[Megadoomer]

Two things, firstly I am correct in thinking that as Babylon 5 ships don't use shields, that they aren't implemented for the ships in TBP?

On that basis I've set the ships in my missions to not have shields, which also has the advantage of the player only having weaponry and engines in the power exchange bars (which saves them having to transfer energy out of the shields they don't have at the start of the mission),  but I haven't seen it done in many (or possibly any) of the released  missions. So is it something people feel is worth doing when producing missions for TBP?

Secondly I was wondering what people feel is the maximum amount of wait time a mission should include before something happens. I've gone up to five minutes before, but in movements in the mist for example the raider ships don't appear till about 8 minutes in. I was wondering what  guidelines people use when designing their missions for how long a mission should take/how quickly the action should start?

[Fabbro]

First of all I think the shields protect your ship from impacts, or something like that. Secondly its all very well having an 8 minuit wait with a bit of radio chatter the first time you play a mission, but if you have to play it 2 or 3 times before completing it it can get a bit annoying.

[Slasher]

1.)  Shields are there to absorb damage from explosions.  This way the player doesn't take an undue amount of damage everytime s/he blows up a fighter.  They do nothing to protect against weapons I guess.  Shields in TBP are simply provided to compensate for how FS2 handles shockwave/explosion damage and do not represent some sort of new technology everybody in the B5 universe developed at once.

2.)  People's attention spans vary.  It might also depend on how you define "wait time."  Can there be absolutely nothing going on during this period except chatter?

[Prophet]

Originally posted by Megadoomer
Secondly I was wondering what people feel is the maximum amount of wait time a mission should include before something happens. I've gone up to five minutes before, but in movements in the mist for example the raider ships don't appear till about 8 minutes in. I was wondering what  guidelines people use when designing their missions for how long a mission should take/how quickly the action should start?

Yes I know there is lots of nothing to do in the beginning... But thats how it sometimes has to be. Ofcourse the raiders could have attacked right at the start, but would that have been smart? From the raiders point of view I mean. There was a heavy cruiser next to the station afterall. So the raiders waited patiently for the freighters to come to their trap.
Sure I could have changed the mission so that the player actually starts with the freighters about 7 klicks from the station, but I felt that it was little 'artificial'.
Just use the time compression. You can fit the 7 minutes in to 30 seconds if you dont like reading the chatter.

I hope the rest of the mission was worth the wait?

[Trivial Psychic]

The only ships that could eventually be in TBP that would have shields, would be the 3rdSpace aliens.

[Megadoomer]

Thanks for the clarification on shields, I'll be putting them back then.

With regards to the wait time, I was asking more out of curiosity. I have about a 3 or 4 minute delay on a hyperspace mission, becuase your being attacked in transit (not being scrambled in response).

I suppose the only issue I have with the opening mission of movements is the two minutes of radio silence before the attack. I was asking more out of curiosity as I've been experimenting with mission timing, trying to get a balance between setting a realistic/tense atmosphere and having the player idle for too long, and was wondering what other people felt was a good compromise.

I was only using the first movements in the mist as an example, as it's the first mission I've encountered with a long wait time.

[Prophet]

I don't think it's easy to find acceptable comprimse.
When I am FREDing, I often look things from a "realistic" point of view. What you often see is that when the player comes to the area stuff begin to happen. It's like ther world is centered on the player.

I remember the first time I was playing Warhead. There was this mission near the beginning where you would be sent on patrol and absolutley nothing happened! I remember just staring the debriefing feeling sincere admiration.
Next time I played that mission the thrill was naturally gone.

That is a real problem. And that is why I usually favor the more "actionsmacktion" based filosophy over my "realistic" one.
That is why in MitM_02 you dont have to spend 20 minutes sitting in the asteroid field waiting for the shuttles.

But as Megadoomer mentioned, fortunatley there aren't many missions out there where you have to wait that long.
At least until MitM chapter 2 comes out :devil:

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Prophet
I remember the first time I was playing Warhead. There was this mission near the beginning where you would be sent on patrol and absolutley nothing happened! I remember just staring the debriefing feeling sincere admiration.
Next time I played that mission the thrill was naturally gone.

What's this? Four years and I hear nothing and then in less than a month both you and IP Andrews come out of the closet about being Warhead fans!


