[Kestrellius]

I've just completed main FREDding for the first segment of Mantle. Thirteen missions in all, although some are quite short. Now I just have to go back and polish up some of the missions, tie up loose ends like fail states, do a few balance tweaks, and then write all the dialogue and objectives and briefings and such.

I'm planning to release the thirteen-mission segment as a WIP by Wednesday the 30th.

[Nyctaeus]

Any plot details or any other info? I found no annoucement, development thread or whatever...

[Kestrellius]

No, I haven't done anything that official. I figure it's best to not announce myself too much until there's something to announce. But as for a summary --

It's set shortly before/during the events of FS2, and it's about a Typhon-class destroyer belonging to a neo-Hammer of Light cult. The destroyer and its battlegroup get lost in Shivan space, and are forced to try to fight their way to safety while struggling with their beliefs.

[Kestrellius]

So, yeah. This is going to take longer than I thought. Turns out that writing messages and briefings for fourteen rather dialogue-heavy missions is a somewhat time-consuming process. Who knew, right?

Still, though, it should be done fairly soon. Within the next week or two, hopefully.

[Trivial Psychic]

I always add the messages as I'm creating the missions, because the amount of time it takes for the messages to play (especially if you expect TTS to be used) can effect how long you need certain objectives to take place.  If enemy Ship A arrives but you've got 4 messages of dialogue to play before a your team takes its action against it, you don't want Ship A to arrive too close so they don't start to engage friendly cap-ships that might result in one of the two ships getting more damage sustained before your team takes its action.  The early damage sustained can affect how long you have to achieve your Protect-your-cap-ship or Destroy-enemy-cap-ship mission objectives.

[Kestrellius]

I just modify the timing if I need to. This is why it's a good idea to compartmentalize things -- have an event take place a certain number of seconds after the immediately previous one, so you only have to change one thing and the other events will follow suit.

[Trivial Psychic]

Still, I find that doing the messages as I create the mission improves both helps maintain balance and can sometimes even lead to inspiration and taking in the mission in directions I hadn't planned on.

[Kestrellius]

It is probably a better idea to do it that way. I'd been treating the mission-design part of the process and the story-writing part of the process as distinct things, partially because there were a bunch of story details I hadn't worked out when I was FREDding (mostly names) and partially because it's a very dialogue-heavy campaign (lots of character stuff). I FREDded all the missions first, putting in either no messages at all or just the most gameplay-related ones, and have now started the dialogue pass.

[Novachen]

Interesting to see how things can be handled differently.

I always had only a general idea of the mission in my mind. Then i always write the text stuff first... the (command)-briefing is actually the first thing that is done in a mission .
And then i am writing a bunch of messages... and only then i create the events and the needed ships around them .

[Kestrellius]

I'm a writer by nature, so I figured I'd do the hard stuff first.

The dialogue has proven to be a bigger pain than I anticipated.