Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The FRED Workshop => Topic started by: radiodj3 on August 31, 2006, 05:05:13 pm
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Ok, fredding aint as easy as i first thought, well certain aspects of it anyway! I understand all of the concepts behind the fredding, but what i am having trouble with is the sexp's in the events editor. Is there any guide or guide line to help when setting up a senario? Some of the commands i don't see how they string together to do what they do, and in turn, i'm not sure sometimes what series of commands I need use to get a certain action....if there is any help I thank you in advance :hopping: :confused:
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USE
THE
WALKTHROUGH! :eek2:
Sorry, got carried away. ;)
The walkthrough is very comprehensive. I recommend using it.
The sexp's are pretty self-explanatory. Just try different things out. It's fun!
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I am almost through the advance walk though, and you are correct.....very helpful and a must use for anyone wanting to learn to fred. the problem is i tried (with limited results) to alter the story line in the walkthough. most of what i did worked fine, but i had to try repeatedly to get it to work. I was just hopeing the was a quick referance or something to refere to when setting something up.....
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The best thing to do is to finish the walkthrough before trying to modify it.
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The layoout is simple enough, each event is llike a little story, or instruction.
For instance, When mission time has elapsed>5>self destruct>GTVA colossus
Guess what happens 5 seconds into the mission?
Linking these and chaining is only as difficult as your organisational skills. You can use events to send messages if a ship jumps out AND your health is within a defined range between 50 and 75% for instance. Or you can make the sun explode if you re-arm with a full secondary bank, (i've done this before to mess my little brothers head up)
Just get used to the usage via the tutorial, Then play with the SEXPS. Its fun and a learning curve all in one.
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No,when the time has elapsed(so the Colossus..why the Colossus...wil self destruct when the mission time is 6).
The walktrough was too advanced fo a noob FREDder...You start with the capture of the Relentless,Argo transports and variables...
Only one thing I've learned from it:that Argo dock count.I learned every other feat all by myself.
To learn FRED well,just use it very often and don't worry if your first attempts aren't ok.I'm FREDding every day since this march(when I got the retail) :D
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The problem with most do it yourself approaches is that people end up with a comfort zone that rules out a lot of the more advanced techniques. For instance I find that more FREDders who were self taught are scared of variables. You don't need to use them in the first newbie missions you'll build and over time you learn to work around them
The result is you're already fairly set in your ways before you start hearing from other FREDders how useful they are. The fact that the new conditionals (when-argument and every-time-argument) aren't mentioned in walkthrough is probably one reason why people are scared of them too.
Personally I loved the walkthrough. I went straight from writing that to making my own missions which although I'll consider crude now weren't actually that bad.
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I never did the walkthrough myself and picked up everything by just playing around in the FS1 days. What's the walkthrough mission like, anyway? It might be fun to make it just to play it. :)
The problem with most do it yourself approaches is that people end up with a comfort zone that rules out a lot of the more advanced techniques. For instance I find that more FREDders who were self taught are scared of variables. You don't need to use them in the first newbie missions you'll build and over time you learn to work around them
Well, it is true that you don't need variables in most of the standard types of missions. I generally only use them to do things that cannot be done at all without them.
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Prevent a wing of Argo transports to capture(capturing?) the GTD Relentless,an Orion.
Maybe the walktrough was difficult for me simply because it wasn't written in my language,I understood everything but there was something wrong.
I use variables very often and until a few weeks ago even when I could use percent-ship-departed or percent-ship-destroyed.
i fell in love with variables thanks to the walktrough.
I'm not scared of the new conditionals,but I'd like to read a description about their effectiveness.
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Variable walkthrough :confused: You mean one shipped with the game?
I've not seen it.
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The walkthrough uses variables to check how many ships have successfully docked with the Orion IIRC.
If you haven't read the walkthrough you can always download it from my FAQ.
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I did the walkthrough over 5 years ago, As was mentioned earlier i found my comfort zone ;), I'll download it and have a read on lunch....
Cheers Karajorma :headz:
edit> ::) I forgot how simple they were, I just never used them. Its amazing how dependant on SEXPS one can become.
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If you read the FRED section of my FAQ there's a bit more advice on how to use them and also a guide on how to use string variables (something that isn't explained in the walkthrough).
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When-argument and every-time-argument,right?
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Nope. Those are the new conditionals. Their usage is different from string variables (although the two work very well together).
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The event system looks like Java...
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How so? I don't see much of a resemblence.
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Mr Think trhen post :lol:
String variables...never tried them,seriously.
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Most people haven't.
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Yeah.This happens because there's a terrible lack of infos about them.
If they make missions more realistic/cooler and/or they can solve some directive problems...well i want to learn how to use them.
when-argument performs actions when the argument is true...so?What's its effectiveness?!?
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When-argument doesn't do anything of the sort. When-argument allows you to provide a list of ships or subsystems or anything else you wish to be used as arguments. SEXPs in the rest of the event can then be set up to use the arguments from list.
Basically if you ever have a collection of ships, subsystems or anything else and want something to happen to any of them that fullfill a condition or one at random or the whole lot in sequence or all of them, then you use when-argument.
The whole thing is explained in the FRED2_Open section of my FAQ.
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Ah,I forgot you FAQ! Now engaging subspace drives(well,it's more a force-jump)
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How so? I don't see much of a resemblence.
Java is the only language I know squat about, so it might resemble them all, but, it uses boolean (true/false) variables (along with those INT variables, but no double variables) , along with a lot of the operaters are the same/similar. I doubt if any of what I'm saying actually makes sense, though :nervous:
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Ah. I get what you mean now. Most programming languages will resemble each other when it comes to basics like that. I've always said that if you can program you have the technical skills needed to make it a certainty that you could learn FRED.
Of course that doesn't mean you know how to make a mission playable :p
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I HAVE LEARNED HOW TO USE THE NEW CONDITIONALS,THANKS ONCE AGAIN KARAJORMA!!!! :lol:
:lol:
:lol:
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Oh my god Karajorma you are awesome.
I was trying to make some b5 missions and got frustrated when I couldn't get what I wanted to happen to work right.
The "when-arguement" sounds exactly like what I needed.
Thanks.
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No problem.
The way I see it is that I teach you guys tricks like this, you go out and make better missions than you would have otherwise and my reward is that I get to play them :)
It's a win-win for everyone :)