Hard Light Productions Forums
FreeSpace Releases => Mission & Campaign Releases => Topic started by: sgtbeil on July 29, 2008, 07:49:10 pm
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Alright, this is a demo for my upcoming campaign, which i have not decided on a name yet, but the idea is WWII is space. this mission is about the liberation of Auschwitz is 1945...i am not sure how much historical fact that the mission contains, so dont bother me about it please.
THERE IS A BUG THAT WHEN YOU COMPLETE THE MISSION CORRECTLY, THE AWOL DEBRIEFING SOMEHOW MERGES WITH THE MISSION COMPLETE DEBRIEFING, SO IF ANYBODY CAN TELL ME HOW TO FIX THIS, I WILL UNLESS I FIGURE IT OUT BEFORE HAND
I AM BACK AGAIN AND ILL WORK ON THE CAMPAIGN AND ANY BUGS WHEN I FIND TIME
[attachment deleted by ninja]
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Here are my notes. First playthrough.
The player wing's loadout is strange. You set the default loadout of Subachs and Prom Rs, but let the player select all the other weapons. This means Prom Ses, Kaysers, and Maxims, to name those that everyone prefers over the Subach (and the Prom R). It doesn't make much sense to set a recognizably weak loadout for the player while it is allowed to take better weapons.
The way you work with SEXP trees is needlessly complicated, and your mission doesn't benefit from it to say the least. Firstly, the "Kill all Nazis" directive became true far earlier than it should have. The same mission goal was accomplished shortly thereafter, but still there were fighters coming in, and only two of the cruisers were destroyed. For a SEXP tree that checks whether all hostiles in the mission are dead, use something like this:
Event
-is-destroyed-delay
--Wing 1
--Wing 2
--... list all fighter wings
--Cruiser 1
--Cruiser 2
--Cruiser 3
--Cruiser 4
You can do this by creating a simple is-destroyed-delay + ship to be destroyed tree like the one you did for the "Destroy Auschwitz" directive. Then right-click on the is-destroyed-delay and go to Add Data --> (any hostile ship). Repeat as many times as many wings/cruisers you want to be destroyed in order for the event to turn true (text in blue, meaning "accomplished").
Your current way of doing SEXPs makes it clear that you don't clearly understand them. It is unnecessary, for example, to have a tree like this:
-when
--and
---is-destroyed-delay
---is-destroyed-delay
--when
---(other operators)
(There is no need to repeat "when" twice, because it is clear for the game that you want the event to come true when (in the instant, in other words) all the conditions you had listed in the tree are met.)
There is no debriefing of any sort. I suppose you only wanted to show us how the mission works out. It's okay this time, but I suggest you make at least the three basic debriefing stages before publishing a mission. These three stages are: the one that says mission completed, the one that says mission failed, and the one that says "You left the area without authorization" (it's referred to as the AWOL debriefing stage.)
Don't expect the player to follow his orders by the numbers. I called in Theta - the bombers - before the Jews were evacuated. This means that the bombers destroyed the station before the rescue transport even arrived. When it did, it realized there was no station to dock with, and remained at the point it jumped into forever. Try to take everything into consideration. If the transport jumps in and realizes the station had already been destroyed, it should jump out. Or you must ensure that the station survives until the rescue is done. An easy way is Ship Guardianing, which makes the station indestructible, with its hull stopping at 1%. Alternately, you can only allow the player to call in the bombers after the Jews are evacuated. This can be done by setting an arrival cue for Theta. If a wing is a reinforcement one, and it has an arrival cue, then the arrival cue must be met before the player could call in the wing in question.
Second playthrough:
I can now see that the Dragons (Luftwaffe wing) come in 25 waves, and they are exluded from the "Destroy all Nazis" objective. The problem is that one wave immediately follows the another. I suggest setting and Arrival Delay in the Wings Editor. A delay of 0 is unrealistic and makes jumping out hard.
The two fighter wings jumped out before the station was destroyed. They should stay in battle until there is at least one hostile ship in the area.
Please don't allow the player give commands to the Jew transport. By default, the player can order the transport to attack something that overrides the "dock the station" order in priority. Giving orders to transports and above should be forbidden. Use the Player Orders window in the Ship Editor.
Lastly, I don't mind the storyline yet, but what is a "Space Jew"?
