Author Topic: SCP Feature Documentation  (Read 2500 times)

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Offline Galemp

  • Actual father of Samus
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SCP Feature Documentation
I'm a crusty old grognard who was FREDding before some of HLP's members were even born. As such I learned everything I know from Volition's FRED tutorials and from dissecting FS1 table data for FreeSpace Port.

But that's put me at a loss as to how to use some of the more advanced SEXPs, tabling, and scripting that's been implemented since then. If you've played Vasudan Imperium you've seen my most up-to-date work, things like landing in hangars, in-mission subspace jumps, and cutscenes.

The Wiki has some rather dry documentation on features but nothing that I can *play with* to see how it actually works in-game. I'm asking for people with knowledge of these features to create straightforward, simple examples using retail data to show off their features. Because what's the point of coding a cool feature if the only ones that know how to use it are working on a giant mod that will never see release?

For example, suppose you want to create a capital-ship pursuit like the recent Inferno mission. The Wiki should have a demo mission that shows how to do an in-mission jump, and a demo mission that shows how to have a ship depart and reappear with the same status. The FREDder can download the demo missions and look at the SEXPs necessary, and copy-paste them into their own mission.

Another example would be a subspace missile strike, or a fighter beam weapon, or some nifty special visual effect. These could be .TBMs that replace an unused FS2 retail weapon, and maybe a demo mission with a locked loadout. Modders can use these as templates in exactly the same way they would learn to modify retail table data.
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Re: SCP Feature Documentation
For example, suppose you want to create a capital-ship pursuit like the recent Inferno mission. The Wiki should have a demo mission that shows how to do an in-mission jump, and a demo mission that shows how to have a ship depart and reappear with the same status. The FREDder can download the demo missions and look at the SEXPs necessary, and copy-paste them into their own mission.

At least for in-mission jumps, there is one made by Axem. I know for used that one, but I don't know if the mission file is still up. Some areas (capship command) aren't covered though.

  

Offline Axem

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Re: SCP Feature Documentation
Yeah, my files are down because freespacemods died and it's hard to remember just what was linked to everywhere. I'll look to restore those files in the next couple of days.

The rest is good ideas. It's sometimes hard to know what people actually want or are looking for.