Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Unknown Target on December 18, 2003, 01:56:35 pm
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I think it would be pretty usefull to allow for another flag in the tables that goes like:
$Default_Persona: pilot1 or whatever.
Just so that FREDERs don't have to manually assign it to each ship. ;)
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Then all unassigned ships would be pilot 1 as opposed to the default where it seems that it chooses them at random? And what table were you going to put this in anyway?
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In the ships table.
And doesn't the game NOT pick a persona for the ship, that's why you never get an in-game message from them?
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huh? they send messages all the time; it just picks a random one for them if none is specified.
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That's what I was about to say.
Plus if you put it in the ships tables all Hercs will have the same pilot and that would look rather silly.
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what about a table that would specify Alpha 1-4, Beta, Gama, Delta and some other common wing names, that campaign people cold change, so that it would seem like the same person was flying as the same ship, to make more continuity... it'd get hard though when people die...
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Cos it's not exactly hard to do so in FRED. There's two pull down menus you need to set to achieve this same effect, and maybe a pen and paper to keep a note of which pilots are which.
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Perhaps an ability in FRED to assign a persona for a ship is in order. Then, every consecutive message from that ship would use that persona. For this, when a message is made, the "persona" would be left as "default" and use the object-assigned persona. If a message from a ship needs to be sent with a different persona than the default, for example, if you have more than one person aboard a cap-ship who's sending a message, then you just need to have the different persona selected in the message box.
Later!
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Can't you already do that?
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Originally posted by Solatar
Can't you already do that?
Don't think so. AFAIK once you assign a persona to a message that one is used in preference to the one assigned to the ship.
As TP suggests what is needed is a default person option in the events editor. When that one is specified the game just uses whatever persona was applied to the ship.
This would be very useful when used in conjuction with the option.
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That sounds a lot better :nod:
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Actually, I was thinking of making it an option in the object editor. When seting up a ship, there would be a field for selecting the default persona for that ship. Obviously, not every ship in the game will require a persona, enemy for example. Ships that are in the mission but are not required to send any messages, would have this field left blank. If we could force the game engine to follow these user-defined defaults, then perhaps when you get a build-in message like those good-shot messages from your wingmen, or "get this bandit off me!", then the heads would match up to the assigned persona. It might however, get hard if you assign a female head, but hear a male built-in message... unless there is already a link between head gender and message voice for the built-in messages.
On a side note, if someone did a complete overhaul and upgrade of FRED, it might be cool to have a small window so you can see in FRED, which head ani you've selected. You'd need to either extract a single frame from the ani for display, or include ani playability into FRED, which could be an advantage if you wanted to see just how long the ani was, to match it to your message length.
Later!
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Um. There already is a box for selecting the persona for a ship. It's (suprisingly enough) in the ship editor.
If you set the pilot all the Standard messages from that ship will come with that persona. If you have a special message it's up to the FREDder to make certain the persona matches.
As for FRED displaying a frame from the ani that's a good idea. For the moment we have this as a stopgap.
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/freespace/FAQ-Images/Fred-Tips/commheads.gif)
NB. I have no idea who originally made that image but I've found it incredibly useful when making missions.
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After using FRED a bit more, I see that I was not aware of that feature of assigning a persona to a ship, but the current system is limited, since you can only assign a persona to a fighter. The problem is you can't use any of the command or capital ship heads for ship persona assignment. I'd like to see this changed so that you can use these personae for assigning to ships.
Later!
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Hey, that image is handy
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I'd put it up on the FAQ and the Wiki if I knew who it belonged to. I downloaded it in the first days I was in the community when I was exploring the FS2 sites.