Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: TrashMan on October 06, 2005, 04:16:34 pm
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This thread might fir better in the Freespace Campaign... we''kl see
Anyway - there are several ways one can make a campaign, but two are the most obvious:
- a purely action/story driven one (like retail) where your wingman are nameless cannon fodder (wiht very few exception like Snipes)
- a squad/charachter oriented one that tells the story of specific charachters/squadron and thus has a lot of poeple who can't die (untill the designer saz so that is)
My own Camapign (Chapter 1 at least) is squad based and there are interesting issues that pop up.
firstly the mission design and the way to make them survive.
MISSION DESIGN:
With wingman that cannot die a mission can easiyl be broken. A player can just order his wingman to attack and move away and simply wait - they will do the job.
A way around it is to give time-related goals that the AI might not be able to manage in time, thus requireing the player interference. The other one is taking the player contol form his wingman and scripting their behaviour, which works great in the first few missioin, but once he becomes a squadron leader it becomes hard to rationalize your inablity to give commands..
The second problem (with wingman shouldn't get killed but do) is their recovery. You can allways say they ejected and were pcked up later, but I never noticed ejection as canon in FS (which is stupid, but hey!).
The second problem is that it can only work in a few mission. No one is going to belive that a secesfull recovery will be made after someone who ejected deep within a shivan infested nebula, or deep behind enemy lines or in subspace...
HOW TO MAKE THEM SURVIVE:
Teh easiest way - make them invulnerable instantly. They will surely survive, but they will never get damaged and you never have to care of fear for them (becouse some mission you can't complete alone). This allso ruins the immersion when tehy don+'t get damaged no matter how much firepower is directed at them.
The second way is to trigger invulnerabiltiy once they get damaged enough (when hull is below 50% or 10%). This makes it a bit more belivable as they can get disabled and all, but they rarely die... rarely, since if a weapon of sufficient firepower hits them, the damage reduced will be too much and will reach 0% before the invulnerabilty triggers and thtey will get destroyed. A way around it is to increase the hull percentage at which to trigger invulnerabiltiy, but that just pushes it back to the first solution, since many missiles are powerfull enough to destroy a fighter in a single hit.
the third way is to use the SpecilHP option in FRED and give them uber shields and hull. They are not vvvery likely to die now, but you still have to take care of them since you know they can be killed.
As I was FREDing mission lately I started to prefer the thrid option.
Allrighty...DISCUSS!
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You forgot the most common way of dealing with this, ship-gaurdian. Where he'll take damage normally but not be vulnerable once he's down to 1% hull integrity.
If it's important that the character not die, you could have him jump out every time his hull went critical (see StarFox 64) and be able to return in later missions. How you go about implimenting this is up to you, but I'd do it by applying a gaurdian SEXP to him and having his departure event linked to his hull integrity.
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Guardian Flags. Ships can still be disabled, but their hull never dips below 1%. (IIRC)
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I would stay away from that sexp. It's still possible for guardian ships to die in some cases. An event that makes the ship invulnerable when its strength falls below something like 40% is a much better idea instead.
I use this for a fixed number of wingmen in all my missions, not because they are important to the story, but so that they don't all die two minutes into the mission and seem like noobs compared to you. :D It's very difficult for a player to tell what's going on as long as different strength thresholds are used for every ship.
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Guardian-ship-threshold (which is effectively the same as ship-invulnerable at some hull damage point) would probably be a better choice for a fighter, but since Trashman apparently doesn't know either exist we had better start with the basics.
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I don't remember seeing that one either, actually. Was it in retail or is it a new FSO sexp? I haven't done any mission design for a while so I've fallen out of the loop a bit. :p
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If you need a wingman to stay alive, IMO the best option is guardian then jumpout. That's presuming that you can arrange the dialog in some way to suit, though.
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there is one problem with jumping out though - how come they can leave when they're critical and I'm branded a traitor???
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Originally posted by CP5670
I would stay away from that sexp. It's still possible for guardian ships to die in some cases. An event that makes the ship invulnerable when its strength falls below something like 40% is a much better idea instead.
