[Ker.Soth]

Man, that was a fast responce. Really know how to make someone feel welcome don't ya? I've got a few programming skills, so the editor hasn't been a problem this far, even managed to make my ship dock with the Omegas. Cause I'm a hardcore fan. No hyperdrives in small ships. Period.



PS: Hope I'm not insulting anyone with the no hyperdrive thing. Whoever created/helped create TBP is much more hardcore than I am

[haloboy100]

Man, that was a fast responce. Really know how to make someone feel welcome don't ya?

Mobius is like that

[IPAndrews]

No hyperdrives in small ships. Period.

The game our game is based on (Freespace 2) gives jump drives to all ships including small ones. So our game does the same. It's up the the mission designer to disable jump drives for ships where it's not appropriate. If you're interested in how it's done have a look at the Raider Wars missions.

[Ker.Soth]

Thnx IP. I've spent some time looking through the editor and I've managed to make fighters arrive and depart through the hangars of the capitals. I think that this drastically changes the dynamics of the missions, since you can really cull the opponents' reinforcements by destroying the hangarbay. My only problem right now is that when my wing arrives, my wingmen keep crashing on me for a few seconds until we exit the hangar. Any leads? Changing the initial speads doesn't seem to work. I have to throttle up the afterburnen to avoid that.  BTW I haven't found any threads dealing with SEXP findings. I'm really interested in exchanging ideas about the cutscene SEXPs



PS:Spaceballs ludicrus speed comes to mind. Thnx whoever did that.

Well, Questions then. How the heck does someone make the camera move during the cutscene? I meen moving with a given ship, not change location. And what is turn time? When I try to use the the camera simply goes ballistic for the amount of seconds I've declared

[IPAndrews]

The game engine launches fighters from hangers by having them follow a pre determined launch path. If you happen to be in the way of that path, they're going to crash into you. All you can do is fiddle with your player's fighter's position and try and keep it out of those launch paths. Be warned though that, in general, the AI in this game is not particularly good at collision avoidance. Luckily most ships are made out of rubber. So damage caused by collisions is kept to a minimum.

The cutscene SEXPs in their basic form are easy to use. They allow you to take the game view out of the cockpit and to a camera positioned anywhere, then point that camera in any particular direction. Then all you have to do is script your ships as you would in a normal mission so the things you want to happen in front of the camera actually happen. For an example see the Ragesh 3 attack cutscene at the beginning of Raider Wars.

[Ker.Soth]

It actually hit me after I wrote the post, gave it a try seems to work fine. You just have to have your ship ai-controled during the first few seconds of the mission, and it will get out of the bay just fine. Kinda felt stupid cause I was already using ai-control to dock. Go figure.

 Next question, does anyone know how to make moving navpoints? There is a SEXP that binds navs to a ship, theoretically moving them along with it but I must be missing something.

[IPAndrews]

I didn't even think of using the AI to get the player ship out of the hanger. Nice work. You can't move waypoints unfortunately. You can move nav beacons using a ship reposition SEXP that I forget the name of. I've never tried to get a ship to fly to a nav beacon instead of a waypoint though. Where as you'd use waypoints or waypoints-once to get it to fly to a waypoint you could maybe use guard or stay-near to get it to fly to a nav beacon. That's the best I can offer.

[Ker.Soth]

Never thought of that, definately worth a try, or make an invisible-no collide ship that will do the job. That just hit me too. Getting all these questions out of my chest feels wonderful.
 
Of course I have another question. I've tried having freighters arrive in the EXPLORER'S main hangar, but the DO NOT want to cooperate. They either stay put once they arrive or make a 90 degree vertical turn and try to exit through the hangar's walls. I've tried different compinations of the arrival paths but it was no good. ( I thought of using the EXPLORER as an EA modular base, the Orions are too small compared to the bases of the other races.)


 BTW receiving answers from THE MAN is very humbling.

[Colonol Dekker]

Press F3 from the main menu to enter the model viewer. Have a look at the paths on the explorer using the various options to show them. See how they're layed out. They may be a "bit off".
*gets ready to dodge a ppg blast from IPA

[IPAndrews]

*gets ready to dodge a ppg blast from IPA

I didn't convert that one mate. Don't look at me.
* whistles and walks away *

[IPAndrews]

Of course I have another question. I've tried having freighters arrive in the EXPLORER'S main hangar, but the DO NOT want to cooperate. They either stay put once they arrive or make a 90 degree vertical turn and try to exit through the hangar's walls.

You might have to surrender to the game engine on this one. I expect the freighters have noticed they are passing into the bounding box of the Explorer and are executing super secret collision avoidance maneuver alpha (point in some random direction away from the other ship and step on the accelerator).

BTW receiving answers from THE MAN is very humbling.

  Kara is more the man when it comes to these matters.

[Ker.Soth]

Now, that's something I hadn't noticed. There are a lot more model paths than dockind paths, but the explorer only has options for 10 docking paths, that must be it. Somehow, somewhere, I'll find the correct combination.  hahaH AHAAHHAAHAHHAHAAHAH

What's the actual difference between docking paths and models paths? I know it sounds stupid, but I only got my hands on TBP 2 weeks ago.

PS While I was typing a reply to Colonel Dekker IP asnwered as well.

If that is the case then a no-collison might fix it. I'll look into it later today. If not, what the heck, I'm happy being able to do all the other cool stuff.

[Colonol Dekker]

Model paths are for turrets and random model gubbins. I think the hangar docks fall into that category. Docking points are for "external linkage" i may be wrong, if so i'll be shortly corrected.

[Ker.Soth]

I think I got it. maybe. I tried the no-collision thing, it might work with a little bit of fine tuning. As  long as I can get it to work within a reasonable amount of SEXPing, I'll use that. THNX for the info Colonel Dekker.

Now, the big question. Briefing Maps. Can someone teach me how to use them properly? All my attempts this far look like a piccaso painting.

[Colonol Dekker]

Briefing maps?
Have you read through the fred tutorial documents? They're pretty comprehensive. With regards to the different b5 icons, the tbp readme might have more info on what's what

[Ker.Soth]

Yeah, I've read the docs several times. Still I can't get it just right. I understand what I must do, but everything keeps coming up wrong. Maybe I simply can't do that, but I'm not willing to give up just yet.

 Main thing is, ok you save the first pic, then what? Does the editor auto-control the camera movement? Do you have to save the next screen at a different location? It just seems to zoom in and out and move on it's own. I'm certain it must be something really easy, I just don't get it for some reason.

[Colonol Dekker]

Save the view for each added stage, move the screen the same you would normally then save when happy. If you want a fuzzy cut to the next stage, click the cut to next stage checkbox. Sometimes you may need to pan back to allow the larger icons to show. If in doubt just open an existing mission and try to copy the way the author made it.
i got faith in ya. I wanna see a working brief within the week. ;D

[Ker.Soth]

Allrighty then, you're on. You'll have a working briefing/ mission in............<disembodied scary voice> seven days.

Do I use FRED to open .pkv files, or is it going to mess things up? (ULTRAnewbie question.)

[Colonol Dekker]

Pkv? Nah Fred only opens .fs2 files. Vpview opens vp files, google a vp viewer to open up .vp files and get the mission goodies.

[Ker.Soth]

Will do. Thnx Colonel Dekker, you're being a great help.

 Now on to another thing. Is there any table showing the relative strength of Capitals? So far, I've been creating missions just to see how things go and get a feel of what's going on. I must say, those damn Primus' have a heck of a range.

And a tiny thing. I read about a weapons table but I can't find it anywere. Any links?