09-03-2000 23:34									#1
	Scenario Turn and .wav Playing Problem Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Right, I'm trying to polish off my Star Wars:Rebellion scenario, and one of the problems I'm having is with the turns.

I want the game to start in 1 AD (or equivalent). The game goes in 1 year increments. I set the scen starting year to 0 (for the default), and this works fine. It makes my scenario turn 1 AR.

Right then. I want the game to play a .wav file the first turn of the scenario. I have the sound in the sounds file for the scenario, and that seems okay. In the events text file, I have put a command line telling the scenario to play the .wav file near startup. Neither of these works properly.

A) IF SCENLOADED then PLAYWAVFILE start.wav

B) IF TURN=1 then PLAYWAVFILE start.wav

If I place the .wav file as a combat noise, then it plays during combat, so I'm sure the .wav itself is correct. Can any of you suss out the mechanics of the game, and penetrate my appalling grammar, to find out WHAT'S WRONG???

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"In all creation, there can be no task more onerous or tedious than that of playing God." - Stephen Fry, 'The Liar'.

	10-03-2000 02:10									#2
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

1) The SCENARIOLOADED trigger is only supposed to be used in conjunction with DONTPLAYWONDERS (the action that stops wonder movies playing) anything else casues unpredictable results.

2) Although not documented, there are several problems with events on turn=1. I don't know why and I expect someone else to give a better explanation.

	10-03-2000 03:41									#3
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There are even problems getting the .wav to play on turns 2, 3, etc.

Is there some sort of thing where I actually have to state the real turn that the scen is in, rather than the relative turn?

So would I have to go digging to find out what on earth "1 AD" really is?

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"In all creation, there can be no task more onerous or tedious than that of playing God." - Stephen Fry, 'The Liar'.

	10-03-2000 03:45									#4
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Try this.

@IF
TURN
turn=1
@THEN
PLAYWAVEFILE
start.wav
@ENDIF

	10-03-2000 04:13									#5
	Got spare money?

Here are the egs of code from the events.txt that I have. They don't work properly.

@IF
SCENARIOLOADED
@THEN
PLAYWAVEFILE
Start.WAV
@ENDIF

and

@IF
TURN
turn=1
@THEN
TEXT
[blah blah blah...you really don't want to know]
ENDTEXT
PLAYWAVFILE
start.wav
@ENDIF


These don't work, and I'm sure it's something to do with the turn problem, not the wave file itself. (I set Lord Vader's attack sound to it once, and got an earful of John Williams whenever he attacked.)

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"In all creation, there can be no task more onerous or tedious than that of playing God." - Stephen Fry, 'The Liar'.

	10-03-2000 04:21									#6
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Does the text get displayed?

	10-03-2000 23:07									#7
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

Good question.

The answer is no, it doesn't.

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"In all creation, there can be no task more onerous or tedious than that of playing God." - Stephen Fry, 'The Liar'.

	11-03-2000 00:53									#8
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In which case the event is not even firing, rather than a problem with the event.

In the Cheat menu, go to Set Game Year

WHAT IS THAT NUMBER?

	11-03-2000 03:03									#9
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The year is 101. Like a certain nice room we have all heard about.

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner...

------------------
"In all creation, there can be no task more onerous or tedious than that of playing God." - Stephen Fry, 'The Liar'.

	11-03-2000 12:17									#10
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

@IF
TURN
turn=-1
@THEN
TEXT
[blah blah blah...you really don't want to know]
ENDTEXT
PLAYWAVFILE
start.wav
@ENDIF

If it works please don't ask me to explain why.

	11-03-2000 14:13									#11
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

Now this is interesting. This time using the turn as "-1", the text shows up properly. However, the music is still not firing correctly.

Any hints? Tips? Walkthroughs and level descriptions?

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"In all creation, there can be no task more onerous or tedious than that of playing God." - Stephen Fry, 'The Liar'.

	11-03-2000 15:48									#12
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

One thing I've noticed
PLAYWAVFILE should be PLAYWAVEFILE
However, that doesn't explain why the text doesn't work.
Perhaps there is something wrong with the event before, like it not having an @ENDIF.

	11-03-2000 18:06									#13
	Full PM-box? Change here!

