Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Iain Baker on July 24, 2019, 03:57:28 pm
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Am I the only one who often looses track of what is going on when caught in a furball?
There have been times a bloody huge cap ship arrives, does stuff and then departs without me realising. When you have multiple events happening on top of one another it can get even more confusing, especially if there are lots of ships in the area and command only refers to them by name so you are not sure which of the *insert number* ships is the *insert name*. :confused:
What tricks of the trade do you fine people use to maintain situational awareness?
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Cutscenes comes to my mind (on the dev side). Besides that, I'm constantly running into the same thing.
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There's a few things you can do. Cutscenes can be one solution, but they take quite a bit of effort to do and interrupt the player in whatever they were doing. Messages are another thing, but the player may not be paying attention to those if there's no voice acting. The best thing you can probably do is design your mission in such a way that you get little rest points that the player can catch their breath and be more attentive for what you (the FREDder) would like to tell them.
So don't do things like pile up lots of wings to keep coming at the player, or do things that are strictly based on mission time. Sure it may be more "realistic" but it is not very "gameplay friendly".
The best thing I tend to do is break up my mission into small stages. When one stage ends, I give around 30-60 seconds of quiet time, send some messages (and have a great good spot to add checkpoints), then proceed to the next action sequence.
Play some of your favorite missions and see if you can spot how they get your attention.
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One thing I learned while playing some campaigns is the use of audio cues such as a radio sound when a message is triggered. It's nice not having to divert attention to the far corner of a screen to see if a new message has come in.
On that topic; having the dialog box near the center of the screen. I need to try again in getting that to work. :P
The best thing I tend to do is break up my mission into small stages. When one stage ends, I give around 30-60 seconds of quiet time, send some messages (and have a great good spot to add checkpoints), then proceed to the next action sequence.
:yes: :yes: :yes:
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It's all covered in Fred docs isn't it?
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Not the retail ones.
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The best thing I tend to do is break up my mission into small stages. When one stage ends, I give around 30-60 seconds of quiet time, send some messages (and have a great good spot to add checkpoints), then proceed to the next action sequence.
Plus one for Stages.
Another trick I have learned "recently" is take more control of where enemies are warping in, in order to define clear lines of sight. However you really need an improvement over the retail AI for that to be effective, as swarm type enemies often times just don't allow for breaks in the fighting like that.
See the prototype below at 2:40+, 4:15+ & 6:10+. Note that for display purposes I didn't actually "play the mission" as much as you are supposed to - FREDer's priviledge :D
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There are some great tips here regarding mission design, but I am never going to FRED a mission. :) I am interested in hearing more strategies for maintaining situational awareness while playing.
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I'd guess that was Iain was also asking for, but it's something I can't help with. :(
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Assign controls to POV control and look around while flying. I still use keyboard default controls so all I need to do is hold keypad insert.
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(https://media.moddb.com/images/members/5/4078/4077319/screen0040.png)
Target groups are your friend - you can assign them yourself under F4 (?).
And yes, going into thrid person mode sometimes helps a lot - esspecially when bombing capital ships.
Additionally, on a more personal note: Hack the tables to give you a HUD that does not scale with the resolution, like in the screenshot above. I find it helps clearning away information you may not need in every situation.
(It's of course not the best move in terms of accessibility -- but that's why it is a personal preference thing.)
re: Devs vs Players:
Well, most FREDers instincly weave their strategies into their mission design after a while, e.g. in Hellgate: Ikeya (https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=95764.0) and Light of Antares (https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=95651.0) I made my target group assignments standard.
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Target groups are your friend - you can assign them yourself under F4 (?).
BTW there's some new add-remove-hotkey SEXP in town to aid you