Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The FRED Workshop => FRED Academy => Topic started by: King Zelch on May 24, 2008, 03:06:18 am
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I have finished my level and it is now ready to be tested! :)
http://www.geocities.com/kingzelchsmail/FAC2M3KingZelch.zip
It has been Zipped so I could upload it.
It should :nervous: all be complete and fully functioning. Please try it and post what you think here. :yes: Thanks.
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Okay, Managed to play the mission and technically I couldn't find much wrong with actually. Which is quite impressive. Usually I find at least a few technical problems. That said there are some issues with balance and aesthetics that I spotted while playing. Once I've gone through the list of what I found wrong with the mission when I played it I'll open up FRED and have a good look around there. :)
1) I found the mission a little hard. Things were going okay until the mass attack of Shivan forces. I found that I was dealing with far too much at one time after that happened. It seems like 5 wings all appeared at once. You should stagger the arrivals a little to make the mission a little more playable. I never actually managed to get to the end so I'll have to judge that based on the FREDding instead.
Of course this is just my opinion and you should probably get a few more from other people to see if they agree with me.
2) I found the mission goal is a little wordy. Something like "Protect the Julius" or "Protect the Julius Until it Jumps" is enough.
3) I got a message stating that some of the Shivans had gotten away yet I destroyed all three gas miners. It may be that there are other ships around but I never saw them. Consider adding another miner that jumps out as soon as the player gets within a certain distance of it. Alternatively better messages from the Deimos might have the same effect (although in that case you run the risk of the player managing to get to the miners quickly enough to notice that the 4th Rahu the Julius says exists is in fact non-existent).
4) The messages could use a little work as they were a little repetitive. Mix them up a little when you have several that say much the same thing. For instance instead of "I've got a visual on Libra wing, they're Dragon class fighters." followed by "I've got a visual on Cancer wing, they're Mara class fighters", change the latter to "Damn, I've got a new visual on 4 Mara class fighters" etc. It makes the wingmen seem more realistic.
The same goes for the destruction of the Rahu miners.
5) Where's the music? :D Both mission and briefing musics were missing.
All in all that's actually a pretty low tally of problems. Now lets see what I find when I open up things in FRED. :)
1) I noticed the false Traitor Debrief. I assume that means you noticed that game supplies one automatically. :)
2) Just a minor thing but I noticed in briefing stage 4 you had this
and
-is-destroyed-delay
--0
--Julius
-is-destroyed-delay
--0
--Annatet
which in case you didn't know is basically equivalent to the much simpler
-is-destroyed-delay
--0
--Julius
--Annatet
3) Again another equivalence thing, you have this (simplified) in Leo Retreat When One Destroyed
when
-or
--or
---is-destroyed
----Leo 1
---is-destroyed
----Leo 2
--is-destroyed
---Leo 3
This is equivalent to
or
-is-destroyed
--Leo 1
-is-destroyed
--Leo 2
-is-destroyed
--Leo 3
Just use the add operator option from the pop up menu to add the 3rd is-destroyed-delay SEXP. That said there is an even better way.
when
-or
-percentage-ships-destroyed
--1
--Leo
-percentage-ships-disabled
--1
--Leo
-add-goal etc
Will have the same effect as your first two events in a single event. As soon as more that 1% of Leo wing is destroyed it will trigger, since each ship is worth 33% you'll get that as soon as one is destroyed or disabled.
4) In general I'm seeing a lot of cases where you should be using add operator rather than making a new event. It is more efficient to stick everything that should happen at the same time in one event using it than to have lots of similar events. It also means that you don't run the risk of having only 3 out of 4 events trigger cause you made a mistake in the 4th. Furthermore if you change the trigger you only need to do it once. A good example of this is the Find Annatet- Change IFF to F, Find Annatet- IFF is F= Visable and Find Annatet- Make Escort Ship Events which all could have simply been rolled into a single event called Find Annatet.
5) Your whole failsafe code is rather odd. Personally I'd remove the whole lot unless you can explain to me what you're trying to do there. I suspect that it's the reason why you're not seeing any ships jump out as it's setting some of the ships to self destruct.
