Author Topic: Relic mini-campaign uploaded  (Read 26476 times)

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Online wesp5

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Re: Relic mini-campaign uploaded
As such, you have to do things the other way and just blow everything up.  Once that's done, you'll get a message telling you to RTB.  If you did things the easy way, you'll get a directive that says "Return to Xerxes." :)

I got neither end directive, I just moved towards Xerxes on my own, jumped and the mission ended. There seems to be a hole somewhere. Also I didn't complain about scanning or not scanning, but I think if the order is to blow 5 ships up, the ships should count down even if I haven't scanned them.

 

Offline Slasher

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Re: Relic mini-campaign uploaded
I've never actually played that mission with cheat codes so I don't know what effect they might have on that.  If you don't get either the message or the RTB directive after finishing without the codes let me know.  I won't have access to a computer than can open FRED2 for a few days, so I can only check these things in WordPad.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Relic mini-campaign uploaded
Engine will compensate for keymapping if you put dollar signs ($) around the keypress in a training message or directive.

 

Offline Slasher

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Re: Relic mini-campaign uploaded
!

You are a godsend.

 

Online wesp5

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Re: Relic mini-campaign uploaded
I've never actually played that mission with cheat codes so I don't know what effect they might have on that.

I didn't use cheat codes, I gave myself 1000 hull in the fs2 file with Notepad++ ;). This bug may connected to the issue that if you blow ships up without scanning them you don't get them counted as destroyed...

Update:
I finished the cool missions 2 and 3 now. I managed to do all 4 submissions in 2 although I didn't really know what the fourth one was ;). I would recommend using another model for the Brakiri pod though, the waypoint model looks out of place. I didn't like that mission 3 is supposed to play in a nebula although it clearly plays in hyperspace. Why don't you make a dense nebula by joining many nebula efffects like you almost do in level 4? Speaking of which, I don't think that predominately choosing red for both missions 3 and 4 is fun. It's gets into the eye ;). Now for another replay of mission 4, I already lost the Xerxes two times.
« Last Edit: November 09, 2010, 03:34:11 pm by wesp5 »

 

Offline Slasher

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Re: Relic mini-campaign uploaded
I kinda avoided counting down the total number of ships destroyed specifically to discourage people from doing things the hard way. :)

There is an event that checks to see if a ship has been destroyed.  If it was scanned and revealed to have valuables, a variable is incremented by 1.  If it was destroyed before being scanned or was scanned and had nothing of value, the variable is not incremented.  Blow something up that satisfies that second conditional and the variable will not be incremented.  If you don't scan anything ever, the variable will always == 0, regardless of what gets blown up.  Every time the variable is incremented +1, through some annoying FRED-fu, the directive counter will increment -1.  The directive counter starts at 5.  For example: variable == 2, directive counter on screen == 3.  I can assure you quite confidently it's not a bug.  :nod:  

I know it's hard going if scans aren't made prior to the fireworks starting; maybe I should have emphasized that in-game more.  I can't remember if scanning things is in the directives or if scanning stuff is mentioned outside of the briefing but I'll check when I get the chance.

You might be asking why I used a variable for this when a non-variable approach would be much easier.  Well, the problem is the cargo is randomized every time you play the mission.  Hence I can't actually tell you which ships to destroy because I honestly don't know. :D

If you're really curious about the mission mechanics you can crack it open in FRED2.  Even I can't do that right now. *grumbles*
« Last Edit: November 09, 2010, 03:38:40 pm by Slasher »

 

Online wesp5

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Re: Relic mini-campaign uploaded
There is an event that checks to see if a ship has been destroyed.  If it was scanned and revealed to have valuables, a variable is incremented by 1.

Hm, but the directive to destroy 5 ships was suddenly tagged as completed without having been counted down to zero. So is there another option that will trigger it?

Quote
If you're really curious about the mission mechanics you can crack it open in FRED2.  Even I can't do that right now.

I use notepad++ myself because I know too little about FRED2 ;). Speaking of which, I haven't yet looked into it, but there was a bug in the second mission which caused the reward message of the Centauri to be triggered twice. I think it was when I dispatched the security wing.

