Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Lynx on July 23, 2005, 12:45:56 pm
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That's not a suggestion, not a request, so put the guns back in the holster. :D
I had an idea about some way to increase the immersion into the game, namely some kind of ship internal net into the game(like some kind of mini-internet on the ship you're stationed on, or gamewise, an extended version of the techroom would describe it somehow).
As you know, the FS engine offers rather little to incorporate more trivial aspects of the story; the briefing windows and techroom sections have a very specific purpose, you can only put in a briefing, technical description, but, for example, a written conversation in there would look out of place. In short, you can carry across story on a big level, but without much personal involvement or trivial aspects of the story.
If there'd be a possibility to give the tecroom more options, this could be perhaps overcome. Right now, there's only history, ships and weapons. This could be extended to, for example, a news room presenting updates after every few missions(the news article mustn't necessarily connected to the games story, you could, for example have the results of the 2667's world soccer championship in one article, which serves noe purpose for the story but increases immersion), a email page, where the player character would recieve e-mails from various characters from time to time to further the personal involvement for the player, or a ship bulletin where articles about happenings on the ship are made public(for example, one pilot announces a jazz performance by some buddies in the ships lounge or something....). The possibilities would be nearly endless.
So, your thoughts?
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Put them all in the Intelligence section and use "tech-add-intel" to add a new article every few missions.
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Here's one (perhaps tricky). How about the ability to update or replace some information? For example, at the beginning of FS1, there are no shields right, so no ship, weapon, or intel entry (except that GTI Riviera reference in the MX-50 description) should mention them. Later, when shields become known, you might want description data to include them. ML-16 does little shield dammage, so its tech entry should indicate this, but not until shields are known. To accomplish this, you'd have multiple tech entry descriptions, one of which would be flagged as default. The default one gives initial data, and the other entries would give more recent data and a sexp would tell the game to switch to the next entry for the ML-16. As soon as shields becomes known, the campaign designer would use the sexp and suddenly the tech entry says that the weapon is all but useless against shields. Then, perhaps by the time the Prometheus becomes available, a third tech description would say that the ML-16 is completely obsolete and relegated to training and private security. The same thing could work for intel entries, indicating that we first know little of the Shivans, then later we know some more about their strategies and can deduce their objectives, and so on. It allows the player to remain up-to-date, especially on campaigns that cover long periods of time, such as S:AH.
What do you think?
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@Goober: Nice, though IIRC there are pretty hefty limitations on the length and number of entries in the history DB, so you couldn't put too much in there. Or am I wrong? Anyways the good thing is that in the techroom it's not forced upon the player like stuff in the command briefings(which are used by various mods for things like that) and therefore seems more authentic
Also, it probably would look messy that way, you'd have various news, on-ship gossip, history files and emails mixed. What would really be nice is to have the ship-net thing as own entity with subsections, where you first have an index page to choose from various pages available(e.g. as said a news page, an e-mail page, the ship's lounge, a page with announcements and so on) like some kind of mini internet.
Could be really nice if html would be actually utilized for it, allowing far more flexibility in the design and setup of the pages.
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Reminds me of Doom 3's palmpilot thingy. :lol:
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Excellent ideas. It would add so much immersion-wise!
I'm all for it!
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An idea on the initial development:
"tech-remove-intel" sexp.
Alternativly:
"tech-update-intel" sexp.
What's the ECC (Estimated Complexity of Creation) on this one Goob?
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"Tech-remove-intel": Trivial.
"Tech-update-intel": Nontrivial. Not worth the effort, particularly since it can be simulated with "tech-remove-intel" followed by "tech-add-intel".
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What about the ship and weapon descriptions?
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Nontrivial. *Very* nontrivial. Much too complicated.
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I think it's a bit silly that you need an accompanying person to read your e-mail (the guy who salutes you).
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Well, you need a guy to help you switch campaigns too...maybe Alpha 1 is just totally retarded outside the cockpit? :p
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He was born for his job, and nothing else, I guess. :)