6) You probably shouldn't have used Beta or Gamma wing for the other wings. Right from the start of the mission they are visible in the top right corner's wingman health display. You can change the name of the wings that are visible from the Mission Specs Editor->Custom Wing Names. Change those to wing names which don't exist in the mission and that minor problem should vanish. To be honest I suspect an SCP change is required here really as there are times like this one when you do want a ship to appear on the HUD but not for the entire mission.
7) The Alpha 2 Will NOT Survive! is practically useless. It only triggers after several days and it effectively ship-guardian's Alpha 2. Did you want him Guardianed from the start? If so just use when - true as your trigger. In fact I tend to always start my missions with a single event called Initial Events and stick all the mission start stuff in that event.
8) You probably should consider not instantly blowing up the Annatet if the Julius is destroyed. It seems rather forced to me. Allow the mission to continue but simply make the Shivan forces too much to hold back in that case.
9) You should turn trails back on by unticking that box in the mission specs editor. Since this is a nebula mission it turns them off (at least it should do. I could swear I saw them!).
Okay, think I'm done for now. Apart from my complaints this is looking pretty good. With some better balancing this could be a pretty solid mission.
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OK, I've fixed the problems you've mentioned and there's only one thing I am having difficulties with.
4) In general I'm seeing a lot of cases where you should be using add operator rather than making a new event.
I don't seem able to have a and operator in the results section of a script, at least not the way I can with the conditional part. In fact I am unable to use any of the logical operators in this case. :confused: Is this a bug or is there another way?
Anyway I've fixed all the other problems (except the long-winded scripts) and the improved version can be found here: http://www.geocities.com/kingzelchsmail/FAC2M3KingZelch2.zip
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You don't use the AND SEXP for the action operators. If I have this
when
-true
-do-something
I can simply right click on the when SEXP, choose Add Operator and change that to
when
-true
-do-something
-do-something-else
for
And
-A
-B
I would right click on the AND and do the same to make
And
-A
-B
-C
As for the mission, I'm rather swamped at the moment but the time it takes you to fix all those events should give me a little extra time so I'll take a look once you've done that. :)
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Well I've done that now and I certainly have allot less events! They're far more easy to manage now! :)
I made a few other slight changes as well. You can get version 3 here: http://www.geocities.com/kingzelchsmail/FAC2M3KingZelch3.zip
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I will take a look at it this weekend (I've been rather busy lately).
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Okay, I finally had the time to take a good look at this.
1) It's still too hard. My wingmen got wiped out very quickly leaving me and the Julius facing a wing of Dragons, Mara and Taurvi. Far too much.
2) I barely managed to extract myself from that situation with almost completely defensive flying near the Julius. I got the message to head for the navigation point (which I spent about 20 seconds pressing ALT+N to uncover before I realised you'd used a pharos beacon :rolleyes: ) only for absolutely nothing to happen when I got there. (I do know why nothing happened BTW but that's a little debugging exercise for you, ask if you get stuck though).
3) The quality of your events has improved significantly. There are still a few tricks you could learn to improve the way you've got things working but what is there is pretty solid and I'm sure you'll pick them up as you go along.
4) Minor oversight but the message about the Tauvi bombers came from command cause all my wingmen had been wiped out and the message is marked as high priority. You might want to shunt that message over to the Julius if there are no wingmen left or simply make it normal priority so that you don't get it if the wingmen are all dead.
You might not have expected that but even with Command silenced you still will get messages from them if you have a high priority message with no one to send it.
5) Minor nitpick but there was no Knossos portal at the Nebula side of the GD jump node. You simply have a jump node there so you might want to update your briefing.
Get those bugs fixed and do something about the difficulty (either reducing the enemy numbers, when they jump in or guardianing a few of the wingmen) and I'll take another look cause this is actually quite a fun mission to play.
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Version 3 on SVN build, first pass. Normal difficulty.
