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How to end missions?

IndieIndie Moderator
in Buda 5 Dev Forum
How does one end a mission and return the player to the (previous) menu screen? Giving the player the death script and then blowing him up does the trick, but thats not what I want.

Besides, its not polite to blow him up every time he has completed a tough mission. :D

Comments

  • Roi DantonRoi Danton Moderator
    Re: How to end missions?

    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Indie [/i]
    [B]Besides, its not polite to blow him up every time he has completed a tough mission. :D [/B][/QUOTE]
    The world is that unfair (have probs with my (ex)girlfriend again ... becomes usualness *heh*) so this isn't that unrealistic ;) :D .

    I thought, Warlord has focused on that? If not, we could remove the mission screen ... so a Fade In Black with Director Mode, maybe a docking sequence/planet/wreck sequence (bnk vid or engine animation) before.
    Then removing the mission screen with iGUI.RemoveLastOverlaysAfter( "TheMissionScreen" ); and then should the last Screen .. the GUI screen appear. Have to be tested.
  • IndieIndie Moderator
    Warlord, did you discover anything?:confused:
  • Warlord IIWarlord II Earthforce Officer
    I just tried to go back to skirmish interface after mission and if I remember right screen went black (there was still some screen left above my interface after I removed overlays after Custom GUI screen ie my interface). I didn't actually focus on doing it. I asked Roi if he knew how to do it but he suggested same thing I tried. I could look into it more because I still have this week as holiday before my school starts (first of September).
  • IndieIndie Moderator
    That'd be great and it would save time time for me. I can mail you the Explorer campaign GUI, but since its built on top of the mission collection everything that works in the collection should also work in the Explorer gui.

    Hmmm... well, its not exactly the same. From the main menu you go to the briefing screen of the next mission so I guess what I'd really want is to go back two screens... I guess it won't be that much of a problem if one can go back once.
  • Warlord IIWarlord II Earthforce Officer
    Only problem could be that your main screen classname (use dev mode-> bottom left corner) is CustomGUIScreen and briefing screen name is the same. So we'll see. It would be the same if I could go from skirmish mission straight to Mission Collection's main screen (bypassing Skirmish gui).

    Still you could just end mission -> go back one screen ie debriefing (actually there is several screens between mission and your gui) -> from there to next mission or back to main screen. Just that I don't know how to change briefing into debriefing. If we remove overlays it just goes back screens. Also when you go back screens, I don't know if game automatically "cleans" space or not. So if you would go to main screen and after that back to same place in space would the same ships still be there (that's probably not desired). I know that in I-War 2 root folder there is scripts.ini which tells what script to run when player enters and exits space but I don't know if they work in our case because I don't know how Particle handled moving from base to space and back to base (scriptwise).
  • Warlord IIWarlord II Earthforce Officer
    Just a little update. I could go from skirmish mission to the skirmish gui with a single function. Simple if you know what you are doing (like I would, just experimenting ;) ). Look Pog SDK and the GUI package there. On top there is title "Screen Manipulation and Handle Functions". There is what you need. Removing overlays after gui screen won't work because all screens between gui and mission aren't overlays (overlay is kind of layer above screen). Instead PopScreensTo( string screen class ); works. Replace screen class with class name you want to go to. Only problem is that our main screen class name is the same as briefing screen / skirmish gui which is "CustomGUIScreen". And like I said in my last post I don't know what happens to the "space" if we pop our gui to top. It will destroy current screen that I know but what about ships etc.

    On a side note (when I remember it) you have to destroy top groups in group hierarchy manually. Otherwise there will be memory leakage (probably small but still). I don't know if it's necessary if all sims in group are destroyed.
  • Roi DantonRoi Danton Moderator
    Sry that I didn't answered before but the last days I've looked only quickly on the board.

    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Warlord II [/i]
    [B]Removing overlays after gui screen won't work because all screens between gui and mission aren't overlays (overlay is kind of layer above screen). Instead PopScreensTo( string screen class ); works. Replace screen class with class name you want to go to. Only problem is that our main screen class name is the same as briefing screen / skirmish gui which is "CustomGUIScreen".[/B][/QUOTE]
    The screen class I used (Mission Collection) is the [i]icPDAOverlayManager[/i] which works for our custom overlays. Example from the SkGen.pkg:
    [code]
    ScenarioMain()
    {
    GUI.StopAllMovies();
    GUI.PushScreen("icPDAOverlayManager");
    Initialize();
    }

    [...]