Also I couldn't finish mission 4 on easy again without cheating by increasing the Xerxes' hull to 1000. It lost over 150 points in the end so I was very far off. Maybe you cracks fly much better, but I think any mission should be solveable on easy without dozends of tries. Also here again marking important targets like the shuttles with function keys would be nice! Besides that, a great mini campaign :)! What do you think about my other suggestions, especially regarding the nebula mission?

 

Offline Slasher

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Re: Relic mini-campaign uploaded
There is an event that checks to see if a ship has been destroyed.  If it was scanned and revealed to have valuables, a variable is incremented by 1.

Hm, but the directive to destroy 5 ships was suddenly tagged as completed without having been counted down to zero. So is there another option that will trigger it?


I'm guessing that if you destroy everything then that particular directive goes to true since there really isn't anything left to destroy at that point.  

It occurred to me some of the missions might actually be easier on Medium than Easy.  I never actually played the campaign on anything lower than Medium, so I figured by default anything easier than that would be, well, easier.  So when I ran into frustrating moments in the campaign, I put events in that only activate if the difficulty level is >= Medium.  On mission 4 there is an event that disables one of the Omega's forward guns if the Xerxes hull integrity drops below a certain percentage, for instance.  The same is true on mission 1.  These "helper" events only kick in when you play on Medium or higher, and some only activate on Hard.  

Since I'm guessing you lose the Xerxes to the Omega's fire on mission 4, in a future release I might just apply these "helper" events across all difficulties, or at least for Easy and above.  I wanted the player's focus in mission 4 to be on smaller craft, and only hitting the capships if there was nothing else to really do.  Possible temporary fix: play on a higher difficulty. :D

 

Online wesp5

  • 29
Re: Relic mini-campaign uploaded
I'm guessing that if you destroy everything then that particular directive goes to true since there really isn't anything left to destroy at that point.

I didn't destroy everything, I only destroyed some tankers and freighters. Probably exactly the five needed only without knowing it.

Quote
Since I'm guessing you lose the Xerxes to the Omega's fire on mission 4, in a future release I might just apply these "helper" events across all difficulties, or at least for Easy and above.  I wanted the player's focus in mission 4 to be on smaller craft, and only hitting the capships if there was nothing else to really do.

I already focused on the smaller craft and only disabled the beam of the first cruiser attacking the Xerxes, so I would indeed suggest enabling these helper elements for all difficulties, especially easy :). Also there were so many fighters that the first time ever my computer started to stutter after Clark's ships arrived.

About the nebula, if you don't want to change the whole level, I would suggest changing the mission description so that it places the whole level in hyperspace. Because I was really disappointed when you announced some cool nebula and all I got was the usual hyperspace ;)...

 

Offline Slasher

  • 29
Re: Relic mini-campaign uploaded
TBP slowed a computer down?  :confused:

Also, here's the list of ships that have to be blown up to finish mission 1:

$Formula: ( or
   ( = @objectives[0] 5 )
   ( is-destroyed-delay
      0
      "Gateway to Paradise"
      "Eagle"
      "Buck Rogers"
      "EASW-CPU-05"
      "EASW-CPU-06"
      "EASW-CPU-07"
      "EASW-CPU-08"
      "Silent Warrior"
      "Cruissier 1"
      "Cruissier 2"
      "Cruissier 3"
      "Vice"
      "Ana Haraway"
      "Renozuken"

 

Offline Slasher

  • 29
Re: Relic mini-campaign uploaded
I'm guessing that if you destroy everything then that particular directive goes to true since there really isn't anything left to destroy at that point.
I didn't destroy everything, I only destroyed some tankers and freighters. Probably exactly the five needed only without knowing it.

Do you remember specifically which ships you destroyed, and if any of them were scanned or not scanned for certain?  I've tried recreating this bug several times now with no success.   :confused:


 

Offline FUBAR-BDHR

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Re: Relic mini-campaign uploaded
Actually yea TBP can cause some slow downs at times.  It should be one heck of a lot less with 3.6.12 and Zathras 2.0 and a lot less when 3.6.14 and whatever Zathras goes with that comes out. 
No-one ever listens to Zathras. Quite mad, they say. It is good that Zathras does not mind. He's even grown to like it. Oh yes. -Zathras

 

Online wesp5

  • 29
Re: Relic mini-campaign uploaded
Do you remember specifically which ships you destroyed, and if any of them were scanned or not scanned for certain?