I got shot down by Libra 4's Hornet-sniping. (Somehow I find the enemy AI can use them Hornets with their questionable turn rate waaay better than I do against them...) Two ALP wingmen died prior to that happening to me. Will agree that it's fairly hard, the first part was deceptively easy although the Deimos' hull integrity dropped somewhat fast to me. I didn't see Beta wing appear on the wingman list though... or idk... then again, I'm in a hurry to knock off for the day that's already past, so I didn't look around. xD
Were the constant lightning flashes and sudden screen overbrights by both the sun and random unknown sources supposed to denote the "active" region of the nebula? :confused:
Will give this a try again much later in the evening if I have time to spare. The player's not supposed to successfully shoot down all of Leo wing, right? (I kinda jumped into the action after looking at only 2 or 3 pages of the briefing :lol:)
Also minor spell errors which to me is understandable. The wingman text, kinda... interesting..., "so-and-so wing has been (insert another way to write the word ELIMINATED here)". ;)
Prometheus R = :nervous: :sigh:
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Ok I played through it once real quick, I'll have to do more later.
1st is scripting. Briefing, debriefing and in game. Wordy wordy wordy. But that's nothing. Simple and easy.
2nd Damn that's a lot of fighters! They jump in all at once and are very close!
Either stagger the jumps or have them jump in farther away.
3rd I got a message to investigate a second waypoint before the first waypoint was resolved. I have disarmed the shivan cruiser and my orders window was already telling me to hit another one, where I found the other cap ship. I'm looking at the Annanet while they're talking about looking for it. Just weird.
Suggestion, have the Annanet jump in after the cruiser goes down? You had it placed far enough away it shouldn't be seen.
Also, this is the first time I've really played the FSO, what is up with that voice? Can that be fixed? I know that's not your fault but it totally ruins the mission for me.
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You can turn off the voice synthesis from the launcher's speech tab.
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I told him it was too hard but he wouldn't believe me :lol:
It IS possible as he has done it several times on medium.
Anyways he'll take a look at it later today (GMT)
P.S. I'm his twin, not some random person :)
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A good rule of thumb is to always play missions you FREDded one level of difficulty higher than you play normally. That way the extra difficulty compensates for you knowing exactly what to do.
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2nd pass, fragged by Capricorn 5.
3rd pass, fragged by Virgo 3.
4th pass, fragged by Cancer 2.
4th pass was probably the most interesting. At one point I almost rammed into Beta 2 in the nebula and I saw it had "No Orders"? Was no order given, or was it issued later?
I lasted long enough until the Dragons came and did (for some odd reason) a slow frenzy on I-have-no-idea what, I decided to chase down one, got fed up, changed targets to a Mara and ended up getting backstab-sniped by yet another Hornet four-shot from out of nowhere. -_-||
While chasing down the Mara, I noticed that the entire Alpha wing had already gone down without me watching... at least now I know where the random "NOOOOOO!!!"'s and "AAAAAHHHHH"'s came from. :lol: There's enough enemies on the map to make me unable to read any of the text or actually follow the directives, and get fed up with the Perseus altogether. Or maybe I'm already used to high speed physics up to the point where even the afterburner feels useless.
And it's a mission that really forces me to use missiles/rockets in order to go the distance. My play style is heavy on primaries, so no choice but to improvise. At least the Perseus firepoints are accurate enough for Tempest use.
P.S. I used to play FS on Easy, but when I started playing around with mods I focused on Medium as it's sort of "the middle point". I quickly felt the pinch of no burners after the step up. I still think I'm not flying properly though. =\
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I decided to follow karajorma's advice so I played the level on hard. I was owned by the Virgo and Capricorn wave :shaking:
Hmmm :doubt: maybe the level is too hard...
I won't have time to re-balance it today although I have started with other changes (Including making it clearer that the nav points are beckons).
Blue Lion
I think I know why the speech with the Annatet got a bit mucked up when you played. I'll be onto that next.
asyikarea51
I'm not sure what you mean about random flashes. However it may be better to make the nebula less active.
I also agree with you about the Prometheus, however I had the player using one as a kind of compromise with people who may prefer it to the HL-7. I may change that unless others state they prefer it. As for Beta's orders, that has now been fixed.
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Well in the later part of the mission when the fighting starts to get thick, suddenly my screen will just overbright and then I have lightning flashes here and there somehow more frequently than normal. It could be that I'm just seeing things, but I experienced the overbright on each pass so I kind of think there's something there.
