Any analysis of the Wz CAM Script Triggers ?

[Rman Virgil]

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* I've looked around and haven't found anything but you never know which is why I'm asking -

* Has anyone analyzed the original Wz CAM's script triggers and cataloged them verbatim ?

* The reason I ask is that such a catalog can be the basis of a modular resuse of script assets by simply swapping out components: ie., map coordinates, etc.

* Thanks in advance.

Cheers, /V\I/R\G/I\L/

[lav_coyote25]

is a good idea!  where are these items?  ;D

[Rman Virgil]

is a good idea!  where are these items?  ;D

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* Good question. There are far more qualified folks than I that can answer but I'll take a stab at it invisioning  a .wz with:

map.gam
.wrfs
.vlo and .slo script files
addon.lev where you specify T1/T2/T3 & Multi or Ski

Cheers, /V\I/R\G/I\L/

* BTW: You still interested in Machinima ? I started working with a totally dedicated platform a few months back that is fabulous and FREE (including 3D GFX assets) that might interest you if your still into it.

[lav_coyote25]

* BTW: You still interested in Machinima ? I started working with a totally dedicated platform a few months back that is fabulous and FREE (including 3D GFX assets) that might interest you if your still into it.

yes - links?  please. ;D

[Rman Virgil]

* Yup.

* Here ya go:

* Take Me to the kwelst, user-friendliest, and freest Machinima Platform to date

* Using Syth-Actors and panning to map-stills (for example) you can readily create high-quality mission-briefs ala the C & C style..... Fun stuff..


Cheers, /V\I/R\G/I\L/

[Giel]

* Good question. There are far more qualified folks than I that can answer but I'll take a stab at it invisioning  a .wz with:

map.gam
.wrfs
.vlo and .slo script files
addon.lev where you specify T1/T2/T3 & Multi or Ski

I hope I'm qualified enough Anyway the *.wrf and *.lev files won't contain any "triggers" at all (they just contain references to which files have to be loaded). You're best chance for finding "triggers" are the *.vlo and *.slo files (see the scripting manual for info about these filetypes).

You can specifically try looking at these (I'm pretty sure these are the campaign script files). http://svn.gna.org/svn/warzone/trunk/data/script/text/

Edit: fix link

[Rman Virgil]

I hope I'm qualified enough Anyway the *.wrf and *.lev files won't contain any "triggers" at all (they just contain references to which files have to be loaded). You're best chance for finding "triggers" are the *.vlo and *.slo files (see the scripting manual for info about these filetypes).

You can specifically try looking at these (I'm pretty sure these are the campaign script files). http://svn.gna.org/svn/warzone/trunk/data/script/text/

* Sweet ! Thank you.

* Got some traveling coming up and the hours of airport waiting time will pass in a blink studying this. Perfect.

/V\I/R\G/I\L/

[Rman Virgil]

---------------------------------------------------->


* Well I've got to looking thru all these scripts this week and it makes for some interesting reading, even funny in spots - especially the Pumpkin comments 'bout "Blokes" (that's what they call Scavs) and needing to fix this that & the other and workarounds to scripting impasses. Not having looked at WZ scripts for years I probably only get maybe 50% of it ( if that) and that's probably only because I've been learning the Linden Scripting Lang for "Second Life" the last few months (awesome resources they have to support such efforts, especially the Scripting Wiki which I understand was spearheaded years ago by a homeless gal who was living in an alley behind a Comp store and put her rig together from discards, got into "SL" early on, started teaching herself the script-lang, created the wiki and is one of the current gurus on the subject.)

* Anyhow... I think there's a craving for a fresh Cam experience but most are scared-off by learning the scripting and perhaps the daunting nature of trying to make something as long as the original. So... I'll see how much fluency I can attain towards the end of a modest 250 x 250 map, bounded into quadrants to comprise a 4-Mission experience. But I will finish the Trinity project first - while I'm learning to make sense of stuff like:

//set Morale to low
//setRetreatPoint(enemy1, enm1Ret2X, enm1Ret2Y); //retreat to base
//setRetreatForce(enemy1, 75); //set morale to 25%
//setRetreatLeadership(enemy1, 50); //set leadership chance (small=more likely?)
//order guys around bunker to get into position behind when player near

* Wonder if there is anything in Lav's Docs Project that would shed light on "//set morale to 25%"..... (is that related to 'Health' ?.... though I did see scripts that specifically used health and not morale) and "//set leadership chance (small=more likely?)"....... leadership ??? - what the heck is that all 'bout ?

