Civilians Appear As Friendlies

[shadow99]

Hello. I'm creating a level where the player thinks a Russian attack is going to take place on Larche, so the squad heads there from La Trinite to protect them. When they arrive, there is a small conversation and then the civilians open fire on the squad. The only problem I have, is that the labels of the civilians are red when the player aims at them. I want the text 'Man' to be in green instead of red, so that first time round, the player is really fooled.

Thank you very much.

[Dubieman]

Well, the TAG things, red and green over a dude appears in cadet mode. Vet mode, it doesn't matter.

But if the text don't matter, how about a few setcaptive triggers and careless behaviours so everyone doesn't hit the dirt while talkin peacefully.

I don't like the idea though. Unless you talk and move away first. Pulling guns in close quarters like that can be quite dirty...

[shadow99]

Makes it more dramatic. I have everything under control, the civilians on the right sides and all, no firing until the conversation's over, it's just the fact that on cadet mode, a player could predict what's going to happen.

So there's no way to change the color of the text from red to green? Surely it can be done via script, right?

[macguba]

I don't know but I bery much doubt it.    This is not really a mission editing question - it's messing with the game engine.

A workaround would be to have genuine civvies mincing around, then have a short cutscene during with the good civvies are deleted and replaced by evil civvies without the player seeing.

[shadow99]

That's an option, but it would require a bit of work. Basically, I'd need to delete everything I've done around the town.

I looked back at GRK's post again, and just out of curiosity tried the setCaptive command in a mini-mission. I didn't think it would change anything much, as I already have 'Never fire' and 'Open fire' waypoints for each side, but fortunate for me, setCaptive changes the color of the unit's writing from red (or green) to yellow. It's not green, but I'll settle for it.  

So I went through and setCaptive true'd em all, and then made a .sqs where I disabled it for all of them when the time came.

Thanks GRK and macguba.