Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The FRED Workshop => Topic started by: CaptainX on July 26, 2007, 10:36:50 pm
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Greetings all.
I just finished my first attempt at a cutscene using the SEXPs in FRED2. I think it came out pretty well. I packed the mission itself and the other files needed into a VP file, so hopefully that'll work for everyone.
Check it out and give me your opinions, I plan to use cutscenes like this in the campaign I am designing. Any suugestions would be most helpful.
... Yes, I know the carrier in the scene is VERY overpowered, but I was going for a big movie scene effect... it won't be that powerful in the campaign ;)
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Err, good for you, but you don't have to post two threads. :p
That said, I'm downloading it now and I'll watch it a bit later. :)
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I was going for a wide audience :D
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Just FYI, it's generally a bad idea to post multiple topics on the same subject. I know you said you were going for a wide audience, but most of the people who check the modding forum are going to check the FRED forum too.
That being said, I'll download this thing and check it out. :)
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I plan to use cutscenes like this in the campaign I am designing.
damn! another one! :lol: (i'm doing the same thing for another campaign, Steadfast...)
i'm interested in cutscenes, and i'm curious to see what sexp you have used for the camera movements. maybe i'll learn something.
unfortunately i have very little time for FRED now, so i'll open your mission in the next weeks...
anyway, downloaded.
I was going for a wide audience :D
:lol: BTW, are you doing a campaign all alone?
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What ships feature in the scene?
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Topics merged.
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Guys, my apologies, I made that VP last night while under the influence of sleepyness LOL.
Other than stock ships, the cutscene uses the GTI Bretonia and the GTCa Warlock (a modified version of it). I forgot to put the Bretonia into the VP, so it's not going to work for anyone who doesn't happen to have it.
The GTI Bretonia is too large to post here on the forums.... below is the download link. It's a simple VP as well, so installation will be a snap for anyone who wants to see the cutscene.
http://hades-combine.com/web/index.php?ind=downloads&op=entry_view&iden=245
Sorry about the trouble there :sigh:
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:lol: BTW, are you doing a campaign all alone?
Yes, I'm going to take a shot at it. I used to design FRED missions for fun all the way back to the original Freespace. I wish I had kept some of my old missions... some of them took days of work and were well received by some of the FS2 community.
That cutscene was fairly simple, once I figured out how the SEXPs work. For this campaign, I'm going for a different kind of approach. Each mission will actually be 3 missions.... a cutscene, a launching from the carrier scene, and then the actual action scene.
Once I finalize the planned storyline, I'll post it here and see what you guys think.
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some of them took days of work
Amateur. :p You can't complain about the amount of work a mission took until you're into a month's work at least. ;)
and were well received by some of the FS2 community.
Single missions or a mini campaign? Did you release them here or just pass them out to a few people. What username did you use back then?
I ask cause there is a reasonable chance that someone still has them.
That cutscene was fairly simple, once I figured out how the SEXPs work. For this campaign, I'm going for a different kind of approach. Each mission will actually be 3 missions.... a cutscene, a launching from the carrier scene, and then the actual action scene.
Sounds good but please don't fall into the trap of having unskippable cutscenes at the start of every mission. It gets rather annoying by the 3rd or 4th time you're replaying a failed mission. It's not hard to make cutscenes automatically skip after a certain number of plays.
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oRLY? please tell me how :) It would come in very handy on a certain *cough,*ing* cough*ander thing i'm working on.
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Sounds good but please don't fall into the trap of having unskippable cutscenes at the start of every mission. It gets rather annoying by the 3rd or 4th time you're replaying a failed mission. It's not hard to make cutscenes automatically skip after a certain number of plays.
This won't be a problem, because the cutscene is a completely separate mission that is marked as completed when it is played through the first time. Then the launching mission loads, where the player sees the main briefing. They launch from the carrier, and then warp out, and then the actual action mission loads, using the Red Alert/No Briefing settings. This gives the appearance of launching from the carrier and conducting operations in another area.
If anyone ever played the Wing Commander: Prophecy PC game, I'm going for that kind of feel. Briefing, launch, jump to mission. In fact, that's why the carrier is named the Midway... it's a subtle tribute to one of my all-time favorite games ;)
... However, by typing that explanation, I just discovered a bug.... once the player does the launching mission, it'll be marked as completed and it won't come up again. So if they fail the action mission, they won't get to see the briefing or weapon loadout screen again. When they replay, it'll immediately drop them into the action mission
I might have to rethink my plan. Thanks for pointing that out, I wouldn't have realized that until later.
