[karajorma]

Since I've apparently been given a very light workload for the next two weeks, I've decided that I'm going to get back into SCP programming with some improvements to the way Builtin Messages work. The image above shows one of the major problems with the system.

For this reason, I plan to upgrade the system to allow messages.tbl to have a +Mood entry for any message. Anything without a mood is considered okay to play at any time. Anything with a mood will only play if the pilot or mission has a matching mood. So given a table like this

Code: [Select]

$Name: Praise Self
$Message: XSTR("Damn I'm good!", 968)
+Persona: GenericPilot1
+Wave Name: Pil_gen1_praisehimself.ogg
+Mood:            Boasting


$Name: Praise Self
$Message: XSTR("Please, I can do that any day of the week.", 974)
+Persona: GenericPilot1
+Wave Name: Pil_gen3_praisehimself.ogg
+Mood:            Arrogant


$Name: Praise Self
$Message: XSTR("Got one! Take that you metal bastard.", 975)
+Persona: GenericPilot1
+Wave Name: Pil_gen4_praisehimself.ogg
+Mood:            Vengeful


$Name: Praise Self
$Message: XSTR("Yeah! Scratch one bogey!", 984)
+Persona: GenericPilot1
+Wave Name: Pil_gen5_praisehimself.ogg


$Name: Praise Self
$Message: XSTR("Score another one for me.", 985)
+Persona: GenericPilot1
+Wave Name: Pil_gen6_praisehimself.ogg

At the start of the mission, only the last two generic (no mood) messages will play. The I use the new SEXP I'll add

Set-Builtin-Pilot-Mood
-Red 2
-Boasting

and the first message will play instead. Then the players battlestar gets blown up. I don't just want Red 2 to react so I use a different SEXP

Set-Builtin-Mission-Mood
-Vengeful

And now everyone will start cursing the Cylons when they kill them.

Anyway, that's the plan. What I want to know is if there are any ways I could make that better, or if there is anything else I should do to the builtin messages system while I'm in there.

[Droid803]

While you're messing with builtin messages, could you also get rid of the hardcoded terran command "hostiles arrived" message that appears when you set the command sender to a capship?
It's hardcoded for sure because it's not in my messages.tbl yet shows up randomly anyway, playing the retail headani + voice over file with the default message... I had to hack "around" it by replacing the source headani and voice file...

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Would it depend on a hard-coded list of moods, or would it work via string comparison? Hard-coded moods might be slightly faster and more fool-proof, but string comparison would allow infinite flexibility: mods could specify any moods they want. JAD could use 'troll' and 'disco' moods, for instance, and mission-specific built-in messages would also become possible. To continue your example, after the player's battlestar gets blown up, the pilots could go "There, that one's for the Theseus!". The only limit would be the modders' imagination.

[Sushi]

You mention both mission-based and pilot-based moods. I humbly suggest starting just with the first one, and dealing with the second one later. The mission ones are both more immediately useful and more straightforward, I think, and will be easier to do.

Honestly, my first thought is to just allow "mood" to be a property of a mission that can be controlled via set-mood and clear-mood SEXPs. You can have more than one mood as appropriate for the current circumstances (so you basically track a list of active moods). And as you already mentioned, mood-keyed messages will only play if the current mission's mood list includes the right string. It may also be useful to have a +Not Mood property, for messages that are generally appropriate EXCEPT for specific times.

So for Diaspora, to prevent stuff like the above, you could do the following:

- Cocky pilot messages of praise for self and others have +not-mood: Somber.
- In the mission, track a variable called "somber-cooldown." This starts at 0.
- When a major friendly ship gets blown up, add some value to somber-cooldown and call set-mood "Somber".
- Have a SEXP that just fires off every second and decrements somber-cooldown until it is 0.
- Have a SEXP that fires when somber-cooldown reaches 0 to call clear-mood "Somber".

Or something like that. This is all pretty much off the top of my head.

[z64555]

If your going for cooldown stuff such as that, you might have to resort to mood scales... like from Overjoyed to Pissed off. 

[karajorma]

While you're messing with builtin messages, could you also get rid of the hardcoded terran command "hostiles arrived" message that appears when you set the command sender to a capship?
It's hardcoded for sure because it's not in my messages.tbl yet shows up randomly anyway, playing the retail headani + voice over file with the default message... I had to hack "around" it by replacing the source headani and voice file...

