Help with tutorial

That is correct. Using special comms is a more advanced stage of editing. You need to use WCPPas to decode various WCP files and such.

I don't know why your ship disappears. Either you've bound it to the wrong actionsphere, or you simply forgot to activate it.

I also have no idea why m_Spawn doesn't work at Nav 2. One guess would be, you've altered the functions used by the spawned ships, assigning them to the wrong actionsphere. For ships to show up at this navpoint, they must be either actionsphere 0 or (presumably) 2. Alternatively, it might be simply because the Nav 2 function is utterly fucked up. Here is a list of problems with your Nav 2:
- You're using 'setup' incorrectly. In fact, you're not using it at all. Either get rid of that setup := false line, or do something with setup.
- 'If (NAV_Withinsphere...)' only checks if the player has entered the actionsphere. It doesn't check if he's still in it. The player could visit this navpoint and leave, and the navpoint wouldn't even notice that he's gone.
- That second 'while (1)' loop will prevent the navpoint from ever being activated again. The thing about while (1) loops is that there's no way out of them.
- 'until (NAV_Withinsphere...)', is even worse here. Why is it there? You keep the function waiting until the player enters the navpoint's actionsphere, and then the very next thing you do is deactivate that actionsphere?
- Furthermore, the 'until (NAV_Withinsphere...)' loop doesn't have anything in it. This will crash the mission complaining about an infinite loop.

Try this code, don't just copy and paste it into your mission. Look at it, compare it to your Nav 2 code, and try to figure out why I made each change.

Code:

function M_Nav2;
var
setup = true;
begin
  while(1) do begin
    if (NAV_WithinSphere(Alpha1)) then begin
      Nav_ActivateSelf;
      if (setup) then begin
        M_Spawn(2,17,23000,23000,233);
        M_Spawn(30,10,23222,23222,233);
        setup := false;
      end;
      NAV_SetPlayerNav(1);
      while(NAV_WithinSphere(Alpha1)) do begin
        AI_WaitSeconds(1);
      end;
      NAV_DeactivateSelf;
    end;
    AI_WaitSeconds(1);
  end;
end;

So what exactly didn't work?

That's pretty much irrelevant. Remember, you're designing missions for other people, not for yourself. That means your mission must be able to handle that one crazy player who decides to revisit all the navpoints after completing the mission.

As for objectives, are you still doing this as a sim mission? If yes, then you can't get objectives to work. The objectives screen is disabled in the sim, just like the nav map.

Actually, you don't. The mission might end after the player performed a particular action, and you can even have a trigger for the "mission complete" message, but there won't be any objectives as such.

If you're not getting the "mission complete" message right now, or if you're getting them too early, it's because you've put 'M_WaitUntilDead' into the code again. We've told you before, M_WaitUntilDead doesn't return a variable, so it just won't work in an 'if' statement. M_WaitUntilDead is a function which basically makes its caller wait until all spawned enemies are dead.

It doesn't work that way. Sim missions can be used to get a hang of the basics, but that's all. You can't use sim missions to learn about things that are disabled in sim missions.

Also, at this stage, I wouldn't advise you to move onto real missions. First you need to really understand what you've been doing so far - and that means being able to find and fix just about any bug in your code.

You can't go back automatically, that's right. And yes, you can't select a navpoint in the sim, so unless somebody was really good at navigating by the stars, they couldn't revisit a navpoint. But that's not the point, unless you intend to stick with sim missions permanently.
And no, this navpoint wouldn't have worked had you used the nav map to select it.

Well, then obviously bind to actionsphere is not the problem. What are the symptoms? Do the ships always show up, or do they not show up after you return to nav 1?

Well, I did tell you that your nav functions are screwed up . The problem lies (among other things) in the way you placed the NAV_DeactivateSelf line. But here's something to cheer you up - had you placed the NAV_DeactivateSelf line correctly, you wouldn't find the navpoint at all after returning to it.

There's really no problems here that we haven't pointed out to you before. I've even rewritten Nav 2 for you, so you would have an example to work from. So, this time I'm not going to help you fix this navpoint. These are simple mistakes, and if we keep fixing them for you, we'll actually be slowing down your progress. Look at the code I've posted before, compare it to your Nav 1, and you should be able to find the problems yourself.

If you're referring to the buoy, sure it does. If all else fails, just use the 'actionsphere:' property in the object declaration.

Why wouldn't you be able to? You can't have a spawned ship leading a wing, but it certainly can be added to another wing.

Skate and Ray clusters are somewhat different to ordinary fighters.

First up, they're their own object type ('cluster'). Second, they need two additional properties in their object declaration:

EVENT_1: <insert name of child object's death function here>;
EVENT_0: <insert name of child object's main function here>;

(the child object functions are pretty much the same as ordinary object functions, but, IIRC, the child object main function does not require the SF_ActivateSelf command - they're automatically activated by the death of the parent object)

Third, they need to be piloted by a specific alien pilot - 117. No other pilot will work for them.

Keep in mind, BTW, that 'skate' and 'skateb' are actually the names of the two Barracuda variants. Skates are called 'triraym', 'trirayb' and 'trirayt'. Finally, I'm not sure if they'll work at all in a sim mission (though that shouldn't stop you from trying).

Look up wcp.pas in \lib. Also look up Thomas' not-quite-comprehensive but still very useful documentation.

Nope.