[Axem]

What impedes your progress? Why were there over 10 releases last year and as we enter the final months of 2013, there have been only 4 non-single mission, non-re-releases. This isn't a "FreeSpace is dying" question, because we're still seeing amazing progress in another area. I "feel" that 2013 has seen more effort towards making new ships and assets than to campaigns. There's nothing wrong with that. Maybe we have a tick-new campaigns, tock-new ship biannual cycle? Or maybe there's a lot of silent progress and 20 new campaigns are just around the corner to be released?
 
It's just a curious thing since there's no reason there couldn't be amazing progress on both. The number of dual modeller/FREDders are far and few. And the few that are, are releasing their stuff as they make it for their own campaign (the ideal situation anyway!)
 
So what say you? What's slowing you down? Is FRED too hard to use? Do you want to FRED but don't have a story? Do you need too many new ships for your dream campaign? Are you compelled to match Blue Planet in action packed complexity and world building? Are you trying to make a campaign longer than Revenge: Final Conflict and Derelict combined?
 
I'd love to help you, the "royal you" anyway (I can't help 500 people with their individual problems). For the 2014 series of newsletters, one of the quarterly series I'd like to do is help inspire or help realize what you need to do to make a campaign. I realize this can be sort of floaty stuff, everything can be sort of subjective and everyone has their own style. But if a general trend emerges, then maybe there is something to work with.

[Rodo]

What impedes progress?
Aside from RL stuff (assuming you don't want to know about that), Fred is a very tricky tool to work with.
You'd expect the copy/paste function to behave in some fashion and it does not, you'd like to move chained events around without suddenly having Fred freeze on you loosing 15mins worth of work, maybe even get the proper description for the sexp you are trying to use that sometimes it's not there or it isn't that clear.

BUT for me what hinders development the most is the inability to playtest that tricky part of the mission you just sexp'd in but takes place in the middle of a 10min long mission.
Playing until getting there is the real PITA in fredding, and sure you can work your way around pasting this in a new mission, but that's just a workaround and sometimes it's worth another 10 minute rigging a new mission with all the necessary sexps and ships, hell sometimes it's not even possible.

[BritishShivans]

I find the greatest obstacle to my FREDing is willingness + getting **** to work. I occasionally mess around with FRED to keep myself familiar, but it really peeves me when my custom music doesn't show up, or I can't table ****. I'm not exactly a good modder :V

Plus, having to aggressively micromanage the AI for certain...very complex things. Oh, the AI is fine and dandy occasionally with simple to moderately complex orders. But give it something complex, and you have to hold the AI's hand throughout the whole thing. To be honest, it's not really *that* frustrating, but it gets grating if I have to do it every time the AI absolutely *needs* to do something complex.

Bleh.

[Axem]

Rodo: There are methods to make that type of playtesting to be less painful. Going over them might be one idea for an article.

BritishShivans: Could you give an example of "complex AI"? I'm just curious what you're trying to do!

[BritishShivans]

Hint: Tenebra-like AI. Getting the AI to intelligently react to things, rather than the usual. Getting the AI to do something like "disable this ship without doing too much damage." I mean, I'm not exactly an excellent FREDer, but the amount of times I've had to hold the AI's hand is ridiculous.

This is even more so when I want something like Tenebra in regards to your wingmen. Albiet, the I've noticed that lately the AI hasn't been as frustrating in regards to ordering them around with SEXPs and commands - I've had to hold it's hand much less than usual.

Albiet, there is this annoying thing where after blowing up a few ship these Narayanas fly into some debris and promptly die, thus screwing up the mission and causing the pair of Karunas to get killed because they fly straight into range of the beam cannons... 

But that's one mission. Oh well.

[Shadow DS]

Hi all, long time fan boy here.
I have been gone a long time and silent for many others but this post spoke to me and I felt compelled to reply for the first time in many years. Thank you Axem for helping me get over my fear of communicating.

