Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The FRED Workshop => Topic started by: Alikchi on May 12, 2007, 10:34:23 am
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Firstly, a definition of character-driven campaign. Derelict, Homesick, Transcend and other fanmade campaigns are a step in this direction relative to FS1 and FS2, where essentially everyone was an anonymous meatbag pilot. But these campaigns were not necessarily character-driven, inasmuch as although they were intriguing and entertaining, the characters served to give commentary and background on the situation, rather than influence and drive it.
I want to make a campaign where the characters are ridiculously important. Transcend and Sync come the closest to what I have in mind, since the player's character does speak and there are fairly detailed inter-character relationships. In my campaign, 2 in every 5 missions would be essentially dialogue, with occasional combat, while the remaining 3 would be more traditional FreeSpace missions. Command briefings would often include emails to and from the player or messages between other important characters. Dialogue would be in a more informal style.
So, would I be asking too much of the player's patience and memory to assign Alphas 1-4 names and identities? :D Would you be entertained if, let's say, my dialogue-mission banter was witty enough?
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well what if in your first mission all wingmates die, the next 2 die, the one after that they all die again. Due to the low lifespan of pilots, remembering thier names over and over again would be arduous.
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What Asteroth said: Either you make all the important characters invulnerable, or have them mysteriously resurrected in the next mission. The sooner is a bad choice because you could just order them to destroy any ship, and they would succeed just because they are not supposed to die. The latter doesn't need an explanation.
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Solutions:
1) Escape pods
2) not fully invulnerable, but heavy use of Special hitpoints
3) Invulneralbe when below 50% hull, but cripple them (destroy weapon subsystem, or engines, or reduce their AI)
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I wonder what Wing Commander Saga plans to do about this/ You might wanna consult them.
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What Asteroth said: Either you make all the important characters invulnerable, or have them mysteriously resurrected in the next mission. The sooner is a bad choice because you could just order them to destroy any ship, and they would succeed just because they are not supposed to die. The latter doesn't need an explanation.
A good balance of protect-ship and invulnerable SEXPs can conceal this, as will good balancing. Trashman's option 3 is a good idea as well.
Also, this gives you an actual incentive to protect your wingmen. But in all likelihood I will use the Transcend/Sync option, making them effectively invulnerable, or in other cases, making their survival necessary for the mission to succeed.
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With FS's AI, making your wingmen's survival sounds like a bad idea. You know, they can run into a salvo of Tornadoes and die very easily.
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Usually I'd be completely against characters, and post something like, NO WAY, but I don't care anymore, and want to play something a bit different from FS. Depends on which mood I am in, really. :)
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Steadfast will have characters (e.g. Alpha 1 will be the veteran pilot who always knows what to do, Beta 3 is the idiot/funny guy etc.)
But I'm not FREDding, LGM is FREDding, you should ask him.
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And you should know that Alpha 1 is not the player in Steafast either.
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Provided the story and dialogue are well-written, I would love playing a character-driven story. I pay more attention to story than most people... leading me to like some games that everyone else seem to hate.
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Though I can live with it, I prefer campaigns where I can choose what I want to do or where I want to go, while the characters/wingmen play a strong supporting role (basically regular FS style, but better NPC interaction over stock).
But I'm aware that a campaign driven around that logic can be a nightmare to do, because two people won't do the same thing. Could be why I didn't enjoy Transcend (I think it was Transcend), because the player character said or did or decided to do something I wouldn't have said or done. (My distaste of the horror genre is another matter altogether.)
I'll leave that to the NPCs.
But like I said - I don't mind. I'll play it. :) Besides, if I was making a campaign, I probably would've done the same forcing of actions on the player so that the story can flow... :(
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character names.. ummmmm
Mildok Scheseiweisser
Serras Planter
Fondose Jennings
Barney Rimmelback
Disaud Rebont
Pen Li
Isamashima Yamosomi
Raj Viseesar
Gianluca Murazza...
i can make up alot of names easily.
but i do agree with what other people have said on this; make them invaunerable or forget it...
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3) Invulneralbe when below 50% hull
Use ship-guardian-threshold or deal with the consequences of having them destroyed anyway if you try using invulnerable.
And then curse as ship-guardian-threshold fails to do what it should do due to a bug I haven't tracked down the cause of yet.
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Yeah...that happens sometimes...if you restart the mission it usually works normally..
I think it fails if it takes too much damage at once (like when hit by a cyclops or a capship beam) as it simply jumps for 100% hp to -200 and hte triger fails.
Aditionally, I think it's bad to put ANY words except the most common lines (like when somone asks you a direct question, you would give a direct answer.)
