Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The FRED Workshop => FRED Academy => Topic started by: karajorma on January 14, 2005, 03:21:50 pm

Title: Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: karajorma on January 14, 2005, 03:21:50 pm: In the last few months of working on the FRED Academy I've tested a whole load of missions by very new FREDders and I've noticed that often it's the same mistakes that come up time and time again. Rather than continually repeating myself I figured it might be an idea to have a little list of some of the more common FREDding mistakes I've seen.

13) Poor spelling and grammar
I've not been that hard on this one while playtesting cause

a) I'm not that observent and
b) Spellchecking is something I feel should be done last of all
c) I understand that many people here are not native english speakers.

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to correct those things as you go along. When a mission is complete this leaps from being a low grade annoyance to a very big one. Completed missions should never ship with obvious spelling errors in them. If English isn't your first language ask for some help.

12) No use of the Y-axis
Ever seen Star Trek II : Wrath of Khan. Ever got the feeling that the captains of all the ships in a mission haven't? They're all arranged on the XZ plane. No ships diving in from above or nipping in from below. While it's believable that a small convoy of ships might arrange themselves this way so as to spread their flak above and below them effectively it's harder to believe that enemy ships jumping in would somehow know what plane they were on and leap in on it.

11) Poorly chained directives
This is quite a common one. If you forget to chain your Return to Base Objective it will appear at the start of the mission. Freespace is clever enough to avoid putting up a directive to kill Cancer wing if they aren't present yet but it doesn't do that for every directive. Unless you sure you don't need to you'll have to chain the directive to the event which triggers it.

10) Magically completed mission objectives
A close relative of the above error. Quite often a FREDder will put in a mission objective but forget to actually put in the trigger because he means to go back and put it in later. Nothing screams out "I haven't tested this mission" quite as loud as this cause unlike the above one this one has music to draw the playtester to the fact that you've screwed up. :)

9) No use of the escort list
All major capships and anything which is mission critical should appear on the escort list. Making a ship appear there is very simple. Just go to the ships editor>>misc. Tick the escort ship box and assign a priority. All caps should be given a priority. Don't make the mistake of only giving them to the 3 most important ships in the game. If one of them is blown up the next most important ship should then appear on the list.

8) Poorly chosen event and message names
This one won't affect people playing the mission but it's just plain common sense. While you might think you'll remember the arcane naming system you've chosen to use you almost certainly won't if something makes you come back to the mission in a years time to fix a bug. In addition to making your life easier it makes life easier for playtesters as they can give you the name of a faulty event/message for you to fix. Finally when you look over your mission and see an is-event-true-delay SEXP how on Earth can you tell what other event it refers to if all of them are called "event name".

7) Only one RTB directive
Some missions only need to use Return to Base Directive. What some FREDders like to do is have an event that gathers up all the possible events that can end the mission and chain the RTB to that. However amongst new FREDders only one RTB is generally more indicative of a poorly thought out mission. Basically the designer thinks "Hmmm, alpha will fight this cruiser, kill the fighters and then escape with the convoy". No thought is given to what happens if something goes wrong. When this happens the mission basically continues forever because no thought was given to this possiblity.

6) The Everlasting mission
A more insidious relative of the mission with only one RTB is the everlasting mission. Unlike the previous one there are RTBs in the mission but the player can do something that causes it to never appear (for instance disabling the wrong ship in the final FS2 mission can prevent Capella from going nova). Unlike the above error this isn't a newbie mistake as quite often even the professionals have failed to think of something the player might try. It is seen fairly commonly in newbie missions though so I mentioned it here. As a mission designer you must actively think of ways that a player could screw up your mission and prevent them. If an enemy ship must survive the mission you must have a plan for what to do should the player disable it.

5) Only one debriefing
A close relative of the the only 1 RTB error is the only one debriefing error. Basically the same logic is at work here and the mission only has a debriefing for a successfully completed mission. If anything else happens you'll only see No debriefing for mission xxxx.