That worked a treat! Now all the music plays and the text pops up! Thanks a lot for your help, tips, and expertise(s?).


Final little nitpick question: does anybody else find that the very first text popup message in a given scenario will look a bit darker than all the others, as though the letters were written in BOLD font?

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"In all creation, there can be no task more onerous or tedious than that of playing God." - Stephen Fry, 'The Liar'.

	12-03-2000 05:51									#14
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"TURN=-1"

I have found out that this makes the event take place every turn. Perhaps putting in a JUSTONCE ought to iron this little niggle out?

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"In all creation, there can be no task more onerous or tedious than that of playing God." - Stephen Fry, 'The Liar'.

	12-03-2000 16:26									#15
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I've noticed that bold text too.

	12-03-2000 17:27									#16
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Problem still ongoing:

The -1 Turn command means it occurs every turn. That's fine, because if I need to have something happen first turn, I'll just put that down along with a "JUSTONCE" command.

But how do I cause things to happen at turns later in the game? Do I need to specify the turn of the scenario (ie with first turn of the scenario equalling "1") or do I have to perform mathematical gymnastics and work out what the actual turn of the event will be (ie 1 plus whatever the first turn was set to in scenedit)?

This is really beginning to arse me off and it won't be long before I violently lose interest in it and ferociously wander off to do something else.

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"In all creation, there can be no task more onerous or tedious than that of playing God." - Stephen Fry, 'The Liar'.

	12-03-2000 18:35									#17
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

I don't have alot of FW/MGE experience but I do believe that the TURN trigger works on every turn other then the first turn.

I'm tring to imagine, "ferocious wandering".

	13-03-2000 02:32									#18
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The set game year is the number of turns elapsed. If this is set to 101 then the first turn will be 102 (I think, it might be 101 still). The Game turns elapsed is NOT the same as the starting year. The starting year does not vary, obviously, but as you are producing the scenario you are playing the game so unless you set game year back to 0 every time you save as scenario you will have moved passed 'turn 1'. Try saving the scenario after resetting this to 0 and putting in 2 identical events to fire on turns 1 and 2 and see which one works.

Well spotted about PLAYWAVEFILE. It has caught me out before.

	13-03-2000 03:46									#19
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Miner: I've got a save slot (in a normal, scenedit, game) which I boot up and save as scenario periodically. Each time I do this I save over the old scenario, which is all right because I'm improving on it directly.

This shouldn't(?) increment the turn by one each time...??? But yes, I see that the game is in turn A, and having saved that as scenario, the first turn in the scenario is (A+1), right?

So bearing that in mind, should I or shouldn't I consider TURN commands to be elapsed turns (wrt BC, AD, etc) or should they be "scenario" turns elapsed instead?

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"In all creation, there can be no task more onerous or tedious than that of playing God." - Stephen Fry, 'The Liar'.

	13-03-2000 04:56									#20
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

Years and game turns are NOT the same thing at all.

	14-03-2000 02:31									#21
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Quote:

This shouldn't(?) increment the turn by one each time...??? But yes, I see that the game is in turn A, and having saved that as scenario, the first turn in the scenario is (A+1), right?

Ah but it does and this is the point. Whenever you play when setting up your scenario as you must do and press enter at the end of a turn then the game has incremented another Game Turn. Unless you reset this games turns elapsed the scenario remembers this. Your event is not firing because you are on turn 101 and you have set the event to fire on turn 1.

I have just tested this with a scenario.
Whenever you Save as Scenario the game remembers the Game Year. It is perhaps best not to think of the Set Game Year cheat option as in the number of years AD or BC but rather, as the popup menu suggests, as the number of game turns elapsed.

To have them in sync, set Set Game Year to 0 when you Save as Scenario. Then turn 1 will be the first year of your scenario. Turn will almost never equal game year unless you set the start year to 0AD and set the years per turn to 1, an unlikely occurrence!

I hope this made sense.
[This message has been edited by Miner (edited March 13, 2000).]

	14-03-2000 03:45									#22
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Alinestra:
Load your save file. Then open the "set game year" cheat and check the value (it's misnamed and a source of confusion!). It should have a value of 1 if you want your turn 1 event to work correctly. The turn counter advances whenever you end a turn, something you wouldn't normally do while building a scenario. However ending a turn could happen accidently or even on purpose, it you wanted to create barbarian cities by letting the barbarians have a turn and capture some unoccupied cities.