FOW3 will have charachters, some of them will be killable, others wont (I'll prolly implement solution number 3), but the player will rarely talk (if at all).
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I'd personally go with
Special Hits, enabled Shields: 10,000, Hull: 10,000. Though it is not guaranteed to work and knowing the AI would probably die no matter how many extra hits they have. :rolleyes:
INFA standalone uses ship-guardian-threshold with
rand
5
15.
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With 10,000 HP, they probably wouldn't die. If you decide to drastically increase your wingmen's strength, increase the hitpoints better. They only start evasive action after their shields fall down, so if you have 10,000 shield and 100 hitpoints for your wingmen, he will die real soon. The other way around, it'll be better.
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I'd play the campaign but I'd probably skip all the story bits. Kinda like Grand Theft Auto.
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never used FRED, but i do have a bit of an idea, however lame it be, just have em keep re-spawning when ever they die, sure it would get cheesey, but at least it's effective
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That's not cheesey or effective. It's lame.
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I find it hard to believe that the GTVA doesn't have some form of ejection system. Lord knows they could use it.
If you want to play a character-driven campaign...well, I recommend Sync, but the thing is, FS2 is not conducive to character-driven stories. This suits me fine. The most grevious errors of fiction are almost always those of the plot (from its failures to an overwhelming urge to scream "WHAT!?!"), but the ones that pain me most are always those of characterization...and these are also the most common. FS2 suits itself to telling a good story without much in the way of characters, something you really can't do in most mediums. And it keeps my urges to strangle writers down.
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I like the idea of character driven games. I'd play it.
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Yes, character driven :)
It's a nice alternative, some campaigns here have a great plot, but you don't know anything about your wingmates.
It's good to play a Pilot with history, with a character.
"Revenge - Final Conflict" is one of these campaings i would say it's nearly character driven, you play a pilot with a name and have wingmates with history.
I like it and this is a thing i miss in the most Campaigns, it's kinda like boring to play a Pilot who's name is "Alpha 1"/"Epsilon 3" (or other wing names) and who never talk a line.
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Let me say something about the sbject...
Characters are useful. Many missions suffer of balance problems and the presence of invincible fighters and/or bombers makes everything better. In normal missions, a high number of wingmen dies(wings Alpha through Delta, 16 spacecraft)and the player's squadron should be disbanded. Characters are also useful when writing messages: Command and warship COs are supposed to be flat characters and can't send messages like "Oh my God, a Shivan Juggernaut! Command has condemned us to death! We'll die!". Warship COs should send messages when they're still alive, so you sometimes have to create alternate messages(message 1 is sent from Y when the X is destroyed and the Y is still intact and message 2 is sent from Command when both X and Y are down).
DySkO cited Steadfast...the 35th Black Eagles is a particular squadron, so it doesn't work as an example. That's the most elite squadron of the GTVA and the death of a pilot is a rare event.
That's what I use for characters:
ship-guardian-threshold with a random value between 5 and 35/40
Double the hitpoint of the characters, so they won't be heavily damaged early in the mission.
ship-subsys-guardian-threshold for engine/engines. This one's is important, because characters survive if hit by powerful weapons but their engines can be disrupted.
Advanced AI. I have created a table with AI levels that go beyond General specifications(the best one is...LieutenantGeneral of course :P )and characters are highly skilled. Their meneuvers are good, but they should look even better if you use Joshua's mod.
In Steadfast there also are ENEMY aces to face...but I can't tell you more :P
Gianluca Murazza...
I know him! :lol:
John Luke...Bad Wall?!?
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Advanced AI. I have created a table with AI levels that go beyond General specifications(the best one is...LieutenantGeneral of course :P )and characters are highly skilled. Their meneuvers are good, but they should look even better if you use Joshua's mod.
i still haven't got it in my fred... (waiting for new VP...)
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Hey LGM...those AI tables are custom-made? Care to share them?
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If there's one thing that bothers me about ship-guardian and any other sexps similar to it, is that when the guardian takes effect, the subsystems can still take hits and go bang. Hence why I end up using ship-invulnerable (but then again, the invulnerable sexp makes the AI not care about anything shooting at it, because the AI thinks it's not taking hits that hurt).
And editing the code so that the AI (when enemy) will engage the player/NPC when they get hit instead of when their shields drop won't work either... they'll probably keep pursuing said player/NPC till it dies? No chance at all for the player/NPC to shake the enemy AI off his/her/its back... :doubt:
A cripped NPC that's vital to the story will literally make the story come to a standstill... :shaking:
Perhaps edit the guardian sexps so that subsystems will also be made invulnerable when the guardian comes into effect after health (and/or individual subsystem health) has dropped below x percent? But Guarded ships still pursue targets that are attacking them even though it's futile? (Basically to cover up the fact that Guardian was used in the first place...)
