Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The FRED Workshop => Topic started by: starbug on July 16, 2020, 03:04:17 am
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So it's been a while since I did any fredding, so I am working on a mission using blue planet mod and I have a small issue. The mission is very talky and I have done my message list. The problem is whe the messages a displaying in the middle of the hud it doesnt show the whole message before disappearing to the right hand corner. I have tried increasing the time between messages but seems to make no difference. Even short messages dont display the full text. Have I missed something incredibly simple to fix this?
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Have you checked if it is an issue specific to the Blue Planet-dependency? I remember they use a custom font, so they might have modified the text draw time on the message box.
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i will check it out on regular FS2 and see if that makes a difference
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In BP>Config>Axmessage.cfg, add "AfterVoice": 12.0, between the "Length" and "TitleColor" lines. This may or may not cause problems for BP, though if your mission is its own mod using BP as a dependency then you should be good.
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cheers colt. No my missions are in the BP mod as i am only using BP assets
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What delays are you adding between the messages? The delays are in MILLISECONDS so the values you enter need to be in the thousands.
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Also message lists suck, use chained send-message events, they own and are better.
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One of the advantages of splitting message lists is that you don't have people talking how they're going to win while the mission failed the message sender got killed in the meantime.
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Breaking message list up also has the advantage that you can more easily randomize dialogue from walk-on parts or condense adaptations to the mission progression, like so:
$Formula: ( when
( has-arrived-delay 14 "Prophecy" )
( when
( is-event-true-delay
"result - repair"
0
)
( send-message
"Sovereign"
"High"
"prophecy arrives 2a - sov"
)
)
( when
( or
( is-event-true-delay
"result - self destruct"
0
)
( is-event-true-delay
"result - destroy"
0
)
)
( send-message
"Sovereign"
"High"
"prophecy arrives 2b - sov"
)
)
)
+Name: msg prophecy arrives 2
+Repeat Count: 1
+Interval: 1
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Occasionally, I will use send-message-list so I can have it as part of an event that takes place as soon as its conditions are met, but have the message play slightly after. For example, an enemy ship gets destroyed and the directive attached to the event goes true immediately, but if I also include a send-message-list use, with a 2000 ms delay and only one message, where the message is a yeah-we-got-him message, it will appear to happen 2 seconds later, but I didn't need to chain a second event 2 seconds later for the message, or have the directive wait that 2 seconds to show complete because I wanted a message delay in there.
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Indeed, but it's somewhat ironic that the best use for this SEXP is something different than it was originally proposed for.
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This SEXP is kind of a mess because it requires you to manually add, and in a quite disturbing way to be honest, all information related to the messages you want to be displayed on screen. It takes a lot of time, much more than what I'd expect from a SEXP that is supposed to make things easier. As Battuta said, it's not as good as using a chain of events and send-message. I admit it's the SEXP I use, however, and I chained up to 30 messages with it.
If I recall correctly, unless things have changed in the past few years, there's also a limit to the maximum number of messages which can be used with this SEXP. (Correct me if I'm wrong, please).
It would be much more handier if used on a completely different interface that would allow you to select a number of messages in the box and get them "transferred" instantaneously to the SEXP. The procedure I dream of would be something like this: select the messages from the box, then get them to appear immediately in the SEXP in the same order they show up in the box itself. At that point, you'd simply have to select their recipients, intervals in milliseconds, and priorities. It'd be much, much faster.
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My vision would be a custom dialog editor where you get stuff like message length autocalculated, fiddling with message lists only makes sense in txt editor; and how relocating events often breaks stuff behind your back it's certainly the easiest way.
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Imagine a FRED with functioning keyboard shortcuts
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Ok cheers guys, one example of the message is, "Alpha 3 scan the GTSc Inglewood for survivors" and the millicount is 20000, it only displays up till "alpha 3 scan the GT" then the message box disappears, but I will use the chained message events. Is there a tutorial on how to set it up correctly?
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Imagine a FRED with functioning keyboard shortcuts
I'm afraid the computational power in my head isn't capable of going that far
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Ok cheers guys, one example of the message is, "Alpha 3 scan the GTSc Inglewood for survivors" and the millicount is 20000, it only displays up till "alpha 3 scan the GT" then the message box disappears, but I will use the chained message events. Is there a tutorial on how to set it up correctly?
Does it behave differently then if you use simply send-message?
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I'm experiencing the exact same issue with a version of Axem's message/HUD script (Nightmare knows what I'm talking about). Increasing its font size beyond a certain limit will get the messages to become mostly unreadable. Have you edited the modpack?
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Is there a tutorial on how to set it up correctly?
(https://i.imgur.com/KDt63ul.png)
insert conditions and nested whens as needed
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Ok cheers guys, one example of the message is, "Alpha 3 scan the GTSc Inglewood for survivors" and the millicount is 20000, it only displays up till "alpha 3 scan the GT" then the message box disappears,
Is it still not working? If so then try editing the "Length" to 0.1 instead. This is my current setup for example...
"Speed": 0.03,
"Length": 0.1,
"AfterVoice": 12.0,