Author Topic: B5 - Star Fury Pilot...  (Read 13125 times)

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Offline wesp5

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B5 - Star Fury Pilot...
I'm playing these cool single missions at the moment but I have problems with two of them. The "A view from the gallery" mission just goes on without end even after both waves of the enemy ships are destroyed. Is this a bug or is something more supposed to happen? Also in the "Voice in the wilderness" mission after the alien ship appears nothing more happens. Another broken script?

 

Offline Slasher

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Re: B5 - Star Fury Pilot...
I'll look at them later tonight but I can't remember having a problem with them. 

 

Offline Slasher

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Re: B5 - Star Fury Pilot...
It looks like "A View From the Gallery" should end automatically once the invasion force has been destroyed.  There should be a message saying as much about 10 seconds before you end up at the debriefing screen.  If you see this message but nothing happens then something weird is going on.  If you don't see this message then it might be a matter of some targets yet to be destroyed.

A quick look at "A Voice in the Wilderness" shows that the second alien ship is supposed to fire on the other alien ship that was present at the beginning of the mission.  It looks like the only condition that needs to be met for the mission to end automatically is the destruction of that first alien ship "Unknown Ship."  The second alien ship is supposed to help with this but from the events I've looked at it's only supposed to fire once and, fire or not, vanish about 10 seconds after arrival.  Given the distances involved I doubt it's beam will hit the Unknown Ship.  Back in 2007 or 2008, the fire-beam events allowed ships to hit targets well outside their normal range.  There has been a code change since then that can and will break missions like these, I'm afraid. 

 

Offline wesp5

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Re: B5 - Star Fury Pilot...
It looks like "A View From the Gallery" should end automatically once the invasion force has been destroyed.  There should be a message saying as much about 10 seconds before you end up at the debriefing screen.

I think I didn't get that message. Maybe I will have to try it again. There are only two waves of enemies right?

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A quick look at "A Voice in the Wilderness" shows that the second alien ship is supposed to fire on the other alien ship that was present at the beginning of the mission. 

My problem here was that  the second ship never appeared. Maybe I will have to try that mission again too...

BTW Slasher, were you involved with the creation of this mission pack? If so, congratulations on some very cool missions! Replaying some of the biggest battles of the series was fantastic. If have some bug reports though:

- All the map names begin with "Babylon 5" which is a bit long so you can't really see how the map is called.

- In the "Signs and Portents" mission there is a typo in the debriefing calling Londo "Milari" and not "Mollari".

- In the "Twilight Struggle" mission there is another Narn cruiser appearing during the battle which is not consistent with the show. Also why are several Shadow fighters not lockable and invisible to the computer and most of the others are not? The mission is hard enough already so I really hope this is a bug that can be fixed.

- In the amazing "Shadow Dancing" mission there is a Star Fury flying around with the label "Shadow Battle Crab" and a battle crab with the label "Medium Cruiser" or something. These two would better be corrected. Also the latter one and another battle crab far away don't ever interact in battle, even if they are attacked!

 

Offline Slasher

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Re: B5 - Star Fury Pilot...
madaboutgames, one of our team members that left for parts unknown some time ago, is the author of this particular mission pack.  If you like this one then you might try his Earth-Brakiri War and Heat Em Up campaigns as well.

 

Offline wesp5

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Re: B5 - Star Fury Pilot...
madaboutgames, one of our team members that left for parts unknown some time ago, is the author of this particular mission pack.

Oh, so there is no chance of getting this issues fixed?

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If you like this one then you might try his Earth-Brakiri War and Heat Em Up campaigns as well.

I sure will :)! Thanks for all your great contributions...

 

Offline FUBAR-BDHR

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Re: B5 - Star Fury Pilot...
He still checks in occasionally so there is a chance he would fix it if it is confirmed to be a bug.  Even if he doesn't we can always include a fixed version in the next Zathras. 
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Offline wesp5

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Re: B5 - Star Fury Pilot...
Even if he doesn't we can always include a fixed version in the next Zathras.  

I have no idea how TBP modding works but maybe simple things like wrong spaceship labels can be easily changed. So how does one open these vp files? Could something like this be done with the FRED editor? What I mean is, is it possible to edit existing campaign to correct errors without redoing everything?
« Last Edit: September 20, 2010, 04:30:30 pm by wesp5 »

 

Offline karajorma

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Re: B5 - Star Fury Pilot...
The fixes for these problems range from trivial to minor difficulty. All you'd have to do is extract the missions from the VP and edit them in FRED. You'd then save the missions to the Data\Missions folder inside the folder where you found the VP. I suspect FUBAR was saying that they'd fix the issues if they could confirm them but far be it for us to prevent someone new taking their first steps in modding/FREDding. We've ended up with many great mission designers in the past because people have tried to fix things themselves and then realised how easy this stuff actually is despite looking hard from the outside. :D

My FAQ links to several VP editors on the tools page. I think VPView should suffice for your problems.

- In the "Signs and Portents" mission there is a typo in the debriefing calling Londo "Milari" and not "Mollari".

.fs2 files are simple text files. You wouldn't even need FRED for this one, a search and replace in Notepad/wordpad would fix it.

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- In the "Twilight Struggle" mission there is another Narn cruiser appearing during the battle which is not consistent with the show. Also why are several Shadow fighters not lockable and invisible to the computer and most of the others are not? The mission is hard enough already so I really hope this is a bug that can be fixed.

You'd need to look through the mission logic and see what the 2nd Narn Cruiser is being used for. For a beginner the easiest way to do that would be to delete it in FRED and see what complains about it being missing when you hit save. :D

Looking though the mission logic (Also Known As events and SEXPs) would allow you to figure out what's up with those shadow ships.

