Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Wing Commander Saga => Topic started by: Creash on January 06, 2007, 10:40:21 pm
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1) I can't engage my after burners in my custom made missions I've created via FRED. Is there some event or option I have to engage like you do for Beam Weapons (beam free all) to make it work?
2) I love how you've found a way to make a mission end via landing on a carrier. I'd love to incorporate this technique into my Freespace 2, B5, and own Wing Commander missions and am curious what steps you take to make it happen. If I had to guess, does it entail having your fighter getting within so many meters of a designated capital ship?
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2) It does. There's an end-mission SEXP that, when used with a distance check to the landing bay, will do exactly that. An event to do it will look something like this:
* Carrier_Landing
-op when
-op >
#50
-#distance-ship-subsystem
#<player ship>
#<carrier>
#<fighterbay>
-op end-mission
Replace the stuff in <brackets> with the proper names of ships and subsystems, and it will end the mission when the player gets within 50 metres of the carrier's figherbay.
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What shade said :)
As for the afterburner, it never happended to me that it doesn't work. Just note, that there are several special ships.tbl entries used. All AI fighters have still the standard recharging Freespace Afterburner, only the player has a limited one, and therefore we created special entries.
They are named a little strange (varify only in one letter), but those are the few :
F-66B Thunderbolt VII
F/A-76A Longbow P
F-86A Hellcat V
F-96D Arrow
Besides those "standard" player ships, there is one more :
F-96D Arrow NOAB
This one here has it's afterburner completly removed (I use it for story part where the player shouldn't use his afterburner).
Did you use the last one accidently ?
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What shade said :)
As for the afterburner, it never happended to me that it doesn't work. Just note, that there are several special ships.tbl entries used. All AI fighters have still the standard recharging Freespace Afterburner, only the player has a limited one, and therefore we created special entries.
They are named a little strange (varify only in one letter), but those are the few :
F-66B Thunderbolt VII
F/A-76A Longbow P
F-86A Hellcat V
F-96D Arrow
Besides those "standard" player ships, there is one more :
F-96D Arrow NOAB
This one here has it's afterburner completly removed (I use it for story part where the player shouldn't use his afterburner).
Did you use the last one accidently ?
Aaaah, that would be it. My mission has me flying the Arrow NOAB. Good good, I'll go change that right now :cool: As for the landing event, very clever and well done! I intend to use it often in some of my missions.
It makes more sense than jumping into subspace/hyperspace when the carrier your supposedly located right next to in the field of engagement is just 500 meters to your port side :lol:
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F-96D Arrow NOAB
This one here has it's afterburner completly removed (I use it for story part where the player shouldn't use his afterburner).
I'm thinking about adding a lock-afterburner SEXP same as I did with weapon lock a while back so that people don't have to go through this sort of nonsense. :)
Now that 3.6.9 is out I can look into it as soon as the BtRL demo is out and things quieten down a little.
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2) It does. There's an end-mission SEXP that, when used with a distance check to the landing bay, will do exactly that. An event to do it will look something like this:
* Carrier_Landing
-op when
-op >
#50
-#distance-ship-subsystem
#<player ship>
#<carrier>
#<fighterbay>
-op end-mission
Replace the stuff in <brackets> with the proper names of ships and subsystems, and it will end the mission when the player gets within 50 metres of the carrier's figherbay.
I'm having trouble creating the proper event chain listed under the Event Manager to get this working. I always end up not doing one path correctly so I can't bring up the options I want. Any way you can break it down even easier for me please? :p
Aaaah, to be noobish. I make up for it in crazy-big-battles, good voice overs, and good mission content. I thought I was really good at FRED, but now I see I'm really starting to meet the masters. I love these forums :pimp:
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F-96D Arrow NOAB
This one here has it's afterburner completely removed (I use it for story part where the player shouldn't use his afterburner).
