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I am in the process of hacking out a simple plugin to reset flags when a team's flag has been idle too long. Ideally, the plugin would reset the team flags individually, but since the only function available is a general flag reset, that's what I am using.

I am having trouble in only one area of the code - I have looked at this 100 times and can't see what I am doing wrong. For some reason that I cannot fathom, the conditional statements testing for the flag a player is holding, e.g.:

if (player->currentFlag == "R*")
RedLastTime = bz_getCurrentTime();

never are true, even though I know that a player has the red flag (e.g). Am I using the wrong type of argument?

The surrounding code is below:

void TeamFlagResetHandler::process ( bz_EventData *eventData )
{
if (eventData->eventType != bz_eTickEvent)
return;

bzAPIIntList *playerList = bz_newIntList();
bz_getPlayerIndexList ( playerList );

RedTeamCount = 0;
GreenTeamCount = 0;
BlueTeamCount = 0;
PurpleTeamCount = 0;

// check to see if anyone has picked up a team flag & count players per team
for ( unsigned int i = 0; i < playerList->size(); i++ ){

bz_PlayerRecord *player = bz_getPlayerByIndex(i);

if (player->currentFlag == "R*")
RedLastTime = bz_getCurrentTime();
if (player->currentFlag == "G*")
GreenLastTime = bz_getCurrentTime();
if (player->currentFlag == "B*")
BlueLastTime = bz_getCurrentTime();
if (player->currentFlag == "P*")
PurpleLastTime = bz_getCurrentTime();

if (player->team == eRedTeam)
RedTeamCount++;
if (player->team == eGreenTeam)
RedTeamCount++;
if (player->team == eBlueTeam)
RedTeamCount++;
if (player->team == ePurpleTeam)
RedTeamCount++;

bz_freePlayerRecord(player);
}

bz_deleteIntList(playerList); ... and so on ...



Any help on this would be appreciated

you want to probably use BZF_API const char* bz_getPlayerFlag( int playerID );

the field in the player record has the full flag name, not the abbreviation.

JeffM - thanks for the quick response.

I've tried using "R*", "Red Flag", "RedFlag" with bz_getPlayerFlag( int playerID ) and still no luck. I've also tried those variations with the player record's currentFlag (player->currentFlag, above) with no luck either.

I'm sorry to keep troubling you with this; it's probably a simple thing I am missing here...

log out what the flag function is returning. I don't remember the code for the teams.

Ok, debugged some more and my problems might be related to how I am comparing:

FlagHeld = bz_getPlayerFlag(i);

if (FlagHeld == "R*")
RedLastTime = bz_getCurrentTime();

Through debugging I have found that FlagHeld does indeed contain "R*" when the red flag is held (or "L" with laser, "GM" with guided missile and so on). It seems that the boolean comparitor == is not working in this case. I also tried strcmp(FlagHeld, "R*") == 0 and it compiled ok, but crashed bzfs when I tried to join locally. FlagHeld is declared as const char *FlagHeld;

Forgive me if I am missing something that is probably obvious here. I have only a little experience with data types and their manipulation.

Unfortunately, it looks like bz_getPlayerFlag() can return
NULL pointers (rather then returning a pointer to an empty
string). The strcmp() call looks right, just check for a NULL
value before doing it.

trepan - long time no see and thanks for the tip. It dawned on me before I went to sleep last night that the null return from bz_getPlayerFlag() was probably the culprit for the crash and I was going to try that method today.

Thanks again, and I hope all is well.

LouMan

** Just tried it and that was the trick Thanks for your help JeffM and trepan!

For future reference, iirc the player record data member for the flag uses "Red Team flag" (or some variant with different capitalization) for team flags. Took me a while to figure that one out...