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Each mission will actually be 3 missions.... a cutscene, a launching from the carrier scene, and then the actual action scene.
ah, hem, are you a friend of Mobius? because this seems quite familiar to me... it's exactly what he did for some missions of Steadfast...
Sounds good but please don't fall into the trap of having unskippable cutscenes at the start of every mission. It gets rather annoying by the 3rd or 4th time you're replaying a failed mission. It's not hard to make cutscenes automatically skip after a certain number of plays.
Interesting... you're right. how do you do it?
Amateur. :p You can't complain about the amount of work a mission took until you're into a month's work at least. ;)
:lol: true ... also if i'm not very experienced ... i started a cutscene-mission about 1,5 months ago, and it isn't finished yet...
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It's not hard to make cutscenes automatically skip after a certain number of plays.
Any subtle hints ?
I'm out of shape Fredwise with all these new fangled variables etc.......
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ah, hem, are you a friend of Mobius? because this seems quite familiar to me... it's exactly what he did for some missions of Steadfast...
LOL No, actually.... it just seemed to me to be the most logical progression of what I planned to do.
I wanted to have the player based on a supercarrier that operates alone, behind enemy lines. Like I said before, my inspiration for the basic idea was Wing Commander: Prophecy.
In this particular campaign, the storyline will progress with the carrier conducting strike missions against pirate targets in the remote and dangerous areas of several systems. The carrier is designed to operate alone, and won't have much help from the GTVA during its missions. Most likely, the carrier is going to be the one seen in the cutscene, the GTCa Warlock class, slightly modified (with proper credits to the original author(s) of course).
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oRLY? please tell me how :) It would come in very handy on a certain *cough,*ing* cough*ander thing i'm working on.
There are two ways I can think of that are pretty easy.
1) Create a Persistent Player Variable (i.e a standard variable but select the player persistent option). Call it MissionPlaythroughs
Then add these SEXPs
When
-true
-modify-variable
--MissionPlaythroughs[0]
-- +
---MissionPlaythroughs[0]
---1
when
- <
--MissionPlaythroughs[0]
--3
-All the cutscene stuff
when
-or
--Cutscene done
-->
---MissionPlaythroughs[0]
--2
-Set up the mission ready to play
That's the simple way. But if you don't mind seeing the cutscenes every play through you're out of luck since it will stop playing after the second viewing.
2) Choose a key (space is a good choice) to skip the cutscene. Then time the length of the cutscene and make a persistent variable called SkipCutscenes. I tend to prefer to use string variables if I'm setting up my own boolean test but most people simply use numbers because strings have a bug that requires a minor error in notepad if you set them up incorrectly.
when
-and
--key-pressed
---Space
-- <
---mission-time
---Length of the cutscene
-reset-key
--space
-Modify-variable
--SkipCutscenes[false]
--true
Now set up the cutscenes in the same way as above except you use
when
-string-equals
--SkipCutscenes[false]
--false
as your trigger.
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Guys, my apologies, I made that VP last night while under the influence of sleepyness LOL.
Other than stock ships, the cutscene uses the GTI Bretonia and the GTCa Warlock (a modified version of it). I forgot to put the Bretonia into the VP, so it's not going to work for anyone who doesn't happen to have it.
The GTI Bretonia is too large to post here on the forums.... below is the download link. It's a simple VP as well, so installation will be a snap for anyone who wants to see the cutscene.
http://hades-combine.com/web/index.php?ind=downloads&op=entry_view&iden=245
Sorry about the trouble there :sigh:
Awesome, ther GTI Bretonia. :D
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oRLY? please tell me how :) It would come in very handy on a certain *cough,*ing* cough*ander thing i'm working on.
There are two ways I can think of that are pretty easy.
1) Create a Persistent Player Variable (i.e a standard variable but select the player persistent option). Call it MissionPlaythroughs
Then add these SEXPs
When
-true
-modify-variable
--MissionPlaythroughs[0]
-- +
---MissionPlaythroughs[0]
---1
when
- <
--MissionPlaythroughs[0]
--3
-All the cutscene stuff
when
-or
--Cutscene done
-->
---MissionPlaythroughs[0]
--2
-Set up the mission ready to play
That's the simple way. But if you don't mind seeing the cutscenes every play through you're out of luck since it will stop playing after the second viewing.
