destroying cars before player spawns in?

Is it possible to destroy a car before the player starts so that i would miss the explosion but still see the fire and smoke? if i setdamage i can destroy a car but i want this to happen before i spawn in? basically because i cannot get fire and smoke to work (well fire) exactly as i would like to. It looks dumb moves around the object as the player does and generates no light causing me to have to place a hidden fireplace.

You could add a black screen for a prolonged time and lock the player movement at the mission start, although you would need to disable any sound as well.

You can always just set the height up high, so it drops and creates "real" damage

right at the start. Just need to hide the drop out-of-view. Turn your players around

or something to that effect. (one of my quick editor tricks) :cool:

That is what i was thinking something simular to say wasteland where i spawn the player out of the area with a black screen and then teleport player to mission start. that may have to be it... sucks the fire doesn't work properly (or i don't know how to use it)

You can also just use setHit to take out the tires, and set the damage in the editor to the desired effect, then add in the smoke. I think the coop mission defend on stratis uses blown up vehicles at mission start.

Ive been using set hit as well, when i ran it twice by mistake it made the car flip! decided to just use heli insertion so that everything happens out of view of the player before he gets there.

Yeah, I've had the same problem before, I "solved" it by just having players have a black screen for a second or two... but it still feels like a poor solution at best.

This is how BIS is doing it:

place this into the init of the unit:

this setFuel 0; this setdamage 1; this setdamage 0; this setdamage 1

Then place an MH9 helicopter on the map near the vehicle. Save your mission.

Go under the mission.sqm folder and find your helicopter:

replace the classname of the helicopter with "test_EmptyObjectForSmoke";

Below is an example from the stratis MP COOP mission

		class Item16
	{
		position[]={6211.2642,4.0234079,5586.4102};
		azimut=396.70901;
		offsetY=3;
		special="FLY";
		id=76;
		side="EMPTY";
		vehicle="test_EmptyObjectForSmoke";
		leader=1;
		skill=0.60000002;
	};

After editing the mission.sqm file save it. Then go back to your mission and reload the mission do not save it. Your helicopter is gone and replaced by a small mine icon. You can now move that mine icon around to where you want the smoke. Oh and no explosion sounds.

One other thing, once you have done this you can just click on the new smoke object then copy paste wherever you want another smoke object and just save the mission from the editor.

The MH9 turns into the mine pictured below, it doesnt really matter what object you use:

Brilliant thank you i will try this, thanks for such a clear explanation.