[Asker]

Hi there, its a me, Asker.

Well... due to lack of time caused by school, moving to my girlfriend, i havent found time to FRED, especially, after my bandmate broke my old laptop with Coke-Mix...

well, well...

Now to the Topic:

I'm working in the first Chaptor of a campaign... but first Mission, first Problems... i got along with the invisible Asteroids myself.. but the Debris Editor dont give the results, i'm looking for...

The idea behind the scenario is a stranded Hades in the middle of a dense Asteroidfield. In the first Mission, you should escort a convoy, because many ships disappeared. In this Mission, its revealed, that the Pirates use the jamm-effect of the metallic asteroids to stealth...

but the problems is... i dont get a asteroidfield, thats dense enough... is 256 the maximum of asteroids in the field? or does the number with the size of the field grow?

Edit: Im also working with an inner box, so the Hades isnt touched by the Asteroids. (some sentrys protect the Hades.)

[Angelus]

The limit of Asteroids is 256 and the smaller the field the denser is it.

You could extract the asteroids models and maps and save them under a different name and then add a entry to a .tbm file.
Then place the asteroids in FRED outside of the asteroid field to increase its size.
The drawback is, it's eating ship slots in FRED ( there's a max number of ships you can place in FRED ).
And unless your convoy has more then 40ships it shouldn't be a big problem though, 'cause you can spawn enemy wings in waves.

[Asker]

Well, I thought about another idea... but i Dont know, if it is that good, cause im not that well on doing that:

An arguement-everytime-when Time elapsed event... maybe with 50 Asteroids.
When 2 seconds are elapsed, then change coordinates of 1 Asteroid (maybe in a list an then after 2 seconds the next on the list is changed). The change could be playerpostion+rand(-1000 to 1000) on the x-y-z coordinate... but it should be 100 away... would a rand(500-1000) do it, when another random event decides wether its positive oder negative?

EDIT:
Okay, i tried to make this event. (For testing i just tried out 15 asteroids)
I got one Problem. I want a random number between -2000 to -500 and 500 to 2000. can someone help me with that? has that something to do with the seeds?

[karajorma]

The rand SEXP should do that.  Even if it doesn't just make a random number between 0 and 1500 and then subtract 2000 from it.


Seeds are a way of cheating slightly during mission development. You basically set a seed to the rand SEXP and it stops being random. Every time you use the SEXP it will give you the same set of numbers in the same order. This makes playtesting a lot easier. When the mission is ready you remove the seed and the mission becomes truly random.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

I believe Kara is referring to the rand-multi sexp.  Rand is only evaluated at mission load? and always returns the same value.  Rand-multi evaluates when it's called. 

[karajorma]

Yes but if you seed rand it will give you the same number every time you play the mission. That can also be quite useful.

[Asker]

Well, i succeeded in generating random coordinates... but 1 prob is still there... when i try to create them 500 units away (creating a box, where no asteroids appear), 3 corridors, and meeting themselves in the box are created, so the asreroids er just created in five boxes. Any suggestions?

EDIT: My formula:
x=get x-coord[Alpha]+(rand-multiple(500-2000)*(1-(2*rand-multiple(0-1)))