Then that's a bug that needs fixing.
Personally I've never seen it happen and I tend to doubt it actually exists. Lions Den is frequently quoted as a mission where it goes wrong but it doesn't even use the Ship-Guardian SEXP.
As a matter of fact Lions Den uses exactly the method you've suggested.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
If you need a wingman to stay alive, IMO the best option is guardian then jumpout. That's presuming that you can arrange the dialog in some way to suit, though.
Not an option Aldo. Besides the point that Trashman raised there are missions where your wingmen can't jump out (Lions Den) or where you need them to stick around for plot purposes or to say something.
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CoS has the same thing, a large amount of wingmen that stay with you always.
I use threshold-guardian at around 30 percent hull, and sub-system-threshold-guardian for engines at 50 percent. The one for engines is because while they may be invicible, their engine system aren't, and if that gets destroyed they're as good as dead anyway. Looks stupid too.
But balance is shifted in your favour too, you could use them as a distraction or to eventually clear out enemies that were meant for you to do. Hey, they're invicible, what stops them?
So using arguments and crap, I protect the ships and set their AI-class to coward. This way, they're still there, but you can't expect them to do much for you.
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Originally posted by karajorma
Then that's a bug that needs fixing.
Personally I've never seen it happen and I tend to doubt it actually exists. Lions Den is frequently quoted as a mission where it goes wrong but it doesn't even use the Ship-Guardian SEXP.
As a matter of fact Lions Den uses exactly the method you've suggested and I have heard tales of the other ships getting killed.
Exactly. It's all-too obvious in Bearbaiting especially, where the Phoenicia's invulnerable SEXP activates a split-second later than it should, a split-second that often ends up in the destruction of the Phoenicia.
I tend to use both invulnerable and guardian. Ship-invulnerable gives the player the belief that a wingman is taking damage, but also keeps a character alive. Unless the player is bughunting or blatantly looking for discrepencies, then this works. Guardian basically is a fail-safe; it honestly is better to have a wingman stupidly floating around at 1% than having Command send your wingmen's messages.
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Then that's a bug that needs fixing.
Personally I've never seen it happen and I tend to doubt it actually exists. Lions Den is frequently quoted as a mission where it goes wrong but it doesn't even use the Ship-Guardian SEXP.
As a matter of fact Lions Den uses exactly the method you've suggested and I have heard tales of the other ships getting killed.
It's impossible to safeguard from the ship dying completely (apart from making it invulnerable right at the beginning) but having a larger percentage threshold will definitely reduce the chance of it screwing up. I think it has to do with how damage is applied. In an extreme case, if a fighter is at 2% strength and gets hit by a BFRed, then it will probably fall straight to 0% without ever hitting 1%. (can a coder verify this?)
Even if it worked though, you wouldn't want all your wingmen to have exactly 1% strength by the end of the mission. That would make it obvious to the player.
I have had Snipes die in loop1-2 (Love the Treason) quite a few times. In fact, I ran into it just a few weeks ago. It looks really stupid when a ship that is supposed to have a conversation with some other ship is dead and the other ship keeps talking on anyway. :p
Unless the player is bughunting or blatantly looking for discrepencies...
Who doesn't do that? :D I do that in every game I play. Finding glitches is so much fun. :D
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Originally posted by CP5670
I have had Snipes die in loop1-2 (Love the Treason) quite a few times. In fact, I ran into it just a few weeks ago. It looks really stupid when a ship that is supposed to have a conversation with some other ship is deac and the other ship keeps talking on anyway. :p
That one doesn't use Ship-Guardian either though.
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Are there any official missions that use it? I remember having it fail far too often in my missions when I started out with FRED2, so I avoided it for good after that.
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I'm writing out a list as we speak :)
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I'm thinking of making a escape pod model (cockpit only - like on SAAB) and that way my wingman can get killed in several missions without actually dying.. . (on death - spawn pod)
Of course, that would mean a recovery craft allso.. and all the SEXP's...
Don't know if it would work becouse of a ship's name and all...
Do the Code Wizzards have any ideas?
