Smoke Markers Help

[Justificus]

Hey guys, was wondering if anyone can give me a hand here. I tried searching fro my answer but didn't find anything helpful that I could understand. Is it possible to set up a trigger zone to have a smoke marker go on when a unit/group/part of a coalition goes into the zone and off when they leave it? I'm sure there's probably a way to do it with scripting but I'm a complete idiot when it comes to doing that sort of thing... :) I am able to figure out how to start the smoke marker to go but not how to shut it off when the unit leaves the zone. Any tips/help wold be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

[ESAc_matador]

Hey guys, was wondering if anyone can give me a hand here. I tried searching fro my answer but didn't find anything helpful that I could understand. Is it possible to set up a trigger zone to have a smoke marker go on when a unit/group/part of a coalition goes into the zone and off when they leave it? I'm sure there's probably a way to do it with scripting but I'm a complete idiot when it comes to doing that sort of thing... :) I am able to figure out how to start the smoke marker to go but not how to shut it off when the unit leaves the zone. Any tips/help wold be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

 

 

You can do it via mission editor. When unit inside a triggerzone flag value 1, when flag value 1 trigger smoke in trigger zone, when unit outside triggerzone flag value 0.

 

Or via script. Mist. Unitsinzones activates a flag. And trigger.action. smoke.... if you need the script for something else, may be I can help you later.

[Justificus]

You can do it via mission editor. When unit inside a triggerzone flag value 1, when flag value 1 trigger smoke in trigger zone, when unit outside triggerzone flag value 0.

 

Or via script. Mist. Unitsinzones activates a flag. And trigger.action. smoke.... if you need the script for something else, may be I can help you later.

 

Thanks for the reply, ESAc_matador, I'll give the flag part a shot. I actually tried to do this with the flag setting but not having a clue what I'm doing it didn't work out too well. With your little tip here I may be able to figure it out! Will have to wait for a break from work to try it out. Thanks again!:beer:

[Apache600]

Smoke Marker will not work as well as you'd like (if you're using the regular trigger's and not LUA Script) Once a smoke marker is "lit" it will burn for 5 minutes. You can't shut it off.

 

What you can do though is the Signal Flare, and set it to " TYPE - Continuous action". So if a unit is "inside a zone" you can have Flag 20 ON. when the unit is "Outside of the zone" you can turn Flag 20 OFF. and then have a separate trigger that states Continuous action with Flag 20 ON as Signal Flare.

Note, if you don't use "continuous action" then when the unit enters the zone, you will only get one Signal Flare to fire. When you set it to Continuous, then the Signal Flare fire once every second for the entire time the unit is in the zone.

[Justificus]

Apache600, thanks for your reply as well. That explains why I could never figure out how to shut it off. I didn't realize that it would last only 5 min.! That's not bad if it will always trigger once I have a particular unit/group enter into the zone. So the smoke will stay on as long as the unit or group is within the zone? Once they leave the smoke will go off after 5 min.? That will work for what I'm trying to do if so. Will play around with it tonight some more. Thanks again for both of your replies!

[Apache600]

I recommend using the "Once" trigger for smoke markers. If a unit enters your trigger area, the smoke will start as will its 5 minute timer. It won't matter if the unit stays or leaves immediately. The smoke will stop in 5 minutes. If the unit stays in the area for 6 minutes, the smoke will still stop after it reached it's 5 minute timer.

 

There's a workaround for this. Let's say you want smoke to be going the entire time a unit is inside your area. Try this in Mission Editor:

 

Type: 1 once

Name: Unit in Zone w/ smoke

Conditions: Unit Inside Zone

Unit: Unit A

Zone: Smoke Zone

Actions: Flag On

Flag 50

 

Type: 1 Once

Name: Flag 50 smoke

Conditions: Flag is True

Flag: 50

Actions: Smoke Marker

Zone: Smoke Marker

Altitude: 1

Color: whatever is your fancy :P

 

Type: 1 Once

Name: Flag 50 smoke continue 1

Conditions: Time Since Flag

Flag: 50

Seconds 300 (that's 5 minutes)

Actons: Smoke Marker

Zone: Smoke Marker

Altitude: 1

Color: same as before, unless you want to get CRAZY and mix it up. but that's just CRAZY!

