[KARMA]

well maybe its simply stupid, since i have only a vague idea of how campaign building works, and maybe i'm suggesting something that already exists...in case...shame on me...

isn't possible to have a "record" of some kind of mission data and to use that data in the successive missions? i make an example:
imagine to save some variables like
player ship hp
player ship's subsystems damaged
number of missles fired
enemy fighters destroyed
friendly fighters destroyed
enemy capships destroyed
friendly capships destroyed
objective(s) hp
others

saving those variables would make possible to use them in designing the successive mission, and i can think of a lot of situations where this would be very useful, a couple of example:

to simulate "multi sector" missions (in xwa or tachyon you can jump from a sector to another in the same mission..it was suggested sometimes ago but it would be probably longer to be implemented than this solution): since you can start a mission with the same ships status of the end of the precedent one, it would be like a single mission splitted in two or more missions

to build "strategic campaigns" where resources are very important and depends on your flight behaviour

maybe also alternative mission goals or sexp events can be saved
in order to have both more mission possibilities after the played mission and more possible situations in the successive mission (example: i destroyed the radar system of a capship in a mission when it wasnt a specified goal, in the next mission i encounter the same capship and may have something like: if radar is present a wing of fighters is dispatched to intercept me at 10 km, if not present the wing of fighters is dispatched at 3 km, and this w/o building two or more alternative missions) edit- well this example can be done anyway w/o saving event but just ship status

[LtNarol]

red alert carry over

[penguin]

Yeah, but I personally hate the way "red alert" missions work -- the ending is too abrupt, there's no debriefing, etc.  It would be nice to have the status carry over without having to do the red-alert thing.

I would assume all the status info would need to be stored in the player file somewhere, maybe there's already space for it for red-alert missions.

Some guesses I'm making about restrictions on "carryover missions":

• they would have to be "scamble" missions (i.e., you can't pick your ship/loadout)
• the mission couldn't have any changes to wings/ships that are present in the prior mission, and would all have an entry delay of 0 -- this would be true for both friendly and hostile wings/ships.

[Mysterial]

I recall being able to use some sexp like previous-mission-objective or something like that to check for things happening in prior missions. I haven't used FRED in a long time though, so I don't remember how flexible it is.

[Fineus]

Couldn't you take the red-alert mission code and alter it so that instead of going to the red alert screens it goes to the debriefing as standard and so on - but the exit button links back to the next mission section in the same way the red alert mission start button does. Thus you get the stats and everything but not the red alert screen...

Or am I loosing the plot again?

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Thunder
Couldn't you take the red-alert mission code and alter it so that instead of going to the red alert screens it goes to the debriefing as standard and so on - but the exit button links back to the next mission section in the same way the red alert mission start button does. Thus you get the stats and everything but not the red alert screen...

Or am I loosing the plot again?

Should be more than possible - IIRC the Red alert section code actually has some commented out lines that display the normal debrief if there is no following mission - it should be possible to utilise a modifed version of that, IMO.

[Sesquipedalian]

Currently, one can use red-alert to carry ship status from one mission to the next if and only if the ship is 1) still present at the end of the first mission (if it jumps out before the red-alert it won't work), and 2) present right at the beginnig of the second mission (i.e. its arrival cue is simply set to true).

Using the is-previous-event sexps can add more of a dynamic element to a campaign, and they are more flexible than red-alert in that they can reference any event or goal in any previous mission.  However, these sexps are still have their limitations in that they are tied to events and goals, and cannot be used for ship status type things without a lot of painstaking work and utterly massive amounts of wasted sexp space in a mission (you can only have a finite number of sexps in a mission's sexp tree).

Truly useful would be the implementation of stored variables in the course of a campaign.  If a variable or group of variables could be stored in a pilot's campaign progress file and recalled at anytime in a later mission, it would give us all the flexibility we could want in allowing earlier missions to affect later ones.

For but one example, a ship could jump out at any given time in a mission, and at the moment it does we use a sexp to store all of its ship status information as a group of variables.  Then a few missions later we could have the ship jump in at any time and immediately set it status to the values recorded in the previously stored variables.

Of course, ship status is only one thing that could be recorded in these stored variables.  A mission designer could put anything at all in them, so really their usefulness would be limited only by our collective imagination.  Fredders could come up with uses for this that I couldn't even dream of right now, I'm sure.

if I had coding knowledge I'd get started right now on this, but, alas, I do not.

[KARMA]

exactly what i tried to explain sesqui, but you said it in a better way:)
i'll add another example: multiplayer campaigns....

i was thinking on a way to make possible to have something like a "world online", limited to the campaign and the variables obviously, for example: imagine a team v team game, 5 sectors in a row (may be more, its just an example), the two extremities are the bases of the two teams, game starts in the 3th sector (the one in the middle), who win goes ahead in the direction of the opposite base(i don't know if it is possible to build loops in the missions list), each team start a mission with a standard amount of forces + the forces saved in the precedent mission, who destroy enemies base win. A lot of variants can be added, for example, the more you go in sectors near a base, the more the team the base belongs to will have advantages, mission may vary from sector to sector, from a simple melee (starting point) to more complex missions.
the game design will be like: who wins get +1 points, who loose get -1, the first who reach 3 wins, but presented in a more "involving" way
this could be a nice idea for a league, and it may make fs2's multiplayer  grow a little (well i was thinking about this to build something to play inside my clan, but it isnt a bad idea to export  i think)

[penguin]

For an example of how the is-previous-event sexp is used, look at SM03-01 and SM03-02 ("Bearbaiting" and "High Noon") in the main FS2 campaign  (actually, is-previous-goal is used, but it should work the same)...

There's a primary goal for each of the Sathanas' main beams; whichever ones are knocked out in SM03-01 are destroyed in SM03-02.  It's far from perfect, however... If one of the beams is at 2% at the end of SM3-01, it will be at full strength in SM3-02.

As Sequi pointed out, it's a painful way to do it...

[Sesquipedalian]

Precisely.  So lets get stored variables implemented, okay?

[KARMA]

i'll have a closer look to how fred works as soon as possible
btw, for other reasons i gave a fast look at how homeworld works: it is a bit strange, it has a directory system and a compressed archive that work in almost the same way of freespace, but the lods are on different files as so the ship data, and there is a mission file that works as an access database, but more interesting is that at the end of every mission a simple txt is generated, where are saved a lot of the parameters we are talking about, don't knwo how good this solution is nor if it is possible, but it seems a fast and simple way

[Sesquipedalian]

That could maybe work, Karma.  Maybe look into the red-alert stuff, too.  The data at a red-alert must be stored somewhere, so maybe you could take that system and expand it?

[Zarax]

Well, Rise Of GCA actually aims to do something similar, and without source code changes my estimate is a painful amount of sexp scripting and various sligthly changed copies of every mission in order to allow "dynamic mission tree"...
Adding ship variables management at campaign level would bring mission designing to new heights...