Miner: I think that if you set the value there to zero, then the first turn will be turn zero, not turn 1.

William: I believe turn=1 should work just fine. I see it all the time when authors display a scenario briefing on turn 1. I've done this myself.

	14-03-2000 05:00									#23
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Tried it out with the scenario at turn 1. However, this makes my timeline go funny (which I can handle) and also means that my events for turns 1 and 2 do not work at all.

This I can't handle and it's beginning to worry me.

	15-03-2000 00:59									#24
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Gothmog: You are right. Set game turn to 1.

AC: More info req'd.

	16-03-2000 10:43									#25
	Full PM-box? Change here!

In regards to the sound problem....make sure the wav file is in the correct format, i'm not sure what it is but it's in the scenerio design part of the MPGE book.

	15-03-2000 23:31									#26
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A few very necessary explanations and elaborations:

A) This makes my timeline go funny. That is to say, I want it to go 1 AR, 2 AR, 3 AR, etc. But it doesn't. Instead, it goes as per the old Civ2 year increments just after BC becomes AD. This isn't too bad - it doesn't destroy the mood of the game.

B) My events for later turns aren't happening at all. I set an event to change terrain on a certain square on turn = 2. (As Gothmog and others suggested, I have set the starting turn to 1, not 0.) Having read the other thread where somebody made an error with the MAPRECT coords, I made sure that they were flawless. However, the turn 2 event still failed to materialize. I'm having another look at this to make sure I'm doing the right terrain change. However, I also included a text popup, which didn't materialize, making me suspect the entire event is faulty.

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"In all creation, there can be no task more onerous or tedious than that of playing God." - Stephen Fry, 'The Liar'.

	16-03-2000 01:41									#27
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Problem A) is easiest to answer. Go to
Cheat/Scenario Parameters/Turn Year Increment and change it from 0. (0 is the Civ2 default were the years/turn changes through history.) I would suggest 1 turn per year. This popup box is a lot clearer than most.

As for B), please post the event here so we can look at it.

	19-03-2000 00:48									#28
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@BEGINEVENTS

@DEBUG

@IF
NOSCHISM
DEFENDER=anybody
@THEN
@ENDIF

I am considering actually doing away with this, provided that I can provide alternative identities and dll gifs for all the other tribes in the game. However, would I be right in assuming that specifying a civ with this event would make it NOSCHISM only for that particular civ?

@IF
TURN
turn=-1
I have tried this with turn=1 and it won't work
@THEN
JUSTONCE
TEXT
[etc]
ENDTEXT
PLAYWAVEFILE
start.wav
@ENDIF

@IF
TURN=2
@THEN
CHANGETERRAIN
terraintype=11
maprect
17,51,17,51,17,51,17,51
TEXT
[etc]
ENDTEXT
CREATEUNIT
[etc]
locations
17,51
endlocations
@ENDIF
This fails to work at all

@IF
UNITKILLED
unit=Star
attacker=anybody
defender=anybody
@THEN
TEXT
[etc]
ENDTEXT
CHANGEMONEY
receiver=TRIGGERATTACKER
amount=2000
All right up to here - everything works fine...but then...
PLAYWAVEFILE
dontdothat.wav
@ENDIF
This fails to work at all. I'm checking up the .wav stats to make sure it's identical - yup, it is the same as the other sound files I have so it should work. Why doesn't it?

.....
....
...
..
.


@ENDEVENTS

Can any of you out there tell me what difference lowercase uppercase makes? I'm sure it makes some difference but can't figure out what must be what for it to work proper like.

Any comments gratefully appreciated and also noted in the scen readme for a very-dubious brand of immortality.

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"In all creation, there can be no task more onerous or tedious than that of playing God." - Stephen Fry, 'The Liar'.

	19-03-2000 01:39									#29
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!!!an unusual Miner double post!!!!
[This message has been edited by Miner (edited March 18, 2000).]

	19-03-2000 01:40									#30
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The events, at first glance, look good.

Do they work after you have changed the years/turn ?

Also, if you change the .wav file being played to one which comes with the game does it work?