4) Odd naming conventions
Freespace has certain naming conventions that should be used in any mission set in the FS2 universe unless you have a damn good reason for changing it. GTVA wings are always named after letters of the greek alphabet. Enemy fighter wings are named after signs of the zodiac. Although there is more leeway in the names of capships expecting anyone to take the GTD suck my balls seriously is frowned upon.
Worse than poorly thought out names is the appearance of GTC Fenris 37 as this shows that you've put no thought into the names of your ships. All capships must have a unique name. You might be able to get away with giving a Poseidon or Isis a number but that is less forgivable in a Triton or Argo.

3) No delay between waves
Even in the most intense of battle there should be a few seconds delay between the death of the last ship in one wave and the next wave arriving. Otherwise it looks like the ships were lurking in subspace waiting for the death of their team mates. If you really have to avoid giving the player a breather for some reason you should still use a delay but increase the threshold for the wave so that the player is too busy with the current wave to notice the appearance of the next one.

2) Poorly thought out team loadouts
This one is a biggie. The biggest mistake is the use of the D varient weapons in singleplayer. These weapons are for use in multiplayer and thus are completely useless in the singleplayer game.
The other big mistake is having too few or too many weapons available. What's the point in 700 Helios bombs available if there are no bombers in the mission? Hell what's the point in having 700 Helios bombs available period. Similarly there's no point in making tempests available if you only give out 10 of them.
A minor mistake is having a loadout consisting only of 5 myrmidons when everyone is already in myrmidons. Why bother putting anything in the ship loadout in that case?
(The last two will become somewhat moot once the SCP introduce a resource tracking element to campaigns but if you're not using that they are still worth mentioning).

1) And the biggest/most common mistake of all is.....

No AWOL Debriefing
This is the debriefing that appears if you leave the battle when you weren't told to do so. A lot of newbies think that this one is added automatically so they don't put it in. But if you think about it, how does FS2 know whether you were supposed to leave them mission or not? A good AWOL debriefing should check if any of the conditions allowing you to leave have come true. In addition the other debriefing sections should check and not be played if the AWOL one was (Why would Commmand applaud you for protecting a ship if they are about to take you out and shoot you! :D ) Basically this is an offshoot of the only one debriefing error but it's so common even in people who've got several debriefing stages that it was worthy of special mention.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Skippy on January 14, 2005, 03:28:44 pm: Excellent :yes:

You should stickify your thread ;)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: karajorma on January 14, 2005, 03:35:59 pm: I'll let it get a few comments first. Many people miss the stickied threads :D

EDIT : Adding the 13th one now :) Thanks to TopAce for noticing that I'd forgotten to mention poor loadouts :)

Oddly enough that didn't come up as often in the FA missions as I'd have expected which is why I missed it :)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: TopAce on January 14, 2005, 03:52:00 pm: Here are what I noticed:
Ship/weapon selection
Too many people simply ignore this possibility and even if they do not, they do weird and illogical things. I recognise right away if you did ignore making any modifications; I get 5 fighters available of each class and get 16 primaries available of each type, including the dogfight versions which you cannot arm on your craft in Single Player mode.
Also, even if you modify this window, you tend to put in some weird number per weapon rate. For example, getting 500 Cyclopses is an overkill, but having 300 Tempests while the player flies Herc IIs with no default Tempests as weapons is too few. Do not only untick which craft/weapons you do not want to make available. Take into consideration the player's/wingmen's craft's specifications and change the number accordingly.
[EDIT]Oh, Karajorma was faster to mention this, but I still keep this here.

Difficulty
There is no need for an essay here: Rather make your mission easy at first and optimize(harden) only after you have hunted down all the bugs you found. It makes your and your testers' work much easier.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Primus on January 14, 2005, 04:02:04 pm: You did this after playtesting my mission... I'm so depressed now :(
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Blaise Russel on January 14, 2005, 04:03:00 pm: I don't really see the point in editing the loadout *numbers* to precisely correspond with the number of fighters in Alpha, Beta and Gamma and the weapon slots they have available. So what if it's 5, 5, 5 for 4-man Alpha, or 16, 16, 16 for Alpha 1 flying solo? Does it matter? I mean, you're not OCD, are you?