2) Choose a key (space is a good choice) to skip the cutscene. Then time the length of the cutscene and make a persistent variable called SkipCutscenes. I tend to prefer to use string variables if I'm setting up my own boolean test but most people simply use numbers because strings have a bug that requires a minor error in notepad if you set them up incorrectly.
when
-and
--key-pressed
---Space
-- <
---mission-time
---Length of the cutscene
-reset-key
--space
-Modify-variable
--SkipCutscenes[false]
--true
Now set up the cutscenes in the same way as above except you use
when
-string-equals
--SkipCutscenes[false]
--false
as your trigger.
Now that makes perfect sense :nod:
Cheers Karajorma, I shall give this a try :yes:
I have to say i've never really released a full on -campaign, just little snippets of event'ish experiments, but i reckon my first release will be happilyt recieved.
:nervous:
I hope........
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Why not just have space skips cutscenes? Simple, effective... at least thats's how I'm doing it
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The more complex your cutscene, the harder it becomes to skip at any point.
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Each mission will actually be 3 missions.... a cutscene, a launching from the carrier scene, and then the actual action scene.
ah, hem, are you a friend of Mobius? because this seems quite familiar to me... it's exactly what he did for some missions of Steadfast...
I'm actually doing it for the whole first episode. The more appropriate word usually used to describe someone like me is "Masochist".
Sounds good but please don't fall into the trap of having unskippable cutscenes at the start of every mission. It gets rather annoying by the 3rd or 4th time you're replaying a failed mission. It's not hard to make cutscenes automatically skip after a certain number of plays.
Interesting... you're right. how do you do it?
Keep in mind that skipping a cutscene isn't always possible. For example, in Steadfast mX, you are requested to support a cruiser shortly after the take off. A mini-mission in the mission. You can't skip all related messages.
Karajorma, as expectable, is right. Starting cutscenes should be "skippable". That's something I'm seriously taking in consideration.
But there's a problem... what if there are message-lists? I obiously can't open all the missions I made so far and create an event for every message(I will have to do this, if I want to make sure that the message is displayed DURING the cutscene). The max number of events is 150. I will break this limit!
That's what I have in mind:
show-subtitle(s) - "Location, Hour, Ship the player is being launched from"
show-subtitle - "Press S to skip" <---this will displayed for a certain amount of seconds. If the player doesn't press "S", the cutscene will proceed and there's no way to stop it.
In can be done with multiple parts of the cutscene...in theory. But I'm sure that it will give some problems.
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I like the idea of an opt out window, I'll take all this on board.
Top guys, bloomin upgrades, Good old Retail Fred was so simple :lol:
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I find FRED_Open more simple. :)
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FRED2_Open makes it possible to make the same mission as retail with much less effort. On the other hand it allows you to do new things that are much more complex.
Keep in mind that skipping a cutscene isn't always possible. For example, in Steadfast mX, you are requested to support a cruiser shortly after the take off. A mini-mission in the mission. You can't skip all related messages.
I think you're talking at cross purposes with me here Mobius. My code was never designed to let you skip a cutscene that was currently playing. It was designed to prevent the cutscene playing the next time you play a mission.
You can implement it so that it skips this play too as you have done. If you notice my reply to Trashman above I did say that complex cutscenes can be hard to skip. But at least you can avoid inflicting them on the player again if he fails the mission. :)
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Eh?..
If-key-pressed
- space
- end missioon
that's very easy methinks...
Oh, you're refering to in-mission cutscenes? :nervous:
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You can implement it so that it skips this play too as you have done. If you notice my reply to Trashman above I did say that complex cutscenes can be hard to skip. But at least you can avoid inflicting them on the player again if he fails the mission. :)
The cutscene I was refering to is a total exception :)
Oh, you're refering to in-mission cutscenes? :nervous:
Of course!!!
How can you fail and replay a cutscene mission? :wtf:
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That would make a good idea for Axem's next............
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Goober's next I hope.
