[diceman111]

Ok well after 2 liters of Cola and of frustration I think that I have finished (or atleast got most of it done) with mission 11 from campaign 3 of the FRED Academy. 

http://www.etek.chalmers.se/~erics/diceman111C3M11.fs2



/Dice

Last updated : June 07, 2006

[karajorma]

That was pretty quick! I'll make a point of playing this tomorrow If anyone else wants to give opinions they're more than welcome of course

[karajorma]

Okay. Played the mission a couple of times. I had fun (which is the most important thing) If you've not read any of the other FA threads I ought to warn you that I'm now going to pull apart the mission and point out every single flaw I saw in it. Please don't think I'm nitpicking or having a go at you. This is all about making you a better FREDder. Sometimes I'll be pointing out the basic mistakes no FREDder should make and sometimes I'll be pointing out little things that make the difference between a good FREDder and a great one (The latter is our goal after all). Feel free to disagree or point out why you did something a certain way

• Beta Wing overlaps slightly with the Acumen.
• The Grid is unaligned. I appreciate a little work is needed to get it back to how it was but it always looks a bit sloppy to have a grid that isn't aligned. Use the Level Object and Align object options to get everything straight again for the briefing and then save the view.
• Please don't use Ur instead of your etc. I'll assume that it was just a simple mistake the slipped past you when writing at speed.
• The mission needs some music. It's pretty unappealing without it . (You set the music in the Mission Specs Editor BTW). You might also want to consider changing the briefing music. Brief 01 is a little understated for a situation like this where the GTVA is getting worried. Brief 4, Brief 5 or Cinema would be my picks but as FREDder the final call is yours
• The two bonus objectives come true immediately after the final ship is killed. There is no real way that Command would be aware that there weren't more wings waiting to jump in so add a delay there of about 30 seconds or so it looks like Command are figuring out that there are no more ships when no more arrive. Of course if you do that you face the danger of having the mission end with the Bonus objectives incomplete even though the player killed everything. For that reason you should change the objectives to something like this
  
  Kill all Fighters
  -or
  --is-event-true-delay
  ---All Figthers down
  ---30
  --is-event-true
  ---MISSION COMPLETE
  ---0
  
  Mission Complete is simply an event that means the mission is over. You may already have something suitable.
• Don't make the player wait for the Acumen to jump out. Not only is that rather boring but it's also out of sorts with the storyline cause as I understand it the player is meant to be onboard the Acumen for the jump to Ross 128 as he doesn't have a inter-system jump drive. Instead make the destruction of the fighters a secondary goal and use the mission-end SEXP (with a message a few seconds earlier as a warning) once they and the corvettes are defeated. You'll have to make the goals invalid of course but I've noticed you already know how to do that
• Speaking of which you shouldn't invalidate the Destroy Ravana goal on mission completion. The GTVA failed to do that so we want to have a major goal incomplete so that we get the right music played during the debriefing. As things are you'll probably get the victory music played even though that's somewhat inappropriate for the mission
• You needed a return to base directive for when the mission is complete. If you're going to use end-mission you can possibly avoid it now but in the version I played it was definitely needed. I had to assume the mission was complete before jumping out.
• The debriefing will need some work. I noticed a few mistakes there. The first being the lack of a good AWOL debriefing. You're ahead of the curve somewhat in that I didn't get the "No Debriefing for mission xxx" message I usually see but a good AWOL debrief should be different from the standard failure briefing. If you're interested Goober and I had a long discussion about what makes a good AWOL debrief (and debriefings in general) on this thread a while back.
• A more serious problem with the debrief is that you're only checking the completion of each goal on its own. If for instance I kill the corvettes but then lose the Acumen to bombs I'll get we were luck not to lose the Acumen cause the corvettes were crap debrief followed by the we lost the Acumen debrief. Which is somewhat odd to say the least. Personally I prefer to have a "We won" and "We lost" debrief for things like that but you probably could get away with it if you phrase the debrief so that it reads like good or bad news depending on the status of the Acumen at the end of the mission.
• 
  

Stuff I liked

• Noticed you using variables. Personally I wouldn't have used them in that situation.
  when
  -and
  --percent-ships-destroyed
  ---50
  ----Corvette 1
  ----Corvette 2
  --not
  ---is-destroyed-delay
  ----0
  ----Corvette 1
  ----Corvette 2
  
  would have the same effect as both the SCv Annihilator Down and SCv Erradicator Down events and would be much easier to understand if you came back to the mission 6 months later.
   That said any use of variables from someone in the Academy makes me happy cause it means I don't have to explain exactly why they're so marvelous
• Nice use of 3D, Delays between wings, Escort list and several of the other things I mentioned new FREDders commonly forgetting in my top FREDdiing mistakes article

Anyway that's all for now. It's getting late. Look forwards to playing the next version

[Shade]

You might also want to consider changing the briefing music. Brief 01 is a little understated for a situation like this where the GTVA is getting worried. Brief 4, Brief 5 or Cinema would be my picks but as FREDder the final call is yours

[opinionated bastard]Please don't use brief4 for 'getting worried' Brief4 is the special, rarely used, 'oh-****-the-sky-is-falling-and-we-are-all-going-to-die' briefing. Brief5 would fit, with brief3 upping the ante slightly and brief1/2 being your basic 'going into combat but not really expecting too many problems' kind of thing. Finally, some of the ambient scores can be quite creepifying if used as briefings for an appropriate mission.[/opinionated bastard]

[karajorma]

It's a fair point

[diceman111]

Ok well sorry if it took so long for me to respond have been busy with other stuff, will try and fix the mission when I get time (should get done pretty soon).

And Thanks for the input

/Dice

[karajorma]

Not a problem. Look forwards to seeing the next version.

[diceman111]

Ok the link is update with a new version of the mission, everything should be fixed except "The Grid is unaligned" dont really know what u mean by this I guess u mean that things arent aligned tried to fix it so it should now look a bit better.
There might be a problem with the primary mission goal "protect the Acumen" I have chenged it I dont know how many times but I think I have found a series of SEXP´s that will make it trigger properly now but if anybody should find that it dosent please let me know only have patiance to play the same mission so many times ;-).

Also read the tread about AWOL debriefing interesting stuff have read most of and tried to implemt some of it think it worked pretty well atleast.

Well happy shivan hunting to u all.

/Dice

[Shade]

'The grid' would refer to the grid shown in briefings. It looks better if it's aligned with vertical and horizontal lines, at least initially, though there can certainly be good reasons to use other angles once past the first stage.

[diceman111]

Aaaaah thank u well I will look into that later and update the mission when I have fixed it might take a while since I think that is one of the hardest thing to work with in FRED (The briefing editor that is) but I will give it a go.

/Dice

EDIT: Ok well now I have fixed it I think dont know if this is wht u meant but I have used the Level Object and Align object functions.