MISTEST

MISTEST (aka Mission Tester) is a script for checking objects and scripting within maps made for Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge. Although the name implies it tests 'missions' only, it is equally useful to test multiplayer maps. Ambient effects often have minor errors it can find like a missing value, as well as more basic things like invalid pre-placed TechnoTypes, or objects outside the usable map area. It examines rules(md).ini, art(md).ini, ai(md).ini, and sound(md).ini, along with the map itself. It is run via dragging-and-dropping a map onto the included batchfile on Windows, and creates a mission.log file with the results. Make sure to associate log files with your preferred text editor.

Before using MISTEST, all specified INIs, have to be extracted to the game directory, where MISTEST should also be extracted, with the correct read/write permissions. A copy of the TCL runtimes (version 8.3+) have to be installed, available through Activestate, link below.

To configure MISTEST to run correctly, and read the right files, the mistest.tcl will have to be edited to manually set the path for the game, the specific filenames used by the mod, and possibly toggle the optional warnings. Pay close attention to the 'ra2dir' example path, TCL doesn't support backslash for path navigation, it uses the UNIX system of forwardslash. On a side note, the logging can be set to append rather than overwrite, allowing a user to drag-and-drop a sequence of maps to check (one at a time) and all their results will be added with identifiers to the log.

MISTEST doesn't do any error checking of the game/mod INIs, and is only using them for reference to understand what is or isn't valid within the map. For error checking the INIs you'll want to use AICHECK. MISTEST also does not check the terrain or OverlayTypes in any way, that's left to the map editors.

Links

• Latest download at PPM
• ActiveTCL Runtime downloads (free registration)