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Use ship-subsys-guardian-threshold
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To get around the subsystem issue, you simply need to use ship-guardian-threshold together with a ship-invulnerable command when the ship's strength is just above the guardian value.
As for the original question, I slightly prefer stories that don't emphasize characters a whole lot (unless it's a prominent person in the game's universe, e.g. Bosch), as that tends to shift the plot focus to the bigger picture. This is something that sets FS2's story apart from those in many other games; it's more like a history book than a novel, in some sense. Although I would certainly play any campaign if it's generally good otherwise.
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Yeah, I probably would. Good characters are always interesting.
Couple of issues, beyond the "All your wingmen die horrible deaths and bad things in general happen."
First, your character can barely intervene in terms of character interaction. Since you can't account for what a player will say, as a rule of thumb, you have to remove their interaction, or force it. So either you have Transcend, or something where everyone else speaks and you don't.
Second, in conjunction with 1, it's hard to make a character that is a nonentity a protagonist in the context of a character driven story. Therefore, it is improbable that the player will be in a command or otherwise important position, leading to the effective removal of specific tactical options inherent in the gameplay of FS2.
Wait, what did I just type?
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I use ship-guardian-threshold and ship-subsys-guardian-theshold with when-argument so I don't need to copy and paste many SEXPs...
Hey LGM...those AI tables are custom-made? Care to share them?
Via MSN? Yeah... :)
To get around the subsystem issue, you simply need to use ship-guardian-threshold together with a ship-invulnerable command when the ship's strength is just above the guardian value.
I don't think it works in a mod like Inferno, where the Shocker is strong enough to disrupt all the engines of a Claymore Mark II without damaging the fighter so much.
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Thanks for the input, all.
To get around the subsystem issue, you simply need to use ship-guardian-threshold together with a ship-invulnerable command when the ship's strength is just above the guardian value.
As for the original question, I slightly prefer stories that don't emphasize characters a whole lot (unless it's a prominent person in the game's universe, e.g. Bosch), as that tends to shift the plot focus to the bigger picture. This is something that sets FS2's story apart from those in many other games; it's more like a history book than a novel, in some sense. Although I would certainly play any campaign if it's generally good otherwise.
I understand and agree with you when it comes to characters like Bosch - if there's one thing I love about FS2, it's the sense of history and strategic context - but the problem with those major characters is that your only sources of information are Command Briefings and in-mission encounters with the characters themselves. (Your listening-device mission is a good exception to this rule, and something I wish I'd though of first. ;) ) I'd like to use wingmen to provide illumination of the situation ("Dammit! Command let Bosch escape!") and minor entertainment (duct-tape, etc).
Yeah, I probably would. Good characters are always interesting.
Couple of issues, beyond the "All your wingmen die horrible deaths and bad things in general happen."
First, your character can barely intervene in terms of character interaction. Since you can't account for what a player will say, as a rule of thumb, you have to remove their interaction, or force it. So either you have Transcend, or something where everyone else speaks and you don't.
Second, in conjunction with 1, it's hard to make a character that is a nonentity a protagonist in the context of a character driven story. Therefore, it is improbable that the player will be in a command or otherwise important position, leading to the effective removal of specific tactical options inherent in the gameplay of FS2.
Wait, what did I just type?
I'm not certain if I should allow the player to speak or not. It'll give me more ability to push a certain storyline, but it'll also force the player to assume an identity, and I kind of like the anonymous shield of Alpha 1. Alpha 1 is an unbiased observer, and I'd like to preserve that.
The alternative to Transcend is the Derelict option, with your wingmen essentially talking among themselves, and the occasional "Alpha 1, go do something for us."
I guess the perfect "Sweet spot" would be the sort of interaction you had with Snipes, Xinny, and Zero. Or remember how the first several missions of Derelict were almost all dialogue and story? I'd imagine every fifth mission being like that, spread out through the campaign.
I still have plenty of time to decide.
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Derelict was an exception because it was created in a way that it did not require too much of a guardian sexp, pure genius. and what was it.. alpha 2? the duct tape man, an absoutly superb campaign, then the storyline was good and not too much like a few i have seen, that either go over the top or not even hit the required white line.
if you create something that has a superb plot, like Procyon Insurgency and the character driven ideas that derelict had, then a fair diffculty rating and so on.. this could possibly be even better then some more highly rated MODs like b5 or wing commander or even bsg. you have nothing to loose, go for it and good luck. :)
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To get around the subsystem issue, you simply need to use ship-guardian-threshold together with a ship-invulnerable command when the ship's strength is just above the guardian value.
