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Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: TopAce on December 12, 2003, 03:30:23 pm

Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: TopAce on December 12, 2003, 03:30:23 pm
Would it be possible if the game allowed to assign our player to for example Beta 2? It would be more realistic if a newbie, not experienced novice pilot at the beginning of a campaign wouldn't start as Alpha 1 at once.
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: Lightspeed on December 12, 2003, 03:36:15 pm
'Tis already possible.
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: TopAce on December 12, 2003, 03:38:26 pm
It's strange. FRED yells at me when I try to assign the player to Beta 1. :)
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: Lightspeed on December 12, 2003, 03:41:03 pm
yeah, FRED yells a lot. It still works though.

remember: NEVER trust in what FRED says ;)
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: TopAce on December 12, 2003, 03:42:19 pm
But it is annoying at every time you save your mission.
And it decreases the quality of your mission much.
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: Lightspeed on December 12, 2003, 03:47:33 pm
why should it decrease quality?

But yeah, FRED's repeated 'warnings' are crap. "oi, look Players not Alpha 1, omg what's this? it doesnt have secondary weapons!!1111 no good, and what's this? There's some different player orders in this wing?' - 'Ok, Ok, Ok, Ok, Ok, Ok, meh...'

:doubt:
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: karajorma on December 12, 2003, 04:34:44 pm
So leave the player as alpha 1 and swap him over at the end of FREDding the mission :D
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: Lightspeed on December 12, 2003, 04:46:28 pm
and fiddle around with real Alpha Wing and 1000 SEXPs when changing it? :sigh:
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: Woolie Wool on December 12, 2003, 04:49:53 pm
I actually will put in some missions in Starforce where you're not only Beta 1 instead of Alpha 1, but Alpha 1 actually bosses you around and you cannot give orders to Alpha wing.
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: TopAce on December 12, 2003, 04:57:41 pm
Good luck skipping the error messages FRED will show you. :)
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: karajorma on December 12, 2003, 05:12:49 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Lightspeed
and fiddle around with real Alpha Wing and 1000 SEXPs when changing it? :sigh:


Hmm. If you've set up a lot of SEXP's that will break try this instead.

1) Open the mission in notepad and change the +Game Type Flags:  setting from 1 to 11. That will make the mission Single AND multiplayer.

2) Assign whatever ship you want to be a player ship

3) Assign alpha 1 to not be a player ship.

4) Go into the missions specs and change the mission to training and then single to reset it back to singleplayer only (or use notepad again)

5) Laugh at how simple that was compared with clicking through error messages every time you saved.


I haven't actually tried this yet but I see no reason why it wouldn't work. Just to be sure keep a copy of the mission before you try it though.
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: Woolie Wool on December 12, 2003, 05:24:51 pm
I'll take the error messages. Pressing OK a few times is more simple than that.:p
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: TopAce on December 12, 2003, 05:27:29 pm
If you do not save often, then it is really simplier.
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: karajorma on December 12, 2003, 05:41:01 pm
You're both missing the fact that you have to do half of that anyway. The only thing that is new is using notepad for a 5 second edit.

If you make missions in a one or two hour long session then I'm sure it is quicker but since I can easily spend several hours in a FRED session and still have not completed the mission I have learned that it is sensible to save every 10-12 minutes especially since I FRED in FRED2_open exclusively these days.

Not saving often in FRED is a good way to end up howling in anger when you end up losing your entire mission.
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: Falcon on December 12, 2003, 08:29:28 pm
I usually use wordpad once I'm done Freding. One time I placed myself as a ursa and changed my turret to an BFRed :lol: bye bye shivans :devil:
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: Black Wolf on December 13, 2003, 01:45:42 am
Quote
Originally posted by TopAce
Good luck skipping the error messages FRED will show you. :)


Why skip them? Just click OK a few times and you're fine. It'd probably be way too much work, with too much lost (some of those error messages have picked up mistakes for me that I'd have missed) and far too little gain.
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: Goober5000 on December 13, 2003, 05:01:29 am
Quote
Originally posted by karajorma
...


Or you could click the button "set as player ship" available in fred2_open 3.5.5, and avoid the whole thing. :)
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: Sesquipedalian on December 13, 2003, 05:07:53 am
Quote
Originally posted by Goober5000


Or you could click the button "set as player ship" available in fred2_open 3.5.5, and avoid the whole thing. :)
Beat me to it.
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: karajorma on December 13, 2003, 05:22:51 am
I did wonder what that was for :D

The trick for making a mission single and multiplayer was worth mentioning anyway :D
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: Lightspeed on December 13, 2003, 07:21:49 am
yeah the set-as-player ship thing is very good :)

But FRED still annoys and annoys ;)
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: Fury on December 13, 2003, 08:10:34 am
Why you think [V] named it as "Fred". ;)
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: Hippo on December 13, 2003, 08:28:08 am
Or, you could do it all without touching notepad... Make it a multiplayer mission, mae the ship a player ship in the Ships Editor, and remove the player ship from A1, then make it single again... *cough* its in the ahtw demo *cough see for yourself :p *cough*
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: diamondgeezer on December 13, 2003, 09:09:27 am
What's actually needed is allowing the plyaer to fly outside of Alpha, Beta and Gamma. Is this another 'we don't understand the inteface code' job?
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: kasperl on December 13, 2003, 09:45:41 am
IIRC, yeah.
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: Goober5000 on December 13, 2003, 12:30:03 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Hippo
...


That's exactly what karajorma just described, except doing it via FRED.  I think doing it in Notepad is more straightforward.

Quote
Originally posted by diamondgeezer
What's actually needed is allowing the plyaer to fly outside of Alpha, Beta and Gamma. Is this another 'we don't understand the inteface code' job?


I understand the interface code, but it's as annoying as anything and it's a lot of work.

But that isn't the primary reason for allowing the player outside of Alpha, Beta, or Gamma.  The main reason is because those wings are hard-coded into the code in many, many places, and it's not quite clear how we could allow other names.
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: TopAce on December 13, 2003, 03:06:24 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Black Wolf

Why skip them? Just click OK a few times and you're fine. ....


That is what I meant. ;)
By the way, how are Beta and Epsilon wings in the source code? :confused:
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: diamondgeezer on December 13, 2003, 06:36:24 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Goober5000
But that isn't the primary reason for allowing the player outside of Alpha, Beta, or Gamma.  The main reason is because those wings are hard-coded into the code in many, many places, and it's not quite clear how we could allow other names.

That's a bugger :sigh:

What about the 'masking' approach Stryke (I think) suggested, then? So that, for example, 'Alpha' would read, say, 'Delta' to the player but the game would still treat it as Alpha?
Title: Alpha 1's time is over - Assignment to another squadrons?
Post by: Goober5000 on December 14, 2003, 01:39:07 am
It would be hard to keep track of both names at the same time, because invariably you'd have a bug where either you displayed Alpha or you told the game Delta when you were supposed to do the opposite, either by mistake or omission.  It'd be easier to just allow any name.

We might take a look at this after the code freeze.  This and the expandable IFF system are coded along the same lines (and similar in implementation to the species system).