Anyways, to be perfectly honest, what impedes my progress is a mixture of Real Life and what Rodo and BH said combined with keeping things fresh and interesting.
In the past, I have written 4+ campaigns, 3 of which were never released and one was on the old Volition Achieves website as a demo back in 1999-2000 and died shortly after a HD crash. Aside from that, the rapidly changing nature of the game, which in itself if great but can be problematic when new features come out that you really like and then implement them into your work only for it to fudge up something else.
 
For expample:
Back in the spring of 2001 I started work on a return to earth campaign which at the time I thought was fresh and fairly original. It was to be released in two parts which part one was finished by 2003. New models were released into the community which fit the “feel” of the story I was going for so changed were made to make it more challenging and believable.

Being solo work, it took a long time to work out the kinks and by the time they were worked out, the game changed completely for me (which was great) it allowed me to toy with some ideas that were not possible before. After a while RL and other interests got in the way and the campaign just sat on my hard drive. Finally, I lost track of HLP community and FS2 for a while due to those other Interests but tried to keep my ear to the ground with the work I was doing slowly and quietly.

In 2011, I got back into FS2 hard core and realized my original story wasn't so original any more. With the many similar stories out there along with the simply outstanding work of other projects like blue planet, Sync and others, my story was simply too bland, too unidirectional to be released. So earlier this year I started deconstructing and rebuilding my story from the ground up with a change of focus. I have a goal for a 2014 release of this now 13 year old project but to be perfectly honest I know the odds are fairly good that it may take longer than that.

What holding me up now is that trying to update a lot of the files I had from years ago now leads to numerous and annoying errors which I managed to track down all but 33 of them (from over 600  )
In addition, many of the models that were originally used now look very dated by today’s standards and were being replaced and re-balanced by what’s available to the public. Some of those have been placed as a filler as they are at present “best fits” and not final choice.

The story itself still needs a lot of work as the original plot line I think has been done to death so I came up what a new one which I think fits very nicely.
Work is painfully slow but continuing with my goal of finally producing something to the community I followed for well over a decade now.

P.S.
I hope my post inspires many others who are like me working in the shadows. Don’t give up.

[yuezhi]

Widespread lack of interest in my stuff is my reason

[Mito [PL]]

Well... As a beginner FREDer i can detect some lazyness in my behaviour  . And being stuck on first mission is annoying, but i warn you, you will see the release .

I think some sort of semi-scientific encyclopedy should make understanding the universe smoother, like a subspace theory (i could write something)... could help.

Another reason would be having campaingns just too good to not to play them ^^ and they steal time from FREDing then .

(A messy post but well...)

[Boomer20]

I have found various reasons to impede my Freding work, University was the big one but with the semester over now its no longer a problem. Till next year.
My other problems have been developing ideas on how to finish the campaign, I've done the first half, I have an end in mind but in between is here and there. (I have learnt now that I probably should have developed the whole story before starting)
I also have been redesigning what I already have to make it what I believe to be release worthy to the community. I've been redoing my earlier missions to remove things like pointless multiple waves, missing events etc.
Lastly something that I will be posting at a later date, I have one mission that upon changing builds the mission is now completely broken and will need a redesign, all of which takes time.

[Rodo]

I know, over the years I've been fredding I've developed my own method that consist in placing certain empty sepxs with impossible trigger conditions, then I just move'em around and change the trigger to true so it starts out right on the beginning and disable the original starting sexp, but as I said that's just a workaround and sometimes it's not possible due to necessary preconditions.
I'd really love to have a possibility to say to fred:
Hey man I just want to run this mission AND execute only this portion, from this sexp (*click) to this sexp (*click), now go on and create a temporary mission with all the stuff you need to run that particular section.
Heh, I do recognize the potential nightmare this would represent for coder to implement such a function, but I'm allowed to dream right? 

[Black Wolf]

Well, there's no doubt that the number one thing that holds me up is me. I get distracted, or busy and I can stop doing FS stuff for weeks at a time - or work on FS stuff other than my main projects. But that, I suspect, is going to a problem for everyone (supported as that statement is by this thread), and not something the community can really expect to help with, which I think is meant to be the main thrust of this topic. So, let's think about what slows down mission making that the community can help with.

