[LtNarol]

you know, doing the hangar thing isnt very hard, all we need is an additional SEXP to the effect of "playerai-add-command" that allows the fredder to give the player's ship orders that take control of the ship and use the regular orders of ais.

Then all you would have to do is use the order dock (or enter hangar, dont remember which it is but you get the idea).  The is-key-pressed sexp can be used to start the sequence, and there ya go.

[Corsair]

Docking in a hanger to end a mission? Where's Zeronet?
Seriously though, that would be awesome. Might need to do some tweaking with some models then though. Somebody DO IT!

[LtNarol]

like i says, many of the things we are asking for can already be done, ie: someone asked to allow ending a mission without warping out but still at the player's discresion, well, its simple: is-key-pressed (whatever key you want to use), redalert.

[EdrickV]

IMHO the best way to have the player's ship leave by a fighter bay is to put a check in the Alt+J code to see if the player's wing is set to leave via a ship's fighter bay instead of hyperspace. If so, have the normal AI fly the ship into the bay when they press Alt+J. If the ship is still around. SEXPs to override a wing/ship's departure (and maybe entry) point could be useful too. If you just want to keep the player's ship from doing the warp out animation you can disable that without any source code editing.

[LtNarol]

i still say a sexp that give control of the player's fighter to an ai, that way the same sexp can be used for a number of other things as well, instead of altering so much code just for one thing.  This sort of autopilot function can come in really handy for fredders when used with or without the is-key-pressed sexp.

[Stryke 9]

About the Avenger thing: That wasn't, technically speaking, a hack. I talked to him afterward, and he'd more or less guessed an admin's password. That was it.

And BTW, considering how he hasn't, say, made another shot at it, I'd say give him another chance, since if he really DID have hacking skills he could very well have used them if he wanted to after being banned. If he decided not to, so much the better for you admins- perhaps, if you care so much, you shouldn't have guessable passwords. Of course, I wouldn't lay high odds on his returning even if he could, it's entirely likely now that he's found a better place to go...

On a completely other note, I do see the prob with letting him back. Still, if he can get in by guessing passwords, I or anyone else could, given a while. There's obviously a security problem there...

[Kellan]

Originally posted by LtNarol
you know, doing the hangar thing isnt very hard, all we need is an additional SEXP to the effect of "playerai-add-command" that allows the fredder to give the player's ship orders that take control of the ship and use the regular orders of ais.

Then all you would have to do is use the order dock (or enter hangar, dont remember which it is but you get the idea).  The is-key-pressed sexp can be used to start the sequence, and there ya go.

Oh, you could have so much evil fun with that one for things other than docking. A s-exp that's very broad like that would be good. I mean I could, for example use it to simulate the player losing control, going onto autopilot, ship being damaged, etc.

[TurboNed]

Originally posted by LtNarol
i still say a sexp that give control of the player's fighter to an ai, that way the same sexp can be used for a number of other things as well, instead of altering so much code just for one thing.  This sort of autopilot function can come in really handy for fredders when used with or without the is-key-pressed sexp.

I find this to be useful occasionally (from my old X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter days) when I'm viewing the map (which doesn't exist in FS/2) - but IF it's implemented (no good reason to implement it that I can think of, except if there's a map-type-thing created) - why make it a SEXP?  Just make a new control to map and if for some strange reason you want it to be enable-able/disable-able, make a checkbox in the Mission Options thing from FRED2 - making a SEXP for this sort of thing is worse than making a SEXP for beam-free-all - if the feature exists, we just want it enabled/accessible by default.  (-:

  --TurboNed

[TurboNed]

Originally posted by Stryke 9
About the Avenger thing: That wasn't, technically speaking, a hack. I talked to him afterward, and he'd more or less guessed an admin's password. That was it.

And BTW, considering how he hasn't, say, made another shot at it, I'd say give him another chance, since if he really DID have hacking skills he could very well have used them if he wanted to after being banned. If he decided not to, so much the better for you admins- perhaps, if you care so much, you shouldn't have guessable passwords. Of course, I wouldn't lay high odds on his returning even if he could, it's entirely likely now that he's found a better place to go...

On a completely other note, I do see the prob with letting him back. Still, if he can get in by guessing passwords, I or anyone else could, given a while. There's obviously a security problem there...

IF that's how it happened, then the problem is not that there are passwords to be guessed, it's that there's someone who tried to guess them for the purposes of cracking (hacking is what we're doing to the FS2 source code - cracking is what it seems Avenger did from what I've read in this thread).  And I'm pretty sure that we've decided that the admins (who know exactly what happened, as they were kinda there - and on top of that, they have the power, authority, and right to ban someone simply because said someone's IP resembles an ex-girlfriend's phone number) will ban or unban Avenger as they see fit.  Can we stop talking about him now?  The rest of this thread is interesting.

