Please be gentle...

[c0chese]

While not a complete noob to the series, I am completely clueless when it comes to anything more than placing units and copy/pasting scripts for some basic things like setting aircraft height etc.  I would really like to learn, but it is going to have to be from the ground up. Can anyone recommend any sites, books or anything that can give me a better understanding of scripting? I really want to learn, but I get so lost, it would be so helpful if someone could just give me a solid starting point. 

[savedbygrace]

If you truly want to learn, the absolute best way to do so is to play a mission through, see what features it offers that you find interesting, depbo that mission and open it up in the editor to compare sensors and other in editor structure to what you find in the mission files such as the scripts or description.ext and slowly pull each strand apart to see how it is layered. Once you have an idea of how it works, start trying to implement that simple idea into a new mission of your own and then tweak it to see how thins change.

Otherwise, you can read all the tutorials we have on this site dating from OFP because you'll find that 95% of that material still applies to later series titles. By opening things up, you'll begin to see keywords in the editor and mission files that will educate you on what to search for in the search feature of this site. Once you have exhausted your search ability, please feel free to post your concern in the mission editor's section of the forum for help. But please try your best to search for other threads on the topic you are having trouble with because 8 times out of ten, it's already been covered. Sift through the Editors depot of scripts, tutorials and other resources as well to get an idea on what others have done to push the limits of the engine.

If you get stuck at any point, feel free to PM me or any other staff to help turn you in the right direction.

[Wolfrug]

Hi and welcome to OFPEC! 

The best way to learn is to do. That is to say, simply try making a mission. Very soon, you'll bump into something you don't know how to do ("How to check if everyone in the group is dead?") - then you search around for an answer ("{alive _x} count units (group unit1) == 0"), and failing that, you ask the question here (with an informative thread title and a description of what you need done and why) and hopefully someone can help you. Then you continue on, until you bump into another problem. Rince and repeat!

Aside from what SBG there told you, there's another thing you need to keep in mind. The most important tool you, the mission editor, has, is EXPERIMENTATION. All the commands in the game are already listed, right here in our very own COMREF or in the equivalent on the BIKI: Scripting Commands. You can do almost anything with clever combinations of those commands - that's all scripting is, really. Just combining commands in a clever way. Usually the descriptions can give you a hint of what they do and how they work, but the best way is to try them yourself! Not sure how "alive" works? Add a trigger that has the condition: not(alive unit1), and the on activation: hint "The unit is dead!". Then go ahead and shoot poor unit1 and notice your hint popping up.

So yes, go forth and edit. And have fun!

Wolfrug out.