Maby a special escape-pod option in FREd, where for each ship you can set up a escape pod model ti will use and it will automaticly be named like "destroyed ship name" pod..
Thing is, messages have to be coded to still play from Alpha 2 pod like they would from Alpha 2...
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The Place of Chariots - Iceni/Bodaciea
Mystery of the Trinity - Alpha 2 and Zeta 1 (Zeta 2 is unguardianed at one point but was never guardianed in the first place :D )
A Game of TAG - Alpha 2, Scout 1, Kappa 3
Endgame and Speaking in Tongues - Iceni
Exodus - Nebtuu (Believe it or not the Nebtuu is guardianed for just long enough to take out the Abraxis).
Clash of the Titans II - Alpha 2-4
That's a surprisingly short list to be honest :)
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Exodus - Nebtuu (Believe it or not the Nebtuu is guardianed for just long enough to take out the Abraxis).
Interesting. The Nebtuu dies almost every time (on hard) if you don't take out the Nahemas at the beginning, so I guess that sexp is pretty useless as things stand.
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Not useless. If you're playing retail you can tell everyone to ignore the Abraxis, and disarm it instead. Then you've got a nice invulnerable Sobek to help you throughout the mission :D
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Does that actually work? If I ignore the bombers, the Nebtuu dies like four out of five times while the Abraxis still survives. The main reason it's an undesirable outcome is that two Seraphims arrive only if the Nebtuu is still around but the Abraxis is dead, so you lose out on two easy kills. :D
That ignore ship bug is still there in the latest SCP builds as well. As you said though, it can be useful in some cases. :D
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Not tried it but it might be interesting :)
I'd heard that the ignore bug was solved fairly recently though.
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I usually use 30%....and if they die in the mission i say something in mission like....Alpha 2 is extravehicular, recovery craft en route. Then in the debrief i will mention that they have been picked up and are doing fine.
Unless of course it is time for them to die, then i will make them invulnerable at 60% until it is close to time for them to die...then i will usually remove the invulnerability and let them die...sometimes a death is more scripted...but that's generally how i handle them.
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Originally posted by CP5670
Who doesn't do that? :D
Normal people. :lol: :lol:
Finding glitches is so much fun.
Agreed. So long as its not a blatantly annoying or show-stopping bug, finding errors such as the Ignore Ship bug can be a load of fun. :)
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Originally posted by CP5670
I have had Snipes die in loop1-2 (Love the Treason) quite a few times. In fact, I ran into it just a few weeks ago. It looks really stupid when a ship that is supposed to have a conversation with some other ship is dead and the other ship keeps talking on anyway. :p
Speaking of good old Snipes, that might be a good issue to bring up with Singh regarding his plans to bugfix the main campaign. That's really a case where Snipes should have been made invulnerable, since his dialogue is important to the mission; besides, it doesn't make much sense to have to rescue him in the second SOC loop if he was KIA. :p
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Originally posted by TrashMan
there is one problem with jumping out though - how come they can leave when they're critical and I'm branded a traitor???
Because you decided to FRED the mission that way?
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and that's a matter of mission style and the belivabiltiy of the game universe..
so how hard would it be to code that escape pod thing?
Hm..come to think of it, escape pods should be protected by default - the AI should ignore them unless specificly instruced to attack.
another issue that springs to mind is a recovery ship (support ship). If the escape pod has a dockpoint, a support ship (named Rescue 1 or something) would automaticly arrive and pick up the pod, and warp out.
However, there might be instances where you want the pods to stick arond for hte mission, so a ENABLE/DISABLE recovery would allso be usefull..
Might make for some really neat campaigns..
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You could handle it like Wing Commander 3 and 4. All wingmen you get bug out or eject before they can be destroyed and are invincible, up to a critical plot point usually. After that plot point, they can be destroyed instead of ejecting. If they are destroyed, the game plays a funeral scene and none of their cutscenes are shown for the rest of the game, and they are unselectable as wingmen.
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For my major characters, I almost always protect them, beam-protect them and then on top of that give them invulnerability.
