Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => The Babylon Project => Topic started by: DoctorWho on June 23, 2005, 09:57:16 am
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Im a noob at FREDing and have started a couple of missions but I can't get beam wepons to work on the Sharlin or any other ship, any answers?
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Mission specs. Tick all ships beam freed by default.
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Ouch. :D *dons asbestos suit*
You need to use the beam-free-all sexp. Or if you're using SCP (I dunno if TBP uses it), then there's a "all-ships-beam-free-by-default" option in the mission specs editor.
:welcome:
Welcome to HLP, DoctorWho. Enjoy your stay. :)
EDIT: Argh, beaten to it again....
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I'm biased but I heavily reccomend taking a look at the FRED Academy (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,28122.0.html) so you can make B5 missions with a team of people to help and advise you.
Campaign 5 is the one you want to look at.
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thanks alot
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Actually even if you don't join up I recommend the FRED section of my FAQ. It will help teach you a lot of useful things. The common mistakes section is a good read too.
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No offence the FRED section of your page is so complicated I got nothing out of it. How do you use variables?
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Don't worry, after FREDing for a bit and doing the Fs2 FRED walkthrough it should make alot more sense
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Wow. How long has it been since we had one of these topics?
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I can't get a event to happen when a ship docks
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Could you be more specific?
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Im having alot of troble in general with events I can't get anything to work. All the guides I've seen are rather useless. Can you sugest a good one?
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Originally posted by DoctorWho
No offence the FRED section of your page is so complicated I got nothing out of it. How do you use variables?
Variables are something of an advanced topic for many FREDders (In fact there are some people who've written entire campaigns and still don't like to use them) so if you don't get them straight away and my FAQ isn't helping it's probably a good idea to understand how SEXPs work before you move on to them. On the other hand several FREDders got the hang of them quite quickly so don't feel that you'll never understand them. :)
My FAQ makes the assumption that you've done the FRED walkthrough. If you haven't look in your TBP folder at Data\Freddocs\index.html as there is tonnes of good information there.
It's worth actually doing the walkthrough rather than simply reading it. FREDding isn't something I find particularly hard but there is a lot to it so it's hard to remember everything from just reading a document.
It takes an hour or two to do the walkthrough but it will take you far longer to puzzle out how to do everything yourself :)
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I'll try it out, thanks
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Im doing pretty well but it keep's talking about an attake any ship comand and I can't find it. Anyone?
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Go into the ship or wing editor (depending on what you're giving orders to) and choose initial orders.
You'll find in in the behaviour pull down.
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The guides keep saying use the SEXP. How do you do that
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What you want is the following SEXP.
when
-whatever
-Add-Goal
--Name of ship
--AI-Chase-Any
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But what are SEXP
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They are the ones you make in the events editor.
We could call them events, but SEXP sounds a bit cooler :p
This too is explained in the FRED walktrought karajorma mentioned earlier. Read the whole document as it tells you all the basic things you want to know, and most of the complex things too. Pretty much everything you have asked so far can be found from the walktrought. And if you keep asking these very basic things you could find from the walktrought people will eventually get annoyed by it.
If you encouter something that you can't find from the walktrought after reading it at least three times, the chances are that it is a new thing the source code people have added for our enjoyment. And that you are encouraged to ask about.
So do a little research and learn where these things can be found because I'm a veteran and I still have to check the walktrought for a quick reminder...
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Originally posted by Black Wolf
Wow. How long has it been since we had one of these topics?
Which is why it's a good thing to go over again. Hopefully some other TBP users will take encouragement from this and start trying their hand at mission designing. After all, that's what TBP is there for more than anything else.
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Originally posted by Prophet If you encouter something that you can't find from the walktrought after reading it at least three times, the chances are that it is a new thing the source code people have added for our enjoyment. And that you are encouraged to ask about.
So do a little research and learn where these things can be found because I'm a veteran and I still have to check the walktrought for a quick reminder...
To be fair to the Dr. it sounds like he's doing the TBP specific walkthrough rather than the general freespace one. Which at a quick glance does in fact appear to refer to SEXPs without explaining what they are.
Personally I think that's the correct choice as the FS2 one requires the use of FS2 ships which he may not have access to. :)
Originally posted by Prophet
They are the ones you make in the events editor.
We could call them events, but SEXP sounds a bit cooler :p
I know I'm occassionally guilty of it too but events and SEXPs are slightly different things and should be refered to as such.
SEXP is to Event as Branch is to Tree.
Each event is made up of SEXPs. For instance
Event Name
When
-Ship-destroyed-delay
--Name of ship
--0
-do-nothing
is 1 single event made up of 3 SEXPs (When, Ship-destroyed-delay and do-nothing).
Like a branch can have smaller branches, a SEXP can be made up of other SEXPs so it's a good analogy.
I know I'm being pedantic but it can stop confusion at times and it's a good habit to start calling things by the right name from the start :)
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Thanks that cleared things up. I am using the TBP walkthrough because I have never played the real Freespace 2 and don't know any of the ships.
