[Nami]

Hi all. 

I completed the stock Volition walkthrough for FRED2, but after going back to fix some issues, I've realized I'm stumped about a couple of things - specifically, chained events.  It's probably so simple that I'm just overlooking it, but I'm having trouble understanding. 

The series of events that controls Sleipner wing docking with the Relentless has me boggled.  This is not about the events themselves, but how the chaining controls the execution.  For example, if I have only the events "Sleipner 3 going in" and "Sleipner 4 going in" chained, the Sleipner wing behaves as expected during the mission.  If I keep those chained, as well as chain in "Sleipner 2 going in" and then destroy Sleipner 1, the other three ships just sit still.  That way to me seems to make more logical sense since we only want these events to occur once the others have completed.  This is why I'm thinking my understanding of chained events is just plain wrong. 

Also, let's take the scenario that Sleipner 2 is docked with the Relentless, and then a fighter takes out Sleipner 3.  Since "Sleipner 4 going in" would be true at this point, how does Sleipner 2 being docked prevent that "Sleipner 4" event from occurring?  It works that way if I only have the events for 3 and 4 chained.  According to the freddocs, this is why chaining is necessary here, but I just don't understand how it's affecting it the way it does. 

I had one additional question not related to the chained events (or maybe it is).  I wanted to make a scornful debriefing for the player if he jumps out to early, and used the "Relentless out of picture"  (figuring it would be false if mission was ongoing) event to evaluate for that, but I get a "no debriefing avaiable for mission" message when I try to test that.  What am I doing wrong here?  I do have my "Relentless out of picture" event chained to the final return to base event, so maybe it does have to do with the chaining. 

Thanks for any help!

[Goober5000]

If you attach your mission, we can take a look at it for you.

[Nami]

Thanks. 

I'm sorry if my last post was confusing.  I can figure out how to make it work as described in the tut; I just don't understand why the chaining works that way.  Of course, I may have some other events in here out of order or something. 

This version is currently in a "testing" state.   As it is now, I have Sleipner 1,2,3 going in all chained.  It works properly for me with only 3 and 4 chained. 

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[karajorma]

The series of events that controls Sleipner wing docking with the Relentless has me boggled.  This is not about the events themselves, but how the chaining controls the execution.  For example, if I have only the events "Sleipner 3 going in" and "Sleipner 4 going in" chained, the Sleipner wing behaves as expected during the mission.  If I keep those chained, as well as chain in "Sleipner 2 going in" and then destroy Sleipner 1, the other three ships just sit still.  That way to me seems to make more logical sense since we only want these events to occur once the others have completed.  This is why I'm thinking my understanding of chained events is just plain wrong.

Here are the two events in question.




As you can see the top event requires slepnir 1 to have docked for 10 seconds for it to become true. When you chain the lower event to the upper one you are basically saying "The top event must be true for the lower one to happen" with the exception of repeating events chaining is basically identical to

Code: [Select]

when
-is-event-true-delay
--The event above me
--Chain delay number of seconds
-do whatever
If you chain the events together you can't make Sleipner 2 going in trigger if Sleipner 1 is destroyed. If it's destroyed it can't dock for 10 seconds and therefore the Sleipner 1 Done event can never trigger. Which means the rest of the chain can't either. So the ships sit there doing nothing.

Also, let's take the scenario that Sleipner 2 is docked with the Relentless, and then a fighter takes out Sleipner 3.  Since "Sleipner 4 going in" would be true at this point, how does Sleipner 2 being docked prevent that "Sleipner 4" event from occurring?  It works that way if I only have the events for 3 and 4 chained.  According to the freddocs, this is why chaining is necessary here, but I just don't understand how it's affecting it the way it does.

Okay what is going on there is this.

The Sleipner 3 event requires one of two things to be true for it to go in, Sleipner 2 must either be destroyed or done. The Sleipner 4 event requires the same things but this time for Sleipner 3. So think carefully, all the ships jump in and the player first blows up Sleipner 3, what happens? The game sees that the event Sleipner 4 going in now evaluates to true. It doesn't matter that Sleipner 2 hasn't finished (or even started yet). But when you chain the events to each other you tell the game "We must be done with Sleipner 2 before we check on Sleipner 3. And we must be done with Sleipner 3 before we check on Sleipner 4)."


So why didn't we chain the Sleipner 2 event then? Well the event above it is NOT Sleipner 1 going in. It's Sleipner 1 Done. There is quite a difference between the two events. As long as the mission is completed the "going in" events are always triggered, either the ship is destroyed or the one in front of it finishes its task. But the "Done" tasks only trigger if the ship completes its task.

I had one additional question not related to the chained events (or maybe it is).  I wanted to make a scornful debriefing for the player if he jumps out to early, and used the "Relentless out of picture"  (figuring it would be false if mission was ongoing) event to evaluate for that, but I get a "no debriefing available for mission" message when I try to test that.  What am I doing wrong here?  I do have my "Relentless out of picture" event chained to the final return to base event, so maybe it does have to do with the chaining. 

Yeah, that's your basic mistake. You only get the return to base event when you actually finish the mission. So obviously you're making the game wait for that to be true before the "Relentless out of picture" can evaluate to true. If you unchain them, it probably will work (although I haven't looked at the mission).

[Nami]

Thanks for the responses!   

But when you chain the events to each other you tell the game "We must be done with Sleipner 2 before we check on Sleipner 3. And we must be done with Sleipner 3 before we check on Sleipner 4)."

That's basically how I thought it worked.  I'm thinking now that my confusion is coming from the ordering of events and how the chaining of one event affects others.

To try and make more sense, I was under the impression that in order to be a part of the chain, every event in that chain had to be chained and have the little chain icon beside it.  Your description is leading me to believe that clicking the chained checkbox automatically implies a chain to the prior event (even if that prior event is not chained itself).  Am I understanding this correctly?  I have added a screenshot of my current event list. 

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[Nami]

Thanks again!  I just played with it a little bit and now all of the problems I was having are solved.  It looks like my confusion about the chaining connecting to the previous event automatically was my problem. 

[karajorma]

Yep, chaining is basically exactly the same as saying When the event above me is triggered, I might also now trigger, but I can't before that for pretty much most cases. There is a slight difference in the case of repeating events but I won't confuse you with that now.