Various modding issues

[spaceh]

Well I plunged headlong into modding tonight and have been met with nothing but problems. These are the ones I have unearthed so far...

1. InstantUnits->Armour always one of them will have no flag colour and wander off for no reason and it's not selectable (e.g. 5 units, team 2 so they are selectable; nb: also tried teams 0 and 1 just in case; 1 of the Armour units will always move away into the distance and beyond so only 4 usable)

2. Buildings->SafeArea doesn't seem to work. I had it setup with activating with 200 DGs but no matter what team I set the SafeArea to the mission objective, which was set to BuildingOnline on the SafeArea, never turns to Completed, even though it is showing enough DGs in the counter on the mission screen.

3. InstantUnits->AI doesn't appear to make the red DGs do anything. I had 3 AITargets all linked, about 40 red DGs near one of the AITargets and an AI unit (only 1), but no matter what configuration of teams I set, the red DGs just stand around.

As a side note the Armour AI is bugged. If an Armour unit hits another one it immediately seems to run some kind of collision avoidance routine but when that completes it never continues it's prior instruction. So if you don't know it's stopped your left wondering why the turret hasn't been made where you placed it. Even stranger the turret positioning flag still shows on the map so you kinda expect the Armour to go to it... but it doesn't under the aforementioned conditions... it just seems to give up.

Anyhoo, these problems have stopped me from getting anywhere with modding which is a little frustrating to say the least. So if someone can help it would be greatly appreciated. To help you understand what I'm trying to achieve here are the two current mods I had in mind:

1. Skirmishes - basically a series of individual maps designed to test the players ability at conquering the objectives with limited units. I originally thought of using simple 'kill all the bad guys' type maps, but it seems that the biosphere_objective1 objective only works for biosphere (hardcoded?). So then I decided on getting the player to get an amount of DGs to a safe area, overcoming all obstacles in the way. However problem 2 above put a stop to that.

2. Story - my story based mod will need text obviously, but with the objective problems that I had with skirmishes and the fact that I can't get AITargets to function properly, again I am forced to stop.

I apologise if I'm missing something but other than the tutorial written by IcePick there is little or no indication as to how the game maps are using the various scripting elements and mission conditions to achieve the desired result.

[Jackmn]

2. Buildings->SafeArea doesn't seem to work. I had it setup with activating with 200 DGs but no matter what team I set the SafeArea to the mission objective, which was set to BuildingOnline on the SafeArea, never turns to Completed, even though it is showing enough DGs in the counter on the mission screen.

I've had no problem getting it working myself, keep tinkering. Try making it the first objective as well. As a side note, it has to work, because IV used it in-game.

3. InstantUnits->AI doesn't appear to make the red DGs do anything. I had 3 AITargets all linked, about 40 red DGs near one of the AITargets and an AI unit (only 1), but no matter what configuration of teams I set, the red DGs just stand around.

Correct team?

[Darksun]

1. Skirmishes - basically a series of individual maps designed to test the players ability at conquering the objectives with limited units. I originally thought of using simple 'kill all the bad guys' type maps, but it seems that the biosphere_objective1 objective only works for biosphere (hardcoded?). So then I decided on getting the player to get an amount of DGs to a safe area, overcoming all obstacles in the way. However problem 2 above put a stop to that.

I got it to work, you need to have a spawn network (ie a spawnpoint master and at least one spawnpoint).

[spaceh]

Thanks for the replies. To answer some of your questions:

Quote:
3. InstantUnits->AI doesn't appear to make the red DGs do anything. I had 3 AITargets all linked, about 40 red DGs near one of the AITargets and an AI unit (only 1), but no matter what configuration of teams I set, the red DGs just stand around.
Correct team?

Yes, correct team. I've tried every combination just to make sure but no luck.

Quote:
2. Buildings->SafeArea doesn't seem to work. I had it setup with activating with 200 DGs but no matter what team I set the SafeArea to the mission objective, which was set to BuildingOnline on the SafeArea, never turns to Completed, even though it is showing enough DGs in the counter on the mission screen.
I've had no problem getting it working myself, keep tinkering. Try making it the first objective as well. As a side note, it has to work, because IV used it in-game.

It is the first and only objective at the moment.

I got it to work, you need to have a spawn network (ie a spawnpoint master and at least one spawnpoint).

Ahh I did wonder about that. So does that mean I can't make a map with limited numbers of DGs, i.e. InstantUnits instead of spawning units?

I'll keep playing around but if I don't get any luck with it I'll put my maps up for download to see if someone can figure out what's wrong.

[Stormchild]

3. InstantUnits->AI doesn't appear to make the red DGs do anything. I had 3 AITargets all linked, about 40 red DGs near one of the AITargets and an AI unit (only 1), but no matter what configuration of teams I set, the red DGs just stand around.

It is possible there aren't enough DGs for the AI to trigger. It seems to wait until the group reaches an (unknown) critical mass and then splits some off to head to the next waypoint.

[Darksun]

Ahh I did wonder about that. So does that mean I can't make a map with limited numbers of DGs, i.e. InstantUnits instead of spawning units?

You can, stick the spawnpoint somewhere inaccessible. Doesn't look good, but it works.