 

Repeat this "Continue" section for as long as you think the unit might be in the area ... plus a little extra Add an additional 300 seconds to the "Time Since Flag" for every repeated trigger

 

Type: 1 once

Name: Unit leaving zone

Conditions: Unit Outside Zone

Unit: Unit A

Zone: Smoke Zone

+

Time since Flag

Flag: 50

Time: 1

Actions: Flag Off

Flag 50

 

 

This should be able to keep the smoke on for however long the unit is inside the zone. And then eventually turn off after the unit leaves.

With this though, once the unit leaves the area, there's no turning the smoke back on for this zone.

[Justificus]

Apache600, thank you so much for taking the time to type all that out for me!!! S! So if I understand you correctly, there's no way to get the smoke to always go on in a particular zone after going off? So using an entry like "Continuous" instead of the "Once" option you mentioned won't do this? Is it because the smoke will not go off after 5 min. with this setting?

 

In another mission I made for myself, I did the flare option that you had mentioned but I just didn't like how they were going off all the time while I was in the zone, too frequent for my taste, that's why I was hoping to be able to do something similar with the smoke... But from what I'm reading and hearing from you it's not quite possible, unless I get into scripting, right? Thanks again for your time.

[Apache600]

I don't like using "Continuous" with smoke markers. When I was testing one of the missions for my campaign, I had a smoke marker on Continuous, and I got some massive slow-downs in the Sim when the smoke was ON. I attributed this to the idea that for every second the smoke was on it was starting a new smoke marker on top of the existing one. So you'd have 300 smoke markers in one spot before they would start timing out. After changing my triggers to what you saw above, the slow-down went away.

 

There is certainly a way, actually a few, to make it do what you'd like. It's gonna be a little messy with the triggers, but we could get it to work. I am sure that scripting a LUA of some sort could probably do it as well, but I don't like working with LUA, so I'll keep all my stuff to the standard mission editor options.

 

Ok, after a little of trial and error, I got it working. We'll be using the "Switched Condition" Type to make this work. If you want, I can write it down like I did last time. But to make it easier, and for you to mess around with it, I'll just attach the mission file here. Download this and put it in your saved missions folder along with your other missions.

 

What I have is a tank sitting just outside the zone. He's there to initially observe the smoke. In the first 10 seconds, a plane flies through the zone activating the flag, then I cancel the flag a second later (the smoke stays on for 5 minutes) I do this 3 times with 3 separate airplanes just to show you that this works. But what if a unit stays in the zone for longer than 5 minutes? At the 20 minute mark, the tank drives into the zone and activates it at about the 21 minute mark. He then sits inside the zone for a bit. After 5 minutes elapses, the blue smoke turns to green, showing that the trigger is working. after that 5 minutes, it turns red. The next trigger, which should NOT fire because the tank leaves the zone, is Orange smoke. There's Another plane flies through the zone at the 31 minute mark (while the tank is still in the area) showing that it does not interrupt the current clock and turn the smoke back to blue.

 

I highly recommend using the Time Acceleration, or this will be the most boring test ever to sit through.

Smoke Tests.miz

[Justificus]

I was just messing around with what you wrote earlier and came back to refresh my memory and saw your latest post!

 

I can't believe you got it working and so quickly and dare I say elegantly with the tools we have at hand. Off to go check out the mission and try to replicate it. Thanks a million!

[Justificus]

:surprise: Wow, I would have never been able to come up with what you just did there! I tried using flags but obvious had no clue as to how to properly use them once I saw what you were doing with them. I should be able to do that in my NTTR mission but will leave that until tomorrow. It's late, I'm on my 2nd beer and I'm tired, a definite prescription for disaster! :pilotfly: Thanks again sir.

Edited June 1, 2016 by Justificus
Spelling...

[Apache600]

Or a prescription for AMAZING!!! ... ok yeah, probably not. haha

 

And you're welcome, glad I could help you out. I hope this cleared up some of the confusion for you. I've had a ton of practice with the trigger system lately, so if you have any other questions, feel free to ask! Good luck with your NTTR mission

 

- Apache600

[Targanon]

Just to go back on this..

 

 

is there still no way to turn the smoke off say plane in zone smoke on plane not in zone smoke off??