- Cheers, RV

* EDIT: Lav you might find it interesting to take a gander at the Linden Scripting Language Wiki ...... it's a pretty awesome learning tool, IMHO.

[Chojun]

RJ,

The easiest way to explain morale is to point you to NEXUS behavior in Cam 3.  Their morale is very "low" so if they reach a certain amount of damage, they'll retreat (as a group) to the designated retreat point to recover.

The Warzone scripting language is very powerful but unintuitive.  It has seen its lack of success due-in-part to inadequacies at the Edit World level.  I contrast Warzone's failures to Warcraft and Starcraft's successes, where both of those games had very powerful map editor software.  The custom map scene on battle.net is, from what I observed during my years on battle.net, far more popular than the standard and tournament game play.

Work could be done on Warzone's scripting internals, but I'd almost recommend rolling enhancements into Edit World first that would allow average end-users to create feature-rich custom maps.

[Rman Virgil]

RJ,

The easiest way to explain morale is to point you to NEXUS behavior in Cam 3.  Their morale is very "low" so if they reach a certain amount of damage, they'll retreat (as a group) to the designated retreat point to recover.

The Warzone scripting language is very powerful but unintuitive.  It has seen its lack of success due-in-part to inadequacies at the Edit World level.  I contrast Warzone's failures to Warcraft and Starcraft's successes, where both of those games had very powerful map editor software.  The custom map scene on battle.net is, from what I observed during my years on battle.net, far more popular than the standard and tournament game play.

Work could be done on Warzone's scripting internals, but I'd almost recommend rolling enhancements into Edit World first that would allow average end-users to create feature-rich custom maps.

* I suspected as much, 'cause I couldn't think of any other mechanism but "health".... What threw me was the actual ref to "Health" in other scripts.... Probably they just used the terms interchangably...

* Agree the rest.

* If someone did take a look at EW / WE32 with the goal of rolling-in scripting functionality even if it wasn't that fancy to start, it would likely release the creative flood-gates like it has in most communities that have such an editor. But since Qalmy left us, no one else seems to have gotten excited about working on EW.

- Cheers, RV

[Chojun]

The nice thing about Warcraft and Starcraft's Map Editors is that the scripting is all gui, menu driven.  You select from a list the event that triggers the trigger (my apologies for being redundant), then choose conditions that must exist in order to continue with the trigger, and then the action to be executed from another list.

I could program this myself but I'm very busy with other things..  If there are 1 or 2 other programmers here (or somewhere) who are familiar with MFC, I could guide them through the process to implement the changes in Edit World.

Sometimes I wish there were about 3 or 4 of me.  But then, I think all we would do is fight over our one laptop 

[Troman]

The Warzone scripting language is very powerful but unintuitive.

Just out of curiosity, what exactly is unintuitive about it and how did you come to this conclusion?

Work could be done on Warzone's scripting internals

What work do you mean?

The easiest way to explain morale is to point you to NEXUS behavior in Cam 3.  Their morale is very "low" so if they reach a certain amount of damage, they'll retreat (as a group) to the designated retreat point to recover.

This is not morale. You can control retreating behavior by choosing one of the following in unit right click menu: "retreat on medium damage", "retreat on heavy damage" or "Do or die".

I'm learning to make sense of stuff like:

Code: Select all

//set Morale to low
   //setRetreatPoint(enemy1, enm1Ret2X, enm1Ret2Y);   //retreat to base
   //setRetreatForce(enemy1, 75);         //set morale to 25%
   //setRetreatLeadership(enemy1, 50);      //set leadership chance (small=more likely?)
//order guys around bunker to get into position behind when player near

* Wonder if there is anything in Lav's Docs Project that would shed light on "//set morale to 25%"..... (is that related to 'Health' ?.... though I did see scripts that specifically used health and not morale) and "//set leadership chance (small=more likely?)"....... leadership ??? - what the heck is that all 'bout ?