Being a nebula mission I also find it a bit odd that there's a sun in the system. If the sun's supposed to be there then I won't say anything. If not then maybe you could scale down the size to like 0.1 or something if you can't remove it? Like, really small...
Not too experienced with FRED myself, I'm relying on limited FRED1 experience to do things... :nervous:
On the Prometheus R, hmm, if this mission existed last year I might've agreed with you, but then came one day when I just had to read the wiki to find out. The added one-hit damage does help things a bit, but with stock FS rules by slowing down the fire rate with linked guns, I either went with HL7 + Tempest (despite being uncomfortable with using ammo), HL7 alone or PromR alone. I only linked guns against the bomber units.
Transcend is one good example of a campaign where the PromR's weaknesses really get to you. But if due to plot reasons the gun really really needs to be a PromR, then I can tolerate it.
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Well according to the background editor there are no suns. :confused: I know there are as I have seen them in the level myself. :sigh: So I don't really know whats going on. Anyway adding a sun seems to remove the 'non-existent' ones. I have made this one as small as I can add put it behind the battle to try and make it less of a problem. Unless there is a way of removing the others without having this one that is the best I can do.
Anyway I looked at the veteran comments on the wiki about the Prometheus R and they all seemed to hate it. So that means I don't feel so much like I should do a compromise anymore. That means two Subach HL-7s! ;)
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FS2 automatically adds a sun at 0,0,0 if none is specified in the mission file. The problem is that in most missions you're pointing at it right at the start too.
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Just to let you know I haven't forgot about this level and I am still working on it, I've just had other things to deal with recently. The rebalancing looks just about complete now, because I just completed* it on hard. I've also remade the briefing which is now allot shorter. I should finish version 4 soon. :yes:
*As the Beast jumped in to destroy the Annatet it gave me a 'little' shove. :eek2: :shaking:
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I've finished version 4 now. You can get it at:
http://www.geocities.com/kingzelchsmail/FAC2M3KingZelch4.zip
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Anyone there? :nervous:
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I'll playtest tonight. I didn't have enough time to do both missions.
EDIT : Finally found the time!
Still finding it damn hard! Which is a pity as it's preventing me getting to the later stages of the mission. I'll try it again on very easy in a couple of days if no one agrees with me so I can see if there are any problems there. If they do you probably need to alter the waves a little. In general most FREDders seldom go above 3 or 4 ships in a wing. You have 5 or 6 in some of yours and no chance to rearm (which means you can't simply missile spam the enemy ships). Furthermore since you're in a Perseus you're not even particularly missile heavy in the first place. That might just reflect my playing style but I like to smack bombers with tempests before they can get their bombs off. Especially in nebula missions.
You probably can get away with just trimming a few ships from those enemy wings without it causing any major problems.
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The results of my test run:
The mission's difficulty was all right to me. I tested it only once, on Easy, and I had no problem with completing the mission.
The technical part of the mission is, as kara said, pretty good. I'm happy with your way of doing the briefing stages and playing with the change-iff SEXP. I was also satisfied to see that I could not give orders to the Julius.
Complaints and recommendations, listed in no particular order.
- Of course, I recommend you spellcheck your mission, too. MS Word's spellcheck wil catch most of them. Again, as I already said to someone else, use commas before or after the name of an addressed, like in "Cover me, pilots" instead of "Cover me pilots." It's seemingly minor, but I keep pointing out this sort of mistake because MS Word's spellcheck will likely not find this.
- I recommend you merge the two stages of Command Briefings. You currently have two two-liner stages.
- I'd also recommend you lower some subsytems' integrity a little bit, because a ship starting with 30-some percent hull and all subsystems working 100% is not realistic. Some turrets could be destroyed, for example. I didn't check the campaign's outline, but I assume the Julius came under bomber attacks, so it's reasonable to assume that some turrets and subsystems were hit by bombs.