I'm thinking about adding a lock-afterburner SEXP same as I did with weapon lock a while back so that people don't have to go through this sort of nonsense. :)
Now that 3.6.9 is out I can look into it as soon as the BtRL demo is out and things quieten down a little.
Weapons lock as in terms of your load-out or something as nifty as instance missile lock ons? 8)
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Weapons lock as in terms of your load-out or something as nifty as instance missile lock ons? 8)
As in terms of "You can't fire, but you can die!"
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Here is an example : Note that fighterbay01 is always in the front of the carriers, and fighterbay02 is in the back :
-event-name
op-when
op <
op- distance ship subsystem
Alpha 2 (player ship)
TCS Hermes (carrier)
fighterbay02
25
op- end-mission
Important : You need to chain this event to some other event or a goal, otherwise the mission will also end when you fly to that position right on the start of the mission. I usually chain it to the arrival of the last navpoint or the "you are clear to land" message
@Karajorma : That would be handy if you would do that :) BTW, I need your help again to fix that stupid goal in mission 2, can you spare a few minutes ?
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-event-name
op-when
op <
op- distance ship subsystem
Alpha 2 (player ship)
fighterbay02
25
op- end-mission
did you forget the name of the ship that has fighterbay02?
EDIT: Woah, now it's there.
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Hehe, I was faster (and noticed myself :) ) Sometimes you have to be really quick in this forum to edit your stuff :D
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Now that you've helped him getting started with FRED, can't you blackmail him into FREDing the WCS campaign missions or something? ;7 :p
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Now that you've helped him getting started with FRED, can't you blackmail him into FREDing the WCS campaign missions or something? ;7 :p
I'd actually be very interested in helping with the development team!
I'd be handy in many different departments:
1) Voice Overs and Voice Over Script (theatre experience, college creative writting minor, attended Newhouse School of Comunications for film at Syracuse, University)
2) Mission Concept Creation and Development (FRED capable, writting, film)
3) Storyline Writting (writting, film)
I wish I had the uber campaign I made a few years back called "War on the Frontier" I made fore FS2, a great 12 mission masterpiece with full voice-over and original screenplay as a 'interview folio' or 'resume', but I lost that back in the day in one of many nasty reformats and it got corrupted somehow in reinstall :mad:
Also, one note is that I am a dedicated singe-player cheater, so I tend to make missions to accommodate that :p I like the battles big, intense, so much that if you weren't invulnerable it is rather doubtful you'd get out alive in the middle of a furball with almost 40 fighters on each side and large fleets going toe-to-toe on top of that. If there wasn't an opening or invitation, it's ok. College life keeps me pretty busy (though I spent still too much time on this and gaming :lol:) but would certainly think it over if I was asked to join the team. I love a chance to throw my creativity into something for others to experiance and enjoy. And being on top of these kind of breakthroughs the folks at Hard-Light Productions would sure be something. 8)
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-event-name
op-when
op <
op- distance ship subsystem
Alpha 2 (player ship)
fighterbay02
25
op- end-mission
did you forget the name of the ship that has fighterbay02?
EDIT: Woah, now it's there.
Sadly it's more from be being Noobish than anything. I'm not sure what operator your using when you have just 'op' listed, nor can I find how to put in the numerical value 50. I need more of a step-bye-step process as you go down the tree....as in what you first select out of what category under each operator type, then so on and so on as you find from the menus where you select the actual operation.
Reminds me of the days when I first got into FREDing and couldn't figure out how to get the beam-free-all to work when I had so many ships jumping in, out, etc. which muddled things up and took tedious work to individually turn them on. Thank god for 3.6.9 and the "beams by default" option! :lol:
Oddly enough, timing voice overs was the easiest. Some would argue that's one of the harder parts.
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Now that you've helped him getting started with FRED, can't you blackmail him into FREDing the WCS campaign missions or something? ;7 :p
Hehehe. I've been using FRED for years. I just haven't used it vigorously for a while as I used to and now, with the resource of these good folks at Hard-Light, I want to bring my FREDing up to the next level. They sure work better than an FAQ you'll find out there.