I'm not certain which error you're on about. But file a Mantis bug report on it and I'll assign it to myself.

[Goober5000]

This sounds like a terrific feature.   I think the string-comparison method for mood selection would be the most useful.

[redsniper]

Code: [Select]

when
-all-day
-erry-day
 -Set-Builtin-Pilot-Mood
  -Laporte
  -Vengeful
  -Murderous
  -Insane

[Droid803]

While you're messing with builtin messages, could you also get rid of the hardcoded terran command "hostiles arrived" message that appears when you set the command sender to a capship?
It's hardcoded for sure because it's not in my messages.tbl yet shows up randomly anyway, playing the retail headani + voice over file with the default message... I had to hack "around" it by replacing the source headani and voice file...

I'm not certain which error you're on about. But file a Mantis bug report on it and I'll assign it to myself.

...This appears to have been caused by a massive derp on my part.
It's been defaulting to some hardcoded arrival message because it's picking "Command" to send a message when the Command Persona selected has no "Arrive Enemy" message defined (I derped and typoed Command as Comand lol), thus causing it to play HEAD-CM1, TC_Arrival.wav, and a random "Arrive Enemy" message picked from messages.tbl, which, while being a strange default option, I guess isn't really a bug?

That said I am excite about this feature.

[karajorma]

Cool. I'll have to get to coding it then.

[Woolie Wool]

Is there any chance for a taunt function (you would be able to use it on enemies to goad them into dropping what they're doing for a while to attack you, and enemies could be set to use it on you every so often)?

[Dragon]

Yes, that'd come in handy. Also, voice messages by player while giving orders could greatly add to atmosphere, especially in non-FS mods.

[karajorma]

Neither of those are builtin messages but I'll look into it.

[Mongoose]

...you know what Spoon and Droid will do with this, right?  FS_Open: The Visual Novel.

[General Battuta]

...you know what Spoon and Droid will do with this, right?  FS_Open: The Visual Novel.

Both Spoon and I (and probably Droid too) have in fact already done this by use of some insane SEXP trees. You can build your own extremely detailed pilot personas in FRED. Right now I have several missions where each wingmate will react not just to orders in general but to orders to attack or defend specific ships at specific times in the mission, and they'll even draw from a pool of randomized lines so they don't repeat themselves too much.

[Spoon]

...you know what Spoon and Droid will do with this, right?  FS_Open: The Visual Novel.

>Implying I'm not already doing this without this feature

Both Spoon and I (and probably Droid too) have in fact already done this by use of some insane SEXP trees. You can build your own extremely detailed pilot personas in FRED. Right now I have several missions where each wingmate will react not just to orders in general but to orders to attack or defend specific ships at specific times in the mission, and they'll even draw from a pool of randomized lines so they don't repeat themselves too much.

I've seen this in action in BP and its super nice and impressive 
But a visual novel it is not 

[General Battuta]

Yeah but the VN stuff you're doing is the same technique, right? It's not a codeside pilot persona thing. You could already achieve all this 'mood' stuff with SEXPs - it'd just be much more of a pain in the ass.

[karajorma]

Yep. Which is why I want to put it into the code.

...you know what Spoon and Droid will do with this, right?  FS_Open: The Visual Novel.

And the only reason I'm not going to be making Diaspora : The Visual Novel is cause we're shooting for fully voice acted in every release.

[Droid803]

...you know what Spoon and Droid will do with this, right?  FS_Open: The Visual Novel.

>Implying I'm not already doing this without this feature

I have to commend you for being able to sift through 200+ events, enough to make the old FRED events editor lock up on closing, and have the events page span 2 whole monitors.

Yeah but the VN stuff you're doing is the same technique, right? It's not a codeside pilot persona thing. You could already achieve all this 'mood' stuff with SEXPs - it'd just be much more of a pain in the ass.

Yeah, which is why I actually haven't tried it (to any deep extent, after it being apparent that it would be a pain in the ass)
I've heard the horror stories and am not interested in fighting SEXPthulhu to make it work.
With the codeside pilot things though, I'm much more inclined to make it happen XD

[General Battuta]

Without even the luxury of Spoon's awesome dual monitors I ended up having to FRED in notepad a lot. (This feature would own as code)