- Here's something more important: I advise you add the rendezvous navbuoys to the Escort List. Without them being on the EL, they're harder to find. If the player finds a nav buoy (say, by getting within 300 meters), you can use the ship-vanish to make it disappear, as you will no longer need that navbuoy (The Julius remains targettable, so the player won't get lost.) Also, it's beacon, not becon.
- When the Obliterator gets within the Julius's beam range, the Julius says something like: "The Obliterator is within the beam range of the Julius." Since it is the Julius that says this, I think it would be more realistic for the captain to say: "The Obliterator is within [our] beam range."
As I said, the technical part of it was satisfying, so was playing the mission. Overall, you deserve a thumb up for this, especially considering that you're a beginner FREDder. :yes:
I'll take a look at it in FRED and see what else I can comment.
[EDIT]So, here they are:
- You can use the send-message-list SEXP for successive messages. You can spare some time and effort, because they'll need fewer Events. Just don't forget that you give the delays in milliseconds, not seconds.
- It's good that you have so many messages. It gives your mission a decent atmosphere.
- Why does the Obliterator disable the beams on the Julius if they get within a kilometer range to each other? It's unusual, and without any explanation (like through messages), makes no sense. If you remove this, it will become unnecessary to beam-free-all the Julius twice. Also, why do you use the beam-free-all SEXP if you have set the "All ships beam-freed by default" option?
- Bombers only have orders to attack the Julius. Without anything else, they will just keep flying around after destroying the Julius. I recommend you either make them jump out (makes more tactical sense) or make them attack the fighters (more belligerent, they're Shivans after all.)
That's all for the first run.
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Thanks for the review. :)
Since you agree with me about the difficulty I feel I am able to continue Fredding the level without having to decrease it. So work can commence again. :drevil:
- I recommend you merge the two stages of Command Briefings. You currently have two two-liner stages.
Sound like a good idea. I had two stages so I could have two clips. However as Karajorma has pointed out there is no Knossos in the nebula system. So the reason for the second isn't valid.
- I'd also recommend you lower some subsytems' integrity a little bit, because a ship starting with 30-some percent hull and all subsystems working 100% is not realistic. Some turrets could be destroyed, for example. I didn't check the campaign's outline, but I assume the Julius came under bomber attacks, so it's reasonable to assume that some turrets and subsystems were hit by bombs.
I forgot to do that. :nervous:
- Here's something more important: I advise you add the rendezvous navbuoys to the Escort List. Without them being on the EL, they're harder to find. If the player finds a nav buoy (say, by getting within 300 meters), you can use the ship-vanish to make it disappear, as you will no longer need that navbuoy (The Julius remains targettable, so the player won't get lost.) Also, it's beacon, not becon.
I had realised they where hard to find but a solution hadn't occurred to me. Making them vanish is also a good idea. :yes: I have noted the speling mistake.
- When the Obliterator gets within the Julius's beam range, the Julius says something like: "The Obliterator is within the beam range of the Julius." Since it is the Julius that says this, I think it would be more realistic for the captain to say: "The Obliterator is within [our] beam range."
That was a bit of a slip.
- Why does the Obliterator disable the beams on the Julius if they get within a kilometer range to each other? It's unusual, and without any explanation (like through messages), makes no sense. If you remove this, it will become unnecessary to beam-free-all the Julius twice. Also, why do you use the beam-free-all SEXP if you have set the "All ships beam-freed by default" option?
It disabled their beams because the Obliterator would usually open fire too early for the player to do much. As for the duplicate beam free-all script this is because at first I didn't know about this tick box.
As for not using message lists, I didn't know about them when I started making this level. So I used separate events.
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I'm sorry for the delay in progress with my level. :(
Basically I've come across a bug and I can't get Mantis to work. What I've done is deleted all the text in one briefing stage. The editor had no problem with this at the time and let me save the level. However whenever the level is played it crashes just before switching to that phrase of the briefing. Also when I try and open the level FRED crashes. So if I didn't have a backup, which I do, I would have lost the whole level. I felt that since the bug was so serious I had to report it before continuing but I can't get Mantis to work from what I've got from this thread: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,34786.0.html Anyway hopefully someone reading this thread can get it to work. Hopefully version 5 should be arriving soon.