That's a pretty dangerous idea. Given the low hitpoints subsystems have it's not hard to take out the subsystems without getting anywhere near close to the threshold.
In addition in any mission involving disruptor-type weapons you can take out subsystems without even damaging the ship.
I use ship-guardian-threshold and ship-subsys-guardian-theshold with when-argument so I don't need to copy and paste many SEXPs...
That's pretty much what I'd do. The only thing I'd add to that is using rand-multiple to make the threshold value less obvious.
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That's a pretty dangerous idea. Given the low hitpoints subsystems have it's not hard to take out the subsystems without getting anywhere near close to the threshold.
In addition in any mission involving disruptor-type weapons you can take out subsystems without even damaging the ship.
It works pretty well with the default ship/weapon stats. I've actually never seen a fighter become accidentally disabled or disarmed with this technique, although the situation may be different for custom weapons as LGM said.
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You could just give them the guardian flag, then have them warp out when they get to 1%, and disallow the player jumping out until the mission is complete. That way the characters won't die, and your player won't get the Desertion debrief when everyon else has jumped out as well.
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Problem with warping out is that in some missions you can't do that. For instance most of Homesick.
It works pretty well with the default ship/weapon stats. I've actually never seen a fighter become accidentally disabled or disarmed with this technique, although the situation may be different for custom weapons as LGM said.
I'll point out that in over 30-40 play throughs of my Birth of a Legend mission I was unable to kill Scar and yet despite a working ship-guardian-threshold SEXP I'm still getting this (http://www.game-warden.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4250).
No matter how many times you play a mission during playtesting it's almost certainly going to be played more once it's out there. Playtesting is not going to turn up a bug that occurs 1 out of 1000 times. But if you release that campaign and 10,000 people play it then it almost certainly will turn up a few times.
Forget observed data and go on simple logic. Pretty much all GTVA fighters have a weapons subsystem which is 10% of the hull and an engine subsystem which is 35%. That means that if you go invulnerable at say, 50% you have no guarantee whatsoever that you won't lose your subsystems.
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As you said, Birth of a Legend exploited what I think is the most important weakness of mission testing. You don't know what could happen if an incredibly high number of people plays your campaign. I use ship-subsys-guardian-threshold for engines just because I watched a fighter supposed to be undefeatable being disabled.
We can always use repair-subsystem and repair the hull and/or the engines of a ship. If the hull integrity of a fighter gets below a certain value, we could use both ship-guardian and repair-subsystem in order to reduce the odds significantly. What do you think?
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I think the solution is to fix the problem so that the SEXP works as intended.
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I've just opened Birth of a Legend.
has-arrived-delay 1 "Fractal"
ship-guardian-threshold
rand 6 17
"Fractal 4"
That's where I think the problem is... I never use so low values, I set something like 15 - 30/35. Sometimes FS may be not that fast to "catch" a fighter in time and protect it(that's the impression I have...it may be false). If that Scar is going to appear again, you should leave it with >20% of hull integrity :)
EDIT: Reasonable values needed...
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now, would that protect it from say, flying into a torpedo or something that would normally instantly obliterate a fighter? as you said, it sometimes doesnt catch it right away so.....
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Replay mission...nuff said..
You can't fix EVERYTHING...nor should you try...
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I've just opened Birth of a Legend.
has-arrived-delay 1 "Fractal"
ship-guardian-threshold
rand 6 17
"Fractal 4"
That's where I think the problem is... I never use so low values, I set something like 15 - 30/35. Sometimes FS may be not that fast to "catch" a fighter in time and protect it(that's the impression I have...it may be false). If that Scar is going to appear again, you should leave it with >20% of hull integrity :)
EDIT: Reasonable values needed...
Bear in mind that I'm not approaching the problem as a FREDder trying to hack his way around the problem. I'm looking at it as a coder trying to fix the code so that no stupid hacks are needed.
The problem is nothing to do with the game "catching" it in time. That might be an issue if you were trying to activate a ship-invulnerable when the ship reached a low number of hitpoints as it's quite possible that the game could run through all the ship kill code for that frame and only later find a SEXP that was supposed to trigger and save that ship.
This should not be an issue with ship-guardian-threshold. The SEXP is meant to work in a different way, setting a variable that is checked every time the game goes through the ship_do_damage() function and not allowing any damage to be done which would push the ship below it's threshold value.
