[Akalabeth Angel]

I just discovered yesterday that there's a limit to the number of variants of cargo you can have in a mission.  Yippee! I didn't actually count to find out how many you can have, but it's probably around 30.

    So now I've reached SexP limit, Ship Limit, and Cargo Name limit while fredding . . . I wonder what's next?!

[pecenipicek]

what are those? i wanna  know

[redmenace]

I am not sure if I should congradulate you or give a scouling look.

[Starman01]

Originally posted by Akalabeth Angel
So now I've reached SexP limit

Welcome to my small sad world

[Grimloq]

learn to sexp consisely! i can get everything (quite ) in less than 1 screen of sexps.
[edit] ALT name limit!

[Starman01]

I'm no newbie

But my missions are highly scripted, nearly 100 events and more, one part for the immense mission-chatter (yes, I'm using message-lists ),  then many scripts because I have sometimes four mission-areas instead of one (due to autopilot) and last thing,  I need tons of scripts to keep the AI behave like I want (i.e. first chat, then attack. Fly formation, break formation and so on).

My biggest problem is now, that I somehow managed to optimize the SEXP to stay below the limit, but now I figured out a way to let the enemies send death-messages (just like in original Wing Commander), but guess what it takes for each fighter, that should do it, namly SEXP

Certainly I can save me a few more Operator, but not enough for my purpose.

[karajorma]

Check out Akalabeth's FA mission and you'll see that he's not exactly wasting events.

Like me he just uses lots of events to cover the unlikely possibilties that can crop up in a mission.

Starman : Check out Goober's new conditionals if you're not already using them. You could probably save a ton of SEXPs using them.

[Starman01]

Originally posted by karajorma

Like me he just uses lots of events to cover the unlikely possibilties that can crop up in a mission.
 

That is exactly the point The AI can sometimes really be a pain in the neck

Where is goobers new stuff located, can you give me a link please ? (However, I fear somehow that this will lead me into some serious rebuilding of the demo-missions, which are nearly finished and voice-acted now, except the death-screams  )

But maybe, I can learn something new for the main-campaign

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Starman01
That is exactly the point The AI can sometimes really be a pain in the neck

Not just the AI either. On any mission that involves disabling a ship you've got to take into account the possibility of some damn fool blowing it away I tend to spend equal amounts of time dealing with player and AI stupidity

Originally posted by Starman01
Where is goobers new stuff located, can you give me a link please ? (However, I fear somehow that this will lead me into some serious rebuilding of the demo-missions, which are nearly finished and voice-acted now, except the death-screams  )

But maybe, I can learn something new for the main-campaign

I wouldn't bother rebuilding missions just to use them but if you've hit the SEXP limit in a mission where you have 5-6 identical SEXP's which only differ in the ship they affect this could do it in one event.

That said I seem to remember Goober saying that the new conditionals actually work by internally generating the standard SEXPs you'd expect in FS2 so they might not help you get over the SEXP limit.

Anyway if you want to give them a try you need the version of FRED from this thread

[Starman01]

Originally posted by karajorma


Not just the AI either. On any mission that involves disabling a ship you've got to take into account the possibility of some damn fool blowing it away I tend to spend equal amounts of time dealing with player and AI stupidity

Yeah, I have almost the same problem, with one exeption. My fighter-wings (and main-actors), which are more or less undestruble (set guardian) sometimes get disabled in a big battle, so I have to repair them before continue autopiloting, otherwise they wont follow me anymore

I wouldn't bother rebuilding missions just to use them but if you've hit the SEXP limit in a mission where you have 5-6 identical SEXP's which only differ in the ship they affect this could do it in one event.

Ah, that you mean. Kazan already told me to do so. It works good in 95% of all cases. But sadly, the Game sometimes skips part of this combined SEXP

When you make something like that ...

__When
___has time elapsed
___________2
___then

_____add goal
___________alpha1
__________   _ai_waypoints once
____________   _path1

____  add goal
___________beta 1
_____________ai_waypoints once
________________path2

____  add goal
___________gamma 1
_____________ai_waypoints once
________________path3

...you have a really good chance, that in 1 out of 10 cases (sometimes even more often) one of the fighters don't receive his goal. I have encountered this very often, so I'm forced to set the waypoints the old way to make sure the AI-Fighters act like they should do.

When I want to prevent it 100% from happening, I need to make 3 Events, and for 500% safety, each is one second after the previous.