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- In the amazing "Shadow Dancing" mission there is a Star Fury flying around with the label "Shadow Battle Crab" and a battle crab with the label "Medium Cruiser" or something. These two would better be corrected. Also the latter one and another battle crab far away don't ever interact in battle, even if they are attacked!

This level of error tends to suggest that this was partially deliberate. It is common practice in missions to add small ships and put them far away pretending to be much larger ship classes (it taxes the CPU and graphics card a lot less to deal with them). Obviously something has gone wrong if those ships are now taking part in the battle rather than lurking thousands of metres away and only appearing on the mission log when destroyed.

Again looking at the Events would quickly give you an idea of what was being attempted here and clues on how to fix it.
« Last Edit: September 20, 2010, 07:48:50 pm by karajorma »
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Offline Slasher

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Re: B5 - Star Fury Pilot...
I only gave a cursory glance at the scripting, so my analysis on those two missions above might very well be off.  A more in depth look should reveal exactly what madaboutgames intended, and how it can be brought about with the current version of the mod if anyone's up to it. 

 

Offline FUBAR-BDHR

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Re: B5 - Star Fury Pilot...
My thought on it:

Reporting bugs without checking to see if they are reproducible = not so good

Reporting bugs that are reproducible = OK

Reporting bugs with evidence (screen shots, ect) = Good

Reporting bugs with evidence and fixes = Great

Releasing those fixes without attempting to contact the mission designer = not so great.  

So if you can fix them and pass the solution on to to MAG that is great.  If no response from MAG (he's usually unavailable for months at a time) then you can release an update.  

Also in cases like this we need to know if it works when running the default TBP 3.4b install with 3.6.9 and without Zathras.

« Last Edit: September 21, 2010, 12:29:57 am by FUBAR-BDHR »
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Offline Vidmaster

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Re: B5 - Star Fury Pilot...
MAG's campaigns are often based on pretty random scripts, which lead to a general high bug level.
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Offline wesp5

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Re: B5 - Star Fury Pilot...
First some comments for FUBAR: Yes, the bugs in "Twilight Struggle" and "Shadow Dancing" are reproducable because they happened all the dozend times I had to replay these two missions ;)! I managed to finish the "Voice in the wilderness" mission on my second try though, while the "View from the gallery" mission still refused to end with the number of enemy ships gone, but the orders not recognized as accomplished. Also I would gladly contact the creator of these missions, but it was already mentioned here that this isn't easy.

I suspect FUBAR was saying that they'd fix the issues if they could confirm them but far be it for us to prevent someone new taking their first steps in modding/FREDding.

It would be cool if someone else would fix these issues, but I guess you professional have more important things to do and if it is really not that complicated to edit existing campaigns to fix typos and misslabeled ships I could take a look, when my time doing the Bloodlines patch allows for it ;). I could then upload the corrected missions for you to check out of course before they are released to the public...

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You'd need to look through the mission logic and see what the 2nd Narn Cruiser is being used for.

I guess it was added to prolong the mission as several Narn fighters jump in as well, which isn't at all possible in the show. The strange thing is that with the unlockable Shadow fighters around most of the time you won't survive that long anyway, so I really wonder what this backup is supposed to be for.

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This level of error tends to suggest that this was partially deliberate. It is common practice in missions to add small ships and put them far away pretending to be much larger ship classes (it taxes the CPU and graphics card a lot less to deal with them).

That is certainly something different because the "Shadow" Star Fury attacks right at the start together with a bunch of Shadow fighters. Most probably it was just intended to be a Shadow fighter instead. I don't know about the defenseless Shadow crabs, maybe they are supposed to be permanently disabled by the telepaths. It would hardly be possible to win that battle with two more of them alive and active ;)!

 

Offline Slasher

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Re: B5 - Star Fury Pilot...
I looked again at "A View From the Gallery."  There should be at least two directives on the left side of the screen: "Destroy 1st Alien Wave" and "Destroy 2nd Alien Wave."

Once the conditions for these two events has been met you should receive a message, the text  of which simply reads "Good."  Ten seconds later the game should automatically dump you at the debriefing screen.  I can't think of anything that would override an end-mission SEXP, so something might be messed up earlier in the events. 

 

Offline wesp5

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Re: B5 - Star Fury Pilot...
I looked again at "A View From the Gallery."  There should be at least two directives on the left side of the screen: "Destroy 1st Alien Wave" and "Destroy 2nd Alien Wave."

Yes, both count down enemy ships but once they reach zero the don't grey out and the mission doesn't end...

 

Offline FUBAR-BDHR

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Re: B5 - Star Fury Pilot...
There was a bug discovered in end-mission sexp tonight.  Not sure if that would cause this issue or not.  I'll have to test it out when I get time.
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Offline karajorma

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Re: B5 - Star Fury Pilot...
There was? I've made quite a few changes to that code over the years so I'd be interested in hearing what the problem was.
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Offline The E

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Re: B5 - Star Fury Pilot...
Problem was this line:
Code: [Select]
if (!ignore_player_mortality && (Player_ship->flags && SF_DYING)) {
The second part of that boolean will always evaluate to true.
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: B5 - Star Fury Pilot...
Problem was this line:
Code: [Select]
if (!ignore_player_mortality && (Player_ship->flags && SF_DYING)) {
The second part of that boolean will always evaluate to true.

Is this going to change the way end-mission behaves if it is fired after player death?

 

Offline wesp5

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Re: B5 - Star Fury Pilot...
Is this a special syntax problem with the "View from the gallery" mission or a case of incompatibility? Can it be fixed?