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Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: MetalDestroyer on January 30, 2007, 02:17:52 pm

Title: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: MetalDestroyer on January 30, 2007, 02:17:52 pm
Well, I wonder if there will be any improvement about technical features for SCP ?
Like :
- having a 12 (or more) ships squad instead of 4 (or a non stable 6 ships per squadron) for each side (friend, enemy, neutral, others)
- having no limits to number of objects in Fred2 (for now, Fred2 is limited to 100 objects no more)

I don't have further ideas, but it would be great if we can make those two. I know that Battle of Endor like mission isn't a good idea. But I'm trying to stress test my old computer into its limit and how far I could put objects without using waves (in the case of squadron).
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: Turey on January 30, 2007, 02:20:41 pm
- having a 12 (or more) ships squad instead of 4 (or a non stable 6 ships per squadron) for each side (friend, enemy, neutral, others)

Unlikely. It would require a lot of interface art and HUD art to be redone.

Also, you'd run out of personas. Be kind of odd when half your wing doesn't talk, or Alpha 10 looks just like Alpha 2.
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: MetalDestroyer on January 30, 2007, 02:27:14 pm
Unlikely. It would require a lot of interface art and HUD art to be redone.

Also, you'd run out of personas. Be kind of odd when half your wing doesn't talk, or Alpha 10 looks just like Alpha 2.

Well, the HUD art could be ignored for the time being, I don't really care if all my squad are shown in the HUD for now. Or perhaps, we could remake the squad indicator to be like the X Wing Alliance indicator (by putting name line per line with their hull & shield status).
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: karajorma on January 30, 2007, 02:49:21 pm
The HUD is one thing. Breaking the Loadout Screen is more problematic however.
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: RazorsKiss on January 30, 2007, 03:45:14 pm
So, what all needs to be changed to get this done, and what is affected by these changes that will also need to be modified?

Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on January 30, 2007, 03:45:53 pm
Well since alpha, beta and gamma are already player loadable wouldn't it just be a matter of allowing beta and gama to be player ships in TvT just like they are in dogfight?  That would give 12 players per side but it would be 3 wings of 4.  Never looked at the code so I don't know what would be involved.  Hasn't coop already been updated to do 12 player?  Could have sworn I saw someone doing this.

While we're on the subject is it possible to have more than 6 ships in a wing with the current FS2_open?  I'm not talking player ships here just AI.  If not that would be a nice addition.
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: MetalDestroyer on January 30, 2007, 05:30:27 pm
While we're on the subject is it possible to have more than 6 ships in a wing with the current FS2_open?  I'm not talking player ships here just AI.  If not that would be a nice addition.

Just reread the first message ^^. I'm guessing for the same thing; well, I forgot to mention for AI ships xD .
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: Trivial Psychic on January 30, 2007, 11:02:01 pm
-Remove requirement for player-ship to have secondary firepoints
-Remove requirement for player-ship to actually have primary weapons
-Remove requirement for player-ship to actually have secondary weapons
-Allow default wings (Alpha, Beta, Gamma) to be 6-ships (as requested above)
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: ShivanSpS on January 31, 2007, 12:43:59 am
-Hability to Import Ships and events from other mission without eleminating the current ones.
-Hability to import new background from other mission without eleminating the current one.
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: karajorma on January 31, 2007, 03:33:36 am
Well since alpha, beta and gamma are already player loadable wouldn't it just be a matter of allowing beta and gama to be player ships in TvT just like they are in dogfight?  That would give 12 players per side but it would be 3 wings of 4.  Never looked at the code so I don't know what would be involved.  Hasn't coop already been updated to do 12 player?  Could have sworn I saw someone doing this.


Coop doesn't allow 12 players in retail?

I've never actually built a full working Coop mission for multi as Axem took the BtRL ones and I've noticed that he also has an 8 player limit. Now I'm wondering if that's the limit.
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: CP5670 on January 31, 2007, 09:40:01 am
I'm pretty sure 8 was the limit in retail FS2. None of the missions in the Fredzone packs, including my own, had more than that.
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: karajorma on January 31, 2007, 01:10:06 pm
Yeah but multi had a lot of strange and daft sub rules (No fish no fire etc) which were nothing to real game limitations but were simply due to the community setting it's own limit on what was fun. I guess the best thing to do is to make a 12 player coop and see if it works.
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on January 31, 2007, 02:38:21 pm
Multi coop and TvT only allowed 8 players.  4 in alpha and 4 in beta or zeta.  you could control the loadout of gamma and maybe delta in coop and one other wing in TvT but they could not be player ships.  Dogfight was the only multi that allowed 12. 

BTW:  Standard TvT rules were No AI AE SD or support.  Translated that is No AI, Area effect (fish(piranahs), fire(infernos), or emp)  Self Destruct or support ships.  Support ships were buggy and all showed up as the team that called the first one.  So ones sides heat seakers would go after the support ships while the other side could use them normally.
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: karajorma on January 31, 2007, 03:27:53 pm
Mantis that last bit and I'll look into it sometime.

