[BritishShivans]

Well, I'm not sure if I'm saying what I want to get out here, but I'll try.

Recently, I've been trying to learn how to FRED, but I'm not really sure where to start - and looking at "Wrapping your head around the code" thread by Mongoose, I think there's something we can do about that.

What I think we could use is a document with some references that just explains how FRED's tools/SEXPS/basics works in a nice, non-confusing manner (i.e gets the information across as simply and as effectively as possible.) This would be used in conjunction with the tutorials already out there, and would serve as a kind of "help" document.

I don't know if something like this is already out there, but I think it would help with people new to FRED by helping simplify certain things and being a good reference. Hopefully, this would help people trying to find someplace to start - especially myself. I'm not trying to make gigantic EPIC!!11 campaigns, rather I'm trying to FRED a mission or two and try to learn more. 

However, I'm simply baffled, and I really don't have an idea of what to do - there's the documents and that, but I don't know where to start. It's very confusing, personally. I'd like to learn how to FRED, since I like making my own missions/plot ideas, and also because HLP doesn't seem to have plenty of FREDers who can help implement missions. But again, I'm very confused - and I think this is the problem that most people seem to have in regards to using FRED - that initially, starting is very confusing, and while they might take in and learn from the tutorials, putting your own missions ingame is a confusing experience.

Again, I'm not sure if I'm getting my point out, and it'd be nice to hear what other people think about this topic.

[The E]

Did you do the FRED walkthrough, which is part of every complete FS2 install? Some of the things have changed in FRED2_Open, but I'd say that that old walkthrough is still 99% accurate.

There's also the Diaspora FRED walkthrough by Karajorma that covers about the same things, just with FRED2_Open.

[Mongoose]

The original walkthrough really is a great way to get a grasp of the basics.  Hell, if even I can follow it, pretty much anyone can.

[BritishShivans]

I did do the tutorial, actually. But like I repeated twice in my OP, Volition tutorial seems like you're just copying the mission rather than learning from it. Although I might be missing stuff. I'll take a look again later.

[Black Wolf]

What you're asking for is kind of difficult. Yes, the walkthrough produces the same mission every time, but the idea is that you take the lessons learned there and play with them until you can do the things you want to do in your own missions. I... I'm not sure how we could do a better job than that with another type of document.

Honestly, your best bet is to start what you're doing in FRED and keep an IRC window open to #freespace. There's normally at least one or two FREDders who can help you with the more complicated stuff.

[General Battuta]

You only need to do three things to make gigantic EPIC!!11 missions:

1) do the Volition FRED walkthrough (Kara's is great too)
2) Find a not-too-complex released mission and look at how it does stuff; I used missions from retail FS2 and BP:AoA, since anything from, say, Axem is likely to be too hard for a beginner to read
3) Keep an IRC window open

You will be able to do anything you please. Trust me, it's how I learned!

[Goober5000]

If the FRED2 tutorial is not to your liking, you could always try the FRED1 manual.

[mjn.mixael]

FRED Academy and Karajorma's FRED quiz were two good ways to move from the basic FRED tutorial to some more advanced techniques. Sadly, neither of those have had any life for a long time. I have been meaning to whip up something myself to help beginners move on to some more advanced techniques, but I haven't had much motivation.

[BritishShivans]

You only need to do three things to make gigantic EPIC!!11 missions:

1) do the Volition FRED walkthrough (Kara's is great too)
2) Find a not-too-complex released mission and look at how it does stuff; I used missions from retail FS2 and BP:AoA, since anything from, say, Axem is likely to be too hard for a beginner to read
3) Keep an IRC window open

You will be able to do anything you please. Trust me, it's how I learned!