  --TurboNed

[Setekh]

Guys, if you can't decide on which version of hangar-based mission endings is best, just plan on implementing both. There's no harm in putting several ways of doing one thing in; the current SEXPs already show that.

[Nico]

about the hangar thing, you DO realize it's already done, as said in the first post?

[Zeronet]

Originally posted by Corsair
Docking in a hanger to end a mission? Where's Zeronet?
Seriously though, that would be awesome. Might need to do some tweaking with some models then though. Somebody DO IT!

Here . One of the things you could do is a Autopilot launch from a hanger, sorta like WCP or being dropped out B5 style.

[LtNarol]

1. its not already done, the player's ship is always under the player's control except when warping out, there is no way to force the player's ship to do something without the player's consent at this time.  Thats what im looking for.

2. the sexp is better than a check box because using it as a sexp allows for variables (gasp).  Why are there sexps in the first place instead of just a bunch of check boxes that say: "bombing mission", "lots of enemy fighters", "capitalship vs capitalship"?  So we can customize.  With the sexp, we can determine when something happens and if something happens.

[delta_7890]

Originally posted by LtNarol

2. the sexp is better than a check box because using it as a sexp allows for variables (gasp).  Why are there sexps in the first place instead of just a bunch of check boxes that say: "bombing mission", "lots of enemy fighters", "capitalship vs capitalship"?  So we can customize.  With the sexp, we can determine when something happens and if something happens.

And under what conditions.  

[LtNarol]

ok, say you want to make a mission where you're patroling an asteriod field, boring milkrun of a mission where all you do for the first 5 minutes is fly paterns through the field following a wingman.  Wouldnt it be nice if you gave the player the option of hitting a key (say "a" for example) and the player ship automatically follows your wingman until the player hits the key again?  If it was a checkbox, the player would not be able to enable/disable this.

If you wanted the fighter to dock with a station, you hit a key and the ai takes over, pilot the ship to the thing and docks it.  Check boxes dont work so well for that.  like i said earlier, there are reasons why we have SEXPs in the first place.

While we're on this topic, it would be very nice if we can have a new ai command SEXP: follow ship.

[EdrickV]

Originally posted by LtNarol


While we're on this topic, it would be very nice if we can have a new ai command SEXP: follow ship.

Guard ship does about the same thing follow ship would, unless you're in combat or want a ship to follow a ship on a different team. As far as autopilots, I think other then for warping out/landing they're just for the lazy but that's just my opinion. Someone could just turn on autopilot and watch the AI try and control their ship through the whole mission. FS2 isn't a Microsoft flight simulator. And, right now at least, the AI often is not very smart when fighters are "following" another ship. There is also a "stay near ship" AI-goal" available to support ships.

If anything, I think some sort of AI piloting system for the player's ship would be most useful for in game cinema scenes. (Incidently, in some missions Alpha Wing's initial orders are to guard Alpha 1. If you tried using a "follow Alpha 2" thing in them you'd be following a ship trying to follow you. Hmm. Now I'm going to have to make a mission just to see what something like that would look like.)

[CP5670]

It should be possible to assign the stay-near-ship and keep-safe-distance operators to fighters; these can be quite useful every now and then, but it is currently only possible to give them to support ships.

[EdrickV]

Originally posted by CP5670
It should be possible to assign the stay-near-ship and keep-safe-distance operators to fighters; these can be quite useful every now and then, but it is currently only possible to give them to support ships.

Actually, you might be able to trick FRED2 into giving that order to any ship. I've tricked it into giving an "ignore ship" order to a cap ship. Will test it out right now. :>

[EdrickV]

Well, it worked. It looked a little odd having this big old ARMD cruiser following me around though. As long as the SEXP doesn't have any ship type checking within the code itself you can assign just about any orders to any ship.
How I got an ARMD cruiser to follow me around like a lost puppy:
Startup FRED2.
Put in the ship you want to follow you. Can be any type.
Put in a support ship.
Name the follower whatever you want to call it and make the player ship Alpha wing.
Go into the event editor.
Create a new event.
Change Do-nothing to have the support ship stay near Alpha 1.
Right click the support ship's name and choose "Edit Data"
Type in the name of the ship you want to follow Alpha 1 and press return/enter.
Press OK to close the event editor. Delete the support ship, save, and have fun. It will move to stay about 300 meters away. (If it can't move it will turn to face you. If it can.)

[Kitsune]

Could anyone figure a sexp string like...

IF
- distance from
---Alpha 1
---GTD Orion 1
--is lesser than or equal to
---200
AND
-is key pressed
--alt-j
THEN
-end mission

Just how is the question:
--orion hangar animation
Something akin to the death animation?  (Where the camera is on the outside of the ship and it simply flies into the hangar while things happen around it...)  But not like the generic cutscene (Which would end mission and needlessly go to a anim)