[propbeanie]

I don't know if you remember this, KM, but Bubblehead1980 might also be interested:

Originally Posted by propbeanie

...
Back to this... I have done untold tests, crashing the game more than not, while trying to find a definitive answer. The result? I still don't know anything definitive, but I am a bit closer.

Initially, I had 36 lines in a text file, but I had little typed text and more numbers on lines with carraige returns to show the lines. The orders page scrolled fine, and had a "gutter" to scroll the page back and forth. As I added text to the file though, I had to keep cutting down on the number of lines. Notice that the first line starts with a <Tab> character, and has 55 other characters on the line. A "normal" line of text is 60 characters. However, you cannot always fill a line, since it is most likely a "total character" count that determines the limit. I still can't decide whether a new line is worth 2 characters (the two pipe characters), or four characters (carraige return and new line character). I am almost certain though that CR/NL is a Windows type of character, whereas the game just uses CR only... maybe... ??

It seems that the "character" limit is actually about 954, but I am not 100% certain of that. In the image below, I have 951 characters, but that includes 2 "pipe" characters to start each paragraph. Notice also that the last sentence is not complete. Each of the double pipes I added for the paragraphs required that I delete other characters.

Orders test file image

 

The text of course, is non-sensical, and I never did get close to the intended 1024 stated in that text, or even 1000... I arrived at 952 as the number, since it is divisible by 8, of which 8 bytes is the "standard" character size, and I crashed the game at 960. I am certain that EOF and carraige returns influence the character count, but notice that even with removing the double pipes for the carraige returns to start a new paragraph does NOT allow for very many more typed characters...

As of this time then, I would say that anything over 950 characters is suspect, depending upon how many CR there are in the file... sigh.

Edit: btw, I will do more testing, with more Objectives, which would add more lines to the bottom of the file. The question of course being "will that influence the total character count of the orders themselves?"... more late.

New List:

 

DavaoGulfEarly04
Extract Philippines 01
Extract Philippines 02
Extract Philippines 05
Gar2Mariannas
Insert Palau Island 02
Insert Palau Island 04
Insertion Commando Philippines 04
Insertion Corregidor Supplies
Insertion Spy BismarckSea 03
Insertion Spy Philippines 03
Insertion Spy Philippines 04
Insertion Spy Philippines 05
Insertion Spy Philippines 06
Lifeguard Corregidor VIP
Patrol Marshalls Early 02
Photo Leyte Invasion 01
SeaTrialHP_04

These are the files with greater than 950 characters after "MissionBriefing=" in the tsr file. I do know that at least half of these do indeed work properly from testing. However, they will still be edited for that just-in-case scenario. Also, four other files had already been edited today, as well as others over the last few weeks. Those would include SOJ missions in 1943 out of Pearl, which were previously tested and functional, but have been edited to comply with being less than 951 characters.

Originally Posted by KaleunMarco

yes, i concur.
i was assigned another mission that died at the start and when i checked the mission briefing it was over 1k. so i edited to less than 1024 characters and reloaded the mission and it still bombed. so i edited it down under 900 (IIRC) and only then did the mission start.

I am not sure how to 'calculate' this anymore. I have found a 2nd mission in the next release that fails due to "verbosity", although both missions are under 950 characters... I thought I had it yesterday with it being due to the size of the words and where they land in the line of 50 characters across the page. The game will not hyphenate words, so if you use a word of say 16 characters but only have 15 left on the line, then if falls to the next line, and you basically "lose" those 15 blank characters on the line. OK, got that... We had also figured that there was a maximum of 20 lines on the page, and if you look at the "Spoiler" image above, that's what it has, not counting the Objective synopsis at the end. There apparently must also be a blank line between the body of text and that closing Objective Synopsis... so 18 lines to be "safe"... but wait, if the synopsis isn't much of a synopsis and takes two lines, then you are now hitting 17 lines for the body... I had an "order set" of 842 characters taking up 16 lines fail a few minutes ago... made it 840, and it ran fine... Now I am leaving extra space, figuring 17 lines x 50 characters equals 850, which is a figure we had some up with before... but that "Tab" to start the orders text, which we thought that was one character, is apparently five "space" characters... so 845 characters - plus the wasted white space... Do you know how difficult it is to describe a SpecOp mission with three Objectives in 840 characters or less, not using very big words so as to not waste line space?... especially for ~me~?... needless to say, we're going back through some of the suspect files and trying to do test "layouts" in a text editor to be able to accurately count lines, until I can figure-out a 010 script to do my character, word, and line counting for me recursively...

Originally Posted by Bubblehead1980

Hey guys, I want to make sure not duplicating any work here.

I am working on making the ability to conduct night surface attacks in a realistic and historically accurate manner, as I did in TMO, a possibility in FOTRS. Wanted to check with the team and make sure not already working on that lol.

No, we do not have plans for that as part of the mod at this time. All previous attempts that have been successful for the player to do night surface attacks result in a failure of surface battles at distance, and or planes' failure to attack. On the back burner for the time being, so have at it. Another thing to fix would be the shadows not cast by the moon... lol - I have a really pretty screen grab of the west coast of Negros Island in the Philippines, coming east toward shore in the sub, with the moon clipping the horizon beyond a hill, yet the moonlight is reflecting all the way from the shore, lighting my way to the landing zone...