scp-fs2open
FR: Generalized wing message
Instead of having
$Name: Epsilon Arrived
$Message: XSTR("Epsilon wing now on station.", -1)
...
$Name: Gamma Arrived
$Message: XSTR("Gamma wing has arrived. Awaiting orders.", -1)
it'd be useful to instead have
$Name: Wing Arrived
$Message: XSTR("Epsilon wing now on station.", -1)
+Wing: Epsilon
...
$Name: Arrived
$Message: XSTR("Gamma wing has arrived. Awaiting orders.", -1)
+Wing: GAmma
And then have the game try to match an arriving wing's name. This would mean mods could have individualized arrival lines for more than the standard FS2 wing set.
The game already searches for these messages by wing name; the problem is that it only finds them if they're part of the builtin messages list. This validation does not happen when parsing messages.tbl, so e.g. "Omicron Arrived" would be successfully parsed into the Messages[] vector, it just would never be sent because message_send_builtin_to_player() relies on having a valid type index. There'd need to either be a significant overhaul of missionmessage.cpp or some sort of special exception for wing arrival messages added.
Evidently @naomimyselfandi is working on a set of features including this, so I'll keep an eye out for it's submission.
You've heard correctly! Your proposal is nicer than mine, though, so I'm incorporating elements of it. :)
@naomimyselfandi Something else that's come to mind is a desire to have arbitrary new scripted persona lines, so new lines types can be added and a script function can call for them on a given ship and have it handled like any other persona line. Is that something your features might enable, or should I make a new FR for it?
It's something I've been on the fence about. If there's a need for it, I can certainly implement it.
@naomimyselfandi Having thought about it more, the existance of lua-ai orders makes that kind of script-only persona message a lot more likely to be useful. having persona responses to new order types seems like a practical necessity now that I've thought of it