I've scanned and destroyed the "Renozuken" and also the ship beside it which I can't remember the name. Then I destroyed the two tankers causing those huge explosions and every ship else that tried to flee. Sorry, but I don' know their names.

 

Offline Slasher

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Re: Relic mini-campaign uploaded
Ah!  My fault for not being clear earlier when I said "destroy everything."  By everything I actually just meant the supply and support ships that try to flee, not the warships or their fighters.  Which I guess is a far cry from everything, so my bad for not being specific.  Blow up those ships alone and you have completed the mission's main goal, even if you didn't bother to scan anything.  This is a relief, because that's what is supposed to happen! :)

I've also run through this mission doing both the scan method and "destroy everything (minus combatants)" method and gotten both the message and the directive to return to the Xerxes.  About the only way I can think of right now that you could miss it is if you were hanging around the Xerxes already when the parameters for mission success were fulfilled.  In that case, the directive would show up in your list as already completed since you're already next to the Xerxes.  The ship would then jump a few seconds later, as it's supposed to, without you really knowing you were supposed to return to the ship in the first place, assuming it was your first time playing all the way through.  I could see how one would miss the directive in that case, but it's still actually there.  It just shows up as true (blue text) before you even got a chance to do what it says, because you've already done it.

 

Online wesp5

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Re: Relic mini-campaign uploaded
This is a relief, because that's what is supposed to happen! :)

Ah, so I did the right thing, only I didn't know it because the number was not counting down. Maybe you should consider this in any case, because the objective doesn't demand for only scanned ships to be destroyed...

Quote
About the only way I can think of right now that you could miss it is if you were hanging around the Xerxes already when the parameters for mission success were fulfilled.

Hm, so there was a time limit? I think I just jumped near Xerxes when no objective was left and I didn't know what else to do. Maybe you should trigger an objective to get near Xerxes as soon as 5 ships are destroyed.

 

Offline Slasher

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Re: Relic mini-campaign uploaded
Hm, so there was a time limit? I think I just jumped near Xerxes when no objective was left and I didn't know what else to do. Maybe you should trigger an objective to get near Xerxes as soon as 5 ships are destroyed.

I was really stumped by this one since the event logic seems sound when it finally hit me.  Sometimes new directives don't show up if the directive list is already full.  This can become a problem late in a mission if the mission is particularly big and directive heavy.  Depending on what order stuff is finished in, you might see this directive sometimes, and you might not.  Erratic, I know.

Unfortunately there's nothing I can really do about that.  Short of recoding the HUD, which is no small undertaking I guess, I would have to scale down the mission substantially.  
« Last Edit: November 11, 2010, 08:37:55 pm by Slasher »

 

Online wesp5

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Re: Relic mini-campaign uploaded
I just played Operation Black Sun in which vidmaster managed to change the hyperspace color. Maybe doing something similar could make your nebula mission look like it's not happening in hyperspace.

 

Offline Slasher

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Re: Relic mini-campaign uploaded
Hyperspace/subspace color is set by a texture defined in the skybox.pof file. 

I used the nebula effect, which is an entirely different animal, so this isn't really possible in this case.  I would go for an all black nebula if possible, since it looks closer to a Shadow Deathcloud, but I found the red/black effect isn't too far off. 

I know TBP supports the purple and green nebula effects, but I think you'll agree they lack the "darker" atmosphere.  :)

 

Online wesp5

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Re: Relic mini-campaign uploaded
I used the nebula effect, which is an entirely different animal, so this isn't really possible in this case.

Strange, it looks exactly like hyperspace to me. Maybe the green nebula effect would be worth a try?

 

Offline Slasher

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Re: Relic mini-campaign uploaded
Couldn't find a reference to "hyperspace.pof" anywhere in the mission file.  To my knowledge, that's the only way of enabling the true hyperspace effect in-game.  My guess is the download got corrupted since I'm getting the nebula effect in my version.

And I was wrong earlier about the nebula colors.  Nebula "poofs" are available in purple, red, and a color called "nothing" in FRED2. :D I was mistaken about the green.  There are more background colors available, but mixing the skybox effects with different colored gas effects can scare people into thinking they're on an acid trip so I'm going to avoid that.