This balances out a bit, since the pilot gets invulnerable wingmen, but suddenly he becomes everyone's target once the regular wingmen go BOOM.
*adds the snipes bug to the list fo things that need to be fixed
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I was messing around today with FS2: col, and i noticed in the first nebula mission, I myself couldnt destroy either Alpha 2 or Zeta 1... but other fithers could... it was fun though... i got out of range of the ship i launch off of, and then just started shootin up Zeta 1... lol both alpha 1 and zeta 1 got to 1% and then no matter when i did (and i did everything), they wouldnt die... it was fun though... try to turn on ur allies when the colossus is first introduced... and then take on the 6km long supership... that sould b fun... with the anti-subsystem missles that is... lol
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Originally posted by karajorma
Not an option Aldo. Besides the point that Trashman raised there are missions where your wingmen can't jump out (Lions Den) or where you need them to stick around for plot purposes or to say something.
I know.
[q]That's presuming that you can arrange the dialog in some way to suit, though.[/q]
But IMO where possible, it's the best solution in terms of gameplay as the player isn't given an infinite resource to do their job. The traitor thing never occured to me, but you can probably bodge that simply by using the 'get me out of here' type messages and adding an acknowledgement from command.
Obviously if you're having all 7 of your wingmen buggering off midway through it's going to be an issue, but in certain 'open' battle cases IMO it's better than having invulnerable allies or messages from ghosts.
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I would kill for an escape pod system.. so that the wingman don't run, aren't invulnerable and can send messages even if ejected...
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What EP would hang about a battlefield to send messages, though? Plus you'd have to make messages contextually ambigous because you don't know if they're being sent by an active in combat vessel, or an escape pod.
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Originally posted by TrashMan
I would kill for an escape pod system.. so that the wingman don't run, aren't invulnerable and can send messages even if ejected...
What's stopping you then? There's no good reason you couldn't implement one now.
Having that String Concatenate SEXP that myself and IP Andrews wanted would help a huge amount but there's no reason you couldn't do it now.
The thing is that an escape pod system simply pushes you one fudge futher along. Instead of an invulnerable ship you've now got an invulnerable escape pod. Somehow I can't see the Shivans leaving them alone.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
I know.
[q]That's presuming that you can arrange the dialog in some way to suit, though.[/q]
But IMO where possible, it's the best solution in terms of gameplay as the player isn't given an infinite resource to do their job. The traitor thing never occured to me, but you can probably bodge that simply by using the 'get me out of here' type messages and adding an acknowledgement from command.
Obviously if you're having all 7 of your wingmen buggering off midway through it's going to be an issue, but in certain 'open' battle cases IMO it's better than having invulnerable allies or messages from ghosts.
Invulnerable allies can be easily balanced off by simply cutting off their usefulness. Simply putting them to protected/beam protected will mean that everyone targets you and makes it harder or simply making sure you can't give them orders apart from their own objectives will fix things, since all you need to do then is give the player his own objectives. Balancing the numbers helps too - if you have two invulnerable wingmen, it still wont help if you have a Deimos at 5% and nearly 5 seraphim inbound from different directions throwing cyclops at it every thirty seconds.
There are many ways to resolve the problem. Although in the end, it may seem more like going for the cure rather than the vaccine, realize that its more of overcoming a handicap (which is possible) than growing a new arm (which isn't possible yet).
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Originally posted by Singh
Invulnerable allies can be easily balanced off by simply cutting off their usefulness. Simply putting them to protected/beam protected will mean that everyone targets you and makes it harder or simply making sure you can't give them orders apart from their own objectives will fix things, since all you need to do then is give the player his own objectives. Balancing the numbers helps too - if you have two invulnerable wingmen, it still wont help if you have a Deimos at 5% and nearly 5 seraphim inbound from different directions throwing cyclops at it every thirty seconds.
There are many ways to resolve the problem. Although in the end, it may seem more like going for the cure rather than the vaccine, realize that its more of overcoming a handicap (which is possible) than growing a new arm (which isn't possible yet).