I just hope you admin on the forums don't get annoyed with all my questions :p
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Check my FAQ's FRED pages to help you get up to speed with string variables and the argument SEXPs. You'll be amazed at the kind of stuff you can do with them :) [
@Karajorma : That would be handy if you would do that :) BTW, I need your help again to fix that stupid goal in mission 2, can you spare a few minutes ?
Always happy to. Catch me on ICQ or the HLP IRC channel if you want a speedier response time cause I'm going to be spending most of my time today FREDding for BtRL so I won't be checking for PMs much today.
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BtRL is on of the mods I am waiting for. From what I have seen the shipmodels and gameplay look realy good.
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Hay i have another noobish question : how does the autopilot work? i mean i found the way to create navpoints and give carry status to the ships, but when i try it ingame the navpoit is targetd correctly, but after pressiung alt+A the ship starts making circles and the time compression doesn't activate :mad:
BTW mayby you'll consider releasing source fred file for one of the missons (preferably 'bomb run' i think it has everything in it) so people can just watch the fred code and try to figure out how it works. then you won't have to answer all this stupid questions ;)
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I know this problem, had it quite some times. I can't really say how to fix this, it somehow related to the game not recognizing who is the leader for the autopilot flight. Changing models, wings or setplayer usually fixed it (though I can't say for sure which).
Also sometimes funny I (alpha 2) are not leading the autopilot, but Alpha 1 was (which is actually a nice thing). That belongs to the same error, but I can't reproduce it on purpose.
Nevertheless, because of this I made myself a template mission for starting purpose, you can download it here :
http://www.wcsaga.com/~team/Starman/downloads/template.fs2
It contains waypoints, necessary starting SEXP and three wings, the player (alpha2) is leading the autopilot flight.
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BTW mayby you'll consider releasing source fred file for one of the missons (preferably 'bomb run' i think it has everything in it) so people can just watch the fred code and try to figure out how it works. then you won't have to answer all this stupid questions ;)
Get yourself VPView from my FAQ's tool page and you can look at any mission you like in the VP :)
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They are named a little strange (varify only in one letter), but those are the few :
F-66B Thunderbolt VII
F/A-76A Longbow P
F-86A Hellcat V
F-96D Arrow
Besides those "standard" player ships, there is one more :
F-96D Arrow NOAB
We have changed the naming sheme right after the release of the prologue. Right now it is "'fighter name' P"
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Yes, but not in the version the people currently use for fredding :) We only changed it in the hermes ships.tbl which isn't public yet
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Ok, here's a tutorial version then since it's being difficult :) Start with a new mission, then place down a carrier to go along with the player ship that's already pre-placed. Now, open up the events editor and and start a new event, which should give you this:
* Event name
-op when
-op true
-op do-nothing
Change the name of the event to Carrier_Landing, then right click the "true" operator and select <Replace operator> -> <Logical> -> ">" from the menu that pops up. Now we have this:
* Carrier_Landing
-op when
-op >
#0
#0
-op do-nothing
Right click the top zero and select <Edit data>, then put in the distance you want the mission to end at. For now, we'll use 50. Then right click the bottom zero and select <Replace operator> -> <Status> -> "distance-ship-subsystem", giving us this:
* Carrier_Landing
-op when
-op >
#50
-#distance-ship-subsystem
#<any traitor>
#<random ship>
#<random subsystem>
-op do-nothing
Right click item one ("any traitor"), select <Replace data> and select the player ship from the submenu. Right click item two and do the same, only select the carrier we put in. And finally right click item three and select <fighterbay02>. Now all that remains to be done is replace the "do-nothing" with the "end-mission" operator found under <Change> -> <Missions and campaigns> -> "end-mission", and we get the final result:
* Carrier_Landing
-op when
-op >
#50
-#distance-ship-subsystem
#<player ship>
#<carrier>
#<fighterbay02>
-op end-mission
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As I see it, you put the value 50 to the wrong position . In fred the > Value comes after the distance check operator
-event-name
op-when
op <
op- distance ship subsystem
Alpha 2 (player ship)
fighterbay02
50
op- end-mission
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We both got it right, actually. The difference is I used greater-than, you used less-than. Hence the opposite order achieving the same effect :)
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I've always found code readability to be increased if you give the expression first and the value second since that's the way most people speak and think.