    GUI.RemoveOverlaysAfter( "icPDAOverlayManager" );

    GUI.PopScreen(); //icPDAOverlayManager

    GUI.SetRHSShadyBarWidth( 0 );
    [/code]
    So we can't change the single screen names b/c we have no influence on it. But for example it should be possible to overlay our wished custom screen like this:

    [code] GUI.PopScreenTo("icPDAOverlayManager");
    iGUI.OverlayCustomScreen( "Buda5_SkGen.StartScreen" );
    iGUI.OverlayCustomScreen( "[i]Screen you wanna show[/i]" );
    [/code]


    But as you wrote that unknown behaviour with the ships by popping the screen the following is worth a try, too:

    [code] GUI.PushScreen("icPDAOverlayManager");
    [...]
    iGUI.OverlayCustomScreen( "[i]Screen you wanna show[/i]" );[/code]
    So you won't destroy the misssion screen. And on continuing the mission:
    [code] GUI.RemoveOverlaysAfter( "icPDAOverlayManager" );

    GUI.PopScreen();
    [/code]


    [QUOTE][b]On a side note (when I remember it) you have to destroy top groups in group hierarchy manually. Otherwise there will be memory leakage (probably small but still). I don't know if it's necessary if all sims in group are destroyed. [/B][/QUOTE]
    All subgroups and IMHO all sims will be destroyed when you destroy the top group.
  • Warlord IIWarlord II Earthforce Officer
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Roi Danton [/i]
    [B]All subgroups and IMHO all sims will be destroyed when you destroy the top group. [/B][/QUOTE]Actually the function is:
    [code]prototype Group.Destroy( hgroup group, bool including_sims );[/code]
    So you can choose. But when ending mission it's probably best to destroy sims too. I don't know if it's necessary though.

    Also regarding the space cleanup. I used PopScreensTo function with skirmish and then looked into flux.log. Looks like it still cleans up the space. A little piece of log
    [code]....mission ends with PopScreens.....
    SCRIPT: [unknown] iStartSystem.ShutdownSpace: Shutting down spaceflight...
    SCRIPT: [unknown] iStartSystem.strip_player_ship: Reimbursing ship to loadout...
    SCRIPT: [unknown] iStartSystem.strip_player_ship: Completed
    SCRIPT: [unknown] iStartSystem.unload_localised_text: Removing localised text...
    SCRIPT: [unknown] iStartSystem.unload_localised_text: Done...
    SCRIPT: [unknown] iStartSystem.ShutdownSpace: Completed
    SCRIPT: [unknown] iBackToBase.Terminate: Terminating iBackToBase
    SCRIPT: [unknown] iBackToBase.Terminate: ERROR: global g_ibacktobase_level does not exist.
    SCRIPT: [unknown] iBackToBase.Terminate: ERROR: global g_have_started_ibacktobase_detector does not exist.
    ....back to gui.....[/code]
  • IndieIndie Moderator
    Thanks. I'll test these this weekend.
  • Warlord IIWarlord II Earthforce Officer
    In earlier post you said you want to go back two screens, right (from mission to main menu?). Both main screen and briefing screen are CustomGUIScreen -class. In mission you could use GUI.PopScreensTo (CustomGUIScreen); so it brings up latest screen of that class (briefing) and then you use GUI.RemoveLastOverlay(); so it removes briefing and goes to main screen. I haven't tested it but I think it would work. You could try to put those two commands inside atomic block so they are considered as single command and there isn't possibility of briefing showing.

    Still I think we should have debriefing after mission so you would replace RemoveLastOverlay with a command that makes a new overlay above briefing screen or you can go to main screen as described above and create debriefing above main screen.
  • Roi DantonRoi Danton Moderator
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Warlord II [/i]
    [B]Still I think we should have debriefing after mission[/B][/QUOTE]
    In regular missions yes. So for regular mission we could include a function "Debriefing" in the Buda.pkg, so you only need to fill out some variables (text, background image, ..).
    For the other mission (wreck etc where the player doesn't dock to the explorer) there needn't to be a debriefing. There could be an epilog or smthg.
  • IndieIndie Moderator
    yay

    Wohoo! It works! The spaceflight screen seems to shut down properly. Thanks guys. :)

    Now, the only thing. Current version doesn't support debrief, but it shouldn't cause any problem to make it go straight to briefing screen after it has returned to main menu level.
  • Roi DantonRoi Danton Moderator
    Re: yay

    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Indie [/i]
    [B]but it shouldn't cause any problem to make it go straight to briefing screen after it has returned to main menu level. [/B][/QUOTE]
    iGUI.OverlayCustomScreen("debriefingscreen"); ;)
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