Can't get objects to show up properly in mission editor

#1 I would imagine the problem you are running into is one of scoping. An instance of the RTSUnit class, by default, is meant to only be visible by the connection which "owns" it. I imagine the object is getting created properly, and it's there, but it's not being rendered (possibly moving a unit you control near it's location would make it show up). As for the Z movement, the RTSUnit class, lacking any extensive collision code, is constrained to sit on the terrain.

If you are wanting a building that is visible all the time to every player, you might consider using the staticShape class, otherwise you'll need to do some tinkering to the rtsUnit class, or perhapse derive a new class from it.

#2 Hi Martin,

I don't want the building to be visible to players who shouldn't see it, so I don't want to set it to always be in scope. But I do want it to act like a "normal" building that the player who owns it can select and build other units from, etc., so I don't want it to be just a shape that gets drawn but is non-interactive.

I was able to figure out (thanks to your post) that this was a scoping issue. Whenever I placed one of these "invisible" buildings I was getting a crash during the next event (moving another unit or whatever) because the "controlling connection" object wasn't set. I looked at the "normal" code for placing a building and based on that I added in some additional lines:

function RTSUnitData::create(%data)
{
// The mission editor invokes this method when it wants to create
// an object of the given datablock type.
%obj = new RTSUnit()
{
dataBlock = %data;
scale = "1 1 1";
};

%conn = GameConnection::getServerConnection();
%obj.client = %conn;
%obj.setTeam(%conn.getTeam());
%obj.setControllingConnection(%conn);
%conn.buildings.add(%obj);

return %obj;
}

and now the building shows up fine. Yea! The only line that doesn't seem to be working is the %conn.buildings.add(...) line. It doesn't seem to know what "%conn.buildings" is. Any thoughts?

I think I should be creating an RTSBuilding instead of RTSUnit anyway (which I guess means I should create a new datablock class called RTSBuildingData to use instead of RTSUnitData), but I'll try that in a few minutes. :-)

Thanks!

#3 Hmmm... actually I still have the same problem if I save the mission with the new building and then reload it. The mission file only saves the following info:

new RTSUnit() {
position = "-77 -24.0878 400";
rotation = "1 0 0 0";
scale = "1 1 1";
dataBlock = "barracksBlock";
client = "1456";
mountVehicle = "1";
};

but the client id "1456" won't be valid the next time around so I won't have the client connection info that the VisManager::processServer() code expects to find. That code calls:

RTSConnection* client = unit->getControllingConnection();

but I'm guessing that will return an invalid value (or NULL since 1456 won't resolve to a valid object). So I need a way to populate the client connection info back in when the mission loads. Do you know how/where to do this? I'm not familiar with how that stuff works. :-(

#4 Could you state your root issue/desired functionality? That would make it much easier for us to understand what you want to do, and possibly help lead to a better solution.

It sounds like you either want to have persistent buildings across a server reboot (assuming dedicated server, and a fully persistent world), or you want to pre-assign certain buildings to certain teams for the mission.

If the second is accurate, or close, what you really want to do is to create a new field, something like assignToTeam = x;, and then just prior to starting the game off (but after all clients have connected), scroll through each of these "pre-assigned" buildings/units, and using setControllingConnection() (and/or setTeam() )for each of them as appropriate.

You'll need to look carefully at the team assignment code (it's in /server/scripts/core/gameConnection.cs IIRC), figure out how the team id's are assigned, and then also look at the onClientEnterGame() code to see how they assign a unit's controlling connection when it is created.

As you noted, clientID's are not static, and will change each time the client connects, so you'll need a "meta field" that you can interpret after the clients have all connected to tie the units/buildings to the "current" clients.

#5 Hi Stephen,

Yeah, sorry, I was being vague. :-) I want to pre-assign certain buildings to certain teams. I was actually thinking I would need to do exactly what you described: assign a team id (instead of a client connection id) to each building, and then populate the client connection stuff after the mission is loaded. I just wasn't sure where to look. I will check the code you mentioned.

Thanks!