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:lol: i skimmed that post for the usual stuff but the last two words made me choke on my drink lol. . . .space jew. Tact gone mad.
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Well I managed to fix most of the things that are wrong with it but still cant figure out the debriefing, and it is now available as the download, but i do plan to fix everything before the initial release of the campaign. First of all a "Space Jew" is exactly what it sounds like: a Jew in Space. And btw, what does "Tact gone mad" mean?
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By "tact gone mad," Dekker means that the term Space Jew is tactless. I asked about this term, because there is no need to differentiate between an "ordinary Jew" and a "space Jew." All the terms that have "space" in them (Space Shuttle, space station) refer to things that work differently on Earth and in space. Compare a railway station to a space station.
Here's the result of my third test run:
The mission has become slightly better overall, but there are still many comments.
First and foremost, please stop using terms like Space Jew, Space Nazi, and others that don't exist. Perhaps your storyline would make these compounds valid, but without context, they are unnecessary. So drop the "Space" determiner.
Other mission-related notes:
I suggest you set Bravo, Delta, and Theta wings as your wingmen in the Custom Wing Names option (Shift-N and it's a button below the area where you type in your mission's title). This feautre is useful, because you can have wings other than Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon listed in your Wingmen window (upper-right corner of your HUD). It makes the mission a bit easier, because you can see how many of your wingmen have died/are in cirtical condition.
Also, use the Escort List. Put mission critical ships into your Escort List. Do this by giving a value to a mission-critical ship in Ship Editor --> Misc --> Escort Priority. Valid numbers range from 1 to 100. The more important a ship is in completing the mission the higher its value should be. I do it so that absolutely important ships (in your mission's case, the transport and the station) have the value of 100, and less important ones have lower values (in your mission's case, the cruisers).
Please use more in-flight messages. Even though it is said in the briefing that the player is supposed to call in Theta wing after the Jews are saved, not everyone would remember. As soon as the transport departs, a message something like "Call in Theta wing now" should be sent.
Also account for the possibility that the transport could be destroyed. This means that Command should order retreat and the mission should fail. Do a debriefing stage that appears in the event the transport is destroyed.
You're starting to understand SEXPS, though your way of dealing with them is still cumbersome. Let me show you what I meant in my first post:
(http://www.penguinbomb.com/ithov/SimplerEvent.JPG)
This is the simpler way of doing it. Your tree does the exact same thing, but this is an even simpler tree for the same effect. Also apply this tree to the first mission goal. Use this:
-when
--is-event-true
---Kill all Nazis
Therefore, if you decide to add more hostile ships, you will have to modify only one Event, which will apply the change to the directive and the mission goal.
Luftwaffe wing's arrival delay is still way too low. I suggest a range of 15-30.
Lastly, I suggest you read this: http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Typical_mistakes
Pay special attention to the bit that tells you about the RTB directive. This is the "Return to base" directive that appears when the player is allowed to jump out. Your mission doesn't have that, but it should. I'll leave it to you to figure out how that works based on that article. Good luck with it.
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*nuclear1 chalks up Space Jew in the same category as Space Pope, Space Buddhists, and Space Quetzacoatl*
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lol. "Alright, now go liberate those Space Jews!"
When I first saw that, I thought it was some parody campaign like JAD.
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I don't mind the term Space Jew myself. Or Space Nazi. It adds an element of humour and makes it less politically serious imo.
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I don't mind the term Space Jew myself. Or Space Nazi. It adds an element of humour and makes it less politically serious imo.
that was the point of this campaign, i wanted to do a ww2 campaign but wanted to make it less serious
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Did you make the Space Nazis use Shivan ships? (I didn't DL).
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Did you make the Space Nazis use Shivan ships? (I didn't DL).
what i did is i made the "ground troops" use terran ships(i couldnt put actual men) and the Luftwaffe(German Airforce) use shivan ships so yes and no
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I think it's fine that you use Shivan (or Vasudan) ships here and there. It's not connected to canon FreeSpace, anyway.
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lol. "Alright, now go liberate those Space Jews!"
When I first saw that, I thought it was some parody campaign like JAD.
:lol:
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well im glad you dont have a problem with it
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History redone in space? Very cool idea.
I'm sorry. It had to be posted. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cAVJyBshh0)
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History redone in space? Very cool idea.