Well then.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: karajorma on January 14, 2005, 04:06:31 pm: Like I said it's a minor point. You don't have to get the number exact but having a mission where you only have 5 myrimdons in the team loadout and everyone is already in myrmidons is a little odd :D

Anyway I've edited it to make it more clear that it wasn't the numbers that were important.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Axem on January 14, 2005, 04:11:46 pm: A few comments on the naming conventions. I've noticed in some campaigns people put the prefix along with the name, ex: GTC Trinty. I don't know if its right or wrong.

The FRED walkthrough did it like that but the main campaign never did. Personally I find it pointless as the prefix is also right under the name of the ship as well. It also leaves almost no room on the escort like so I'm forced to see something like:

GTD Neri... 60
GVCv Tat... 92
GTVA Col... 1
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: karajorma on January 14, 2005, 04:14:51 pm: The escort list is the main reason why it's useful. Without it it's easy to forget which ship is the destroyer that is your primary goal to protect and which are the cruisers you don't care about so much.

Are you running in 640x480 BTW?
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Axem on January 14, 2005, 04:30:47 pm: True I guess.

I was playing in 640x480 on my old computer, which was when I got irratated with the prefixes clogging up my escort list. So I stopped doing it into my days of 1024x786.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Roanoke on January 14, 2005, 04:31:56 pm: Background (ie: lack of)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: phreak on January 14, 2005, 04:50:28 pm: you forgot beam-free-all ;)

otherwise its a great guideline to testing missions as well.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: karajorma on January 14, 2005, 05:01:07 pm: Quote
Originally posted by PhReAk
you forgot beam-free-all ;)

It's actually quite rare that you play a posted mission where the beam-free-all has been missed. More often than that you hear the designer whining about the beams not working first :D

Quote
Originally posted by PhReAk
otherwise its a great guideline to testing missions as well.

That was part of my ulterior motive for writing it. I want the FA FREDders to help with the playtesting of missions. If they know what to look for it leaves the experts free to help with the more complicated stuff :)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: TopAce on January 14, 2005, 05:20:17 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Roanoke
Background (ie: lack of)

They can learn making backgrounds later.... when they become more professional and they familirise themselves with the controls/SEXPs/typical mistakes etc.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: karajorma on January 15, 2005, 05:11:22 am: True but it is a common mistake :)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Roanoke on January 15, 2005, 05:56:53 am: Quote
Originally posted by Axem
A few comments on the naming conventions. I've noticed in some campaigns people put the prefix along with the name, ex: GTC Trinty. I don't know if its right or wrong.

The FRED walkthrough did it like that but the main campaign never did. Personally I find it pointless as the prefix is also right under the name of the ship as well. It also leaves almost no room on the escort like so I'm forced to see something like:

GTD Neri... 60
GVCv Tat... 92
GTVA Col... 1

I don't bother putting ship prefixies in the name field, as you say.
Especially if it's a big name like "The Rickenbacker" or somethin'.
(I always include a Van Braun and Rickenbacker in my one off missions, kinda like my little homage)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Fergus on January 15, 2005, 07:39:38 am: Guilty of 7, 11 and 1. I try my best, number 11 is my biggest problem I feel. Still a very handy checklist. Good work, also I have finaly managed to fix my Freelancer problem so I can finally get started on finishing my mission, sorry about the long wait.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Singh on January 15, 2005, 07:43:25 am: *is extremely guilty of #8 himself
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Fergus on January 15, 2005, 08:57:51 am: I always thought that 8 would be the most annoying to make wrong, for the FRED that is. Perhaps mine are a little too self explanatory.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: WeatherOp on January 15, 2005, 09:04:18 am: Really guilty of 13, :lol: and when I do FREd again I'll probley be guilty of all of e'm.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: TopAce on January 15, 2005, 09:35:27 am: Fortunately, only #13 is valid for me. Sometimes, I tend to make few and short briefings, but that is not the Only one directive type of mistake.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Black Wolf on January 15, 2005, 10:24:13 am: It's a very solid list, I'm guilty of a few of them as well, at times. Should be wikied and stickied.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: TopAce on January 15, 2005, 10:41:11 am: Yes, I will put this into the Wiki.
Starting work right now...
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: karajorma on January 15, 2005, 10:50:51 am: Thanks TopAce. Much Appreciated. I'll probably be sticking it in the FAQ at some point too.

