Author Topic: [WIP] Road to Orum'Pur : Spellcheck needed  (Read 1418 times)

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Offline Jackho

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[WIP] Road to Orum'Pur : Spellcheck needed
Hello world,

Last time I made a mission public it was not the first one of this not-so-soon to come first campaign of mine. But this one is. And I'd like it to be spellchecked before I asked for testing. So here it is, maybe you who are reading this want to help me out?

You can try it if you want to, to that end you'll need fsport and mediavps, I'm testing with a recent nightly build so I guess it will be OK with 3.7.4 final. But as I'm attaching only the mission file, it will have no skyboxe.
Of course I need anything you could tell me about this mission, it's just that for now I'm focusing on it's text not reading like monkey English.

EDIT : removed debug sexp/messages



[attachment deleted by admin]
« Last Edit: November 07, 2016, 06:13:52 am by Jackho »
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Jack H. : "Well... There's much more to check than six..."

 

Offline karajorma

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Re: [WIP] Road to Orum'Pur : Spellcheck needed
I think it's smarter to get things spelling and grammar checked after the campaign is basically finished. You're a little too early in the process at the moment which is probably why no one has volunteered.
Karajorma's Freespace FAQ. It's almost like asking me yourself.

[ Diaspora ] - [ Seeds Of Rebellion ] - [ Mind Games ]

 
Re: [WIP] Road to Orum'Pur : Spellcheck needed
Well I volunteered :) But I will split my review in two parts, grammar and the playing itself.

First of all: I really like your ideas for the mission, there are many different objectives, more than just "flying and shooting". I like that.

Ok, the grammar: Please remember that I'm not a native speaker, so maybe I don't see all mistakes or the things I see are probably wrong.

Combat Briefing:

Page 4 of 6: freer. I think you mean: free :)
Page 5 of 6: I think it sounds better if you say: "find... out there (not over there)"

Briefing:
Page 1 of 2: Pilots... pilot yet. (the second one should be pilots, too).

I really didn't find many mistakes, so congrats on that.

But for the mission itself:

I think you can handle FRED well, really. But I think you want too much in this mission.
I have to say, I didn't finish it. I just couldn't. I tried it more than a dozen times, but I only make it to the second exam-part.
I like your idea with the 5 points starting, but that's the problem: 5 isn't enough. But one after the other, I start with general things:

- You should use the emptymessage.wmv to get the little "BEEP" sound, so that the player knows when a new message is displayed. It's hard to read otherwise when you're flying.
- Sometimes the messages need more time between them, they are very fast.
- Every message is just a single line, why? You can have messages over more than one line. I recognised messages that are "broken" in the middle because you start a second message that completes the sentence.
- Without stars and other things to orientate, I find it very hard to know where I am. Especially when the clock is ticking.
 
The start:
Starting without afterburners makes sense, it's a good idea. Though I usually use them at the beginning, but this killed me more than once  :lol:

But the cruiser is too close. I couldn't stay away from it far enough so that I didn't lose a point, and then reach the navpoint in time. Usually, when I finally reached the instructor, I was down to two points. With four exams following, this is too hard. As I said,I couldn't finish the mission. Maybe give more starting points? Or make the players not lose so many at the start? It's been really frustrating reaching the NavPoint... (But the idea with the cruiser is nice, really!)
The instructor is way to impatient. As I said, you lose the points very quick.

I also suggest you give the player more time to look for the high explosives, because of the large number of targets, the turrets and the problems with the orientation. 120 seconds should start the moment you find the high explosives, this would be better I think. But I really like the random part here, it's too easy if it's the same crate over and over again.

I think a little bit more information during briefing would be better, so that you don't have to pay so much attention to the instructor all the time.

I think there are too many targets at once. If you would put the containers that you need to scan at, maybe, F11 or so, this would be much easier.

I also suggest you look at the crates again. I shouldn't get away from the navpoint more than 650m, but I think you can't reach all of the crates (into scanning range) if you stay within the 650m radius.

I also think the 2nd test is too hard: The pilots died too easy while I was playing. Maybe it's better to guard them at a certain percentage and make them jump out.

Well, this is where my games usually ended. I lost all the points here and couldn't continue.

BUT: Your ideas are good, very good. You just want too much in one mission, I think. Maybe you should split the training in two missions? Let the player start again with fresh points after the first one?

