[Creash]

1)  I can't engage my after burners in my custom made missions I've created via FRED.  Is there some event or option I have to engage like you do for Beam Weapons (beam free all) to make it work?

2)  I love how you've found a way to make a mission end via landing on a carrier.  I'd love to incorporate this technique into my Freespace 2, B5, and own Wing Commander missions and am curious what steps you take to make it happen.  If I had to guess, does it entail having your fighter getting within so many meters of a designated capital ship?

[Shade]

2) It does. There's an end-mission SEXP that, when used with a distance check to the landing bay, will do exactly that. An event to do it will look something like this:

* Carrier_Landing
    -op when
        -op >
            #50
            -#distance-ship-subsystem
                 #<player ship>
                 #<carrier>
                 #<fighterbay>
        -op end-mission

Replace the stuff in <brackets> with the proper names of ships and subsystems, and it will end the mission when the player gets within 50 metres of the carrier's figherbay.

[Starman01]

What shade said

As for the afterburner, it never happended to me that it doesn't work. Just note, that there are several special ships.tbl entries used. All AI fighters have still the standard recharging Freespace Afterburner, only the player has a limited one, and therefore we created special entries.

They are named a little strange (varify only in one letter), but those are the few :

F-66B Thunderbolt VII
F/A-76A Longbow P
F-86A Hellcat V
F-96D Arrow

Besides those "standard" player ships, there is one more :

F-96D Arrow NOAB

This one here has it's afterburner completly removed (I use it for story part where the player shouldn't use his afterburner).

Did you use the last one accidently ?

[Creash]

What shade said

As for the afterburner, it never happended to me that it doesn't work. Just note, that there are several special ships.tbl entries used. All AI fighters have still the standard recharging Freespace Afterburner, only the player has a limited one, and therefore we created special entries.

They are named a little strange (varify only in one letter), but those are the few :

F-66B Thunderbolt VII
F/A-76A Longbow P
F-86A Hellcat V
F-96D Arrow

Besides those "standard" player ships, there is one more :

F-96D Arrow NOAB

This one here has it's afterburner completly removed (I use it for story part where the player shouldn't use his afterburner).

Did you use the last one accidently ?

Aaaah, that would be it.  My mission has me flying the Arrow NOAB.  Good good, I'll go change that right now    As for the landing event, very clever and well done!  I intend to use it often in some of my missions.

It makes more sense than jumping into subspace/hyperspace when the carrier your supposedly located right next to in the field of engagement is just 500 meters to your port side 

[karajorma]

F-96D Arrow NOAB

This one here has it's afterburner completly removed (I use it for story part where the player shouldn't use his afterburner).

I'm thinking about adding a lock-afterburner SEXP same as I did with weapon lock a while back so that people don't have to go through this sort of nonsense.

Now that 3.6.9 is out I can look into it as soon as the BtRL demo is out and things quieten down a little.

[Creash]

2) It does. There's an end-mission SEXP that, when used with a distance check to the landing bay, will do exactly that. An event to do it will look something like this:

* Carrier_Landing
    -op when
        -op >
            #50
            -#distance-ship-subsystem
                 #<player ship>
                 #<carrier>
                 #<fighterbay>
        -op end-mission

Replace the stuff in <brackets> with the proper names of ships and subsystems, and it will end the mission when the player gets within 50 metres of the carrier's figherbay.

I'm having trouble creating the proper event chain listed under the Event Manager to get this working.  I always end up not doing one path correctly so I can't bring up the options I want.  Any way you can break it down even easier for me please? 

Aaaah, to be noobish.  I make up for it in crazy-big-battles, good voice overs, and good mission content.  I thought I was really good at FRED, but now I see I'm really starting to meet the masters.  I love these forums

[Creash]

F-96D Arrow NOAB

This one here has it's afterburner completely removed (I use it for story part where the player shouldn't use his afterburner).

I'm thinking about adding a lock-afterburner SEXP same as I did with weapon lock a while back so that people don't have to go through this sort of nonsense.

Now that 3.6.9 is out I can look into it as soon as the BtRL demo is out and things quieten down a little.

Weapons lock as in terms of your load-out or something as nifty as instance missile lock ons?  8)

[Turey]

Weapons lock as in terms of your load-out or something as nifty as instance missile lock ons?  8)

As in terms of "You can't fire, but you can die!"

[Starman01]

Here is an example : Note that fighterbay01 is always in the front of the carriers, and fighterbay02 is in the back :

Code: [Select]


-event-name
  op-when
     op <
         op- distance ship subsystem
               Alpha 2 (player ship)
               TCS Hermes   (carrier)
               fighterbay02
          25
   op- end-mission

Important : You need to chain this event to some other event or a goal, otherwise the mission will also end when you fly to that position right on the start of the mission. I usually chain it to the arrival of the last navpoint or the "you are clear to land" message

@Karajorma : That would be handy if you would do that     BTW, I need your help again to fix that stupid goal in mission 2, can you spare a few minutes ?

[Turey]

Code: [Select]


-event-name
  op-when
     op <
         op- distance ship subsystem
               Alpha 2 (player ship)
               fighterbay02
          25
   op- end-mission


did you forget the name of the ship that has fighterbay02?

