Diary of a Campaign Maker (or How Hard Can It Be?)

[Estnische]

Also, I did manage to create a trigger for the German defeat, that is when the Soviets reach the village. I was struggling to make a German victory condition that I thought would work. Kyth fixed it up for me to be:

Germans have more units: Germans win and victory music plays

Soviets reach the village contour: Germans lose and loser music plays

It works better than I suspected it would. The triggers look like this:




Now I need some help. For immersion, at the start I would like to have the player waiting for some action and one of the crew members plays an old gramophone record. The music plays for say 30 seconds, and then the tranquility is rudely interrupted by a Soviet artillery barage. You can see above I made a music fragment called 'intro_music' and I would assume the trigger would be a timer. But it doesn't work.

Any suggestions?

[Kyth]

There's a few things you need to do with the 'Timer' trigger.

- Use the flag icon (activate once and remember the status)
- The editor allows a minimum period of 1 minute for the timer trigger. You will need to make the waiting period a lot shorter - a few seconds duration only. Do a bit of editing of the script file. It should look like this originally:

   intro_music, 0x20007, 1.000;

To change the trigger period to 5 seconds:

   intro_music, 0x20007, 0.080;

About the 'Musical Fragment' trigger. Use a sound clip of say, 30 seconds duration.
Settings: Set to activate once and remember the status. Make sure the 'repeat' option is off. The time setting is a little misleading for this trigger. It is actually the 'fade-in' time. You want this to be minimized, so set it to the lowest possible value (1 second).

In the script, it should look like this:

   intro_music, 0x2000b, lili_marlene, 1.000, 0;

[Estnische]

Thanks once more.  8) It works!

However, the clip is 60 sec long and as you point out, that's too long. I need to find a free ogg file clipper.

Also, I need to delay the barrage to be at or near the end of the music. Even though I thought I had done this, the barrage starts immediately (give or take a few seconds for trajectory time?). Here is what I did:



and in the script file:

cs_artfire01()
{
   ext, art_fire, F22USV, F350, 8, 20, true, artbarrage, rusart;
   wait_time, 24;
}

What am I missing?

[Kyth]

The lines are executed in sequence; you'll have to use the arrow buttons to move them up or down,

[Estnische]

Gee that's frustrating...

It seems with everything else, if they are linked as these appear to be, then the purpose of a 'waiting' time would be only logical before the event.

Anyway, its close to playing nice now.

Now it would be good if one of the crew told you, 'hey we found an old record player', over your headset, like the  messages I have seen come up at the beginning of a mission.

How do I do that? Is it a script?

[Kyth]

Gee that's frustrating...

 
How so?
Like any other script, the editor allows you to play around with the timing and sequence of events. Those blue arrows shift the lines up and down, to change their order of execution. 

Now it would be good if one of the crew told you, 'hey we found an old record player', over your headset, like the  messages I have seen come up at the beginning of a mission.

How do I do that? Is it a script?

It might be easier to have that as part of the musical recording,

[Estnische]

Kyth, I thought about doing that, but it would have to be in German of course. I am concerned for the English-speaking community who might not get it. Yes they get used to the recorded commands after a while, like “Panzergranate neun und dreizig” means Armour-Piercing 39. But I think this one-off message comes across better by a message window.

Having seen that Rends uses these messages quite a lot, I decided to do some detective work. Here is a picture from a mission in the Barbarossa campaign:



In Rends file Rds2_loc_data.text, I found the same text:

txt_ldm_Rds2_text_01 () { \n It's 3.15 clock \n Artillyobserver: Artilleryfire opens now! \n Commander. Stay in position and wait for order!; }

So in the Rds2_scripts.engscr file I found the reference:

cs_radio1()
{
   nop;
   wait_time, 5;
   ext, add_text, txt_ldm_Rds2_text_01, 0xffffffff, 8, 0;
}

For the life of me, in the mission builder I cannot find the tab to add radio messages to a script. Being a true male, I never read the instructions. I have looked through the mission-building manual several times but never found it particularly useful. But I was really motivated, and looked up scripting in section 9.



And there it is, a command that matches Rends add_text line:



So, are these radio scripts a ‘hidden’ feature? Is there a way to add them in the mission builder, or must I add them to the script files using notepad? Is the first radio message cs_radio1() or cs_radio()?

How hard can it be?

[Kyth]

The 'radio' feature somehow didn't make it into that manual 

But, Graviteam did make specific mention of it in the FAQ:

http://graviteam.com/forum/index.php?topic=2.0


I also wrote a little more about it in another thread:

You can have several tracks running in parallel:

cs_radio1 : Trigger 1, followed by Message 1, then an interval or wait for another trigger, then Message 2, then another interval or trigger, then Message 3, and so on.
cs_radio2 : Trigger a, followed by Message a, then an interval or wait for another trigger, then Message b, then another interval or trigger, then Message c, and so on.
cs_radio3 : Trigger x, followed by Message x, then an interval or wait for another trigger, then Message y, then another interval or trigger, then Message z, and so on.

Try not to have too many unnecessary parallel tracks running at the same time, I suspect it may slow down the game,

By the way, those radio thingies are a standard feature of my missions also.

[Estnische]

And it works!



I took a lot of trial and error to get the timings right, but now I have a radio message followed by a music fragment followed by shelling. Probably not very elegant, but I made changes outside the editor, using notepad. For me, tat is an achievement.

Now to provide a mission briefing.

How hard can it be?

[Kyth]

Okay, so far so good,

The briefing and map have been covered in detail in the other thread, so they should be smooth sailing,

[Estnische]

Maybe, maybe not... 

So, to placing the mission name.

In the Text folder, there should be a file called something.text

Am I right that you can call it what you will, as long as it is in that folder, it will work? I cannot see any other reference to this name.

So mine now looks like this:



and it gives this result:



So far so good...

[lockie]

I think the mission name "Defending cemetery" is not quite suitable somehow
i.e.
- siivertsy: under the pressure
- defending siivertsy
- no any steps backs
etc.
Of course, it's only my point.

[Kyth]

'Defending the Cemetery' sounds a little wimpy.

How about 'A Grave Situation'
or 'Try not to get Buried here'

[Estnische]

Some good suggestions. You are right.I'll have to do some thinking...

[hemisent]

Some good suggestions. You are right.I'll have to do some thinking...

How about: "The Graveyard Shift"

[Estnische]

I think 'A Grave Situation' works nicely.

And so to the mission briefing.

Firstly, the actual text in the _loc_data.text file:



And then calling it up in the cs_main block of the script file:



So, it produces this:



It works for me. Should it be more formal? It's really a case of waiting in defence and see what happens.

[Kyth]

That's pretty good.

Good call about the title! 

Will you be putting some markings on the map to go with the briefing?

[Kyth]

Hello,

How's the going in there,   

Not slacking off, I hope?

[Estnische]

How's the going in there,   

Not slacking off, I hope?

Not exactly 

I managed to add one map item, a lone arrow with text.

So then, I thought, this can't be too 'ard. I added nine more map features, following the thread by Hemisent.

Now the mission crashes.

I've been over the code line by line and it all seems to match. I think I need to methodically go through and add them one by one, but I've been putting it off.

Or I could be lazy and paste it up here...

[Kyth]

I've been over the code line by line and it all seems to match. I think I need to methodically go through and add them one by one, but I've been putting it off.

Or I could be lazy and paste it up here...

Okay, that would be good,

It could be as small as an extra space or ';'