I'll sticky this tomorrow once it's over 24 hours old :D
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: TopAce on January 15, 2005, 10:51:39 am: 'Wikified'. You can reach it by going to FRED Tips.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Grimloq on January 15, 2005, 01:08:35 pm: actually, im quite proud that i almos never have innacurate debriefings :) even without variables.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Falcon on January 15, 2005, 09:40:23 pm: I've always thought that having excess fighters of the same type added a little realism. Thought it would be something you would expect if you were on a destroyer. Since the destroyer has more than one wing instead of just Alpha, Beta, and Gamma to look after. IMHO
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: karajorma on January 16, 2005, 02:51:57 am: Quote
Originally posted by Falcon
I've always thought that having excess fighters of the same type added a little realism. Thought it would be something you would expect if you were on a destroyer. Since the destroyer has more than one wing instead of just Alpha, Beta, and Gamma to look after. IMHO

The problem with that approach is that if you're showing fighters the destroyer has then just showing a handful of fighters is similarly unrealistic. A destroyer would probably have 20 or 30 myrmidons on board.

Besides if you're going down the team loadout turning off what you don't need is there any harm in turning off one more box? :D

The last reason I mention it is so that people don't get confused about the way the loadout options in the mission and campaign editors work. In the mission editor any ships added are extras. You don't need to tick the myrmidon box just because you've already assigned Alpha wing to myrimdons. Same goes for weapons. In the campaign editor however you do have to specify which ships and weapons will be used in the first mission (as well as any following missions when you haven't used allow-ships to add them).
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: WMCoolmon on January 16, 2005, 03:12:35 am: Quote
12) No use of the Y-axis
Ever seen Star Trek II : Wrath of Khan. Ever got the feeling that the captains of all the ships in a mission haven't? They're all arranged on the XZ plane. No ships diving in from above or nipping in from below. While it's believable that a small convoy of ships might arrange themselves this way so as to spread their flak above and below them effectively it's harder to believe that enemy ships jumping in would somehow know what plane they were on and leap in on it.

Unless, of course, you're designing a mission for Fs2D. :drevil:

Quote
9) No use of the escort list
All major capships and anything which is mission critical should appear on the escort list. Making a ship appear there is very simple. Just go to the ships editor>>misc. Tick the escort ship box and assign a priority. All caps should be given a priority. Don't make the mistake of only giving them to the 3 most important ships in the game. If one of them is blown up the next most important ship should then appear on the list.

All the more important since "There's too many of them!" is no longer an excuse - you can always use hud_gauges.tbl to bump the number up a notch.

This message brought to you by :thepimp:
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: NGTM-1R on January 16, 2005, 04:46:01 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Axem
A few comments on the naming conventions. I've noticed in some campaigns people put the prefix along with the name, ex: GTC Trinty. I don't know if its right or wrong.

The FRED walkthrough did it like that but the main campaign never did. Personally I find it pointless as the prefix is also right under the name of the ship as well. It also leaves almost no room on the escort like so I'm forced to see something like:

GTD Neri... 60
GVCv Tat... 92
GTVA Col... 1

Some of us are attempting to distingush actual ownership of the craft...see Derelict for a good example.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Setekh on January 18, 2005, 09:41:51 am: A well thought-out and written piece of helpful information, as always, kara. I think this really belongs in the news...
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: karajorma on January 18, 2005, 01:53:16 pm: Yeah. I suppose I should have posted it :) Guess I'm too modest :D
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: TopAce on January 18, 2005, 03:10:12 pm: It is me who is modest. You are [glow=orange]!MINDFUL![/glow]
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Goober5000 on January 18, 2005, 05:58:22 pm: karajorma, you should put this on the Wiki. :)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: oohal on January 19, 2005, 12:51:01 am: goober, he already did
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Goober5000 on January 19, 2005, 03:27:54 am: Eh... no he didn't, TopAce did. :p
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: aldo_14 on January 19, 2005, 05:20:09 am: Beware the Pedantry Inquisition!
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Fergus on January 19, 2005, 10:13:15 am: The Pedantry Inquisition? HERE? NO NOT AGAIN!
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: karajorma on January 19, 2005, 01:12:20 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Goober5000
Eh... no he didn't, TopAce did. :p

And you believe that I might be able to do a better job of porting it to the wiki than TopAce? I'm sure he'd be happy to hear the reasons for this. :p
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: TopAce on January 19, 2005, 02:07:59 pm: Now that you mention it, I made some modifications in the style of the page.
http://dynamic3.gamespy.com/~freespace/fsdoc/index.php?pagename=Typical%20mistakes

I do not have anything better to do right now. :)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Goober5000 on January 19, 2005, 02:43:03 pm: Quote
Originally posted by karajorma
And you believe that I might be able to do a better job of porting it to the wiki than TopAce? I'm sure he'd be happy to hear the reasons for this. :p
No, I was only covering for the fact that I didn't notice it in the first place. :nervous: I was looking for a page "last edited by karajorma" and didn't see one.

I'll leave now...
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: karajorma on January 19, 2005, 03:11:15 pm: Yeah. I guessed that was the reason. I was just yanking your chain a little :)

It occurs to me that I must have caught most of the big bugs cause I've seen very little in the way of "But you missed...." :) I was expecting a ton of those :)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Cobra on January 19, 2005, 03:52:57 pm: ugh. i make most of those mistakes already.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Cobra on January 19, 2005, 03:58:39 pm: btw, kara, you should make a FRED faq (you haven't, have you?) about the terms of FRED and how to use variables, etc.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: karajorma on January 19, 2005, 04:28:15 pm: The FRED2 walkthrough actually does use variables but doesn't give any examples of how to use them apart from what they did with it so most people forget about them fairly quickly.

I've always planned on doing an advanced FRED tutorial in the same manner as Cetanu's (http://www.3dactionplanet.com/hlp/hosted/fredzone/cetanu_adv-fred-lessons.shtml). Only problem is that I'd have to get off of my arse and actually finish Seeds Of Rebellion before I'd have the material to use for such an example. :)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Cobra on January 19, 2005, 04:39:49 pm: *says very bad words*

i have looked at the FRED2 tut. it just tells you how to make a mission without variables.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: karajorma on January 19, 2005, 04:55:24 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Cobra
*says very bad words*

i have looked at the FRED2 tut. it just tells you how to make a mission without variables.

1. Don't just look at the Walkthrough. You should actually do it.

2. Look again at the docking stuff with Sleipner 1-4
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Cobra on January 19, 2005, 06:29:56 pm: i made the mission a couple of years ago. late night headaches, lemme tell ya.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Hippo on January 19, 2005, 06:40:40 pm: try it again then. Currently, its the most usefull FRED2 resource available, and it covers 98% of what you'll ever need, including variables...
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Cobra on January 19, 2005, 07:09:17 pm: good idea. :yes:
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: KappaWing on February 17, 2005, 07:46:56 pm: That Unification Prequel campaign is mighty guilty of no. 12. I'm guilty of 2, 3, and 8. If you look at my missions, you'll see event names like "poop" or "BeamzAhhhh!!!!", and my message names arent too much better. I'm gonna probably change those. Nah, I'm too lazy. :lol:
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Cobra on February 17, 2005, 08:10:50 pm: lol, you should have seen the missions i created a few years back. The messages were named "Message 1", etc. I also didn't know how to use chains, event delays, none of that. When i made messages, I always wondered why the hell they came at the same time. You get the idea. And I had been using FRED for about 3 months now. 4 years later, i can make medium missions with lotsa bugs. in another year or so, i'll be an expert fredder (I hope)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: KappaWing on February 17, 2005, 08:23:43 pm: I'm always trying to improve with my missions. In my first week or so I was tearing my hair out trying to find out why the capships weren't firing their beams! And I only recently started making decent backrounds. Before then I just entered random numbers into the coordinates box and hoped they appeared in the right place. :D
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Cobra on February 17, 2005, 08:59:13 pm: that's what i do with backgrounds. although i think i'm starting to figure it out. P=side to side, IIRC.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: KappaWing on February 17, 2005, 09:25:23 pm: Quote