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If anyone sees this, how do you get cap ships to attak all ships
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They'll do that automatically. Just run the mission and you'll see.
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But then they don't move at all
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Give them waypoints. DO NOT give them orders to attack something.
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I got a ship to move to a way point but then I want it to form a jump point and leave. How do I get it to leave?
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You do so in the ship's arrival and departure cues, under the ships editor. Just give it a departure cue of something like
-are-waypoints-done-delay
--EAS Somethingorather (ie. the ship that you're editing)
--Waypoint Departure (ie. the waypoint its supposed to be on)
--0 (the amount of time after completing waypoints that the ship will wait before executing a warpout)
I usually do something more like
-<
--distance
---EAS Somethingorather
---Waypoint Departure 2 (or last in the path)
--75 (distance in meters)
That means that it shouldn't slow to a stop as it gets to the end of the waypoints, then have to accellerate to warpout speed.
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I did the first one and the Andrea (the ship) just started to spin around.
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Originally posted by DoctorWho
I did the first one and the Andrea (the ship) just started to spin around.
That often happens for capships because they're too large to "stop on a dime". So I use the first method for small ships and the second method for big ships.
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Makes sense thanks.
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Originally posted by karajorma
To be fair to the Dr. it sounds like he's doing the TBP specific walkthrough rather than the general freespace one. Which at a quick glance does in fact appear to refer to SEXPs without explaining what they are.
Personally I think that's the correct choice as the FS2 one requires the use of FS2 ships which he may not have access to. :)
Right. I forgot there were two of them...
Reading the FS2 walktrought still answers a **** load of questions including every one he has asked here so far. I haven't even read the TBP walktrought so I don't know what that teaches, not much it seems. My point being that if DoctorWho read the FS2 walktrought he would have that much better understanding of FRED workings. No matter what ships are there, it still contains solid information. And it would be helpful for him if he would get answers without posting a question online and waiting for someone to answer it....
Originally posted by karajorma
I know I'm occassionally guilty of it too but events and SEXPs are slightly different things and should be refered to as such.
SEXP is to Event as Branch is to Tree.
Each event is made up of SEXPs. For instance
Event Name
When
-Ship-destroyed-delay
--Name of ship
--0
-do-nothing
is 1 single event made up of 3 SEXPs (When, Ship-destroyed-delay and do-nothing).
Like a branch can have smaller branches, a SEXP can be made up of other SEXPs so it's a good analogy.
I know I'm being pedantic but it can stop confusion at times and it's a good habit to start calling things by the right name from the start :)
I see. I never really bothered to pay much attention about that. I just assumed they were the same thing. And looks like I was right, more or less...
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I agree that the FS2 walkthrough is definately worth reading. Just that he can't actually work through it without a copy of FS2 :)
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The TBP FRED2 walkthrough could really be helped with a comprehensive update. I don't suppose anyone here wants to take a stab at it?
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TBP walkthrough is over 2 years old but I think that it does a pretty good job at teaching. The only thing it needs to explane more is events. The walkthrough turned me off of events and I now make missions withought events at all.
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It might seem simple to all you that have created missions before but I'm 14 and I'm learning abought programing and the event etitor is quite complicated to me!
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It's tempting to forget about events and just stick ships in the mission with a bit of background but you'll find that the missions you make are rather poor in comparison to the ones you'll see in campaigns like Raider Wars. If you can't use events properly you'll have difficulty making any mission that isn't a "kill 5 waves of minbari fighters" style mission.
Events are needed to make arrivals and exits work and also for debriefings and goals. Without them your missions will be pretty flat.
Events are really pretty simple creatures though so there's no need to do that. Each Event has three parts. The Conditional, the Trigger and the Action. You can pretty much ignore the first one for now as beginners never use anything except the When SEXP.
Let's take the simplest event possible
when <-----------Conditional
-true <-----------Trigger
-do-nothing <-----Action
For an Event to occur the Trigger must evaluate to true. Once that happens the game will look at the action section and do whatever is contained in there. It's basically that simple.
Let's look at something a little harder.
When <------------------------Conditional
-is-destroyed-delay
--3 <----------------------------Trigger
--EAS Agamemmnon
-Send Message
--#Command <---------------Action
--Medium
--Oh No!
Pretty self explanitory this one. The game checks continually to see if the Agamemmnon has been destroyed. 3 Seconds after it's been destroyed it send a message from command.
That's the basics of events right there. Don't worry if you don't get the complicated stuff in my FAQ, some of it is pretty advanced. What you need to do is play about with the simple events and learn how to get them to work.
Try doing a few simple things like using the above SEXP to send messages when something blows up. Try using add-goal to make the friendlies start attacking a ship when something happens. Just play with the simple stuff and you'll find the harder stuff slots into place pretty easily afterwards.
Originally posted by Slasher
The TBP FRED2 walkthrough could really be helped with a comprehensive update. I don't suppose anyone here wants to take a stab at it?
What we really need is a generic FRED Walkthrough cause when the BSG guys finish their mod you can bet they'll be lots of people who want to FRED missions for that too.
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Thanks that answerd so many questions right there