Feature add list for Flight Commander and question

[Kyran]

Oh I'm sure to, so many scripting options.
Mission_setFriendlyEjectPickup(false)

Did you get that email I sent to you Iceblade?

 

[Iceblade]

Yeah, just d/l'ed the file in fact.

Pretty good. I should be able to find you a role pretty quickly, well after the summer semester is over next Wednesday, anyway.

 

[Kyran]

Heres a few things I think should be added. (If their not already available.)

Mission Editor Related
Ability to select whether the selected ship will eject or not.
Ability to select the target for a selected ship.

Scripting Related
More supported audio formates for music.
Option to have custom music loop or not.
Ability to have a pilot eject from a ship and either have his/her ship continue in the same direction or spin out of control.
Script to have a ship land in a cap ship.
Ability to list the targets for a certain ship. (Attack Badguy1, then Badguy3, then Cap Ship)
Kamikaze run, have a pilot ram a ship with the option of having him/her eject before crashing.

Campaign Related
Option whether or not missions have the take off scene.
Ability to select which movie(s) play at mission load.

Game Related
Do not land message for cap ships.
Subtitles.
Have Sars pick up ejected pilots when the fighting stops.

 

[Iceblade]

Scripting Related
More supported audio formates for music.

I would think that there should be some audio convertors out there that are free.

Script to have a ship land in a cap ship.

This can be easily done with an in-mission cutscene--and this is what has to be done anyway as each capship is too unique to have the same landing.

Ability to have a pilot eject from a ship and either have his/her ship continue in the same direction or spin out of control.
Ability to list the targets for a certain ship. (Attack Badguy1, then Badguy3, then Cap Ship)
Kamikaze run, have a pilot ram a ship with the option of having him/her eject before crashing.

These are things that are AI-related and will not likely be implemented until the AI is reworked/expanded.

Campaign Related
Option whether or not missions have the take off scene.

Use the prelaunch = none in the campiagn file--place it at the end of the mission name.

Game Related
Have Sars pick up ejected pilots when the fighting stops.

Usually, by the time SARs arrive, you should be long gone--and you never return to nav points in FC.

 

[Kyran]

I would think that there should be some audio convertors out there that are free.

Yeah, I use Audacity, however MP3 output isn't as good as OGG or WAV.

Use the prelaunch = none in the campiagn file--place it at the end of the mission name.

Nice, however now it loads with you looking out the left window, the music doesn't seem to play and when I enter a new nav it crashes and burns. What are the other options for prelaunch?

<mission file="PerfectPlan1.mission.xml" win="PerfectPlan2.mission.xml" prelaunch="none" />

Usually, by the time SARs arrive, you should be long gone--and you never return to nav points in FC.

I used SAR as more of an example. I meant a script for a ship to pick up an ejected pilot.

 

[Iceblade]

wav? ... I always thought mp3's were better. An ogg music file, though, I thought was something extremely specific to one game--guess not.

hmmm...well I never tested the prelaunch = none with anything except the cutscene, which come to think of it had no music, contained only one nav, and went immediately to the cutscene camera. As of yet there are no other strings for prelaunch.

 

[Kyran]

wav? ... I always thought mp3's were better. An ogg music file, though, I thought was something extremely specific to one game--guess not.

I mean Audacity MP3 output isn't that good in comparison to its WAV and OGG output. OGG (Vorbis is the codec used) is an open source audio formate making it better then MP3 (which is patent encumbered) when it comes to free audio programs.

 

[Quarto]

wav? ... I always thought mp3's were better. An ogg music file, though, I thought was something extremely specific to one game--guess not.

WAVs are always better than MP3s - the reason why MP3s are so much smaller than WAVs is because they use a special form of compression that actually results in audio quality loss.

