Editing - Questions and Observations

[Cantata 0]

I have been using the OFP editor for several weeks now and I am gettting better all the time. Thanks to all the people making tutorials out there, much appreciated.

However, I am having difficulties with an MP mission in several areas. Some of these problems include:

1)When grouping units, they tend to start very far from one another when you enter the mission, but they will sit side-by-side if they are not grouped. This has caused no end of trouble for me. Why does it do this?

2)When trying to get two seperate teams to board two seperate helicopters, one team can board but the other cannot. In fact, unless the team leader on the machine acting as the game server tells his team to board, neither helicopter will even land. This happens sporadically, and can be different each time I try. It is even successful on occasion.

3)When these helicopters do carry the two teams to their destination and land, my team and I can disembark, and the second player can dismount but his team will not dismount. If you kill the pilot and gunner in the helicopter, his team will then dismount. What the...?

4)When working with objectives, I want them to flip from active to done or failed using a trigger, but this deosn't seem to work as stated. For instance, I set up a trigger as follows:

Rectangle - w=500, h=100

West - Present

Condition - Alpha in humv1 or Alpha in humv2

On Activation - "3" objStatus "DONE"

I am checking to see that team Alpha is riding in a couple of HumVee's at a certain point in the mission. If they are, then mark Obj_3 as DONE. Troouble is, the stupid trigger turns on and marks the objective complete as soon as the mission begins! Why? This objective should not be completed until much further along in the mission.

If anyone is a mission guru and you would like to see the mission as it now stands, please email me at tgarner@uark.edu and I will send you a zip of the mission. This will NOT be a PBO.

Thanks everyone!

[Damage Inc 0]

1) The units' special field is normally "In Formation". Change it to "None".

3) The second player has to command the team to dismount.

4) You should change the condition field to "this and Alpha in humv1 or Alpha in humv2", assuming that you want the trigger to activate when Alpha is in the Humvees and enters the trigger area.

[Cantata 0]

Excellent, thank you for the reply Damage! #1 and #4 should help me out quite a bit.

As for #3, the second player gives the dismount order to his team, they respond with a hearty "ROGER!" and proceed to just sit there. As soon as the pilot and gunner die, he can control his team as normal. I may try using the command UNASSIGN, or possibly the LOCK command to get this straightened out.

I figure on #2 working better once I can group the helo's together instead of trying to make them operate independently. That seems to be part of the problem.

[Rob 1]

just grp the helis by using the F2 key and drag a line from one heli to the other.

[Cantata 0]

Ok, I figured out #3, I had the waypoint set as "UNLOAD" instead of "TRANSPORT UNLOAD". So, I wonder what "UNLOAD" is used for?

As for #2, I think I will just make each helo a member of the team leaders group so he can command them the entire time. This will solve the problem with the helos landing and will give each commander the ability to use a Pavehawk for ground support if neccessary. I do wish I could figure out why this problem occurs, though.

Otherwise, I have made the modifications suggested to my "Objective" triggers and they appear to be working better. I noticed that I had started numbering the trigers at 1, but the objectives started at 0. I corrected that, too.

Rob, thanks for the tip. I knew how to group (F2), but when I did, since they were "in formation", they wanted to space themselves apart and would not appear in the correct place when the mission began. That is solved at this point, too.

Thanks for all the imput!

[PlaneShifter 0]

BTW, for that trigger condition, I think it needs to be "(this && Alpha in humV1) || (this && Alpha in humV2)", or else the trigger would go off as soon as alpha gets in humV2.

- PlaneShifter -

[Cantata 0]

Thanks Planeshifter, I'll give that a try. I'm still fighting the objective problem. Making Objectives trigger and flip to the proper indicator is a royal pain. It shouldn't be so hard.

I guess I should just get on the scripting bandwagon instead of doing everything through the editor, eh? However, I do like the editor and find it realtively easy to use for most things. Ah well.

BTW: I resolved issue #2 (see above) by simply deleting all waypoints and adding the helos to each infantry team. Now the Infantry commander can order the helos around as part of his team.

Additionally, I had to add a line to each units initilization field, as follows:

this assignAsCargo helo1

Otherwise, this part of the mission works as planned now, and my play testers actually prefer to have the helos under their command. Nice...

NOTE: It seems that the AI refuses to board a vehicle under your control while the engine is running. This is not always the case, for instance, helos landing for a pickup can remain in a low hover and AI will board, but if helo is on the ground and the enigne starts up before AI boards, they will refuse until the enigne AND rotors stop moving.

I have also seen this behavior with the AI and Bradley AFV's. I have three teams of infantry that load up on three Bradleys. However, they will refuse until the AFV's turn their engines off. Anyone got a solution for this? I have tried this in the Bradley's initilization field:

this action ["engineOff", afv1 this]

That didn't work. I end up ordering each AFV to a particular spot, wherupon they stop and turn off engines thereafter. The infantry loads up and away we go. The next issue is gettting everyone to disembark. I have to order ALL my crew members to dismount before the infantry teams can disembark. What a pain!!

All help has been and will be appreciated!

[amos m 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Quote: from Cantata on 8:46 am on Dec. 19, 2001

NOTE:  It seems that the AI refuses to board a vehicle under your control while the engine is running.  This is not always the case, for instance, helos landing for a pickup can remain in a low hover and AI will board, but if helo is on the ground and the enigne starts up before AI boards, they will refuse until the enigne AND rotors stop moving.

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I can't help you there, but just thought I'd add that I noticed the same thing with the civ plane.

[Cantata 0]

Well, I may have found a solution to the "engine off" problem. For the Bradley's under my control we add this to the init field for each unit:

afv1 disableAI "Move"

afv2 disableAI "Move"

afv3 disableAI "Move"

According to the official command reference, this allows for more precise control of the AI units movement. I have not found time to test this, but it just might do the trick.

The hard way to make it work is to have the driver of each AFV dismount so the engine stops, allowing the infantry to board. For dismounting, all crew members must dismount before the infantry will do so.

There has to be a better way to do this stuff. Perhaps BIS will be able to address some of thiese issues in forthcoming updates.