Single Player Missions, Scripting And Pathing Related Things

posted on April 21st, 2009, 10:25 am

Hi Devs,

I was wondering if you could help enlighten me on the main issues with why single player missions can't be created for FO/Armada 2? Is it because tools that do it were never ever released and its all hardcoded into the engine?

Also why is it not possile to create moving asteroid belts in multiplayer maps anymore, whats broken on the pathing front?

and finally why can i not give a unit to a human player in the mapeditor? say i give him two akira's to start with, when saved their be there, when opened up there be there, when playing the game they won't be? but if i set them to ai and give them no crew they can be stolen?

Thanks,

posted on April 21st, 2009, 10:38 am

1. the mission script and rule files are all hardcoded and there has never been released an sdk to create own ones. so creating new mission scripts/rule files would need reverse engineering

2. there were some fundamental changes to the way asteroid belts work. optec can explain that better


3. that depends on the game mode i guess. the one for the game-to-the-death mode which is used for all maps doesn't allow individually placed map objects. don't ask me which game mode does, though

posted on April 21st, 2009, 1:16 pm

1. the mission script and rule files are all hardcoded and there has never been released an sdk to create own ones. so creating new mission scripts/rule files would need reverse engineering

2. there were some fundamental changes to the way asteroid belts work. optec can explain that better


3. that depends on the game mode i guess. the one for the game-to-the-death mode which is used for all maps doesn't allow individually placed map objects. don't ask me which game mode does, though

I love went when the devs reply, such clear and direct answers

1. Do you have any plans to reverse engineer it,

Also, could the rules/script not be adapted, so sure at core the mission would be the same but you could change units and make them harder and also change map lay outs and so on? (i do beleive this is what happened for armada one?)

2. Optec if you could kindly fill the blnak on this it would be very much appreciated, because i always thought you could script ship paths like asteroids, now you can do any?

3. i'll mess around with the game modes and see which one it is...

4. forgot to ask in the last bit, does create a new tech.tt like i dunno basictech.tt create games to have incompalibility issues online? I figured i to wouldnt as your not changing any unit starts and so on...

posted on April 21st, 2009, 1:38 pm

we do no longer use asteroids as they were used in armada2. to have better performance and control over pathing we splitted the visual layer of asteroid from the blocking part, same will happen to nebulas in the near future. Therefore you have to paint your asteroids separately from your blocking layer (blocking triggers)
We can no longer make moving asteroid belts, something i never liked either way. More complex mapevents like supernovas or floating comets are on todo for the next versions.

posted on April 21st, 2009, 1:41 pm

Do you have any plans to reverse engineer it

at some point of development, yes. existing scripts/rules can be used for new missions, but we were limited to what they allow us to do.

posted on April 21st, 2009, 1:47 pm

ive made a few maps and i totally forgot that you guys did that to asteroids, kinda got so used to laying down blocking triggers (would be great if you had more variation on sizes with thos by the way), and i doubt you were going to make them movable but moving asteroid belts did have some useds...

well im glad at some point you will, if you did do you think you'd ever release a tool for us to make custom missions... i merely ask because i had a few ideas...

p.s. please feel free to answer the techtree question

posted on April 21st, 2009, 1:50 pm

yes, also an additional techtree file should make your game incompatible.

if there is a way to create a singleplayer sdk, i will for sure make it available for everyone

posted on April 21st, 2009, 2:42 pm

We can no longer make moving asteroid belts, something i never liked either way. More complex mapevents like supernovas or floating comets are on todo for the next versions.

That sounds nice it would give the maps more visual interest.

posted on April 21st, 2009, 4:03 pm

guess people will have to make a back up of their techtree folder then for my mission based map ideas... shame i wont be able to actually script the ai to do a single thing...

posted on April 23rd, 2009, 1:58 am

why not ask the community, of fleet ops, and a2 files, to find a way,

if we all work together, im sure that building off of one another we can figure it out,

or could it be possible, to just make a new way to make missions, and then make that compatible with fleet ops?

posted on April 23rd, 2009, 3:14 am

it would be a nice idea however there are few people that understand as much about this game as Optec and DOCa Cola do...

posted on April 23rd, 2009, 1:17 pm

It would be great but i already had a lengthy discussion with Optec about this and in short it would defo require reverse engineering armada as the scripts and rules are hardcoded so to find out how they work, you would have to go backwards...