I'm sorry. It had to be posted. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cAVJyBshh0)
um thx but the youtube thing was ****ed
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History redone in space? Very cool idea.
I'm sorry. It had to be posted. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cAVJyBshh0)
:lol:
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lol but seriously guys, im not gonna make the campaign unless i get enough DLs and positive reviews
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Well, I'd download the campaign if it was done comedy-style (with that space jew video as a cutscene, etc.)
Like, a historical parody.
That would be awesome.
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I have to agree, WWII in space is... Downright weird...
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Most people tend to go for campaigns moreso than single missions these days. You could always try a short 3-4 mission campaign if you're wary about investing a lot of time into it. Keeping in mind that the subject matter may turn some people off, but if you made it fairly amusing it might garner a good response.
I haven't downloaded it personally, there's a WHOLE bunch of campaigns on here that I've not even played yet. Just starting on PI which was released like 2 years ago at the minimum.
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PI which was released like 2 years ago at the minimum.
Well, actually (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,46817.0.html)... 2008 - 2007 =/= 2.
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PI which was released like 2 years ago at the minimum.
Well, actually (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,46817.0.html)... 2008 - 2007 =/= 2.
What's this =/= thing? It's != for programming stuff. I thought it was older anyway, as I've played a few older ones recently. Ransom's for one. But anyway this is getting a bit off-topic.
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PI was released last year, but had been in development for eons.
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What's this =/= thing?
It's an ascii approximation of the mathematical not equal symbol.
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What's this =/= thing?
It's an ascii approximation of the mathematical not equal symbol.
Aye. Not familiar with programming stuff and copypasting an "actual" not equal symbol from Word or something would be too much of a pain in the arse.
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I can't provide you with any more positive feedbak that I already gave to you. Instead I have some further suggestions.
If you plan to release your very first series of missions as a campaign, please take the advice of the more experienced. Extract others' missions from their campaigns' VP files and analyze them. See what sort of tricks you can use for you campaign. I suggest taking the Main Campaign's missions as examples for starters.
Make sure that every mission in your campaign has everything that a mission is expected to have. Briefings, customizable loadout unless plot dictates otherwise, mission goals, directives, ships in the Escort List, etc. Put a lot of effort into testing every single mission. Consult the FSWiki for some advice.
Also, make your storyline so that it could be translated into FreeSpace. Don't just throw the player into the middle of it, saying "This is World War II in space. You're in Poland now." Try to make it more or less consistent with the FS universe (because you're using FS ships). Like make the Nazis a new NTF, who are taking extreme measures on Vasudans. Make Vasuda Prime fill the same role in your story as France did in WWII. Use bunch of transparent references to real-world persons and events instead of specifically calling the main antagonist "Hitler" or referring to Stalingrad. In other words, plunge the player into a world that is very similar to that of WWII. It's a better way of doing the kind of storyline you're trying to tell.
If you want me to specify or further explain something, let me know.
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thx for that, but all i really want to know is how to fix that bug that i posted.
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The AWOL one?
It's because the Event "AWOL" automatically begins as "true" because all mission goals begin as "incomplete". To demonstrate:
AWOL
-and
--is-goal-incomplete
---first goal
--is-goal-incomplete
--second goal
In the first second of the mission, the two goals are incomplete: Not all the Jews are saved and not all Nazis are destroyed. FS recognizes this, and as a consequence, the Event turns "true" and will not refresh if a mission goal turns true (complete) or false (fail).
Please read this (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Return_to_base_directive) FSWiki article and look at the mission file that is included with it. Juxtapose the article and the mission, and you'll see.
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im gonna be on vacation for about two weeks, where after hopefully i can get around to working on this campaign, keep in mind that i also have a job six days a week with 15 hour shifts
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im gonna be on vacation for about two weeks, where after hopefully i can get around to working on this campaign, keep in mind that i also have a job six days a week with 15 hour shifts
What, you making shoes for Nike or something?
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A comedy about the Holocaust set in space might be the new definition of tasteless. Why can't you just make an analogical situation in the future without these blunt references or using names like Jews and Nazis. Make them Vasuldans and NTF and it will be much more pleasing, in tact and not to mention making sense.
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well, if you have a problem, or a bone to pick with the subject i chose, dont play it...simple as that. oh and btw, im back...i uhh kinda got fired