1. A FREDding impasse.

Ignoring those halts that you get as a result of writer's block or boredom, I sometimes put a mission aside because I hit a point where I know what I want to do, but not how to do it. This is rarely because the engine isn't capable of it, but more often than not it's because I'm either not aware of its full capabilities or I'm not approaching the problem correctly.

The solution here is actually relatively straightforward - I go on #freespace on IRC and ask the other FREDders who usually hang around for suggestions. This has helped me tonnes of times with missions. I wonder though if some of the newer FREDders are made aware of the IRC channels' existence and ease of use thanks to the direct mibbit links? (You don't even need to register!) Or how many people hang out there who are generally willing to help with FRED problems? That may be something worth making more prominent - perhaps through a sticky thread on the FRED board?

2. Testing and Balance

I'm not sure if this really slows people down, but it is something I've noticed with Frontlines. When I played the missions I had built, I was able to beat them on medium about one time in four. That was fine, I wanted the missions to be hard. When I passed them over to other beta testers however, they found them immensely difficult, to the point hat they couldn't be completed. My sense of balance was completely out vs. a normal player, and this has meant that I have had to make multiple balancing adjustments, getting people to play through multiple iterations. Given that this is happening on missions I considered finished enough to send off for beta testing, it's slowed the porcess down considerably (I haven't been making new missions because I'm fixing the old ones). Now, this may be just my problem, but given the wildly varying balance in missions I've played in some campaigns, I don't think that it is.

In terms of a solution, I'm not sure exactly what we could do here. One possibility would be for FREDders to try to team up with an independent tester from earlier on in the mission making process - that's certainly what I'm going to be doing with the rest of my FL missions. But that's not always possible, especially since it's a big ask to expect playtesters to play through missions that might barely be called even half complete and are probably still pretty buggy and messy  - beta testing after all is supposed to be a late stage thing, after all. Open beta's are also an option, but I really don't like them, since I see a campaign as a whole unit - often with a complex story to tell. I really wouldn;t want to release it out in dribs and drabs, bits and pieces and let the impact of that story get all cut to pieces. Not to mention the inevitable complaints from people who don't understand what an open beta really entails.

So, any thoughts on that?

3. Specific Assets
(Note that I'm talking about a situation where a FREDder needs one or two specific props or ships to complete a specific mission. I'm sorry if it sounds harsh, but I'm less interested in the plight of the occasional person who wants a whole new species or faction's worth of ships)

This is probably the biggest one, and the hardest to fix. For me personally, this slows me down massively, because if I need an asset, I go and make it. However, for a lot of other FREDders, that's not an option (Axem mentioned that combined FREDders/modders are the exception rather than the rule), and so this tends to be a showstopper, rather than a show-slower. Unfortunately, there's no easy fix. Creating new assets to current standards takes a long time, and a lot of effort. I don't know many people who would be willing to do that for someone else's campaign, and it's hard to blame them, especially given the risk that your work might never see the light of day. That's why I'm hesitant to suggest what might seem like an obvious answer - some kind of central thread where people post what they need, and bored modders go in and make them. I would imagine that that thread would fill up very quickly with people requesting ships, and very few people filling requests (again, I wouldn't blame anyone for that, I just think it's a realistic outcome).

That said, such a thread might find a niche more in people suggesting existing ships or props to fill the role the FREDder wants, or it might demonstrate a real demand for a specific sort of ship that doesn't currently exist in the shipset. My small stations were designed in response to such a gap, and I know, for example, that there aren't any modern-standard luxury liner models available - I've tried (unsuccessfully) to fill that niche myself in the past. So it may be worth a try... maybe.

I feel like this has become a kind of wandering, pointles post, so I think I'm going to end it there. Someone else may have other suggestions to make.

[Rheyah]

Atm its because my modding time is limited by my willingness to commit to large periods of time, my creativity and energy devoted to problem solving and the fact I am committed to another Freespace project for a little while at least while they finish their first act.