If Ship-guardian-threshold worked the way you thought it did there wouldn't be much point in having made the SEXP in the first place. It would be exactly the same as
when
->
--hits-left
--alpha 1
--threshold value
-ship-invulnerable
--alpha 1
Replay mission...nuff said..
You can't fix EVERYTHING...nor should you try...
The fact that something is difficult to do is no excuse for sloppy game design. If you're willing to put out a mission full of bugs then that's your own option but I'm certainly not putting out a bug riddled campaign just because I can't be arsed to spend some effort fixing problems.
Having a main character killed in a mission and then resurrect in the following one is abysmal game design.
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Something that will happen once in 10000 playtroughs becouse the game lags a bit with checking is NOT something I'll waste my time on "fixing".
[V] missions wiht Snipes don't allways work, but they work in general.. You can imporve on that, by ussng better SEXP or adding ejection or something, but you can't totaly remove it unless you make the NPC invulnerable from the start.
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I could fix Love The Treason.... in about 10 seconds flat. The only issue left would be the code one which is causing me problems in BSG.
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I think we're all kind of missing an obvious point here...
In a broader sense a character does not have to be a person. Other things can have character...like say, ships. The most blatant example of something like this occuring is probably the Lucifer in FS1 (the Galatea is a close second). This is the closest FS really comes to character-driven, and really the fashion it is best-suited to.
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I'm leaning heavily towards a character-driven campaign in Blue Planet, which is pretty much focused on the one character and his interaction with the universe. So, liberal use of cutscenes, soundtracks, and command briefings to tell a story.
Would people play a campaign like that, or would they prefer something a bit more action-oriented?
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Of course, Darius! Cutscenes are fantastic.
We have never seen such a campaign.... I'm actually planning to change SthCrs into something esotheric, even more than Transcend. I think...I...( :D ) that it's something original.
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hmm i am nw to fs just never played this game before but i played few space sims like x2 beynd the frontiers x 2 the threat starlancer freelancer ... and i must say i really like fs couse is long missions are fun and really got war in feel
but .. the wingmans are just dumbs really .. in one mod i was supose to kill 2 cap shis before they destroy dissabled allie cap ship .. okey i fly alone and destroy hem couse they fly from far away i use this max hull dem weapon .. i destroy 2 wings of bombers ( i play on medium couse on hard always my wingmans are die in 30 second or 2 minutes after mission start LOL) but my 2 wings of fighetrs with supose to defend this stupid cap ship is unable to do this they got 3 wings of bombers to destroy and few fighters but my cap ship always die .. if i am supose to kill alone 2 cap shipps2 wing of bombers then fly like hell to protect this cap ship who is already death i should be use uss enterprize not a asf ... so the point is the wingmans should be a wiser and they supose to got any brains ..
but backing to this tread . the best way is to make them x4 hp and immortal so when they got around 20 hp they use theyr jump drives and back to base is in my eyes best choose they dont die they can be in next mission and making them got 4 times hp ae make u shure they will help u enought to u can finish mission
at last if in a wing on each mission u lost 3 on 3 wingmans the wing should be disbandet and i eally like the idea with giving your wingmans a names history emotions .....but the ship in your wing should got nickanmes like ice burk or something like this not alfa 1 alfa 2 ...... more pesonality = more fun u fell like reall part of wing not a rambo who defend whole fleet alone defend all cap ships alone and defend your wingmans couse theyr are to dumb to help u
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v86/Turey/welcome2hlpbb.gif)
PM me if you want a welcome speech.
wingmen are, usually, stupid.
expecially if you give them orders such as "protect ship"; to tell them "engage enemy" seems to me the best way to have useful wingmen.
A good idea to improve wingmen skills is to put AI to the Admiral class (or "LieutenantGeneral where available), but most of the times unless you set a ship-guardian-treshold they start suicide actions.
to order them to depart when hull<20% is not a good idea if the wingmen are also active characters who have something to say during the mission.
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A good idea to improve wingmen skills is to put AI to the Admiral class (or "LieutenantGeneral where available), but most of the times unless you set a ship-guardian-treshold they start suicide actions.
My "LG" AI level is a very particular one. If you open the AI tbl, you notice the presence of several parameters. Those parameteres will influence the AI's behaviour...my LG level is some kind of berserker monster...
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i don't have that tbl. you have to send it to the team members. or, if i have it, my fred is not recognising it. (does this mean i'm still playing with standard AI? toes this mean the enemies are EVEN MORE skilled?? help...)
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Ehm, I think I should update the VP :blah:
Don't give me credit, it's a n00bish work... everyone could have done it :nod:
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I would definatly play a game this character driven.....thats actually what i've been hoping for for quite a while now