Most people think "if X is greater than 50" rather than "if 49 is less than X".
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We both got it right, actually. The difference is I used greater-than, you used less-than. Hence the opposite order achieving the same effect :)
not really i believe cause the moment your event becomes true the mission will end where ever you are but not when your coming into landing
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Erm, no. In english, it says "When 50 is greater than current distance to landing bay, end mission", which is functionally identical to Starman's "When current distance to landing bay is less than 50, end mission". So it only fires within 50 metres of the landing bay. Try it and see if you don't believe me :)
I simply use greater-than because I'm used to doing that, and if I used less-than I'd probably end up with the exact error you describe because I'd forget to reverse the order compared to what I'm used to.
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Check my FAQ's FRED pages to help you get up to speed with string variables and the argument SEXPs. You'll be amazed at the kind of stuff you can do with them :) [
@Karajorma : That would be handy if you would do that :) BTW, I need your help again to fix that stupid goal in mission 2, can you spare a few minutes ?
Always happy to. Catch me on ICQ or the HLP IRC channel if you want a speedier response time cause I'm going to be spending most of my time today FREDding for BtRL so I won't be checking for PMs much today.
Can you drop a link to particular FRED FAQ pages you've posted on the forums pertaining to this? I'd really appreciate it :)
Or, are you referring to your FAQ website I found in your signature at:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/FAQ/intro.html
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Yep. That's what I'm refering to. The FRED stuff in there should be pretty useful to you at whatever level you're currently at. Some of that stuff is fairly advanced though so if you're still relearning FRED don't be surprised if you don't get it straight away.
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Not a problem. A little re-schooling in my ol' days of FRED advanced abilities shouldn't take too long nor do I consider it a chore. Thanks Karajorma. :)
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Not a problem. When people read my guide and use the stuff they learned to make better missions I get my reward :)
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Here is an example : Note that fighterbay01 is always in the front of the carriers, and fighterbay02 is in the back :
-event-name
op-when
op <
op- distance ship subsystem
Alpha 2 (player ship)
TCS Hermes (carrier)
fighterbay02
25
op- end-mission
Important : You need to chain this event to some other event or a goal, otherwise the mission will also end when you fly to that position right on the start of the mission. I usually chain it to the arrival of the last navpoint or the "you are clear to land" message
The other reason why you have to change this to another event, is that if you ar using 'change sheep class' to hide ships at distance, if the event is active (not chained), the moment carrier model changes to ghost the game will generate an error and shut down :)
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The other reason why you have to change this to another event, is that if you ar using 'change sheep class' to hide ships at distance, if the event is active (not chained), the moment carrier model changes to ghost the game will generate an error and shut down :)
Nope, like I proofed in any mission :) This event must always be chained to something after the last autopilot flight, where "change-ship-class" has already been long executed.
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Damn i wrote changed i mean CHAINED CHAINED :mad: ::)
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Not to mention this :
'change sheep class'
I hope that the "change wolf class" will be also implemented by the SCP :p
No offend Mancubus, I'm just joking :)
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No offend Mancubus, I'm just joking :)
I hope so... for your sake! :D :)
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I hope that the "change wolf class" will be also implemented by the SCP :p
I believe the Starfox team already have that one working :D
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Staraman, would it be possible if you release the template again ::)? i've had a major disk crash and lost most of my data. Now i have new computer (almost) i've changed windows version and the autopilot bug still occures :mad:. and your download link kinda stopped working
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Sure, here you go :)
http://wcsaga.hard-light.net/team/Starman/downloads/template.fs2