Help needed with new scenario

[proudcanadian]

Hello everyone, I'm back! Currently I'm working on a new scenario of my own, based around my home locale of Northern Ontario. I'm hoping to post it on this site once I'm done.

Anyway, I was going through the scenario, sort of playtesting, and I have a later event that tells your railroad to connect to the town of Kenora. However, near the start, one of the AI companies started there, and I don't know how to make sure the event only triggers if the human company connects.

This is probably a real newbie question, but I'm still discovering the map editor, so please help!

[Wolverine@MSU]

Force the test against companies and then choose "On screen player's company". Then be sure to choose "Company station connects City to City".

[proudcanadian]

Thanks Wolverine, I got that fixed, then went to play it, then came across another problem.

It seems that the status page of the annual report has a couple of errors on it. Where I have it saying {company} in the editor, it fills in the name of the last AI company (there are 4 of them), and it doesn't show cities that are connected as connected.

I'm not very good at the whole 'variable' thing yet, so anyone know how to script this?

[milo]

I think you just need to add a "Force test against company" condition, and then choose "on-screen company".

[proudcanadian]

Well, that at least helped with the company name, but the cities still show up as unconnected. Thanks though.

[EPH]

Try making each city connection its own status event. See 'Transcontinental' for an example of this.

[proudcanadian]

Thanks EPH, I'll give it a look to see how you did it. Transcontinental is another one of your great scenarios and I'm sure the new Britain map will be as well.

[proudcanadian]

Well, I just tried making the seperate connections separate status events, but they still showed up as unconnected. HELP!!

[EPH]

Before I can suggest anything I need to know exactly which settings you have for the status event and the exact text in the dialog area.

[proudcanadian]

Okay, Here's the settings. I've checked both "In annual report/ledger" boxes, and also have both test against Player's company only, and after it, Test aginst all players each in the separate columns.

As for the connection text, I basically have the city name, followed by [Company Variable 1~~Connected/Unconnected] for each of them (There are 8).

I hope this helps

[EPH]

First, testing against ALL companies will test against all companies but only display the results from one test, probably the first or last company. This setting just won't work with the ledger as far as I know. I recommend you set the button to 'On screen player's company only' since this is a ledger event.

Second, the 'connected/unconnected' setting for variables, including company variables, is for display purposes only; it will read connected or unconnected but it will not test against that city. The way to use that would be to have a seperate event that fires when two cities are connected; the result of the event would be to set Company Variable 1 to 0 (false/unconnected) or 1 (true/connected). Since Connected/Unconnected is a binary event (on/off, 0 or 1) using a number other than 0 or 1 would have a result but I'm not sure what. It wouldn't tell you anything useful I'm afraid. Obviosly this will only work for four connections since there are only four company variables.


Fortunately the programmers gave us a better way. There are several events that may help you do this, but they all require a test of a connection between TWO cities.

1) Connect city to city - can be your stations or AI stations
2) Connect company stations city to city - requires both cities have stations belonging to your company.
3) Connect city to territory

These require the NUMBER and not the NAME of the city. You can find this by going to the Cities/Regions table, selecting the propoer city and looking in the upper right hand corner for the number.

I usually use the 'city to city' event but you can require 'company stations city to city' if you want the player to have stations in both cities.


So I recommend you use two events for each connection, one when FALSE and one when TRUE.

Event Name 'London to Edinburgh-Y' (or -N for the second event)

'Status (In annual report/ledger)'

Condition: Force test by company (button 'On screen player's company only) (This is optional - you may not need it unless something refers to the company, such as Company Name)
Condition: City Connects to City (25: London, 72: Edinburgh) is TRUE (or FALSE)

Text in Dialog: London is connected (or is not connected) to Edinburgh

(You need two events - one that says Not Connected when the test is FALSE and one that says Connected when the test is TRUE).

Hope this helps - if not, feel free to PM me or post here. :) You can also check out the connection event in British Miracle which is what I used for the above example.

[proudcanadian]

Question:

Is City connects to territory for single city connections? The bronze and silver in my scenario have odd city numbers. (You connect 5 for bronze and one more for silver)

Its a shame you can't do it like it was in RT2 where you could have a single city connection.

[proudcanadian]

Never mind, it seems to work well. There's only one problem. Both events fire in the ledger when the city is connected. Why is this happening?

[EPH]

All city connections are city to city OR city to territory; technically there is no such thing as a one-city connection since you must have two stations for a connection (unless maybe you test for 'connecting' a city to the territory the city is in - I've never tried that). There is a condition that tests the number of cities connected but does not allow you to select specific cities. There is also a data readout you can put in the text part of the dialog [between the brackets] that will report number of cities connected.

"Both events fire in the ledger when the city is connected." Does this mean the ledger pops up when the cities are connected? If so I've never heard of that happening. If you mean you connect the cities and then open the ledger to see the line says 'XXX connected to YYY' then that is working as designed. If you give us the settings and the conditions, I think we can puzzle it out.

I suggest for the player's convenience you add a newspaper or dialog event when the critical cities are connected. You can use that to give historical and background info on the cities, railraod, etc. I always enjoy reading that sort of stuff. :)

[proudcanadian]

Ok, what I mean is that both the 'Connected' and'Not Connected' events pop up in the leger once the city is connected. For example,

Sault Ste. Marie is Connected
Sault Ste. Marie is not Connected.

This occurs for all cities, but as I said, it only happens once the city is connected. Its like the not connected event doesn't dissappear once the connected event rings true.

Also, I've already got connection events written for each of the connections, and they work fine.

[EPH]

That means your test (condition) is true for both.

City Connects to City (25: London, 72: Edinburgh) is TRUE, as a condition, will only fire if the connection is TRUE. City Connects to City (25: London, 72: Edinburgh) is FALSE will only fire if the connection is not made.

[proudcanadian]

That's just it! I've got them each set to true and false accordingly! I'll check again, anyway, but I'm pretty sure they're set like that.

[EPH]

If you still need help with this, please list the settings and the text of the conditions you are using.

[proudcanadian]

Okay, here goes,

True events:
In annual report/ledger
Test against on screen player's company only
Single Player
All territories
Text: [Company Name] has connected to Sault Ste. Marie
Trigger: Comp. Stns. Connects Terr. to City (25: Sault Ste. Marie) is TRUE

False Events:
In annual Report/ledger
Test against on screen player's company only
Single Player
All territories
Text: [Company Name] has not connected to Sault Ste. Marie
Trigger: Comp. Stns. Connects Terr. to City (25: Sault Ste. Marie) is FALSE

These are the conditions and text for all the connection parts of the ledger. Once again, I hope this helps.

[Hawk]

I don't know if this will help or not but what I did in Gibraltar Straits was as follows.
I set up an event with the trigger condition like this.



Which you could change to Comp. Stns. Connects Terr. to City (25: Sault Ste. Marie) is TRUE
Then set the effect like this.



The game variable was used for another event.
Then for the status report/ledger I used the company variable from the effects like this.