The problem is; with the former it's not as realistic to protect allies. IN many ways it's unfair and it'll piss off the player as a result, even if they're partly to blame.
More important, IMO is that you can't balance stuff by tipping the scales in the latter way; if you have a setup with tight restrictions on exactly what the enemy has available to them, not just in general but across the whole campaign, you can't swamp the player without losing authenticity. The reason I started thinking of this was, actually, an older plan for a campaign essentially centred around 2 fighter carrying, smaller than destroyer size, vessels in contention.
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Originally posted by TrashMan
I would kill for an escape pod system.. so that the wingman don't run, aren't invulnerable and can send messages even if ejected...
The SEXP limit has been bumped multiple times. There's a nice fancy SEXP called ship-create. I believe there's also a fancy SEXP about any-ship.
I for one have no problem with protected wingmates, because it seems a bit unrealistic when all your wingmates die within 30 seconds of starting the mission. At least then I can pretend that they have equal skills to myself.
And if I want to be lazy and send them to attack some ship, that's my own business. Maybe I'm just not good enough to destroy some objective in mission. It's a lot more fun than dying five times to get the message to come up.
If you want to be anal about the realisticness of it all, I'm going with aldo's reply, what idiot hangs around the mission in a defenseless escape pod if they have subspace drives? And if they don't have subspace drives, how will you explain them coming back every mission?
If you really want realism you should be asking about being able to use campaign-persistent SEXPs in briefings in the like, so if someone dies you can have a brief blurb about how they're being replaced. Or, SEXP escape pods yourself rather than nag people to spend several hours of their time to implement this feature that only you want, rather than working on something that would benefit more people than just you.
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For escape pods: an engineless cockpit section that floats around until the end of the mission, or gets picked up by a support ship?
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If you read what I wrote then you would see that I propsed a recovery ship option.
An escape pod is just that - an escape pod. Designed to save your sorry ass when hte fighter blows - like an ejection seat.
it doesn't have engines (alltough it could have very small thrusters really) and especially not a jump drive. What next? Weapons on it?
Basicly if you want usefull wingman you can allways use the Special HP in combination with this and AI set to general - that way their survival rate is greater but they can still be destroyed.
You cna still order them around but you got to manage them carefully and protect them.
And hte problem with hte ship-create is I can't create antoher Alpha 2 if there is one allready. Would hte game treat it as the original ship and route messages tough it?
Or, SEXP escape pods yourself rather than nag people to spend several hours of their time to implement this feature that only you want, rather than working on something that would benefit more people than just you.
Interesting... So you see no benefit to anyone in this?
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Originally posted by TrashMan
If you read what I wrote then you would see that I propsed a recovery ship option.
Not very useful in any mission where you get outnumbered and told to run by command is it though?
Originally posted by TrashMan
An escape pod is just that - an escape pod. Designed to save your sorry ass when hte fighter blows - like an ejection seat.
The Shivans are xenophobes. They'd blow anyone in an escape pod away.
The NTF rejected BETAC including it's articles on prisonners of war. They'd blow anyone in an escape pod away.
The HOL think that the Shivans are going to kill everyone. They'd blow anyone in an escape pod away.
Pirates in general are murderers and thieves. Most of them would blow anyone in an escape pod away if only to silence their radios.
Has anyone ever considered the fact that maybe Freespace fighters do have escape pods but it's just that no one we've yet seen has ever been stupid enough to use one? :D
As far as I can see you're better off staying with the fighter under almost every circumstance.
Originally posted by TrashMan
And hte problem with hte ship-create is I can't create antoher Alpha 2 if there is one allready. Would hte game treat it as the original ship and route messages tough it?
- Create a pod called Alpha 2< ALT followed by 4 numbers >.
- In the same event write this value into a string variable called Who'sAlpha2 with a default value of "Alpha 2".
- Use this string variable instead of "alpha 2" in every send-message SEXP.
- Kick yourself that you haven't been using string variables for ages even though the beta version of my FAQ has had an explaination available for them here (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/FAQ/fredopen.html#variables) for over a month. :D
Of course that's dependant on it being possible to affect a ship-created ship with a SEXP but we never know if that works or not until someone gives it a try.
