Antero (Mac Classic)

by Iron of Smiths of Muirthemne

Antero is a tool for scripters. It analyses the contents of exported Map Action files and reports anything that it considers to be problematic or illogical.

I've provided this utility in the hope that it will be helpful. This version fixes quite a few bugs in Antero 0.3, adds code to check for more scripting problems, and has a cool new feature or two.

NOTE: Antero was built before Myth 2 v1.4, so all of the new actions and limits that have been added come up as errors and warnings, however it still comes in extremely handy for finding missing links and the like.

Antero will reference actual line-numbers in the map action file, so it may be a good idea to have the file opened in an editor like BBEdit that can display line numbers...

  • EMPTY STATEMENTS. Such as "Activates on Success" but no values. At the very least this shows where your script is incomplete. At worst, the value could be a needed one (like Facing in a Platoon) that could cause real problems if not fixed.

  • ONE VALUE EXPECTED, and none or more than one provided.

  • TWO VALUES EXPECTED, and other than 2 provided. For example, Radii in a PLMO will work fine with zero values or 2 values, but not anything else.

  • ACTION LINKED TO ITSELF. Linked as in any statement (like Link) that references other map actions. Pretty self explanatory eh?

  • MOVT statement with more than 4 waypoints. A common newbie mistake, as with more than 4 waypoints, the MOVT will not work.

  • SQUA IMPROPERLY REFERENCED (POSSIBLY). Mostly, Squad actions should only be linked from Initial Squad statements in platoons, and potentially from Munger statements too. I've seen them used as unit container actions, but any other context is bound to be wrong.

  • INITIAL SQUADS STATEMENT. Antero will tell you if you use anything other than a Squad action here.

  • PLMO/PLSC. Antero will warn you if you reference one of these from anywhere other than a Platoon's Initial State. It will also tell you if you use anything other than a PLMO or PLSC in an Initial State.

  • PLAT NEEDS INITIAL DELAY ONLY. If you put a trigger time on a PLAT action it will pause for this period at every interpolate point, and you'll end up with a very slow platoon. Setting Initial Delay Only will prevent this from happening.

  • UNNECESSARY DEACTIVATION. A contentious one perhaps. Where an action that by definition will execute immediately & not hang around, and this action is deactivated, Antero will tell you about it.

  • RESULTS ACTION & GROUP UNIT CONTAINER ARRAY. These statements should link to NONE-type actions.

  • LINKS TO DELETED ACTIONS. Yes, Antero will warn you about these.

  • DELETED MONSTERS. Ditto.

  • SQUAD FACING NOT ZERO. This will cause trouble if not fixed.

  • GEOM Actions that deactivate on execution. I've known of several instances where this will fail to populate the Results Action Identifier. Use deactivate on successful execution instead.

  • GEOM Links with more than 25 members in the list. This was reported as causing problems, hence Antero will tell you about it.

  • UNIT LISTS WITH MORE THAN 32 MEMBERS. Another contentious one. Some believe this directly responsible for crashes, while others think its harmless. I belong to the former category, but its up to you to decide...

  • ACTION DEFINED MORE THAN ONCE. This is allowable in Loathing, but whatever you do, don't re-import your map-actions script as it will get it wrong.

  • ACTION NEVER ACTIVATED. Pretty obvious what this means.

  • UNKNOWN STATEMENT. There is something in your script that Antero doesn't know about. If you find one of these, please report it to IronDuke at andrewsumner@yahoo.com. The same goes for anything you think Antero should be checking for, and currently isn't ;)