DropShip in YR...

[Blade]

Has anyone ever tried to use the dropship loadout in YR? It came up in a discussion on PPM about the ETS patch and I've been playing with it a bit as a result, but the specified contents from the loadout don't seem to transfer to the dropship to be delivered. My dropship is named [DSHP], is an aircraft type and has IsDropship=yes so should in theory accept units from the loadout like it does in TS. DeeZire once indicated to me that he had made it work before, but that might have just been in RA2 and there have been a few things he has said should work that haven't.

[Renegade]

I did not try it yet, but I have to admit that, after the ETS discussion, I got curious as well. Maybe we can find a solution together?

[DCoder]

Tried that few months ago w/rp 1.07b, didn't get the spacebar to close the loadout screen.

(The soviet mission with WTC contains some code for the loadout, that might help.)

[~Guest~]

I got it to work 1 time. If u can somehow get past the selection screen (which is difficult with no cursor) Then when the reinforcements come about 99% of the time the dropship refuses to land. It just dances around >.<

But it did work nicely that one time

[Nighthawk]

Whenever it got to the selection screen, the font was using foreign and unknown characters, also, whenever I clicked on a unit to insert them onto the dropship, nothing happened. I skipped the loadout and ended up with an IE.

[Blade]

Yeah, I've had IE's after pushing space to leave the screen as well as the dropship being empty and just dancing around before leaving. I need to do more tests before I can say what causes either result though. I'm sure the font thing is just the game using the wrong character set and is the least of the problems. I would like to see it fixed though, it would make a nice addition and could be used to make a new game mode...

[Nighthawk]

The screen would need resized a bit though, the cameos are smaller than the spaces for them, which are for TS size cameos.

[Blade]

Yeah, a lot of these problems require hard code fixes though, so we have to rely on pd or vk taking an interest in the load out and fixing it. I've looked at resizing it already actually, all the animations are drawn at locations offset from 0,0 which is the top left corner. When you resize, everything gets moved toward the top left leaving a load of space down the right hand side. and at the bottom with noting really happening.

[Nighthawk]

The background image could be edited to have some sort of feature in the bottom corner to take up the space, like an infantry or some crates or something, for effect. Only problem is if things go too far to the top left, then you can't see the icons of what's in the dropships.

[Blade]

The icons stay in position relative to the top corner so everything is still visible.

[VK]

However DropShipLoadout have another problem:
"ALT+TAB" problem
Press ALT+TAB on the screen
...and press again

[Blade]

Yeah, I got that while testing it, though that would likely be fixed by using a 800x600 version. I also have something of a theory as to what causes either the IE or the empty dropship that my testing bears out. I believe that the IE occurs if the units you have loaded would fill the dropship either to capacity or under (infantry or small units) and the resulting dropship would contain units. The empty dropship occurs when I fill the drop ship with large units that would in total exceed its capacity. Anyone want to test and confirm my findings? I've attached the except that is generated from the IE error for reference.

[Nighthawk]

That would make sense, but I thought the IsDropShip tag made whatever is put in the unit have only 1 pip, either that or just says to the game, "I am a Dropship! I'm not from this game so just screw around with my programming if you want!"

[VK]

However when it put units into dropship, it's not checking any Passengers= Size= values

[Renegade]

Behold!

   

Still has the same bugs, but at least it's sized 800x600, and the cameos are where they should be.

Had the idea, maybe the dropship loadout mouse cursor has a seperate SHP that's missing in ra2/yr? If we could get our code-divers to find out the name (if there is one), we could easily add that one, too.

I've also attached my folder's latest except.txt, it logically was generated when I "exited" the loadout screen. Maybe it helps finding the problem.

Note: For those who download the load screen, I didn't test the 1 ship/2 ship screens. They should be aligned correctly, but feedback would be greatly appreciated.