(however, unless you use really excessive compression settings to encode an MP3, the quality loss will usually be unnoticeable to the human ear)

 

[ChrisReid]

wav? ... I always thought mp3's were better. An ogg music file, though, I thought was something extremely specific to one game--guess not.

hmmm...well I never tested the prelaunch = none with anything except the cutscene, which come to think of it had no music, contained only one nav, and went immediately to the cutscene camera. As of yet there are no other strings for prelaunch.

OGGs are a standard format, but they're clearly far less popular than mp3s. For the vast majority of people, a minor loss in quality is worth the ubiquity of the mp3 format today. There is some licensing stuff with mp3s, but that doesn't really hinder mods and fan projects, so there's little reason not to use the format.

 

[eddieb]

Nice, however now it loads with you looking out the left window, the music doesn't seem to play and when I enter a new nav it crashes and burns. What are the other options for prelaunch?

Hmm, there may be a bug here, please send me your files so I can reproduce this.

 

[eddieb]

Heres a few things I think should be added. (If their not already available.)

Mission Editor Related
Ability to select whether the selected ship will eject or not.
Ability to select the target for a selected ship.

The first can be accomplished by scripting already. If I do implement the second one, it won't be in the mission editor.

Scripting Related
More supported audio formates for music.
Option to have custom music loop or not.
Ability to have a pilot eject from a ship and either have his/her ship continue in the same direction or spin out of control.
Script to have a ship land in a cap ship.
Ability to list the targets for a certain ship. (Attack Badguy1, then Badguy3, then Cap Ship)
Kamikaze run, have a pilot ram a ship with the option of having him/her eject before crashing.

No new music formats. Looping is pretty easy to do. I'm not changing the eject physics. You can already script capship landings. No kamikze. I'll think about adding attack lists.

Campaign Related
Option whether or not missions have the take off scene.
Ability to select which movie(s) play at mission load.

Can already skip the default cutscenes. Chosing movies will be easy to implement, but nobody has actually created any movie content that I have seen. You make it, we'll play it.

Game Related
Do not land message for cap ships.
Subtitles.
Have Sars pick up ejected pilots when the fighting stops.

You can script in do not land messages. No subtitles are going in. No SAR pickup.

 

[eddieb]

I'd recommend cdex for wav to mp3 conversion, you can pick the bit rate quality yourself there.

 

[Kyran]

The first can be accomplished by scripting already.

Ah, my understanding of the word programmatically must be off.

Ship_eject(string shipid)

Ejects the ship programatically.

I was thinking it would eject the ship straight away like with Ship_destroy.

Looping is pretty easy to do.

Music_play(string filename)

Overrides any existing music and plays this file in a loop.  Usually cutscenes will use this only.

No option for not looping though.

You can script in do not land messages.

Still, it should do that by default. Wouldn't think it would be too hard to implament.

If MissionComplete = True then play = "cleartoland" else play = "dontland" end if.

No subtitles are going in.

Too hard to implament?

Here is my mission, I lost my webspace so I have to make do with this 500k limit webhost.

http://coorandale.myopracticinstitute.org/perfectplan.xml
Rename the xml to zip. It doesn't have the speach files in it so it might crash.

 

[eddieb]

Ah, my understanding of the word programmatically must be off.

Ship_eject(string shipid)

Ejects the ship programatically.

I was thinking it would eject the ship straight away like with Ship_destroy.

It does. You probably want to look at Ship_setForceEject(string shipid, boolean forceject);

Music_play(string filename)

Overrides any existing music and plays this file in a loop.  Usually cutscenes will use this only.

No option for not looping though.

Yeah, I can add that easily.

Still, it should do that by default. Wouldn't think it would be too hard to implament.

If MissionComplete = True then play = "cleartoland" else play = "dontland" end if.

OK, I think I misunderstood what you asked for. Yeah, I will make the capship do a no response if the mission isn't done and you ask to land.

Too hard to implament?

