Debriefing: Loose

[Pilot]

My apologies if this has been asked before, I didn't find anything related in my searches.  

I am making a mission, and in the mission I have a trigger set to loose.  When the trigger fires and ends the mission, I want the debriefing to come up and show the text for the loose ending.  The debriefing screen comes up ok, but the text does not appear.  This is the debriefing section in my briefing.html file:

Code: [Select]

<hr><br><h2><p><a name="Debriefing:End1">Victory!</a></p></h2><br><p>The American base was destroyed, and a firm beachhead was established on Everon.  Good job, comrade!</p><br>

<hr><br><h2><p><a name="Debriefing:Loose">Failed</a></p></h2><br><p>Your assault failed, you have much explaining to do, comrade!</p><br>The text for end1 works ok, but loose does not.

So how do I call the loose ending text in my briefing file?

[Blip]

<hr><br><h2><p><a name="Debriefing:Loose">Failed</a></p></h2><br><p>Your assault failed, you have much explaining to do, comrade!</p><br>

Try putting : lost instead of Loose

I think thats what the commandRef calls for.

Blip :joystick:

[bedges]

i did indeed ask this a few days back - here.

as you can see, there's apparently no alternative but to use an objective which remains hidden until the very end. it works, even though it's on the left page rather than the right.

hope this helps

[THobson]

And I asked it a few months back.  

I also got into a discussion about whether the ending is indeed loose (as in not attached to something) or should it be lose (as in the opposite of win).

[nominesine]

Loose, lose, lost???

Has anyone seen a debriefing that actually works (I haven't, but I suppose they exist). What do they look like? I tried to solve this puzzle myself but never succeded.

[THobson]

Follow the link in bedges reply

[Pilot]

i did indeed ask this a few days back - here.

And I asked it a few months back.

Damn, I'm really sorry!

@Blip
I tried your suggestion, but it didn't work, thanks for the reply, though.

@bedges
Thanks for the reference to the thread!  I can't belive BIS overlooked something liked that.  I guess I'll just forget the loose debriefing :'(, fortunately it wasn't too important.

Thank you for the replies, everyone, and I apologize for my inability to search right.  I'll close this thread in a day or two if no one else can come up with something.

[bedges]

@nominesine - do you mean 'loose' ending debriefs specifically, or debriefs in general?

debriefs do indeed work, but as with all things flashpoint, they can be temperamental at times. there's a limited amount of space allocated to any one debrief text. it can spill onto the next page, which works fine - up to a point. if the text gets too long on the second page, a weird page/navigation split happens, producing two 'back' arrows, and clicking to get back a page starts making odd things happen.

[nominesine]

I'm always having trouble with debriefings from loose/lose triggers. Never got them to work as far as i can remember. When I have multiple endings I always get the first one to work and almost always experince trouble with end2, end3 etc. But I've never delved to deep into the problem. Don't understand much about html code anyway, so maybe that's the problem :-)

[ACF]

@nominesine:
The snag is you can't have loose debriefings.  And knowing html (not that I do) wouldn't help much with the OFP briefings and their oddities.  My only offering is always use a text editor to edit them, not FrontPage or some other clever programme that constantly 'corrects' your code thinking it knows best.

@Student Pilot
Now, am I right in thinking you want/need two different outros (outrowin and outroloose) and you'd like a debriefing for both? And isn't MacGuba trumpeting the successful transfer of variables between mission and outros in the blurb for 'Un-Impossible Mission'?

If there is a way (maybe playing with the weapons pool as an extra-mission data store; but that's just a wild, inelegant guess), could you not set up an outrowin with the two desired scenes as separate scripts or separate parts of the same script?  Then:

When you activate End1, your super-variable is set to "scene1" or "scene1.sqs" or just plain old 1. After Debriefing: End1 the outrowin script initialises, interrogates your super-variable and jumps to #scene1 or runs scene1.sqs.
Repeat with 2s instead of 1s for end/debriefing/scene 2.

And you can still have an outroloose for whatever purpose you decide it serves!

You may need to compromise on the setting of the scenes unless you're going to control movement, effects and props (no pun intended) through the script(s). If it's an editor-driven outro, rather than scripted, you could still have the player in two places at once by teleporting him or cloning him with a SetFace on an AI unit.

Hope there's enough there to get you off the ground (OK, pun intended that time).

[Pilot]

@ACF
That's a great idea!  I have one question about it though.  Normal variables don't appear to transfer from the mission to the outro.  Is there some variable that does, or can I make the variable transfer?

[ACF]

Imagine how smug I'd feel if I knew I could do it!

There must be variables - which I arbitrarily termed 'super-variables' - in 'campaign space' to control progression of campaigns. The only ones I can think of off the top of my head that, crucially, you can access are those associated with the WeaponPool (how all the ordnance you scavenged in 'Resistance' moved from mission to mission).

