[Lorric]

I've got a 36 message message chain and it stops at message 30. It should be easy enough to just start a new chain with the last 6 messages to finish it off, but I just wondered if that's the problem I ran into? Do you know?

[FUBAR-BDHR]

You can have a max of 30 messages queued at one time.  So basically unless they have already been sent even a second event won't do it for you.  You need to delay the event until there is time for some of them being sent.   

Note this is for all messages not just send-message-list so if you have that many queued and there are other things going on those messages may be lost as well based on their priority.

Also if you run debug you should be seeing a log message about the message queue being full. 

[Lorric]

You can have a max of 30 messages queued at one time.  So basically unless they have already been sent even a second event won't do it for you.  You need to delay the event until there is time for some of them being sent.   

Note this is for all messages not just send-message-list so if you have that many queued and there are other things going on those messages may be lost as well based on their priority.

Also if you run debug you should be seeing a log message about the message queue being full.

Thanks. I thought it must have a 30 message limit per chain, but it was best to be sure if I could be sure in case it was something else.

I've already removed the excess messages from the chain, and made a second chain with the remaining 6 messages set to kick in after the first chain of 30 is complete, and it works perfectly.

Thanks

[General Battuta]

Don't use send-message-list, it makes adding dialogue skips and checkpoints to your missions a horrible pain in the ass

[Lorric]

Don't use send-message-list, it makes adding dialogue skips and checkpoints to your missions a horrible pain in the ass

That shouldn't be a problem for me. I'm simply splitting my missions up that have a lot of talk in them. When the talking is done, you move on to the next mission for the action.

I would have no idea how to do something advanced like that anyway

[Legate Damar]

Don't use send-message-list, it makes adding dialogue skips and checkpoints to your missions a horrible pain in the ass

That shouldn't be a problem for me. I'm simply splitting my missions up that have a lot of talk in them. When the talking is done, you move on to the next mission for the action.

I would have no idea how to do something advanced like that anyway

There are tutorials for it.

[Trivial Psychic]

Sometimes I use send-message-list to reduce the number of events slightly.  For example, you have an enemy ship that gets destroyed that has a directive associated with it.  You want the directive to come complete as soon as the ship is destroyed, but you may want the message announcing its destruction to come a few seconds later.  Rather than chaining (or is-event-true-delay) with a separate event, I just use a send-message-list instance with a 3000 millisecond pre-delay and add it to the main destruction event.

[Kopachris]

Is there any particular reason for limiting it to 30?  If not, perhaps we could set it higher for the Inferno build?

[Luis Dias]

Why would you want it to be higher? I think that's a reasoned way of FRED to tame sadistic fredders that want to spam innocent poor players.

Perhaps it should even be lower, like 20 or 10.

If I want to read literature I'll read a book, thank you very nice.

[Lorric]

Ha. If you play my campaign if I finish it, you're going to suck my story up and you're going to like it, damn it! 

Anyway, there will be no "Wing Commander Saga" style forced to sit through minutes of text issues in mine. Seperate story and combat missions and time compression if even that's not enough will be available.

[Luis Dias]

But seriously though. Less is more, always. At the end when you have written the script, try to cut the dialogues in half. Then halve it again. Then see if you can cut some more.

There's always the tendency to over-dialogue something, perhaps spending 6 to 7 lines of dialogue to say something that could be just hinted at in an half-comment.

I'm no writer, but I really believe this stuff. It's amazingly similar to my own profession, where I get to one solution and then I try to simplify, then simplify some more and then simplify once again, until it's impossible to put it more simple than it already is. Iterative process and so on.

Just my two cents.

[Lorric]

I'll simply go with what feels right.

I am aware of course that this is a game and not a book, but at the same time I do want a story, and not just a "functional" story, just there as an excuse to blast stuff and nothing more. It would be hollow for me without one. Having one also thus increases the odds that I'll complete the project too I feel. I could turn out the odd mission just for being a mission, but not a campaign without a story to string it together. I don't think it will be any more text heavy than your average campaign with a story, certainly not the big epic mods anyway. But if down the road I do feel the need to unload with a lot of text, then I will. The 36 message mission only takes 3mins 36secs to get through. And then it will be on to the "b" part of the mission - the combat. The "a" part will never be needed by the player again, unless they want to view it again.

[General Battuta]

You will be a better writer by learning to cut. There's no downside. Your story will be stronger.

[Lorric]

You will be a better writer by learning to cut. There's no downside. Your story will be stronger.

I'm not sure what there would be to cut. There won't be people using twice as many words to say half as much or engaging in small talk. And like I said, message chains are time consuming to create. There isn't going to be anything not worth the trouble of putting in there.

[General Battuta]

Once you delve into the craft of writing you'll find there's always something to cut. As a (professionaly published, fwiw) writer I can tell you that even when you finish a rough draft that you've buttoned down to the best of your ability, you have room to lose about a third of your word count.

[Lorric]

Once you delve into the craft of writing you'll find there's always something to cut. As a (professionaly published, fwiw) writer I can tell you that even when you finish a rough draft that you've buttoned down to the best of your ability, you have room to lose about a third of your word count.

Well, I guess we'll just have to see. I will tailor the project to my target audience. And the target audience for this project... is me

However, at the same time, I will be trying to stay faithful to Spoon's WoD story too, which I am fond of. So others may also like it. Spoon himself made that I'm sure primarily for himself. Yet others liked it, and it inspired me.

[Rodo]

I would NOT recommend using send-message-list, it tends to work in a different way of what you'd expect.

For example, any message you send with that sexp that includes a ship that was NOT in the mission when the sexp triggered, will display as an "outside" source, like command does.

Or worst, if your missions failed and your message-chain sexp already triggered, the dialogue will continue until it ends...
I cannot express the amount of frustration this provokes in me, I've seen several campaigns have this little annoying issue that for me, is an immersion breaker.

About dialogue lenght and all that, Luis and Battuta pretty much stated what I believe of this matter as well, dialogue (in missions) should stay as short and far away from combat as possible, I've found that this is a work to be done as Luis said, in an iterative way.

[Trivial Psychic]

It has its uses, just not universal ones.

[Goober5000]

You will be a better writer by learning to cut. There's no downside. Your story will be stronger.

There's much truth to this.  (Antoine de Saint Exupéry said, "It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away." -- which I'm sure you've heard before.)  Think of how immersive the FS2 main campaign is, and then go look at how little text there actually is in the command briefings and debriefings.

In comparison with FS2, some of the ST:R command briefings are practically novellas.  Sometimes I wonder whether that means there's unnecessary stuff there, or the story requires all that information, or I'm a naturally verbose storyteller.  Though I did spend an inordinate amount of time rewriting, expanding, trimming, editing, and tweaking them ad nauseam (sometimes literally), so they've seen plenty of refinement.

[General Battuta]

BP is incredibly wordy compared to the missions too. It's probably unnecessary.