P=side to side

Umm, not really.
Here's some clarification.

P stands for pitch, up and down.
P90= nebula above your head.
P270= nebula directly below you
Of you want the nebula's center to be just below the horizon, use P350

B stans for bank, or rotation of the nebula around the center. It doesent actually change the nebula's position. I don't use it much.
B90= top points right
B180= upside down
B270= top points left

H works sort of like a compass. It's the position of the nebula around the sides of the battlefield. The wierd thing is, however, as H increases, the nebula moves counterclockwise instead of clockwise around in the horizontal plane. That kinda screws me up sometimes. For example H=90 is due west, not due east. A mistake by [V], perhaps?

Anyway, you can use combinations of H and P to place the nebula anywhere you want. Just invision the backround as being sort of a coordinate sphere. I usually first move left with H, then move up with P. The B option is completley useless when placing suns. I wonder why they even have it there?

Anyway, hope this helps! :)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Cobra on February 17, 2005, 09:30:40 pm: i thought you said you were still trying to figure that out?
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Solatar on February 17, 2005, 10:29:06 pm: Think he's trying to figure out how to use this knowledge to make stuff look right. :)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Cobra on February 17, 2005, 10:40:46 pm: yeah, that's it. i guess...
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: KappaWing on February 18, 2005, 01:18:21 pm: It's not too hard to figure out if you just put some time in it. I just opened up fred and entered a small number in one of the fields and left the other fields at zero. And saw where the nebula was located in relation to the nose of the ulysees.

Quote

And I only recently started making decent backrounds.

That means I picked this up just a short time ago. It was before that time when I was clueless.:dizzy:
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Blitzerland on March 15, 2005, 08:39:54 pm: I just played a campaign entitled "Neo-Terra," and frankly, all thirteen of these errors come up in every mission.

The enemy wings had the strangest names, such as "Gammer" or "Longly."
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Hunne on March 24, 2005, 09:56:11 am: really nice list!! esp. the one about y-axis
what about not putting capital ships/cruisers too close together if they got some waypoints to fly to...i noticed they´ll then just turn stupidly around themselves if there´s no room to navigate....(d´ooh)+use "cap waypoint speed"
oh yeah: imagine you got a Container full of bombs or so...give it a special explosion...
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Cobra on March 24, 2005, 11:41:34 am: ooooh, the possibilities... thanks for the idea :D
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Unknown Target on March 24, 2005, 12:05:46 pm: One thing that I've found is putting everythign too close or too far away (something I'm actually guilty of). FRED2's scaling is wacky, so it doesn't look like the right distances, and you can end up with something halfway across the universe, or right in front of you.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Cobra on March 24, 2005, 12:38:46 pm: actually, it's really easy to figure out the distances and such. ;)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: TopAce on March 24, 2005, 01:13:10 pm: Not for everybody. Keep that in mind. Humans differ. This makes our civilisation special and dynamic.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Luigi30 on March 26, 2005, 09:20:21 pm: Is doing 11 out of 13 of these in one mission a record?
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Cobra on March 26, 2005, 10:15:54 pm: no.

some missions do all 13. ;)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: karajorma on March 27, 2005, 02:53:32 am: Quote
Originally posted by Luigi30
Is doing 11 out of 13 of these in one mission a record?

