[TEC] Testing Missions

[KaleunMarco]

To All Modders who have built Missions:

Is there a way we can test Mission Objectives, Triggers, and Events through simulation without actually executing the mission?

[propbeanie]

Not really. All you can do is verify the editing and assignments visually at this time. I have been working on attempting to "program" a little "mis file checker", something along the lines of what Hebe has for SH3, and find all Objectives, associated MapZones, and make certain the MapZone is not used for another Objective - One MapZone to one Objective... You can have other MapZones for other purposes, but each MapZone can only have one purpose... The linking of Triggers and Events are similar, although each Event have more than one Trigger, and each Trigger can be used multiple times... My brain "leaked" all the programming and logic required for such an endeavor roughly 35 years ago... - I can't even get a proof-of-concept going in Visual Basic, because the made VB like Visual C... I might eventually get there.

[KaleunMarco]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

Not really.

ok, thanks for confirming.

Originally Posted by propbeanie

All you can do is verify the editing and assignments visually at this time. I have been working on attempting to "program" a little "mis file checker", something along the lines of what Hebe has for SH3, and find all Objectives, associated MapZones, and make certain the MapZone is not used for another Objective - One MapZone to one Objective... You can have other MapZones for other purposes, but each MapZone can only have one purpose... The linking of Triggers and Events are similar, although each Event have more than one Trigger, and each Trigger can be used multiple times... My brain "leaked" all the programming and logic required for such an endeavor roughly 35 years ago... - I can't even get a proof-of-concept going in Visual Basic, because the made VB like Visual C... I might eventually get there.

your Trigger-Events comments are interesting because my experience is that one Trigger cannot be used for more than one Event. every time I use a Trigger for more than one Event, things get bolluxed. And when there are Objectives involved, one never knows if the Objective was Completed and you just did not get the benefit of the message(s).

Back to MapZones......when you say that one MapZone can only be used for one objective in what context do you mean? i've had multiple Objectives for one MapZone. For example, you can build a patrol Mapzone and then reference it for a Reach Zone Objective and also reference it for a Patrol Area (duration) Objective. that's two objectives using the same MapZone. so, that is why i asked in what context can a MapZone be used with only one objective.

as far as programming languages go, i no longer have the tool kits available to me and i am too cheap to pay Microsoft their exorbitant license fee. i bought an inexpensive license to Python with the thought that i could use it for text manipulation such as what you are proposing to do but i discovered Python is not the language for that.

[propbeanie]

As to programming tools, there are all sorts of options in today's world, with the easiest being the use of a Linux build and its "freeware" stuff. Also, MS has the "Community" version of their programming languages, but of course, you cannot compile an executable, except like with the old Basic VBrun.dll way of doing "interpreted" programs, but using netFramework instead. I learned programming during the GOTO days, and "structure" was linear. This even-driven stuff drives me crazy... lol - I bailed while advancing through "Advanced C" in school during the Win31 days, and getting frustrated by how many pages of code it took to build a window... The concept of a "library" for stuff like that was a foreign idea to me... anyway, "planning" is my downfall. I can "see" what I want, but my brain can no longer break things down into programmable pieces. To this day, I still end up with page upon page of spaghetti code, and still little usable functionality... sigh - I'm too impatient.

The MapZone can only be used once. You can use it for several Objectives, but whichever is completed first, is the only one that does. As for the Triggers, the confusion with using them for more than one Event is the fact that the player may not do things the way the modder expects or anticipates, but you can indeed have a "Reach Zone" objective, that has a "Trigger" associated with the Complete Objective, that can then be used to spawn multiple assets. This can get rather involved and convoluted though, and if the objective MapZone is used for something else first, then it will NOT trigger anything. So say you have a "Patrol" objective, but you want to generate a group when the player gets into the area, you would create another larger MapZone, such that you have a "ReachArea" MapZone of 110km and a "PatrolArea" MapZone of 100km, and then set a Trigger for "ReachArea" of say "AreaReached", and then use that to spawn a regular Group - RGG will NOT spawn that way - that then drives around the "PatrolArea" MapZone for the player to shoot at. The "PatrolArea" has a 48 hour patrol objective assigned to it. Say that in the group you spawn, that there is a CLDido that you want the player to sink. In order to do a Destroy Class objective, you need another MapZone, such as "DestroyDido", and it could be any size desired, but since you are confining the player to "PatrolArea" for 48 hours, it would be polite to not make "DestroyDido" any larger than 100km also. Set the Destroy Class to that MapZone, and you now have 3 objectives, each with their own MapZone, and each can do what you desired. The "ReachZone" objective does not need to show on the Objectives list if you don't want it, just by creating a Trigger based on "Reach Zone", without an Objective assigned to it...

But no true "logic", which is very frustrating, and coupled with a very strange implementation of a "Timer" trigger, can make mission building extremely frustrating...

[KaleunMarco]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

But no true "logic", which is very frustrating, and coupled with a very strange implementation of a "Timer" trigger, can make mission building extremely frustrating...

amen to that!