Multiplayer Cutscenes

[45mDex]

Okay. Me and my buddies still play Flashpoint. But we are still interested in making cutscenes. But as usual, the multiplayer cutscenes rarely work, or not at all for various reasons. I have search this site for answer but have yet to find anything to help me. I understand that you need to put scripts inside of triggers so you can sync up all clients to the server, but it does not always seem to work. Also when experimenting. I've noticed that the further you get away from the trigger where the cutscene happens, the less likely you are to see it, or it is delayed. Any thoughts anyone??  

[sheltem]

  Hi there!

I seem to have a similar problem: I've got a multiplayer mission with an intro activated via a trigger: (this exec "intro.sqs"

Well: i can see the subtitles but I'm still in the perspective of the player and not the camera!
Hm I will post the script I'm using tomorrow...I reckon that might be a bit more helpfull  ;D

Anybody had the same experience??

[Planck]

To the best of my knowledge, you can't have an intro in a multiplayer game.

Best you can do is a cutscene once the mission has started.


Planck

[Marvin]

The Intros aren`t working in Mp.  Only in SP!

[myke13021]

I make a lot of cutscenes and i never encountered the problem they wouldn't start.

Maybe it's the way you call them. Safest way imo is to call them with a trigger with a specific condition, not the "present" "not present" stuff, i.e. Condition: not alive loon1. Or, for an intro: Condition: True.

What you shouldnt use, is Scripts activated by "Player". In MP this value is different on each machine.

_cam = "camera" camcreate [0,0,0]
_cam cameraeffect ["internal", "back"]
titlecut [" ","BLACK IN",2]
EnableRadio False

These are the basic camera commands to start a cam script, maybe it helps when i post it in here for you.

I hope i could help, sry about, i'm not as good in english, so maybe my explanations m8 be a little confusing  ;D

[xenofanes]

To the best of my knowledge, you can't have an intro in a multiplayer game.

Best you can do is a cutscene once the mission has started.


Planck

I don't see why you have to show the cutscene in the intro   as this doesn't work properly (or not at all) when you can just as easily have your cutscene in the beginning of the mission (as Planck said). Best is to have no cutscenes in MP at all - it's just annoying if the server doesn't work properly or the admin has other problems and the game is restarted all the time  

[45mDex]

Hmm... Interesting advice. When experimenting, I would design a mutiplayer cutscene triggered by West present. We would start on the north part of Everon on the airstrip. On the first try, both my buddy and I would be next to the trigger, cutscene would work fine and it did'nt matter who triggered it. On the second try, we took turns where one of us would get in a car and drive to the middle of the island. I noticed that the person who drove away would recieve the cutscene a few seconds later. So to finish it up, on the third try we took turns driving to the far side of the island to the south. And whoever drove to the other side of the island did NOT get the cutscene. So it appears what Myke13021 was saying may be related in some way.

[myke13021]

Just to make the terminology clear:

INTRO = a movie that shows before you play the mission, in the editor set up by selecting INTRO ( just below the LOAD, MERGE, SAVE, CLEAR buttons on the right in the editor)
This doesn't work at all on MP maps!

Cutscene Intro = A scripted movie (also the simple trigger effects count as this) which will be played at certain conditions, defined by a trigger. This works in SP also in MP maps.

As far as i understand, 45mDex is speaking about a Cutscene Intro and the problem is that it will be shown only to the loon that triggered the trigger (duh).

As i said before, don't use the "idiots present/not present" conditions to launch a cutscene.
Use instead the Condition box to define when a cutscene has to be showed.

For showing a Intro cutscene, simplest way is to set Condition: true

For a cutscene in the middle of the mission, use something that's related to the mission, i.e. Not alive Shilka.

This should work everytime

[sheltem]

  Hm maybe I shouldnt have used the word intro... A cutscene at the start of the mission was more what i was after...sorry for that!

anyway here is the code:

;intro for blue monday
;by sheltem 2004

;zooming to carrier

DisableUserInput true

_camera="Camera" CamCreate [3380.57,104414.97,-25630.83]

_camera CamSetPos [3380.57,104414.97,-25630.83]
_camera CamSetTarget [3380.57,104414.97,-25630.83]
_camera CamSetFOV 0.775
_camera CamCommit 0
@camCommitted _camera

_camera CameraEffect ["internal","black"]
showcinemaborder false
titleText ["Blue Monday","Plain Down",5]
~10

;zooming to chopper

_camera camSetTarget Heli1
_camera camSetPos [11203.88,8235.51,16.64]
_camera camSetFOV 0.336
_camera camCommit 10
@camCommitted _camera

titleText ["by Sheltem","Plain Down",2]
titleText ["THANX to","Plain Down",2]
titleText ["ofpec.com","Plain Down",2]
titleText ["The Falkland Mod Team","Plain Down",2]
~10
;on entry point over water
 
_camera camSetTarget Heli1
_camera camSetPos [10589.97,3529.52,48.67]
_camera camSetFOV 1.2
_camera camCommit 0
@camCommitted _camera

titleText ["Dr. NO","Plain Down",2]
~2

;under rapell point looking up

_camera camSetTarget Heli1
_camera camSetPos [10423.70,3644.33,1.99]
_camera camSetFOV 0.700
_camera camCommit 8
@camCommitted _camera

;leaving intro
Thor cameraeffect ["terminate","back"]
camDestroy _camera

DisableUserInput false

exit


I start the hole thing via a trigger activated by a chopper with players as cargo...All i get to see so fare are the subtitles  
Any Ideas why?