In the first mission you've ever written? Well it's to be expected :) I wrote the list so that new FREDders would know what to avoid doing but almost every single mistake on there was something that I've noticed someone make while I've been playtesting for FA. :)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Luigi30 on March 27, 2005, 07:19:39 pm: Would it be bad to include the GTA Warp Out Already to be called in 5 minutes after the event that ends the mission happens?
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Cobra on March 27, 2005, 07:35:06 pm: wha?

word that again, and we might be able to answer that for you. ;)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Luigi30 on March 27, 2005, 07:38:08 pm: Okay

My mission ends after
Spoiler:
a shiny big Ravana jumps in and blows the living crap out of the thing you're trying to disable.
The mission is ended when it jumps out. Would it be a Bad Thing to have a ship called the GTC Warp Out Idiot jump in 5 minutes after the Shivans jump out?
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Cobra on March 27, 2005, 07:45:05 pm: that's better. :)

actually, yes. the player should have enough sense to jump out. (waits for karajorma's "bet on idiocy" quote :D)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: karajorma on March 28, 2005, 01:29:10 am: I don't mind easter eggs but I like to make sure that they're in character for the mission. A message from command telling him that he's welcome to keep the ship and go on tour as long as he's willing to pay the multi-million credit price tag would be more in keeping with the mission :)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: KappaWing on March 30, 2005, 01:47:22 pm: Another big error I notice in very many missions regarding backrounds:

Many times, a planet is not rotated correctly so the light side points towards the sun. Even worse is when multiple planets are close together and their light sides face all different directions. Many times you can face the sun, and do a 180 degree u-turn and see a planet with only a sliver of light when the whole planet should be illuminated due to the fact that you're right in between the planet and the sun.

What I like to do is place a sliver planet (with the sliver pointing towards the sun) about 5 to 7 degrees off from the sun to give a 'near-eclipse effect.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: karajorma on March 30, 2005, 04:37:25 pm: That's actually a good point. I've seen that one a few times myself (Probably got it in some of my older missions too!)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Goober5000 on March 30, 2005, 04:48:48 pm: Oh, very true. Number 14 then. ;)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on March 30, 2005, 11:58:52 pm: Hmmmn, I think I avoid most of the 14 in the list. Though as with all FREDers, my missions have improved as they go along. My first couple are so cruddy, that I don't want to modify 'em too much. My most recent ones are pretty good.

I think my main FREDing problem is that my missions are TOO complicated and too scripted. Not complicated for the player mind you, but for me, and my playtesting! And I'm sure some looney can break some of my missions if they want to.

Oh, another problem is mission balance. Now, some of my missions are easy. But for challenging ones, I want them hard for me to win. And for some people, this might be too hard. Then this difficult level ends up being medium, and on top of that I sometimes through in some more enemies for the hard setting for those people who are better pilots than me. But anyways, they're probably too hard to some degree.

Oh well, tough bananas.
Since it's unlikely my massive campaign will ever be finished it won't be a problem :)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: karajorma on March 31, 2005, 03:28:10 am: Those complications add depth to the mission. Even something as simple as having lots and lots of possible messages adds a lot. I tend to make complicated debriefings in missions so that I can be more specific about what happened in the mission. (And I keep bugging Goober for new SCP SEXPs that let me do more and more complicated things :D )

All other things being equal, as far as I'm concerned, the more complicated the FREDding the better :) As long as the complications are seemless to the player (which they were in Courting Alexander for instance ) then it's good. Makes playtesting a nightmare though admittedly :D

As for difficulty that's the hardest thing to get correct when you're working singlehanded on something. Getting a few missions playtested tends to help with that. If you know that all your missions are too hard then things can be toned down. :)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on March 31, 2005, 11:48:45 pm: Well the only thing I wonder is whether those complications are neccesary or not. Some of my missions have more complication that FS2-retail campaign missions, or some other player-released missions such as a few I looked at in Homesick. Which isn't a knock against either work, but if someone can do the same with less wouldn't the less be preferable?

