[CP5670]

Does anyone else think that FS2's directive system is rather clumsy, from a mission designer's point of view? I've been doing stuff with FRED for eight years but have never found the method for setting up directives to be quite natural. You frequently have to make dummy events and chain the directive events off them in order to get the directives to show up at a certain time, and controlling the failure conditions (under which the directive turns red) can be tricky and often requires playing around with variables.

Although there is no point in changing it now, I think it would have made more sense to have an entirely separate section (like the objectives) for the directives, where you could explicitly specify the conditions under which the directive appears, is satisfied or has failed.

[karajorma]

Problem with that is that I tend to use directives for more than just passing on information to the player. Quite often I'll have action SEXPs in there too because there is little sense in having a directive and an event that have the same trigger.

One thing that does need fixing is that bug/feature where events using is-event-true don't appear until either completed or failed though.

[Colonol Dekker]

Directives are cool, they're like little Hud Post-it notes.........

[Nuclear1]

Directives are cool, they're like little Hud Post-it notes.........

Don't think I've ever thought of it like that before.

I personally don't have any problem with the way directives are set up, though it would be cool if there had been a feature to tell FRED when to make a certain directive appear, sort of how validate-goal works.

[Colonol Dekker]

You mean like chaining them?  :

[CP5670]

Problem with that is that I tend to use directives for more than just passing on information to the player. Quite often I'll have action SEXPs in there too because there is little sense in having a directive and an event that have the same trigger.

That's true, but you could also say that about the objectives. A few new sexps to monitor the status of the directives (like is-directive-true-delay, etc.) would be handy in this case, as you can then just let the directives and events reference to each other instead of copying the same conditions in both places.

It's usually pretty easy to specify how the directives are to be satisfied. It's making them appear or fail properly that can get messy.

I personally don't have any problem with the way directives are set up, though it would be cool if there had been a feature to tell FRED when to make a certain directive appear, sort of how validate-goal works.

There is. You can make a second "dummy event" with the condition and chain the directive event off it. Many of my directives actually consist of two events linked in this manner.

[IPAndrews]

Directives are cool, they're like little Hud Post-it notes.........

Great quote. Well done Dekker. 

[Nuclear1]

I personally don't have any problem with the way directives are set up, though it would be cool if there had been a feature to tell FRED when to make a certain directive appear, sort of how validate-goal works.

There is. You can make a second "dummy event" with the condition and chain the directive event off it. Many of my directives actually consist of two events linked in this manner.

I already knew about this. Whatever I was thinking when I wrote the earlier post must've made some sort of sense to me back then, but now it doesn't.

[Colonol Dekker]

Directives are cool, they're like little Hud Post-it notes.........

Great quote. Well done Dekker. 

Whoa, I'm actually doing well in this thread I stand by chaining to events to control directive appearance though.

[Mobius]

Karajorma:Is this bug going to be fixed soon?

Dekker:You made this sentece appear in Snail's signature

[karajorma]

Karajorma:Is this bug going to be fixed soon?

The one with Is-event-true? I'd like to fix it but I'm rather worried about breaking missions written using that SEXP. There's a good chance that directives will start popping up all over the place that were incorrectly FREDded but masked by that bug.

[Mobius]

The one with Is-event-true? I'd like to fix it but I'm rather worried about breaking missions written using that SEXP. There's a good chance that directives will start popping up all over the place that were incorrectly FREDded but masked by that bug.

I see.However I wasn't putting you under pressure to fix it quickly,just to do it in further releases.

[Snail]

Directives are cool, they're like little Hud Post-it notes.........

Great quote. Well done Dekker. 

Whoa, I'm actually doing well in this thread I stand by chaining to events to control directive appearance though.

Um... Is it okay if I use a quote for my siggy?

[Mobius]

Remember to not exaggerate!

[Colonol Dekker]

Directives are cool, they're like little Hud Post-it notes.........

Great quote. Well done Dekker. 

Whoa, I'm actually doing well in this thread I stand by chaining to events to control directive appearance though.

Um... Is it okay if I use a quote for my siggy?

By all means add it to your sig,............


edit --

belated fix.