Another thing about in-mission cutscenes...they're impossible to create with a ship limit number of 100 :blah:
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It's not too bad. One thing I would suggest is moving the sun to a position where it shines some light on the scene. This makes the scene somewhat more dramatic, especially for people who use low ambient-light settings and can't see a thing. Beam-locking the Midway after its initial salvo might also be a good idea, and ending the mission a bit sooner.
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Another thing about in-mission cutscenes...they're impossible to create with a ship limit number of 100 :blah:
That limit has been lifted in the latest CVS builds.
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Speaking of cutscenes...can you make the letters larger with the show-subtitle SEXP?
Is there a way to make really big letters appear?
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Another thing about in-mission cutscenes...they're impossible to create with a ship limit number of 100 :blah:
That limit has been lifted in the latest CVS builds.
It would be a good idea to increase the 150 event limit too, if it hasn't been done already. Long cutscenes can eat up events very quickly.
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It would be a good idea to increase the 150 event limit too, if it hasn't been done already. Long cutscenes can eat up events very quickly.
I think that's been done since before 3.6.9 came out. :p
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The 2/12 FRED2 build (which is post-3.6.9) doesn't like more than 150. I haven't tried anything newer though.
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Speaking of cutscenes...can you make the letters larger with the show-subtitle SEXP?
Is there a way to make really big letters appear?
:nervous:
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Speaking of cutscenes...can you make the letters larger with the show-subtitle SEXP?
Is there a way to make really big letters appear?
there is a way to display graphics in the hud - Axem did that in JAD3 and IPAndrews did that for BHX*
*(for TBP - a beta was released during the 3.4 beta tests..)
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So basicly a a picture? Size? format? Standard rules apply? (0,255,0 = invisible?)
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It can be done with Scripting.
Another thing about in-mission cutscenes...they're impossible to create with a ship limit number of 100 :blah:
That limit has been lifted in the latest CVS builds.
Interesting. Thanks for the info :yes:
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what can be done? the large letters?
Why do people allways give me half-complete answers???
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Another thing about in-mission cutscenes...they're impossible to create with a ship limit number of 100 :blah:
Ship-create sexp... in cutscenes it's easier, because you're sure the player won't see the appearing ship.
Ships limit number, events limit number.... any idea of the waypoints limit number? is anybody interested in increasing it? this because it's not nice to be halfway through a cutscene (fredding job, obviously) and read the message "fred has reached the maximum object number" (or something like this)..... :hopping:
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what can be done? the large letters?
Why do people allways give me half-complete answers???
Calm down. It can be done with the most basic Scripting option.
Ships limit number, events limit number.... any idea of the waypoints limit number? is anybody interested in increasing it? this because it's not nice to be halfway through a cutscene (fredding job, obviously) and read the message "fred has reached the maximum object number" (or something like this)..... :hopping:
Even Italians have limits.
Fortunately, seems that the maximum number of ships has been increased. This is nice, I will no longer have to go crazy with coordinate manipulations and subspace effects! :yes:
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Ship-create sexp... in cutscenes it's easier, because you're sure the player won't see the appearing ship.
I avoid using that unless it's absolutely necessary. It doesn't seem to be entirely stable and crashes the game occasionally (maybe 10% of the time, but the chances go up if you're using it many times).
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Calm down. It can be done with the most basic Scripting option.
Explain please..
And that subtitle SEXP can show a image.
I ask - what kind of image? pcx? dds? bmp?
any size coinstraints? That are the trasnsparency rules for that image?
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*BUMP*
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Ehm...sorry.
I don't know, ask WMCoolmon. I have just copied and pasted his method. :)
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What about show-subtitle? And then the image? I haven't tried it, but I guess it should work.
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You really can't read, can you? :eek2:
Show-subtitle CAN show an image, but I'm asking for specs!
WHERE shoudl the image be located
WHAT type of immage?
Transparency rules?
color depth?
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You really can't read, can you? :eek2:
I already said I couldn't read.
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:nervous:
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Create a thread in "Scripting", Mr. Genius.
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Scripting?
What does subtitle SEXP details have to do with that? :wtf:
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I thought you were refering to JAD 3's big subtitles-based effects. They can be done with scripting.
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What effects? I played the thing but I dont' recall any massive subtitles..
Anywa,y would somebody PLASE give m the specific of that SEXP..... :rolleyes:
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Play Around With That SEXPTM