In the end, I'll probably continue to make overly-complicated missions. In some cases, the player may appreciate it. For instance in the first half of one mission, the player has to scan a convoy but their flight isn't on scanning duty. They've been launched just for that convoy. Meanwhile, another wing is scanning and there's a bunch of ships arriving and departing (along with messages to and fro) which have no bearing whatsoever on the player's mission. So in the end, I suppose the complication in this mission is good as it adds to the realism of the "busy port of call" atmosphere. But some players might be "meh, just get to the next part already".

OR, in the second part of the mission there's a station which a bunch of cargo and ships lying around and unless the player sticks around he won't get close to any of them. So some players might think, "cool, look at all that stuff. It's more than just a station". While others will be thinking "damn, what is all this junk? I can't cycle through all this to find my targets!!! :mad: "

Good sides and bad sides to complication. The main bad side being "will take too long to ever get done; resulting in total waste", but that's probably more a part of the campaign length than the complication of each individual mission.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Flipside on April 13, 2005, 03:37:19 am: I think taking the intelligence of AI wingmen for granted is an easy mistake to make. Attack-any-ship is a dangerous sexp in the hands of the uninitiated ;)
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: karajorma on April 13, 2005, 03:45:36 am: Quote
Originally posted by Flipside
I think taking the intelligence of AI wingmen for granted is an easy mistake to make. Attack-any-ship is a dangerous sexp in the hands of the uninitiated ;)

That's true. I had one mission I made once where I placed a ship 100,000m away only to notice a group of Mara's ignore the main battle and fly off to attack it :D
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Annorax on April 20, 2005, 06:02:24 am: I get to plead not guilty because I haven't FREDded anything yet.

I laughed my ass off at this... now when I finally get off my ass and learn to do something, I'm going to plant the GTD suck my balls and a wing of Dragons named Cockmonger into a mission for Karajorma to playtest. :P

Shouldn't overuse of medal and promotion granting SEXPs be in there too? I seem to remember a campaign I played on FS2 retail that was like four missions, I played with a new pilot on Easy, and I was a goddamn Captain by the time I was done with it. Either that Demon I took out was worth about 200k, or the fredder was an idiot.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: kasperl on April 20, 2005, 06:29:26 am: If it was DEM, then it was for comedy.
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: karajorma on April 20, 2005, 07:53:19 am: Quote
Originally posted by Annorax
I get to plead not guilty because I haven't FREDded anything yet.

I laughed my ass off at this... now when I finally get off my ass and learn to do something, I'm going to plant the GTD suck my balls and a wing of Dragons named Cockmonger into a mission for Karajorma to playtest. :P

Sounds like fun but I only playtest for the FRED Academy and MindGames teams now :) Too much work otherwise.

When it's finished that will be a different matter :D

Quote
Originally posted by Annorax
Shouldn't overuse of medal and promotion granting SEXPs be in there too? I seem to remember a campaign I played on FS2 retail that was like four missions, I played with a new pilot on Easy, and I was a goddamn Captain by the time I was done with it. Either that Demon I took out was worth about 200k, or the fredder was an idiot.

While I agree that it's dreadul I didn't include it in this list because

a) It's more of a mission design flaw than a technical flaw and the list was meant to point out the mistakes people make when actually FREDding.
b) It's not that common a mistake (just hugely obvious when it does occur).

If I ever do a top 13 errors of mission design though I'll probably include it along with things like thinking that including 5 Saths and 4 Colossi is a good idea :D
Title: The Unlucky Top 13 Mistakes made by new FREDders
Post by: Nuclear1 on April 20, 2005, 11:25:34 am: Quote
Originally posted by KappaWing
If you look at my missions, you'll see event names like "poop" or "BeamzAhhhh!!!!"

Quote
I laughed my ass off at this... now when I finally get off my ass and learn to do something, I'm going to plant the GTD suck my balls and a wing of Dragons named Cockmonger into a mission for Karajorma to playtest. :P

:lol: :lol: :lol:

These two posts made my day :p