[Starman01]

So, I'm back

I tried that, but it didn't work. Goal becomes now true instantly, no matter if I'm in formation or not. Here is my event(s)

[karajorma]

Ummm.  I said ADD the is-destroyed check SEXP to your existing directive. Not REPLACE it

I suppose I could have been clearer

[Starman01]

Uhm,.... o.K 

Shall it be within the "and" part or simply at the end of the event. And I assume when I have to keep my goal-event, I also have to keep my two goal-trigger events then, right ?

Back to the subject, it's really damn complicated making a simple "hold formation" goal 

[Goober5000]

Ugh.  I was hoping I wouldn't have to do this, but here.  Take a look at the attached mission and see how easy it is.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[karajorma]

 Easy .

The fact that you had to swap to using a mission goal despite never having mentioned this step before makes me suspect that it was a little more challenging than you thought it would be

Still it's a better solution than mine. I'll give you that I never thought of using a mission goal (and then invalidating it which I presume you would suggest Starman also does)

Back to the subject, it's really damn complicated making a simple "hold formation" goal 

Only due to the way is-event-true-delay works. I can see the code reason why it's there but it simply doesn't make any kind of intuative sense to a FREDder.

[Goober5000]

The fact that you had to swap to using a mission goal despite never having mentioned this step before makes me suspect that it was a little more challenging than you thought it would be

No, it was not. Take a look at the first three sexps in the mission; they're almost exactly the same except that I took the messages out and fixed one bug (putting 55 where I should have put 0 in one sexp).

The only reason the goal is needed is for the directive.  I didn't put the directive in the first example and I even said I didn't put the directive in the first example. I only wanted to demonstrate the bare minimum of sexp logic to get my point across.

Also, the goal trick can be done away with entirely if one uses taylor's extension to is-event-true-delay to "fix" the directive behavior.

Still it's a better solution than mine. I'll give you that I never thought of using a mission goal (and then invalidating it which I presume you would suggest Starman also does)

Thanks.

That depends on what Starman does.  If he uses taylor's is-event-true extension he won't need the goals.  On the other hand I had been under the impression that Starman was actually connecting this mission objective to a "goal", but perhaps that was a language mixup.

Back to the subject, it's really damn complicated making a simple "hold formation" goal 

Only due to the way is-event-true-delay works. I can see the code reason why it's there but it simply doesn't make any kind of intuative sense to a FREDder.

That depends on your definition of intuitive.

[Goober5000]

And here's the version of the mission with the directives independent of the goals.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[karajorma]

The only reason the goal is needed is for the directive.
I didn't put the directive in the first example and I even said I didn't put the directive in the first example. I only wanted to demonstrate the bare minimum of sexp logic to get my point across.

Given that a working directive was the whole purpose of Starman's post though you couldn't really anwer the question without actually providing a working directive though. And that wouldn't work until you suggested this workaround of using a goal. So until you posted the mission you would have just had Starman return scratching his head wondering why it didn't work
 

Also, the goal trick can be done away with entirely if one uses taylor's extension to is-event-true-delay to "fix" the directive behavior.

I forgot that was his solution to the problem. I did look for the thread where he explained it but I'll be buggered if I could find it using the search function. Either it was in the mantis entry or SMF is being annoying about turning up responses.

That depends on what Starman does.  If he uses taylor's is-event-true extension he won't need the goals.  On the other hand I had been under the impression that Starman was actually connecting this mission objective to a "goal", but perhaps that was a language mixup.

Based on the previous mission I'd say mixup. Having remaining in formation as a mission goal seems somewhat underwhelming. They'd probably have to give you a medal for managing to autopilot back to the base to keep the reward levels scale even.

That depends on your definition of intuitive.

It's a side effect. And side effects inherently hurt code readability. You can get away with a ++ or two but anything beyond that can start to really cause problems. Having to remember that is-event-true-delay has a seperate effect in directives from the one that it would be expected to have (especially one that wasn't actually documented anywhere) isn't exactly what most people would expect.

[Starman01]

The formation-scp works fine, I try addapting this to my mission now

Just one thing :

I'm getting an error message with your event where it complains about the additional true value in the "is-event-true" when being used in the directive. Has there been a change recently to the synthax ? I'm still working with a recent build from 08.10., and there I have to put in a number, 1 for true, 0 for false (though the SEXP-Description talks about something else). Or do you have created that mission using notepad ?

After I changed that, it works fine.

[Goober5000]

Actually, that event is supposed to accept true/false.  Accepting 0/1 is a bug.

I don't think the bugfix is in any new builds yet.  The good news is that both true/false and 0/1 should work.