Ask Slug III

Actually, your brain looks a little more fried than me.

1. What the Human Gunship has is turreted lasers I interpret "Tracking Lasers" to indicate that it is used to guide a homing missile to a specific target - as on modern fighter jets.

2. Confirmation

3. Alter Offline is not a Stasis Field - have you ever played StarCraft? Offline is a disabling weapon, but it doesn't put the other ship into Stasis.
To expand on what I was saying - each ship has an Expire Action that turns it into a non-mobile version of the original and creates the image of the stasis field. Then, both of those objcets expire after a certain amount of time back into the originals.
The "Stasis" weapon causes ships to expire.

4. That was what I thought when I first saw the question - but actually it's talking about a single weapon, and the hardpoints it fires from.

5. My suggestion for number 4 works well for this - the created pulse can simultaneously fire two shots from separate weapons with respective placement values.

6. Putting the gun at the front? That means nothing as to how it's turreted. As for "the appropriate bullet properties, I guess you'd have to be referring to allowing it to turn for a quick second to face anything in the range then expiring it to prevent it from turning anymore and becoming a homing weapon. But I think you were just referring to setting Autotarget because otherwise you would state such a complicated process, and that reduces it to a common turrent instead of front quadrant.

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"Once, just once, I'd like to be able to land somewhere and say, 'Behold, I am the Archangel Gabriel.'"
"I fail to see the humor in that situation, Doctor."
"Naturally. You could hardly claim to be an angel with those pointed ears, Mister Spock. But say you landed someplace with a pitchfork "

Gentlemen, BOTH of you misunderstood me.

By tracking lasers, I meant lasers that could track a target, like a homing missile. So instead of a concussion missile arcing towards an enemy ship, you get a laser arcing towards it!

There's something else I didn't mention as well,

Is it possible to have a sprite trail a ship exactly? There are only 2 ways around this, to make the sprite a fighter-like object with an independant existence, and have it follow the ship with ridiculously high movement values, or to have it recreate every second. Seomthing I do not want, because the sprite has an image sequence of it's own, and the first method will probably work, as long as you don't make any sharp movements.

Ok lets say I have 2 power stations that have to be destroyed to finish a mission. How do I make a mission end after both are destroyed instead of just one of them

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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth Journey Back To The Stars"

Quote

Originally posted by brookeview:
**Ok lets say I have 2 power stations that have to be destroyed to finish a mission. How do I make a mission end after both are destroyed instead of just one of them

**

Have two conditions, one for the destruction of each station.

Set the first condition to, when activated, to do an Alter>Condition True Yet on the second condition.

Set the second condition to be initially inactive and to have a DeclareWinner sequence when it is activated.

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GR Name: Sgt. Patrick(EL)
(url="http://"http://www.obain.f2s.com/eastlegion.html")Eastlegion HQ(/url)
My upcoming Ares TC:
(url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/webboard/Forum13/HTML/000216.html")Wrath Of The Fallen(/url)

That great if you have two stations that you know which one will be destroyed first. But how can i make it work with them if either could be destroyed first. And how can I expand it to more than two if any station can be destroyed at any time?

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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth's Journey Back To The Stars"

Quote

Originally posted by brookeview:
**That great if you have two stations that you know which one will be destroyed first. But how can i make it work with them if either could be destroyed first. And how can I expand it to more than two if any station can be destroyed at any time?

**

That will work no matter what order the stations are destroyed in:

Condition 0
If Station 1 is destroyed, activate condition 1

Condition 1(Initially Inactive)
If Station 2 is destroyed, DeclareWinner for player 0

Even if station 2 is destroyed first, condition 1 will be inactive and will not activate it's DeclareWinner sequence until Station 1 is destroyed, making the condition active and declaring the human player to be the winner.

If you want to do it for more than two events such as stations being destroyed or planets being captured, just string the events together in a chain:

Condition 0
If Station 1 is destroyed, activate condition 1.

Condition 1(Initially Inactive)
If Station 2 is destroyed, activate condition 2.

Condition 2(Intially Inactive)
If Station 3 is destroyed, declare player 0 the winner
(EDIT: Hey, it's my 256th post!)
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GR Name: Sgt. Patrick(EL)
(url="http://"http://www.obain.f2s.com/eastlegion.html")Eastlegion HQ(/url)
My upcoming Ares TC:
(url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/webboard/Forum13/HTML/000216.html")Wrath Of The Fallen(/url)

(This message has been edited by Patrick (edited 07-01-2001).)

That works too, Patrick, but it's a tad too complicated. What if you had a mission where you had to destroy 2 stations out of 4? Or 2 out of 2? In Iron Fist I used a different system. Each time a station is destroyed, it sets off a counter. When the counter reaches a certain value, the player wins. That way, is destroying 2 stations is too easy, you can make the level a bit harder by simply setting the required counter value to 3.

Let's say there are 4 stations in the level, and your mission is to destroy 3.