I have to set priorities, and its a major pain to do internationalization, which I see as the only purpose of captions.

http://coorandale.myopracticinstitute.org/perfectplan.xml
Rename the xml to zip. It doesn't have the speach files in it so it might crash.

Thanks, I'll see if I can find the bug you mentioned before.

 

[eddieb]

wav? ... I always thought mp3's were better. An ogg music file, though, I thought was something extremely specific to one game--guess not.

hmmm...well I never tested the prelaunch = none with anything except the cutscene, which come to think of it had no music, contained only one nav, and went immediately to the cutscene camera. As of yet there are no other strings for prelaunch.

Actually the other prelaunch option is prelaunch="scramble". It plays a different movie and plays a different sound in the gameflow.

 

[AD]

I have to set priorities, and its a major pain to do internationalization, which I see as the only purpose of captions.

1/ While kind of true, it isn't exactly the case. Captions are also appreciated by a significant portion of the population with hearing impairment. They might have some hearing even yet find it dificult to make out what people are saying.

2/ Also, with captions, a modder is able to release a set of missions without having to actually organize dozens of people to record voices. Think WC1...

Maybe he wants to playtest how the story works out.... wants to release an early version of his game? It would certainly be a good way to test how the narative is playing out without having to initialy go through the recording process. After which someone could go back and record voices or whatever for version 2.

3/ As far as internationally speaking, many computer literate people in other countries can read english yet cannot understand spoken english. So at least having english captions does expand your potential audience. Of course, it also would allow for multiple language versions without needing to record audio for each language.

Without having to actualy write the actual captions yourself, I think there is a strong case to be made for making the function available to modders.

 

[Kyran]

I have to set priorities, and its a major pain to do internationalization, which I see as the only purpose of captions.

I used the wrong word. I mean text of what is being said over the coms which is used when the sound file isn't available. (or by option)

Comm_playVideo(string wavname, string videoname, string displayedpilotname, int iffcode, text);

Right now when I come to a point where I want something to be said I have to wait until I can get a voice actor to do the lines before adding the code in.

EDIT: AD beat me to the reply but basicly what he said.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Re: captions. Remember Privateer 2 -- lack of captions (in flight and in the video sequences) was one of the biggest complaints about the game... because many players in the US (and the rest of the world) couldn't understand the cast's British accents.

 

[eddieb]

You guys made some good points on captions. Unicode would be the major stumbling block. But if I only allow ascii captions, its a bit easier to do.

 

[Kyran]

You probably want to look at Ship_setForceEject(string shipid, boolean forceject);

I've been trying to get this one working. I have a ship named $all1 and it is an enemy. When I enter the nav I set Ship_setForceEject("$all1", true); and it doesn't seem to work.

I've also tried

• Ship_setForceEject($all1, true);
• Ship_setForceEject("$all1", true forceject);
• Ship_setForceEject("$all1", false);
• Ship_setForceEject(shipid, true);
• Ship_setForceEject(all1, true);
• Ship_setForceEject("$all1", forceject);
• Ship_setForceEject("$all", forceeject);

I've been thinking about how the captions for wingmen might work. You could create a pilot.xml file which sets not only the captions but the video and audio aswell.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<pilot name="Jarrah">
<Insult1 audio="jarrah_insult.wav" video="helment.avi" text="Come on!"/>
<Insult2 audio="jarrah_insult2.wav" video="helment.avi" text="You going down."/>
<Yes audio="jarrah_yes.wav" video="helment.avi" text="Sure thing."/>
<No audio="jarrah_no.wav" video="helment.avi" text="Na mate, I don't think so."/>
<Statusgood audio="jarrah_statusgood.wav" video="helment.avi" text="I'm alright."/>
</campaign>

You could also set more then one com for each, eg. two insults instead of one.

Are there scripts for any of the follow?

• A script to determine whether or not a ship is friendly.
• A tigger thats set if you open fire on team mates.
• A script to see which ship shot a particular ship down.
• A script to determine how many ships the player has shot down.