I do agree that I often wished I could skip the first few missions in that game. But in Freespace you aren't quite so limited. Here's what I'm doing in SoR. Feel free to do the same.


Create a player persistent variable and set the default value to 0. Instead of using when>>true to start the chatter etc you use when the variable =0.
 At the end of the chatter set the variable to 1.  
 Start the mission proper when variable=1.

Now when you play the mission you'll get the chatter the first time round and from then on it will go straight into the mission. It's a little harder to do if you're doing things like escort missions and have to have capships jumping in or using certain paths but it can be done and it subtracts from the faustration of having to listen to the dialogue yet again if you get killed.

[Prophet]

Originally posted by karajorma
What's this? Four years and I hear nothing and then in less than a month both you and IP Andrews come out of the closet about being Warhead fans!

Wanna hear something scarier? I hated Elite! Warhead would be sitting next to my Amiga 500 ready to be played at a moments notice. But Elite would be hidden away only to be uncovered when I was really bored.

Originally posted by karajorma
Now when you play the mission you'll get the chatter the first time round and from then on it will go straight into the mission. It's a little harder to do if you're doing things like escort missions and have to have capships jumping in or using certain paths but it can be done and it subtracts from the faustration of having to listen to the dialogue yet again if you get killed.

Okay... What if you wish to see the chatter again?

[karajorma]

Play the mission in the tech room and it comes back. Play the campaign a second time and it comes back.

Or you can kick up the number a little and make it so that the chatter happens 2,3 or 4 times before vanishing. If you really want to be clever you could even make that a variable set in a little options mission at the start of the campaign or get the SCP to give you a campaigns option screen where you can set the value for certain campaign specific options

[Prophet]

Or I could just save time and let the player himself decide what he wants to see, and let the all-powerful time compression handle the rest.

Originally posted by karajorma
get the SCP to give you a campaigns option screen where you can set the value for certain campaign specific options

Or have them make me a editor wich would create me a whole campaign according to my desires. I could release a 30 mission campaign every day! Very soon I would overcome you, take over the academy, and turn it in to a botanical garden!!!
You are all doomed now!!!

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Prophet
Or I could just save time and let the player himself decide what he wants to see, and let the all-powerful time compression handle the rest.

F**ks up royally with speech synth though. You'll still be getting inane chatter 5 minutes into the action
 Not to mention that I don't think it works that well in cutscenes.

The kind of options screen I was on about probably wouldn't be that hard to do, Certainly not as hard as you're making out. All it does is reset a few persistant variables.

[IPAndrews]

I often wondered if this could be fixed by guarding every send-message with a condition that checks to ensure that the message is still appropriate? So for example, don't send out message setting up a battle between two forces if hostilities have already broken out. I think i tried doing this in a few of the Raider Wars missions but I'm genuinely not sure if it worked.

As for the original question of wait time? I think one minute is long enough to wait for a mission setup. Two minutes probably tops. At this point someone is going to come back and tell me that one of my RW missions took FIVE minutes to set up or something crazy . The worst thing probably has to be dead air. When the game is just sat there and nobody is saying anything.

On the other hand the idea of a mission where nothing happens is genius and I wish I'd used it myself

[Prophet]

Originally posted by IPAndrews
I often wondered if this could be fixed by guarding every send-message with a condition that checks to ensure that the message is still appropriate? So for example, don't send out message setting up a battle between two forces if hostilities have already broken out. I think i tried doing this in a few of the Raider Wars missions but I'm genuinely not sure if it worked.

I have often been thinking that there should be somekind of SEXP that would make sexpression obsolete, or disables event. I dont think there is such thing currently...
Like so:

event
-is-destroyed-delay
--jamming cruiser
--1
-event-obsolete/event-disable/something like that
--B5 selfdestruct sequence

[karajorma]

I'm not sure what you want Prophet. If you want to make an event obsolete why can't you just test for the condition that makes the event obsolete?

If you really do want to do things that way you can just use a variable as a flag telling the event whether or not it should trigger.

Seems to me that doing things that way makes it twice as hard to debug for very little reward unless you have a hell of a lot of conditions that could prevent this event from triggering though.

[Prophet]

I don't really see the point in my post either.
I really don't remember what I was thinking yesterday. I'll be sure to tell you if I do.