I hope my review is not too harsh, I would like to see more of you. But I, as a player, was just overwhelmed. The possibilities to f**k up here are very numerous, so I think you should go less hard on us rookies  :p

 

Offline procdrone

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Re: [WIP] Road to Orum'Pur : Spellcheck needed
you will change many messages and so much of the text later, so better wait untill you're done.
--Did it! It's RELEASED! VeniceMirror Thread--

 

Offline Jackho

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Re: [WIP] Road to Orum'Pur : Spellcheck needed
@all :  Indeed I realize I'm a bit impatient, I'll have to go one step at a time and breathe between each one  :p

Quote from: bomb3rman
Ok, the grammar:....
Nice! Now I feel more comfortable when I think of releasing my work. I was afraid that a mission could get boring because of bad english texts in it.

I Used my own experience in playing when creating the different phases of this training.

Quote
You should use the emptymessage.wmv
Oh my god I forgot to specify this detail, in fact I effectively added a few elements that I couldn't find in the mods. among them there's a cool emptymsg I cooked myself but, as I only gave the mission file, you got nothing. But there is an emptymsg.wav. Something's wrong here because I thought there would still be an emptymsg to play if I don't put mine. Or maybe it's really empty.

- I had bad times reading big 3 lines long messages while struggling to win a mission so I wanted others not to experience the same thing I did. Usually messages delay is 8s except when the speaker is cut short by someone else, also putting the same amount of time between each messages would feel kind of mechanical to me. But that means 8s is not enough, ok I'll change that.

Quote
I find it very hard to know where I am
Ha ha this is space man, you have to use your navigation instruments, this mission's first two parts are all about that as a matter of fact, your HUD has plenty of info, some of them are not used anymore because the missions we play do not require them, even in retail ones! As an example, that might be the reason why you can't both avoid Fenris and arrive on time near the instructor.
Spoiler:
You have to get passed her as close as possible but not too close, nor too far because your travel would be longer and you'd be late, and then go straight and hit aftgerburner all the way to the navpoint. Maybe you targeted the cruiser to monitor how far you are from her? But if you just select the cruiser you will target it's turret and not it's center so you will deal with wrong coordinates, so you have to unselect the subsystems (Alt-S).
Do you think it's too tricky? Please tell me if so.
Spoiler:
And also I hope you didn't run into the camera probe! you'd lose another point!

Quote
...I also suggest you look at the crates again...
This one is like a chinese puzzle, I love chinese puzzles  ;7

Quote
...If you would put the containers that you need to scan at, maybe, F11...
"U" is the key you want for that, and "Alt-N" to not lose sight of the navpoint during the scan, see? your HUD has everything.

Quote
...Maybe it's better to guard them ...
But I will lose the point of this test, which is to control firepower and be more (less?) trigger friendly, so that you shoot only to hit. Sometimes I see on youtube videos players that follow their target while keeping the trigger pressed for a very long time, what if ETS didn't allow them to do that, like in Mechwarrior? And did you chain your primary or secondary (or both :p )? We all know about dogfight now, but who cares about efficiency? I think nobody ever looks at page 2 of the debriefing trying to get 100% hostile hit and 0% friendly hits in every mission anymore. Well if you do then I'll redo this entire test phase, I swear. Briefing said that they would depart so why not try to damage them 40 or 50 % and see if they give up? In FS we kill and destroy too much to my taste, I wanted to try something else. In this mission you won't die, obviously.

Problem is that I'm the one who created this mission so I know exactly what to do and what not to. That's why it's hard for me to make a good balance, and that's why I'll badly need more people to try it. Again in the first part, I used my personal record to establish the limit of 46 seconds to reach instructor. But I realize maybe I shouldn't have done it that way.

Anyway I find it very nice of you and also rewarding to have all these comments, we as FREDders need them so as to know what is a good crafted mission. I'll take consideration of everything you told me and hope I'll end up with something not too hard, but not too easy (hey it's an exam or not ? :lol:). For now I'm going abroad for my job so I won't get any further for the couple of weeks to come, but I will then post a fixed mission, or better, I'll wait for the campaign to be finished as karajorma said above. And also I'll try yours.

I can tell you more about other things you found difficult but there would be too much spoilers, so if you ask me, I'll pm you about it. Also I know you can dig in the mission file a bit, so try to change the pointsleft() default value and see how many points you need, I may use this info.
« Last Edit: November 18, 2016, 02:17:25 am by Jackho »
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Jack H. : "Well... There's much more to check than six..."