Assets wise I am profoundly limited by the availability of civilian ship assets but that's not difficult to write around.  I am not a modeller so I have no right to determine what kind of ships are available for use.

At present I'm looking for a counterpart destroyer to the HTL EACv Darkness but have yet to find one with similar colouring and models.  Maybe an Orion reskin instead.  Still undecided.

[Droid803]

Problems:
1. Lack of interesting mission ideas
- I have no interest in doing escort mission #99192 (I've been there, done that), and it's getting hard to think of gimmick after gimmick which actually works and is fun...gets tiring.
- "I don't know what to do"
- This is the biggest one for me at the moment. I've been rapidly depleting my list of things-to-try, and the things-that-worked list didn't grow much, certainly not enough to string together anything interesting...

2. Frustration at bugs/engine limitations/lack of skill
- Gets in the way a lot when I can't actually put a concept into practice because I run into either engine limitations, bugs, or just plain lack of FREDding ability to make it work.
- "I know what I want to do. I know how to do it, but it turns out can't be done!"
- i.e. Here's this cool idea, except it will never work because reasons a), b) and c). a) can be hacked around after asking Axem, and c) will be addressed in the next nightly. But b)? Maybe if someone writes the code for it. Check back in six months. ****. Back to square one.
- That, or after all that work getting it implemented, turns out it's not fun at all. Again, back to square one.

3. Lack of motivation
- Caused by the two above.

What are NOT problems:
1. Assets
Whatever is needed gets made. Be it a fleet for an entire new species or specific assets for a single mission! Easily the most fun part of modding FSO for me now is firing up 3dsmax, taking a concept from my head, making it into a model, texturing it, then getting it in game. Be this a general ship or an asset with a very specific purpose, this is fun and rewarding - I actually feel I get somewhere!
And then I run into a mysterious CTD that makes the whole concept for my custom asset worthless.
Oh well, at least it was fun to make the damn thing!

2. Testing and Balance
Because nothing ever reaches this stage.
That and what does reach this stage is so like, miraculous that I don't mind testing it over and over, and I have wonderful testing buddies to help me out.


Yeah, I'm kind of experiencing "1st world problems" of modding, I suppose. I have more ability to develop assets/assets lying around than I know what to do with...
Not that anyone can actually help with that. I think I'll get out of this rut eventually at some point. I started putting this off last winter because I told myself "this is the last term of university, better focus, get your **** together, worry about FSO modding later". I now realize that was just a pathetic excuse for my lack of ideas and whatnot...I've been basically NEET all summer and I've got jack **** done.

I'm not sure if this really slows people down, but it is something I've noticed with Frontlines. When I played the missions I had built, I was able to beat them on medium about one time in four. That was fine, I wanted the missions to be hard. When I passed them over to other beta testers however, they found them immensely difficult, to the point hat they couldn't be completed. My sense of balance was completely out vs. a normal player, and this has meant that I have had to make multiple balancing adjustments, getting people to play through multiple iterations. Given that this is happening on missions I considered finished enough to send off for beta testing, it's slowed the porcess down considerably (I haven't been making new missions because I'm fixing the old ones). Now, this may be just my problem, but given the wildly varying balance in missions I've played in some campaigns, I don't think that it is.

I've come to realize that being able to complete the mission reliably and with ease every single time reliably yourself as the creator - the mission can still be way too hard. As the creator of the mission you know more about the inner workings of it than anyone else, not to mention if it's not using retail FS2 assets, you might be the only one who knows the exact capabilities of the ships present...

In terms of a solution, I'm not sure exactly what we could do here. One possibility would be for FREDders to try to team up with an independent tester from earlier on in the mission making process - that's certainly what I'm going to be doing with the rest of my FL missions.

That is what I do. (Thanks, Destiny!)

At present I'm looking for a counterpart destroyer to the HTL EACv Darkness but have yet to find one with similar colouring and models.  Maybe an Orion reskin instead.  Still undecided.

It shares textures with the large ship on the left (pictured there with the old EACv Darkness, which the new was intended to replace).

