Capture the Flag - Timing and Block/Unblock Effect

[JimTM]

I've been testing the "Flag" object using the attached "Capture the Flag" mission. Can someone with experience using the flag please help me with a couple of items:

 

1. The flag "Speed Factor" setting seems to be unreliable at settings other than 1.

 

    In a MP test with Speed Factor 1 and one player in the zone, it takes the flag four minutes to go from the top of the pole to the bottom and to the top again.
    However, with Speed Factor 3 or 4, the flag moves much faster for the Russian player than for the German player.

    I assume that the varying flag speed with Speed Factor 3 or 4 is a bug, but could I be missing something?

 

2. I cannot see any effect of the flag being blocked or unblocked. Can you explain what the effect is supposed to be?

 

    I have set "Block Threshold" to 0.5 for my test mission. In my test, the flag pauses or continues it's trip solely based on whether players are in the zone and the
   balance of players in the zone. Block/unblock seems to have no effect on the flag's movement.

 

Thanks!

 

Jim

 

JimTMTestFlags3.zip

Edited September 15, 2016 by JimTM

[coconut]

Block/unblock can be used to enable or disable a spawn nearby

[JimTM]

Block/unblock can be used to enable or disable a spawn nearby

 

So, the only effect is to generate OnFlagBlocked and OnFlagUnblocked event messages, right?

[coconut]

Afaik yes

[Menacing_Ferrets]

The variation in speed factor based on country is a head scratcher...

 

You didn't float any parameters to the flag object? who knows what that would do. Generally i steer clear of any external trigger to manipulate a flag.  

 

 

From my experience...  BTW i really dig flags nice little element

 

OnFlagBlocked and OnFlagUnblocked can be used to trigger all kinds of mischief.  It is a pretty cool feature.  

 

The flag's state is a range from 0 to 1 and its movement is affected by the speed factor (how fast it goes up or down)  it's initial state can be preset. Once the flag is active in mission, nothing will change it's behavior aside from it counting a vehicle, or not. (Barring you don't delete it or something)

 

Block Threshold is also a range from 0 to 1.    

 

Example: Set block ratio at .5 and when an enemy is able to drop that flag to half (.5) your OnFlagBlocked is triggered (if you have one set at all)  

Same thing going up, OnFlagUnblocked  is triggered once the flag is above .5  These are events triggered by the state of the flag based on what is influencing the flag's movement. The events will have no effect on what the flag is doing movement wise (unless your triggered event deletes the flag ))

 

I often use just the on captured to change airfield country, and use the blocking events to kill the AA with OnFlagBlocked , and spawn the correct country's AA with OnFlagUnblocked 

 

and of course based the OnFlagBlocked and OnFlagUnblocked is country specific just like the capture events.

 

the point being, your imagination can make this function as complex as you'd like

 

 

 

Some times i do use an OnFlagblocked  event to neutralize the airfield but I am VERY diligent with the block threshold.  

If block threshold is set to 1 and the flag is counting planes, you need only break the flag's radius in an AC for a split second to neutralize the field.

 

For most scenarios that is just not cool.  

But for a chess match, dueling, fun, non-historic, sandbox brawl....     it could be interesting.... 

 

I hope this helps?

 

PS as far as speed factor IIRC 1 was REALLY slow and 10 was kind of like Battlefield 2

Edited September 23, 2016 by Menacing_Ferrets

[JimTM]

Thanks Coconut and Menacing_Ferrets for the useful information. 

[Menacing_Ferrets]

This forum is SOOO disjointed, I feel sorry for the new mission editors trying to clean info here. There is soooo much good stuff hidden here.

 

 

I dug this up, as it helped me tremendously

 

This is a cleaned up version of 1CGS' tank advance mission.  Just the four inner flags and their guns.  This group is autonomous BTW.  So to test it, you need only place the objects where you want, save and host!

 

 

 

I have made this a group (unarchive and toss files into data/missions  folder and you can just drop this in a mission from the groups button in the editor.)

 

 

This was extremely helpful to understand flags.  That and Coconut helped me a ton too, but that post is BURIED here somewhere.  My initial usage of flags was just horribly wrong, so maybe we won't find and bump that post

 

 

 

http://jdmadsen.net/bosferrets/FlagsGroup1CGS.zip

Edited September 23, 2016 by Menacing_Ferrets

[JimTM]

Thanks MF, I'll have a peek at your group.

Edited September 23, 2016 by JimTM