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Post the broken mission and I'll take a look at it. I suspect I already know the cause even if I don't have a clue how to fix it (in code - The mission fix is easy).
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Have you opened the mission in a text editor (Notepad, Wordpad, etc.) and tried to fix it?
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Thanks for your help. :yes: Fixing the problem with notepad was easy. The faulty part of the unfixed code is below:
#Command Briefing
$Stage Text:
XSTR("As you all know the GTD Ionas has been destroyed by a second Shivan Sathanas. As of now the Julius will lead the battlegroup and you will get your orders from me. We're on our own here pilots. We must make a run for Gamma Draconis immediatly. There is no time to waste. The Shivan presence in this system will only grow stronger the longer we delay.", -1)
$end_multi_text
$Ani Filename: cb_sm2-10_d.ani
+Wave Filename: none
$Stage Text:
XSTR("", -1) <----- This line here
$end_multi_text
$Ani Filename: cb_sm2-10_d.ani
+Wave Filename: none
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Out of curiosity: Why do you want to have a blank Command Briefing? Why not simply delete that stage?
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Top Ace: Becuase I wasn't sure which part had the animation I wanted and so I left them both in to check.
Anyway get version 5 here:
Normal Version- http://sites.google.com/site/kingzelch/Home/freespace/nebula--rendevous/FAC2M3KingZelch5.fs2
Easier Version- http://sites.google.com/site/kingzelch/Home/freespace/nebula--rendevous/FAC2M3KingZelch5Easier.fs2
For the Easier version I removed a few fighters from the latter wings. Hope it helps...
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A few comments on the "normal" mission.
- Still needs a spellcheck.
- I haven't played the easier version, but I'm sure that you should continue developing that. The normal mission was a lot harder than the version you posted before. I died the first time around, being reduced to space debris from 80-some percent hull in 3 seconds. In the second run, I was very close to dying after the Taurvis and had to continue playing the mission with 34% hull. When the cruisers that would kill the second Deimos jumped in, it wasn't funny. I have bad memories of an "escort the convoy and lose the mission in the 15th minute"-type mission in Derelict. I recommend you not make a mission too hard if it's such a long one (8 minutes and above).
- I didn't receive the "Return to base" directive. Since the player receives order to jump out while running for his life, it is likely that he will not be reading the messages. An RTB directive will solve this.
Playing the easier version... will post feedback soon.
[EDIT, First run]The first time around, I managed to break the mission. Leo 1 was ship-guardianed and its engines were stuck at 12%. Looking it up in FRED, I can see that you accounted for the possibility of a Leo miner being unable to jump out, but the problem is that they cannot jump out if their navigation or engines fall below 30%. Since the Aeshmas' arrival is triggered by a destroyed-or-departed-delay - Leo SEXP, they never arrived. My suggestion is to forget about the ship-guardian, and let their engines be destroyable to trigger the self-destruct.
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The normal version should be identical in difficulty to the previous version. Maybe you where lucky on your first play through. :doubt:
That Leo wing is giving me no end of trouble, although I didn't realise that 30% was the cap point for jumping.
I'll add a RTB for the next version.
[disclaimer] As for the ending, I didn't write the plot for the level. [/disclaimer]
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The normal version should be identical in difficulty to the previous version. Maybe you where lucky on your first play through. :doubt:
I played the first version several times, and never died. Thing is that I did not notice that I upped the difficulty from Easy to Medium, so that's the reason. Still, a lot depends on the Taurvis that launch their dual Piranhas. I suggest you get the Taurvis rid of their Piranhas. There's a huge difference in difficulty between Easy and Medium, so it's likely that an easy mission gets that much harder on Medium. That's why I always playtest on Medium and optimize the mission for that difficulty. As I said, I don't suggest you make a difficult mission here, because this is a long one.
A rather random note on the navbuoys: They jump in via subspace. I suggest you use the No Warp Effect option. Navbuoys aren't supposed to jump in, but suddenly appear.
Lastly, I would be happy to spellcheck the mission for you.
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the problem is that they cannot jump out if their navigation or engines fall below 30%.
That's actually a bug which is fixed in 3.6.10.