[fightermedic]

because i'm terrible at writing, and all new campaigns tend to have such horrible amounts of text involved
and i'm better when i'm reworking campaigns, rather than creating new ones (also there's way less writing involved)

assets are like the least of all the problems, we have a huge database with tons of ships, if one isn't afraid to change a few tables and play around with pcs2 a bit, almost every concept of ship can be made with existing assets, even if sometimes a little texture change may be needed

[0rph3u5]

What impedes your progress?

I've got a slight problem with the fact that I tend to follow every crazy inspiration that comes my way. So it is rather difficult to work a project straight from end to end unless I'm doing it in a concentrated effort. However for such concentrated effort you need a time and no distractions, so far I've been low on both accounts this year.

Additionally, I've been stuck on a FS Open 3.6.10/12 niveau of builds for a long time and have yet to adapt to capabilites of newer builds. So I got a bit of learing curve to deal with.

[karajorma]

Because I care more about solving problems than actually telling a story.

As a result I think I enjoy solving other people's FRED and code problems almost as much as I like solving my own. That means that making a mission consists of a hugely active phase where I solve all the complex FREDding issues that face me (even going so far as to make tech demo missions where I just concentrate on solving the problem) and then a phase I find rather boring where I turn that into an actual working mission.

It's also why I spent so much time here on HLP helping other people with FRED rather than making my own missions.

What I need to do is to sit down and plan out a campaign that is incredibly complex to FRED so that the active phase is more of what is required. In that way, I'd be writing the part of the mission that really interests me until the mission was 80% done or so and then it would be stupid to waste that much effort and not release it. I have something like that written for Diaspora and I'm just waiting for assets to make it.

[Goober5000]

Because I care more about solving problems than actually telling a story.

Then just redefine the problem.  Example: TMA is still unreleased.  Go solve it.

[Rheyah]

There's already a trend forming.  There are people like myself who love writing and telling stories but are limited by a relative lack of FRED experience and time and people that are fantastic at modding things and FREDing but don't have the creative spark they would like to be able to write.

Surely a solution presents itself.

[Black Wolf]

There's already a trend forming.  There are people like myself who love writing and telling stories but are limited by a relative lack of FRED experience and time and people that are fantastic at modding things and FREDing but don't have the creative spark they would like to be able to write.

Surely a solution presents itself.

Not really, unfortunately. If you look at, for example, what Kara has said, he's not saying (I think ) that he doesn't enjoy coming up with stories - he's talking about the boring, non challenging parts of FREDding. The briefings and debriefings, the mission chatter, that sort of thing. It's tedious, non creative, non challenging and can take a lot of time and effort, can be frustratingly buggy for something that seems so straightforward, and then, given that  it's often the main way the player interacts with the mission outside of actually playing it, it's often heavily criticised (especially when written by non-native English speakers).

But that is absolutely not the same as just FREDding someone else's story. Historically in the community, people willing to completely cede control of a story while doing the lion's share of the heavy lifting of the FREDding are few and far between. Some sort of collaboration between both really advanced FREDders and less experienced guys willing to do the messages might work, with the right people, but in my experience, two people working on the same mission leads to a clash of styles (behind the scenes) that can be tough to make work.

I definitely agree with your earlier point about the dearth of civilian ships though. I've been trying to get people to do something about that for years, though, so don't expect a change in a hurry.

[Boomer20]

The part that bugs me is when your messages are either spoken too fast or too slow and no matter how much you change it, it never is quite right (lack of audio doesn't help but there's not much I can do about that).
That and I've fallen into a problem of revealing to much straight out on a platter in command briefings or fiction sections.

There's already a trend forming.  There are people like myself who love writing and telling stories but are limited by a relative lack of FRED experience and time and people that are fantastic at modding things and FREDing but don't have the creative spark they would like to be able to write.

Surely a solution presents itself.

For me personally this idea doesn't really work given that my whole idea of creating this campaign is to build on my skill of FRED (and all its tediousness), and create something worthy of being presented to a community. That said I may be very different to other people.