Hell even if that doesn't work all you need to do is change the SEXP so that the message comes from #Alpha 2 instead of alpha 2 and apart from the disappearance of the targetting brackets no one would notice the difference.
Originally posted by TrashMan
Interesting... So you see no benefit to anyone in this?
Nope. WMCoolmon's objection is that he implimented the create ship SEXP largely to satisfy your request to have escape pods but instead of saying thank you and using it you're bothering him to spend a large amount of time working on a feature that you want, that no one else has expressed an interest in and that could be implemented using SEXPs by anyone else who was interested in it.
This isn't the first time you've asked for everything on a plate and basically try to sway someone by demanding/insisting that it was a valuable feature even though the programmer involved didn't particularly think so.
I'd already posted in the thread to say that it was possible to implement escape pods. If you want to ask how to use current features to implement escape pods I'll be more than happy to tell you.
If you want to make snide comments in an effort to get a programmer to do all the work for you then you'll just get the thread locked.
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Originally posted by TrashMan
Interesting... So you see no benefit to anyone in this?
TrashMan, this is precisely the same flippant attitude that causes you so much trouble in the SCP forum. We have an existing system that works. We've also coded up some extra features so you can have an even better system with a little effort on your part. But you're not happy with any of the existing solutions - you want us to code up the whole entire thing for you just so you can sit back and just hit "go".
It's the same deal with custom nameplates. After a great deal of work, I was able to add a system that lets you replace a texture on any ship with any other texture. I even designed a template so people could make their own nameplates. This takes literally less than one minute; I timed it. But you weren't satisfied with that, you wanted all the work to be done for you.
And so it is with feature after feature. You really present the appearance of a whining kid who isn't satisfied with anything we do for you; you want the entire process laid out from start to finish. That's not only annoying, I'd say it's extremely arrogant. It's frustrating for us because we feel our work isn't appreciated. It's frustrating for others because our time is taken away from other features in order to cater to your demands (or at the very least, explain why they aren't feasible).
We've had to explain this to you time and time again. I have no idea why you haven't gotten the point by now.
EDIT: I posted while karajorma was also posting. As you can see I'm not the only one who feels this way.
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Originally posted by TrashMan
If you read what I wrote then you would see that I propsed a recovery ship option.
An escape pod is just that - an escape pod. Designed to save your sorry ass when hte fighter blows - like an ejection seat.
it doesn't have engines (alltough it could have very small thrusters really) and especially not a jump drive. What next? Weapons on it?
2 words.
Sitting. Duck.
And some more; not only is it just as implausible to have an invulnerable escape pod as it is a fighter, you also have the problem of which messages are appropriate. It's highly unlikely an EP would send the same 'enemy spotted' type message as a fighter, for example.
If you want to have a recovery craft, fine, but you also have to handle protecting that, FRED-ing it in, handling how messages will occur if it is destroyed or removes an escape pod. It's adding another layer of complexity that doesn't really solve anything.
Granted, it's a nice concept, but it's not a/the solution to this type of problem.
Originally posted by TrashMan
Interesting... So you see no benefit to anyone in this?
No. There's no point coding in specific events that can be created via FRED; ultimately you can't expect the SCP coders to do your work as well as their own, which is what this sort of thing amounts to. Not to mention the problems of having - or expecting - special case features for individual people and rationalising that with the general scope use of the SCP nowadays.
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*waits patiently for Trashman to drag me into this somehow*
The always-present good idea for making feature requests is to ask yourself "can I do this with the tools I have". If the answer is yes, then don't ask without a damned good explanation as to why it needs special treatment. That goes in general, but especially here.
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I should probably admit I tend to do this (sort of) in the sense that I can never remember exactly what's been done in the SCP and either forget something is in and ask for it twice, or ask if its done when I think it might be but don't actually know.
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Yeah but you ask politely and stop asking after you've been told how to do it.
It isn't that Trashman made a bad request that gets on my nerves. It's that he refused to listen after being told twice that he could do what he was asking for with SEXPs.