[Marvin]

All looks fine! Maybe try to create the Camcreate at [0,0,0], byt this shouldent be problem!
and maybe put the _camera CameraEffect ["internal","black"] before first Camcommit, sometimes this should be a problem!
hep
No i think the problem is that not - ["internal","black"] byt ["internal","back"], not black, byt back

[myke13021]

ya Marvin't right..
["internal","back"] should do the trick.

and another little trick for camera positioning...

i see you use the [x,y,z] to pos a camera...not very handy isn't it? try the following...

create a gamelogic where you want to place your camera, name it i.e. campos01.
In the init field of this GL type:

this setpos [getpos campos01 select 0, getpos campos01 select 1, (getpos campos01 select 2) +2]

this puts the GL 2m above ground.

In the camera acript, instead of using
_camera CamSetPos [3380.57,104414.97,-25630.83]

just use
_camera camsetpos getpos campos01

With this trick you can push the camera positions in the editor around very easy to experiment with diff positions.

:edit:
another thing i remarked...

titleText ["by Sheltem","Plain Down",2]
titleText ["THANX to","Plain Down",2]
titleText ["ofpec.com","Plain Down",2]
titleText ["The Falkland Mod Team","Plain Down",2]
~10

don't you have the problem that these lines will be shown for less than 1 sec?
afaik, titletext lines, without any delay inbetween them,  will be shown as fast the comp reads the script...and this is very fast.

titleText ["by Sheltem","Plain Down",2]
~10
titleText ["THANX to","Plain Down",2]
~10
titleText ["ofpec.com","Plain Down",2]
~10
titleText ["The Falkland Mod Team","Plain Down",2]
~10

this would show each line for 10 seconds. The "2" at the end of titletext command reflects the fade in time for the text, not how long it will be shown. Tell me if i'm wrong.

Maybe try to rip camera script and text script apart in 2 separate scripts...you can run them both with same trigger, they'll not interfere...

[] exec "intro.sqs"; [] exec "introcredits.sqs"

as example.

this gives you better control over the timings of camera also of the text.

[45mDex]

Okay, I get you Myke, now here's my dilemma. I created a mission where our party starts out on a boat in the ocean. Thier mission is to take the boat to the island and meet with the officer by the campfire. When we get up to the campfire, I set a trigger to have the officer come out of the tent and talk to our party giving us our next objective. Now I have it set to West present, and I know you said not to do that, but i'm not sure how else I could get that to work. Any thoughts??

[myke13021]

hmm...unsure if a cutscene is necessarly for this...but hey, it's your mission...

there's a way i can figure out and i know it looks a little complicated, maybe some of the scripting guru's in here could give a helping hand to make it simpler.

So the problem with the west activated trigger is, some m8 not see the cutscene because they're not close enough to the trigger.....then we have to get around this.....we use variables.

first you'll need to edit the init.sqs (or to create if you don't already have) by placing the following line:

newobjectives = false

this creates a variable named newobjectives (you m8 give it another name but i'll use this for the example) and sets its default value to false

next place a trigger (or edit the one you already have for the cutscene), make it activated by west present, and in the on activation box put:

newobjectives true

i guess you see what this trigger does...it just switches the variable "newobjectives" from false to true.

finally we create a trigger which will call the cutscene.
Place the trigger anywhere on the map, size it to 0 and in the condition box put:

newobjectives

this will activate the trigger as soon the "newobjectives" variable has become true, which we managed with the previous trigger.
In the on activation field, call the cutscene as usual

[] exec "mycutscene.sqs"

I hope some of the scripting guru's take a look on it, since i'm a little unsure about the use of variables, especiall with undelines, if needed or not.

But basically you see the idea i guess.

hope this works for you

:edit:

if you don't want to use a init.sqs, you could do it also with a trigger to define a variable and set its value.
Just place a trigger somewhere, size 0, triggered once.
Condition: True (this activates the trigger at mission start)
On Activation: newobjectives false

[sheltem]

  Thanks for the help!! I will try this tonight!!

to myke13021: yeah the titles flashed by a little fast ;D but the was my least worry ;D But thanks for fixing that though!

I will get rid of that little L  and will hopefully have that cutscene sorted than!

 :thumbsup:

[myke13021]

glad i could help, but i'm still hoping some of the scripting guru's in here m8 take a look about what i wrote to make sure it works