More problematic, since the usage of autopilot I have to do this at every nav-point, which is why I need to use so much SEXP (not sure how many people even use the autopilot-code, but this and adding around 100 messages within a mission nearly kills you and escpecially the SEXP-Operators-limit )

[Akalabeth Angel]

Yeah, I have almost the same problem, with one exeption. My fighter-wings (and main-actors), which are more or less undestruble (set guardian) sometimes get disabled in a big battle, so I have to repair them before continue autopiloting, otherwise they wont follow me anymore

     My campaign is fairly similar, in that there are recurring pilots who have been given names and hopefully conistent personalities. What I do is first have an event that gives all ships the Guardian trait (Alpha 2 - 4)

     And then I have three events after that, stipulating that should each fighter be reduced below X hits (usually 30-40%) , I make the invulnerable. Which thus far has eliminated any problems of becoming disabled, while still looking like the pilot has been in combat and but through their skill has survived. Sometimes 1% will pop up if the guy looses 40% in one hit or something, but usually it avoids the "oh look, my wingman didn't die because the computer didn't let him at 1%" problem.

BTW, this is why I hit the cargo XP limit! Click Here

(Btw, all that stuff in the right hand corner has no bearing/consequence on the mission - that's why my missions take so darned long to do!)

[Grimloq]

*screams and faints*


hey, while im here, what does autopilot DO? is it like in 'prophecy'?

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by karajorma
That said I seem to remember Goober saying that the new conditionals actually work by internally generating the standard SEXPs you'd expect in FS2 so they might not help you get over the SEXP limit.

Maybe a better word would be simulate.  It breaks down the list of arguments on the fly and then calls the sexp code for each argument.  It doesn't allocate any new sexps, but it behaves as if it did.

Originally posted by Starman01
...you have a really good chance, that in 1 out of 10 cases (sometimes even more often) one of the fighters don't receive his goal.

That should not happen - at least not as far as the sexps are concerned.  It's probably a bug in the ai code.  I've noticed that occasionally when I issue orders to my wingmen I have to do it twice before they actually obey.  If that's the case, it might be easier to just add a repeat count of 2 to the sexp.

[Grimloq]

no one answered me...

[karajorma]

Only the WCP boys are using the new waypoint code. Not even I know how to use it

*Deflates giant head*

[Starman01]

Don't stress, people have also real life work to do

As for the autopilot, it works currently like that (but will maybe more enhanced in the future) :

You are able to setup waypoints right over the mission-area (with very huge distances between them, 60.000 meters and more).

When you select a nav-point, it is shown blue in on your hud, and has a locator on it, so that you know where you must move to face the navpoint (just like in WC). When a navpoint has been visited he will get green.

After the selection of the navpoint, you can activate the autopilot.
This will take the players ship into the control of the ai (no movement is allowed while autopilot usage), and the system starts activating an automatic travel with increasing time-compression, up to the maximum of 64 x times faster (or 32x, if the navpoints is closer than 30 K). The good thing on this is, that the time-compression increases and degreases slowly, and is not switching to the maximum right of the sudden.

Due to addiontal SEXP you can hide or restrict navpoints, and select which ships (even capships) will follow you into the autopilot-travel. Slowest ship gives the maximum speed.

It is really an excellent feature, created and programmed by Kazan. If set up a usage-tutorial for our fredders. It may not be
perfect, but it shows you how to create autopilot-missions.

If you or someone else (freespace-wiki ?) has interest, I could provide you with the tutorial. For a real campaing-test, you will have to wait a few more weeks.

Maybe sometime later (or only in Ferrium) Kazan will make a nav-map. Of course there is currently no flyby-like in Wing Commander, but still it is a very handy function, and gives you the possibiliy to create much more complex mission, but than, back to the topic, hello Fred-Limit

[phreak]

since this seems to be a sexp question thread now, how is when-argument used?   i think i missed the thread on how to use it

[karajorma]

Not surprised you missed the thread. It was posted on SectorGame on the forum for some obsure mod or other.

*Suddenly finds himself surrounded by the Twisted Infinities team*
"Not in the face! Not in the Face!"

[Trivial Psychic]

Originally posted by PhReAk
since this seems to be a sexp question thread now, how is when-argument used?   i think i missed the thread on how to use it

Well, this is probably the best place to show this off.  I never got it exactly the way I wanted it, mainly in the debriefing, but it shows off one capability of the feature.  Play the mission first, then look at it in FRED.  Just remember, this requires Goober's 11-06 build of FSO & FRED to work properly.  I've entitled the mission Argument Test, but I've tried to flesh it out a bit more... no ingame messages though.

Later!

[phreak]

Originally posted by karajorma
Not surprised you missed the thread. It was posted on SectorGame on the forum for some obsure mod or other.

*Suddenly finds himself surrounded by the Twisted Infinities team*
"Not in the face! Not in the Face!"

figures as much is was implemented during the Great HLP Crash in the 2004th Year of Our Lord.