  1. If (station 1) is destroyed,

Set counter 0,0 to +1

  1. If (station 2) is destroyed,

Set counter 0,0 to +1

  1. If (station 3) is destroyed,

Set counter 0,0 to +1

  1. If (station 4) is destroyed,

Set counter 0,0 to +1

  1. If counter 0,0 = 3

DeclareWinner player 0

It involves more conditions, but is easier to change around, should you change your mind. If you want to set it so the player has to destroy all 4 stations:

  1. If counter 0,0 = 4

DeclareWinner player 0

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Time is the best teacher, yet it kills all of it's students.

Thanks you guys.

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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth's Journey Back To The Stars"

Just for argument's sake, there's an easier way. Go into the object editor and alter the destruction sequence of a power station so it gives counter 1 1 point.

But you would have to make another kind of station just for that, which is complicated.

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Time is the best teacher, yet it kills all of it's students.

I don't see why you would need to make another station. I have a freighter that wins the level once it lands, but since only 1 level in which there are freighters is a landing one, having that is ok.

How do I get a mission to end if a certain ship gets to a certain object.I have a ship that when it reaches a jumpgate it jumps out of the system using the land at action. I used a proximity condition but if the player is not looking at the ship at the time it jumps out of the system the mission ends in defeat. In this mission you will most likely not be able to see the ship at all when it jumps.

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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth's Journey Back To The Stars". Have a nice day.

Quote

Originally posted by brookeview:
**How do I get a mission to end if a certain ship gets to a certain object.I have a ship that when it reaches a jumpgate it jumps out of the system using the land at action. I used a proximity condition but if the player is not looking at the ship at the time it jumps out of the system the mission ends in defeat. In this mission you will most likely not be able to see the ship at all when it jumps.
**

that's odd. Check the conditions and make sure it doesn't end in defeat for the player.

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Time is the best teacher, yet it kills all of it's students.

Everything is correct. I do have a condition to end in defeat if the ship is destroyed. It goes on to a harder level than if you won. Mabey ares thinks the transport is being destroyed.

On a side note when a ship lands does it expire when it gets out of sight or does it just disappear? And how do you set a ship so the player can't take command of it.

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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth's Journey Back To The Stars". Have a nice day.

Another question for you. This time ResEdit, which I barely know how to start and stop, let alone use.

This concerns Starmap placement into a plug. I opened the starmap in ResEdit, took a screen shot of it and opened that screen shot in Photoshop, modified the map, saved as a pict, correct colour table, correct pixel dimensions, correct file size. I then opened this file in ResEdit and pasted it into my plug in place of the original Ares Map. Marvelously easy one might imagine, except, it didn't work. What I get when I open my map in Ares is a pixelated thing weighing in at approximately one ninth of its original size, and it would appear one ninth of the data, but opening at the correct screen pixel dimensions. What have I missed? It seemed so simple... Any help gratefully appreciated...

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Oh, so it is another bug hunt then...

oops! this is rather embarassing. I, er forgot to save my starmap as a pict resource...
Of course it works. You can ignore the last question... It's the sort of thing the proverbial *****anzee and two trainees would have known, trouble is, never a ***** around when you need one to do your thinking for you!

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Oh, so it is another bug hunt then...

I bet the answer to this is no but I thought I might ask anyway. Is there any to change what the game does when it is demo mode. Having one of my levels shown with a ship flying in random directions is silly?

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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth's Journey Back To The Stars". Have a nice day.

I intend to decode the nlrp data... but then I can't now of course and there isn't anything else to do it with at this point.

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"Once, just once, I'd like to be able to land somewhere and say, 'Behold, I am the Archangel Gabriel.'"
"I fail to see the humor in that situation, Doctor."
"Naturally. You could hardly claim to be an angel with those pointed ears, Mister Spock. But say you landed someplace with a pitchfork "

Quote

Originally posted by brookeview:
**I bet the answer to this is no but I thought I might ask anyway. Is there any to change what the game does when it is demo mode. Having one of my levels shown with a ship flying in random directions is silly?
**

Nup. Nathan Lamont forgot to take that out of Ares when a plug is loaded. Nonetheless, I've seen some "interesting" demos with StarLance....

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Time is the best teacher, yet it kills all of it's students.

Quote

Originally posted by Lord Commander Anic:
**Another question for you. This time ResEdit, which I barely know how to start and stop, let alone use.

This concerns Starmap placement into a plug. I opened the starmap in ResEdit, took a screen shot of it and opened that screen shot in Photoshop, modified the map, saved as a pict, correct colour table, correct pixel dimensions, correct file size. I then opened this file in ResEdit and pasted it into my plug in place of the original Ares Map. Marvelously easy one might imagine, except, it didn't work. What I get when I open my map in Ares is a pixelated thing weighing in at approximately one ninth of its original size, and it would appear one ninth of the data, but opening at the correct screen pixel dimensions. What have I missed? It seemed so simple... Any help gratefully appreciated...
**

Hmm... First of all, you do not need to take a screenshot, you simply open the picture with ResEdit and select Edit>Copy to get it into your clipboard. The reason you got the pic all teeny and pixeled is you posted JPEG or JPG data in there and Ares tried to read that as PICT data. Simply open the full-size picture using your favorite paint program (PhotoShop, Graphic Converter, etc.), select the whole thing, go back into Resedit and paste the picture (giving it an ID of 8000).

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Time is the best teacher, yet it kills all of it's students.