I can definitely save a mission with 12 players in FRED2_Open.
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on January 31, 2007, 06:04:01 pm
I'll toss it in there as soon as I confirm if it still exists.  Haven't tried a TvT with support ships in FS2_open.
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: ShivanSpS on January 31, 2007, 07:05:26 pm
-Hability to can set diferent waves to gamma win when they are no player intented for multi.
-Can use .tga maps in fred.
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: taylor on January 31, 2007, 11:29:07 pm
-Can use .tga maps in fred.
TGA works fine in FRED.  In fact, any graphics format that works in-game will also work perfectly fine in FRED.  It's the same basic code after all.
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: ShivanSpS on February 01, 2007, 12:06:59 am
oh you right, i just need to add the -jpgtga in fred command line...
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: Trivial Psychic on February 01, 2007, 11:47:19 am
That command line has been removed from HEAD builds.  The decision as to whether TGA or JPG formats should be used is now dictated by what filetypes are there, and by the type order precedence.
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: ShivanSpS on February 03, 2007, 10:15:42 am
I have good one...

The posibility of edit the table values for a single ship in fred, in this way we can have a... no know... a Alpha 1, a Medusa capable of carrying Helios and top speed of 70m/s, and Alpha 2 and 3 using normal medusas...

Editing tables for a ship in fred we can have modified ships (maybe upgrades for current ships in the future) without need to use modular tables and create a mod, also in this way will be 100% Multi compatible.
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: Trivial Psychic on February 03, 2007, 10:20:54 pm
That was suggested some time ago.  Basically, it would be a sexp which would allow the FREDder to change, delete, or add any supported table entry in a ship.  It would apply either to a specific ship in the mission, or to all of a specific ship class in the mission.
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: ShivanSpS on February 04, 2007, 01:13:57 am
But you can use a sexp to change the weapons allowed in the loadout?
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: karajorma on February 04, 2007, 02:54:19 am
But you can use a sexp to change the weapons allowed in the loadout?

Nope. SEXPs are only evaluated once the mission itself starts so there isn't any way that one could affect the loadout screen of the mission it was used in.

If you want to stick non-allowed weapons on a ship though you can just use the set-primary/secondary-weapon SEXPs to change the weapon to whatever you like.

Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: ShivanSpS on February 05, 2007, 04:20:35 pm
I have another.

The posibility of have more than one asteroid field and more than 256 asteroids each...

I say this because with only 256 asteroids is IMPOSIBLE to create a dense asteroid field... unless their are VERY small, if someone have tested my Dragon Awakes demo, it know of what i talking about...
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: WMCoolmon on February 05, 2007, 07:35:22 pm
That was suggested some time ago.  Basically, it would be a sexp which would allow the FREDder to change, delete, or add any supported table entry in a ship.  It would apply either to a specific ship in the mission, or to all of a specific ship class in the mission.

Hmm. With a little string gimmicking you could take advantage of the scripting system for this. Have a SEXP that takes

table-set-ship-variable
--shipname <String>
--variable <string>
--value <string>

Convert it to a lua codeblock like so and feed it to the interpeter:
Code: [Select]
if mn.Ships['$shipname']:isValid() and mn.Ships['$shipname'].$variable ~= nil then
   mn.Ships['$shipname'].$variable = $value
end

Although if you specified a variable that didn't exist, it'd probably throw an indexing error. Also, you'd have to work from the variable names in the scripting.html file rather than the TBL; you could make a conversion chart but I'm not sure it'd be worth the time, most of the variables should be the same.

I'm not saying I'll implement it, but it is one way of achieving the effect. (You could do the same kind of thing with a big series of if statements for each variable, or some kind of specialized array.)
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: Dark Hunter on February 05, 2007, 07:44:03 pm
Here's another thing:

FRED always complains at me if I have Alpha 1 send a message, or if I put the player in a wing other than Alpha. However, nothing goes wrong with the actual mission, which leads me to the belief that FRED is complaining about nothing. Would it be possible to remove those "error" messages?
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: Trivial Psychic on February 06, 2007, 12:43:49 am
Both can be fixed for the most part.  The message thing is done by placing a "#" ahead of the name for the player ship which is sending the message.  The player-not-Alpha-1 thing is fixed by using the use-non-standard-wings option under Mission Specs.  That said, I think that it would be useful if, just as the game automatically makes "#command" an option in the list of who is sending messages, that  the same thing be added but for the player's ship.  So, if the player ship is Gamma 2, the game would automatically add "#Gamma 2" as a message source option.  As for the player-not-Alpha-1 my above-mentioned solution with the mission specs, wouldn't work if you want the player as another member of Alpha wing.  It might be more useful if a message came up that says, "you are about to make the player fly as a ship other than Alpha 1.  Are you sure you want to proceed?" with yes and no buttons.  It the FREDder selects "yes", then another messages says "enable non-standard wings, yes/no".  If the FREDder selects Yes, it automatically checks this option and brings up the Mission Specs editor.  If on the other hand the FREDder wants the player to fly as Alpha 3, then he/she would select "no", and the fix proposed by Dark Hunter would take effect.
Title: Re: Improvements about FRED2 Open & Fs2 Open ?
Post by: ShivanSpS on February 06, 2007, 12:52:49 am
Well the msg about seting a squad logo for the player wing is also unesesary...

Anyway i got onother good one, a sexp that allows us to turn off the engines of a ship without the "Disable" msgs...