Not sure whether to be scared or pissed off.

[NETSCAPE]

I meticulously entered a large story text into 16 mission briefings. I had to save each mission afterwards, of course. I confirmed the text showed up properly in the mission brief and sent the missions out to my Beta Testers. Apparently that task caused a bug that cleared all the text from all my text messages that should appear in the missions (in-game text, not briefings). When I tested my missions (pre-briefing version) all the text messages showed up in game FOR SURE (yellow text at top of screen). 

 

After a tester said he never saw these messages - I opened the first 5 missions and all the fields where the text was originally was cleared (5 messages a mission usually give or take)... So I am assuming the rest of the missions are like that as well.

 

I lost many briefings recently because you cannot copy-paste any line-break into the mission editor or it will delete all the text in the said briefing. I learned that lesson. It's simple enough to avoid.

 

However, I have no idea why text would vanish from the in-game text fields. Any idea?

 

All I know is this scares me. Add or fix one thing, other random completely non-related things get deleted...... it really makes me feel the stakes are high when this much work has been done... I am literally afraid to click the save button now. I really don't want to randomly have to re-do tasks across all 16 missions that I shouldn't have to do.

 

I also want to note I never copy-pasted text into those fields for the in-game messages. Again, they all worked before I entered the story-line stuff. 

[NETSCAPE]

huh well I went through every mission in the editor and only missions 1-6 lost the text in the mcu translator text field. The only thing that differs from the first missions compared to the latter is a longer briefing text due to setting up the story.

[TP_Silk]

MCU Translator text fields are really meant to be short and sharp so will very possibly have a maximum number of characters assigned. Nobody is going to want to see their screen covered with briefing text at the start of a mission, that's done elsewhere. If you absolutely can't get away from it then maybe you need a series of 2 or three pup-up texts each timed for 5-10 seconds that fire off one after the other.

[NETSCAPE]

My briefings are hundreds of words long. I'm talking about short text MCU translators in game, ie "You are free to land". They vanished on 6 of 16 missions. I use the same one's over and over in every mission. I have standardized messages at this point, and they have worked just fine on about 40 missions. I experienced some sort of bug. I thought maybe someone else might know why.

 

The longest text in a MCU Translator I have is this (and it works on plenty o missions):

 

"You have landed. Come to a full stop to continue."

 

I redid the text messages for the first six missions ...seemed to work/save, no text loss anywhere.     

[TP_Silk]

Ah sorry - it appears that I misunderstood what you meant.

[No601_Swallow]

As far as I remember the text messages (and briefings) are all in the "localisation" files - the ones the end in .eng .po .de etc. This is obviously to facilitate easy translation of text messages into other languages.

 

I've had problems when I've renamed mission files, and so on. My standard procedure when sending out a mission is to zip up all 7 files (I think it's 7), so the recipent just has to unzip them into the mission (or campaign or MP) folder.

 

Maybe check that all your files (and the localisation files can be edited in a text editor!) are where they should be and named what they should be as well!

 

By the way, I've been experimenting with "long form" HUD messages, as a way of telling a story during the mission. With mixed results... But I don't think there's a character limit on any of them.

Edited October 25, 2017 by No601_Swallow

[NETSCAPE]

Yeah I always zip the entire folder that contains the language files as well. 

[Jade_Monkey]

I had a similar issue.

 

iirc, it had to do with using multiple dashes or underscores in a row to make it look like a line in the briefings.

 

Are you doing that by any chance?

[LLv34_Temuri]

Speaking from my experience, if you're using the Mission Editor and are not scared AND pissed off, there's something very wrong with you. :D

[Gambit21]

Netscape I've had this happen as well - I can't remember the cause for sure now.

I have a vague memory that it was related to re-naming/saving.

Edited October 25, 2017 by Gambit21

[Urra]

Have had this happen. No idea why...I remember having 4-5 exclamation marks in a row though.

Edited October 25, 2017 by TunaEatsLion

[SYN_Vander]

Had this happen to RoF missions. Perhaps a special character in the text caused this? If memory serves me right.....

[Juri_JS]

I've also lost parts of my briefing texts in the past. The reason was that I wrote it in a text editor and later copied&pasted it into the mission editor, but I didn't noticed that I had a line break in the editor text. After saving and reopening the mission all the text after the line break was gone.

[216th_Jordan]

So thats where my text went.. and I thought I just had not finished my work :O

[NETSCAPE]

Speaking from my experience, if you're using the Mission Editor and are not scared AND pissed off, there's something very wrong with you. :D

 

Haha, this is true 

[Gambit21]

Now that I think about it - I believe pasting text into the editor caused my problem as well.

[NETSCAPE]

Yeah the weird thing is they all worked fine at one point. It was after a save that they messed up. BUT I didn't alter the text in the MCU translators at all... I altered the briefing. It doesn't make sense. 

 

And when I redid the missing ones I didn't copy paste of course. 

[Urra]

Yeah the weird thing is they all worked fine at one point. It was after a save that they messed up. BUT I didn't alter the text in the MCU translators at all... I altered the briefing. It doesn't make sense.

 

And when I redid the missing ones I didn't copy paste of course.

There are occasional crashes on save.the way I minimize them is to save and wait at least ten seconds before closing the editor. You have a good chance of crash if you exit with popup to save at the same time.

[NETSCAPE]

Oh I have my methods of backing up work and how to avoid crashes...I have to be at around 500 hours in the editor at this point... 

[Jupp]

~S~ Fellas,

 

Two points about creating Mission Briefings which are certainly true :

 

1) Some "Special Characters" will cause failure. Examples : @#$%&, and such, (exactly which ones... idk)

 

    I have experienced this, and then resolved this matter in the past, first hand, so it's definitely a known issue.

 

2) There IS also a "Character Limit" which will cause failure. Again, it's not stated how many characters it is, so... ?

 

    Reported here : https://riseofflight.com/forum/topic/13676-questions-about-mission-editor/?p=252545

 

 

 It would be great if we could get compile a list of Characters and Symbols NOT to use in the Mission Editor Briefings... and...

 

 what the Character Limit actually is... Character Limit meaning how many letters/numbers/spaces of text you are allowed to use.

 

That's the whole NOTAM. You have been briefed!

 

 

Keep 'em flying,

 

"Jupp" ~S~