EDIT: Woah, now it's there.

[Starman01]

Hehe, I was faster (and noticed myself )  Sometimes you have to be really quick in this forum to edit your stuff

[antagonist]

Now that you've helped him getting started with FRED, can't you blackmail him into FREDing the WCS campaign missions or something?

[Creash]

Now that you've helped him getting started with FRED, can't you blackmail him into FREDing the WCS campaign missions or something?

I'd actually be very interested in helping with the development team!

I'd be handy in many different departments:

1) Voice Overs and Voice Over Script (theatre experience, college creative writting minor, attended Newhouse School of Comunications for film at Syracuse, University)
2) Mission Concept Creation and Development (FRED capable, writting, film)
3) Storyline Writting (writting, film)

I wish I had the uber campaign I made a few years back called "War on the Frontier" I made fore FS2, a great 12 mission masterpiece with full voice-over and original screenplay as a 'interview folio' or 'resume', but I lost that back in the day in one of many nasty reformats and it got corrupted somehow in reinstall 

Also, one note is that I am a dedicated singe-player cheater, so I tend to make missions to accommodate that    I like the battles big, intense, so much that if you weren't invulnerable it is rather doubtful you'd get out alive in the middle of a furball with almost 40 fighters on each side and large fleets going toe-to-toe on top of that.  If there wasn't an opening or invitation, it's ok.  College life keeps me pretty busy (though I spent still too much time on this and gaming ) but would certainly think it over if I was asked to join the team.  I love a chance to throw my creativity into something for others to experiance and enjoy.  And being on top of these kind of breakthroughs the folks at Hard-Light Productions would sure be something.  8)

[Creash]

Code: [Select]


-event-name
  op-when
     op <
         op- distance ship subsystem
               Alpha 2 (player ship)
               fighterbay02
          25
   op- end-mission


did you forget the name of the ship that has fighterbay02?

EDIT: Woah, now it's there.

Sadly it's more from be being Noobish than anything.  I'm not sure what operator your using when you have just 'op' listed, nor can I find how to put in the numerical value 50.  I need more of a step-bye-step process as you go down the tree....as in what you first select out of what category under each operator type, then so on and so on as you find from the menus where you select the actual operation.

Reminds me of the days when I first got into FREDing and couldn't figure out how to get the beam-free-all to work when I had so many ships jumping in, out, etc. which muddled things up and took tedious work to individually turn them on.  Thank god for 3.6.9 and the "beams by default" option! 

Oddly enough, timing voice overs was the easiest.  Some would argue that's one of the harder parts.

[Creash]

Now that you've helped him getting started with FRED, can't you blackmail him into FREDing the WCS campaign missions or something?

Hehehe.  I've been using FRED for years.  I just haven't used it vigorously for a while as I used to and now, with the resource of these good folks at Hard-Light, I want to bring my FREDing up to the next level.  They sure work better than an FAQ you'll find out there. 

I just hope you admin on the forums don't get annoyed with all my questions 

[karajorma]

Check my FAQ's FRED pages to help you get up to speed with string variables and the argument SEXPs. You'll be amazed at the kind of stuff you can do with them [

@Karajorma : That would be handy if you would do that     BTW, I need your help again to fix that stupid goal in mission 2, can you spare a few minutes ?

Always happy to. Catch me on ICQ or the HLP IRC channel if you want a speedier response time cause I'm going to be spending most of my time today FREDding for BtRL so I won't be checking for PMs much today.

[gevatter Lars]

BtRL is on of the mods I am waiting for. From what I have seen the shipmodels and gameplay look realy good.

[Mancubus]

Hay i have another noobish question :  how does the autopilot work? i mean i found the way to create navpoints and give carry status to the ships, but when i try it ingame the navpoit is targetd correctly, but after pressiung alt+A the ship starts making circles and the time compression doesn't activate 

BTW mayby you'll consider releasing source fred file for one of the missons (preferably 'bomb run' i think it has everything in it) so people can just watch the fred code and try to figure out how it works. then you won't have to answer all this stupid questions 

[Starman01]

I know this problem, had it quite some times. I can't really say how to fix this, it somehow related to the game not recognizing who is the leader for the autopilot flight. Changing models, wings or setplayer usually fixed it (though I can't say for sure which).

Also sometimes funny I (alpha 2) are not leading the autopilot, but Alpha 1 was (which is actually a nice thing). That belongs to the same error, but I can't reproduce it on purpose.

Nevertheless, because of this I made myself a template mission for starting purpose, you can download it here :   

http://www.wcsaga.com/~team/Starman/downloads/template.fs2

It contains waypoints, necessary starting SEXP and three wings, the player (alpha2) is leading the autopilot flight.

[karajorma]

BTW mayby you'll consider releasing source fred file for one of the missons (preferably 'bomb run' i think it has everything in it) so people can just watch the fred code and try to figure out how it works. then you won't have to answer all this stupid questions 

Get yourself VPView from my FAQ's tool page and you can look at any mission you like in the VP