I think doing that would be my best option at the moment. Also, I just remembered Axem's tutorials - I was thinking something along the lines of them, since they're informative without being too confusing. Although judging by how some people said that they're too complex for beginners, I think I might  have a different problem altogether   

[Droid803]

You only need to do three things to make gigantic EPIC!!11 missions:

1) do the Volition FRED walkthrough (Kara's is great too)
2) Find a not-too-complex released mission and look at how it does stuff; I used missions from retail FS2 and BP:AoA, since anything from, say, Axem is likely to be too hard for a beginner to read
3) Keep an IRC window open

You will be able to do anything you please. Trust me, it's how I learned!

That's exactly how I learned FREDding when I started. It's good advice!
Axem's tutorials are for fairly specific things, which you may or may not need.

[Axem]

My best advice is just to jump in and do stuff. Do anything! Make a weird mission that doesn't make any sense. Look at the ships, think of neat things to do and ask yourself "can I do this?" Look at the sexps and find ones that look interesting and ask "how could I use this". My first bunch of (unreleased) missions were just GTVA ships battling the Sathanas and other silly things. No structure or anything. Just for fun! I had only played the retail campaign and just done the tutorial, so any common tips and tricks from today weren't drilled into my head yet. You can't really "learn" how to make a (good) mission, its just something you need to work on and experience.

[BritishShivans]

Also, I do I get my missions to show up in the Tech Room? For some reason FSOpen picks up the two untitled missions that come with FSO by default, but it doesn't do that for mine. Anything I need to do to fix that?

[General Battuta]

Save to /data/missions or [yourmod]/data/missions

[BritishShivans]

Thought I missed something. Thanks.

[BritishShivans]

Hmm. I've been messing around with FRED for a couple of days now, and have been doing the official tutorial and messing around with stuff. I know now what I'm confused by the most: SEXPS.

While I understand the idea of how they're used and everything, the sheer amount of "GOTTA DO X RIGHT OTHERWISE I CAN'T DO Y" has proven to be tedious and irritating, and while easy SEXPs I found easy to do, writing multiple objectives into a goal or event I also found tedious, and again, irritating. I feel as if I am wrestling with the Events editor each time I try out a long event.

So, given this, I think I have found the problem I was attempting to describe in my OP: That the Events editor is frustrating as hell, and that I HATE long events, because you got to do *everything* right, otherwise it just doesn't let you progress at all. 

[The E]

Writing events is just like writing a program. Doing everything exactly right is a must; Just be glad that it's highly unlikely you'll ever create an event that will crash the engine.

There really isn't much we can do to improve the event editor's useability, unfortunately (A big part of the problem being that most of us feel that the event editor is perfectly useable as is).
You could of course use notepad to write events "by hand", as it were, but that approach is full of its own caveats, the least of which being learning the LISP syntax that the code uses, and of course memorizing all the arguments to a given sexp.

[BritishShivans]

I thought about writing it down, actually.

I guess I'll just have to figure out how to deal with long events. I'll get there. Eventually.

Now if I wasn't bloody lazy, too... otherwise I'd know how to art using GIMP by now... 

[The E]

As I said, there is no conceptual difference between writing a program, and writing events. In both cases, you need to define what it is you want to do first, then translate that into the particular branch of formal logic that the event code uses. Some people are able to do this without prior training; others will have to acquire the necessary skills on the way.

[karajorma]

To be honest, a beginning FREDder rarely writes enough huge events or events with difficult enough triggers to get anywhere near as annoyed as you describe. From the sounds of it, you might be making a systematic error rather than the issue being FRED.

To continue E's code analogy, it sounds like you're inlining all your code rather than making function calls. I can easily see how a beginning coder could very quickly find that hugely annoying. If you're doing the same in FRED, then yes, it would be very frustrating too.

If you want to post your mission, we can quickly see if that's the case.

[BritishShivans]

Hmm. I guess. I'll think I'll try and fix the part that I messed up on the SEXP that makes the cruisers jump in on the tutorial, and I'll post it here so you can take a look at it.

Also, thanks for offering that. I wouldn't mind having someone point out where I've done something wrong, since I'm doing this by myself - and often I find that sometimes I can be pretty bad at troubleshooting my own problems.