It is actually all documented in the the scripting manual, in the link above provided by Giel.

About "setRetreatForce()" is sais: "Sets the percentage of the current force below which units for a side will retreat". In the provided example, if the percentage number of units drops below 75%, units will run away with the chance set by setRetreatLeadership() function to a position set by setRetreatPoint().

Those functions are used only for campaign.

"Morale" seems to be an abstract notion here.

[Rman Virgil]

It is actually all documented in the the scripting manual, in the link above provided by Giel.

* Gertrude Stein said: "A rose is a rose is a rose..."

* While she was being flip & on target, she wasn't totally right.

* There's documentation & there's "documentation" as anyone who has slogged thru the many obtuse Technical manuals out there or an IRS  booklet "explaining" accelerated depreciation or credit card reward disclaimers or the fine-print legal contracts.

* Like I mentioned in this thread & re-affirmed elsewhere:

* I found learning the Linden Scripting Language for "Second Life" relatively painless and even quite enjoyable and I think it had everything to do with the Wiki presentation-organization-documentation: See for yourself..

* Because I believe it would make a hugely positive difference for peeps inclined to work on Cam/Mods as well as helping me to fluency.... I would volunteer to assist on getting such WZ Scripting Wiki off the ground.  The key would be having at least a couple of others actively commited to it because I wouldn't want it to become a solo effort like the WZ Wiki I launched in 2004 (maybe not enough were Wiki literate in the WZ community back in '04... who knows.... but a Wiki by nature has to be collaborative in order to work...)

Cheers, RV

[Troman]

* Gertrude Stein said: "A rose is a rose is a rose..."

* While she was being flip & on target, she wasn't totally right.

* There's documentation & there's "documentation" as anyone who has slogged thru the many obtuse Technical manuals out there or an IRS  booklet "explaining" accelerated depreciation or credit card reward disclaimers or the fine-print legal contracts.

I don't think that's really the meaning Gertrude Stein put into that phase.

It is a repetition as a rhetoric device to trigger stronger awareness of the thing associated with the word being repeated, which is used by Stein. An interesting fact from the point of view of neuroscience btw, as it reveals some aspects of the inner working of the human brain.

* Like I mentioned in this thread & re-affirmed elsewhere:

* Because I believe it would make a hugely positive difference for peeps inclined to work on Cam/Mods as well as helping me to fluency.... I would volunteer to assist on getting such WZ Scripting Wiki off the ground.  The key would be having at least a couple of others actively commited to it because I wouldn't want it to become a solo effort like the WZ Wiki I launched in 2004 (maybe not enough were Wiki literate in the WZ community back in '04... who knows.... but a Wiki by nature has to be collaborative in order to work...)

Cheers, RV

Well if you have luck someone will volunteer.
There was already an attempt to create wiki pages from the scripting manual on our wiki site. Maybe the author is still interested in it. But, although that's sad, 'solo effort' is a good description of almost all the work done for WZ.

[Chojun]

Just out of curiosity, what exactly is unintuitive about it and how did you come to this conclusion?
What work do you mean?

Because you and I (and speedy?) are the only community members that I know of who have done anything with scripting.  And that one of the community's most elite members, RJ, is asking qustions about it

I should be more specific.  By work on the script internals, I mean work on a way to make it easier for upper-novice end users to create maps with scripted behavior.  In essence, to create a custom map community.  In about 8 years of warzone, people have got to be at least slightly bored of normal gameplay.

This is not morale. You can control retreating behavior by choosing one of the following in unit right click menu: "retreat on medium damage", "retreat on heavy damage" or "Do or die".

Have you noticed how NEXUS Cam3 units retreat before they reach 25% damage?  If I remember correctly this is affected by morale.  But it's been a long time since I looked at the cam scripts.