My unsubstantiated thought is that your End1 trigger adds, say one grenade to the WeaponPool; End2 trigger adds two (I'm just about following the logic, so you should be OK!) while you are in 'mission-space'.

Now, in 'outro-space', I'm hoping you can still access the WeaponPool and that WeaponPool commands still function (maybe not - the 'player' acts differently in intros and outros from missions).  Assuming they do, if you can query the number of grenades in the WeaponPool then you have a number you can use as a condition to initiate the appropriate cutscene: ta-da!

More reliable advice is to pick through the Un-Impossible Mission thread in Beta-Testing to see if there's anything relevant there!  But there is quite a lot of it...

[bedges]

i can confirm that is precisely how the gentleman managed it. not to steal your thunder or anything gubes   :-\

i would have to counter the 'inelegant' remark above though. what's inelegant about it if it's the only way it can be done? frankly i think it's a rather inspired and laterally thought-out solution to an annoying problem.

my tuppenceworth

[ACF]

Not sure whether I'm being slapped on the back or on the bottom there, but I'll go for:

Code: [Select]

While {SpeedMode ACF == "TOOSLOW"} Do {ACF SetBehaviour "SMUG"}
Actually it was the guessing that was inelegant; though the later 'unsubstantiated' was perhaps the better term.  My past tinkerings with the WeaponPool only concerned a short-lived idea for an 'easy' ammo redistribution script rather than it's inter-mission uses.

[macguba]

 ;D

As the gentleman in question, allow me my 2c.

Firstly, there is no debriefing text for a Loose ending.   Sad but true.

Secondly, you can transfer information from one mission in a campaign to the next mission using the commands saveStatus, saveIdentity and saveVar.     loadIdentity and loadStatus are used to recover the information:  I seem to recall that the variable recovers automatically.     deleteStatus does what it says on the tin.  

saveVar and saveStatus work between an Intro and its mission, but only saveStatus works between the mission and its Outro.   saveVar does not.

Normal variables do not transfer from anywhere to anywhere:  they are specfic to the Mission, Intro or Outro in question.

In Un-Impossible Mission I used saveStatus to make the squad extracted in the Outro the same squad with the same weapons as finished the mission.   (It wasn't weaponPool - which I've never tackled - although the principle is the same.)   However, saveStatus proved to be a very temperamental command and it was very difficult to get it to work correctly.   For example, it does not seem to record whether a unit is alive or dead.  I can't remember about damage.   It does convey weapon and ammo information correctly.

Should anybody want to dig though Un-Impossible Mission, which is now in Pending in the Missions Depot, they are very welcome to do so.    The relevant files are transfer.sqs, which is called shortly before the end of the mission; exit.sqs which is launched automatically at the end of a mission, rather like init.sqs at the beginning; and outroStart.sqs, which is called at the start of the Outro.   There may be some minor details that are handled elsewhere, I can't remember, but these three files are the essence of it.

transfer.sqs detects exactly who in the squad is alive and who is dead (it's complicated because there are two loons who may or may not have joined the squad, depending on how the mission turned out) and then gives each dead loon a peculiar magazine load.

exit.sqs does the saveStatus thing.  I don't know why the stuff in  transfer and exit were not combined into one file:  it may or may not be significant.

outroStart.sqs does some other stuff that's needed at the start of the outro.   It then has the loadStatus commands and checks to see if a unit's ammo load is the peculiar one.  If so, the loon must have died in the mission and is deleted from the Outro.   The player unit is also messed about with to ensure he has the corrrect ammo for the Outro.    Finally, all the loons known to be alive are setDammage 0, since sometimes some of them turned up dead in the Outro.   I have no idea why, and since you can't test any of this properly in the Mission Editor (since the Outro does not flow from the Mission) you can imagine what a grisly job it was getting to the bottom of what was going on.

The point is, of course, that you can use this system to transfer any information you like into the Outro.    For example, if dammage is transferred (for this mission it didn't matter so I can't remember) you could use a series of gamelogics with different damage levels to transfer numbers.     Even if that doesn't work, you can use ammo loadouts to do the same.    grenade=1, M16=2 or whatever.   First loon is units, second is tens, third is hundreds and so on.    Perhaps easier to figure out how many ammo types there are and use that as a your base.     Although, since the mission will then load the types, it might increase your lag very slightly.    Maybe binary is best.

However, the whole thing is tremendously hard work and loadStatus is clearly not really meant to be used for Outros.    So frankly I wouldn't bother.

If you do want to use this in your mission you are very welcome to do so:  obviously I'd appreciate a mention.   It is about the most inelegant thing I've seen in the whole of mission editing, but it works.   You could of course use this idea to call a particular Outro script depending on how the mission ended.