc" thingie is not the problem, it fits nicely, but the small gauge in the center that shows the shields and hull of the target is a bit of a problem. The same applies to the autopilot gauge.

I know I can move the autopilot gauge around by manipulating the standard values for its position, but how is the syntax for doing this for just one ship? Is that even possible? (I think the gauges code was changed by Saga but I don't know what is possible and what is not.)
If I can't move the autopilot gauge for each ship I will move it to a position where it looks better, somewhere on the left side probably.

I don't know about the other mentioned gauge though, I didn't see anything about it in the hud_gauges tbl.

[Aginor]

I figured out some way to move the autopilot gauge for each ship individually in the hud_gauges.tbl
It is kinda strange though and it actually might break something.

Here it is:


    $Ship:                              Darket
        $Default:                       (1024 768)
       $Gauge:                     Hardpoints
                $HP_Silhouette:         (0 0)
                    +Image:             hp_sil_darket
                $HP_PBank1_L:           (72 27)
                $HP_PBank1_R:           (80 27)
                $HP_SBank1:             (65 52)
       $Gauge:         thisisadummy
      $Autopilot:      (495 233)

I added the last two lines. If I write anything that really exists behind $Gauge it doesn't work (the game complains on startup). If I write a dummy text it does work. I figured that out by playing with the file and accidentally spelling something wrong.

I tried to find out whether it breaks something but all HUD-related things still seem to work for all ships.


My next question is: What's the name of the small "hull percentage and shields" - thingie in the middle of the HUD? I want to try and move that as well.

[Aginor]

While I work on the problem stated above and my next mission I also have a request for you:
If you are in the mood for it try to create a set of generic wingman lines for a Kilrathi pilot.

Here is the template in case you forgot:

1) "All fighters are destroyed, area is secure"
2) "Enemy fighters have arrived"
3) "I'm attacking your target"
4) "We're the backup and we've arrived to save your ass"
5) "Bravo Wing here, we've just arrived"
6) "There's a fighter on your six!"
7) "I'm dying!"
8) "Charlie Wing here, we've just arrived"
9) "I'm getting the **** out of here"
10) "I'm disabling your target" (going for engines)
11) "I'm disarming your target" (going for turrets)
12) "I'm breaking formation to engage enemy"
13) "Delta Wing here, we've just arrived"
14) "Echo Wing has arrived"
15) "I'm taking damage"
16) "I'm ignoring your target"
17) "I'm not following your order"
18) "I can't pick up your target on sensors"
19) "You just fired on me, man"
20) "Main player has been killed!"
21) "Main player just did something cool!"
22) "I'm out of missiles!"
23) "My fighter is heavily damaged"
24) "Main player is straying away from objective"
25) "Main player is traitor, off with his head!"
26) "I'm following your order"
27) "I'm the greatest!"


That's it for now.

[Deathsnake]

Sorry to put that in your thread but a question - I've made the Intro of Enigma and the first mission with the first models I needed. Now I put the rest of the Enigmaships into the modding directory and... only 15 are there. Why I cannot use the other 30 ? Oo

Need big big help here ._.

[The_Force]

Are they in tabel or tbm format?

[Deathsnake]

tbm. I also had the same problem in the Beta with the Scooby models. In the prologue np. There I already use over 200 models and no problem

[sleeper286]

Do you use several tbm's for the ships?
I had the same issue and the solution was to put the content of all tbm's in a single tbm file.

In fact, of the gauge.tbm (*-hdg.tbm) saga will just use one single file. Anyone more is getting ignored :/

[The_Force]

OK then you are hitting the modular table limit so the solution is to merge several tbm's into one.

[Dragon]

tbm. I also had the same problem in the Beta with the Scooby models. In the prologue np. There I already use over 200 models and no problem

Well, on of the worst decisions Saga team made was to base their fork off a normal build instead of Inferno. You'll have to wait for source code release, since the ship limit in normal builds is rather pathetic. 130 ship classes and 200 weapons is what you get with a Saga build. And the "stock" ships use up most of this limit.

[Aginor]

That's one reason why I don't use tbm files for my mod. (the other one being that I don't really understand how they work^^)
I didn't want to have double the ships suddenly just because I wanted to have some of them flyable.

[The_Force]

Its not the ship limit there hitting I believe it's the modular table limit.

[Aginor]

This might be a stupid question, but....
 
Is it possible to have limited ammo for primaries? I'm talking about the stormfire cannon from WC4 obviously. I might include it for fun if it works.


Second question: Let's say I wanted to do something like the Swarmer pod of the Wasp fighter in WCP or the 4in1 FF missile the Vampire carries. Is that possible?
The latter one perhaps with that "spawn" thingie? So one non-homing missile that creates 4 Pilum FF when it explodes via remote detonate or something.
The rocket pods of the Tigershark shouldn't be much of a problem I think, I just need fast firing dumbfire rockets that use small space.

Disclaimer: No, I don't want to include Prophecy ships in my mod. Yet.

[Dragon]

Check out Scooby's Prophecy-era weapons. They have everything, and I can PM you my version of Tracker MIRV if you want. WC4 Stormfire is better done via secondaries, but the WCP version can be a primary. TBH, I've got most of the WCP-era missiles tabled. I can PM them to you if you want. They all use Saga models and effects.

[Aginor]

sure, that sounds interesting!

[Aginor]

Hi there!
After finishing mission 4 and nearly finishing mission 5 of my campaign I encountered a problem I couldn't solve yet. I don't want to spoil too much of the story but I have thought of an example that is exactky the same:

4 ships are supposed to land on a base. So they should fly straight into the hangar bay and shut their engines off. Sounds easy and it worked as long as there wasn't anything to harm them.
Here's what I did and what happened:
- I created a waypoint path that leads into the base's hangar bay
- I created an event that shuts off the engines on the ships and lets them play death once they are landed. (ship 1 when it is 10m away from the last docking waypoint that is placed at the end of the hangar bay, ship 2 when it is 60m away, ship 3 at 120m and ship 4 at 180m) They fly in something that looks like a line formation 500m behind each other. It looked pretty cool.
- I added enemies and so on and noticed that the ships dodge fire and miss their approach, crashing into the base or flying circles.
- I changed their AI to the one created by the Saga team for the skipper missile. It doesn't dodge at all. works. They fly straight in even if they are fired at.
- They are attacked by enemies and of course somebody rams them or something. So it doesn't work anymore. Either they try to fly into the base rolled wrongly and crash or they somehow re-activate dodging and abort a perfect approach a few meters away from the hangar. I don't know what happens.
- I tried to correct the course by set-object-facing-object and such things but didn't manage to correct that behaviour. That's where I'm stuck. Otherwise the mission works perfectly.

What I need: A script or something that allows a ship to fly into a hangar, correcting its flight path at a certain point before the hangar bay.
Alternatively I need a cutscene that shows how the ships (those which are still alive) fly into the hangar bay.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[The_Force]

Look up landing in the wiki if it's in the saga build that's probably what your looking for.

[Dragon]

It's not. Landing code doesn't seem to be in Saga, nor does it affect AI. It's modifies to the way collisions act.