[Shade]

Couple of playthroughs and my impression is... Ick. No briefing or event music. Missed a secondary goal I had planned. Everything has player orders enabled. The hostile fighters at the end don't launch from the fighterbay as I wanted them to. Briefing icons are mislabeled. There's no recommendation text nor stages for alternate outcomes in the debriefing. Non-existant mission chatter. But the background looks nice

And that's just the most obvious stuff.

[Black Wolf]

You gave yourself the luxury of 30 minutes? I once wrote 4 dogfight missions in that time

Seriously though if we're talking about missions with proper events and all this becomes a fairly nice challenge actually. Had you actually planned the mission at all in any way (like an inkling of a plotline) or did you go into it completely cold?

Almost completely cold. I got the idea when I was making a really quick mission with one of TIs shivan capships just because I wanted to fly against it, so I guess the germ of type of mission I was going to make (Help bombers take out a Shivan capship) was already in my mind, but beyond that, nothing.
If you have a look at the mission you can see how bland and generic it is - just an excuse to have a capital ship assault, and a Lillith that turns up (or at least, was supposed to turn up ) for no logically justifiable reason.

Shade: It is a lot shorter than it sounds isn't it Scramble was a good idea - I probably wasted a good two minutes unchecking ships and weapons I didn't want available (Doesn't sound like much, but that's six and a half percent of total mission development time basically wasted )

To anyone else doing this, I'd add my own tips to Shade's:
Do your ships first, then do the rest of it according to a priority list (Maybe briefing, then your debrief, then your mission goals, then in mission objectives, then use whatever time you have left to do the fluff (import BG, mission chatter, assigning wingmen, music, a title etc. etc.)

Set a timer with multiple indicators, say one every ten minutes, so you know when you're running short. I looked at the clock at 20 minutes and realized I had tonnes still to do, which is probably why I had so many bugs.



Anyway, here's my mission with (most) of the bugs repaired, but no additional content.

http://rapidshare.de/files/22387974/30Min_Repaired.fs2.html

If I was making this as a serious mission I'd like to add a few things, like praise if you're clever and manage to disable the moloch, and a few more shivan fighters so there's a more credible threat to the Britannia prior to the arrival of the Tyrant. But I'm not, so I wont

[Shade]

And here's a fixed up version of mine: http://rapidshare.de/files/22405223/Hammer_fixed.zip.html

Not perfect, but it shows how much just an extra half hour of work can do when you know what needs fixing the most

[CP5670]

Very impressive. I can't even imagine how it's possible to make a mission in 30 minutes though. It usually takes me around eight hours (spread out over a week or so) to plan out and make one from scratch, and then 4 to 6 more hours of playtesting to completely work out all the bugs and balancing issues.

Those actually don't look too bad considering how fast they were made. Much better than what I could do with that sort of time limit (I doubt I would have anything more than the ships placed by that point, forget about any events ).

[karajorma]

I used to be very fast at FREDding when I first started but I've slowed down as I got better (ironic huh? You're supposed to get quicker at doing the same task once you get better).

I'd be interested in seeing how much I could achieve in 30 minutes. I'll have to try this at some point. It does look like fun

[Shade]

It was pretty fun actually to have a serious go at FRED again. Inspiring, even. It'd been a long time since I'd done anything with it besides experimenting with new SEXPs/features or solving other people's problems, and making a full mission that's actually playable (if only just barely, for non-repaired one ) does give a nice sense of satisfaction. I feel like doing a mini-campaign now... maybe even using a rebuilt and improved version of the 30min disaster as one of the missions

[Setekh]

I used to be very fast at FREDding when I first started but I've slowed down as I got better (ironic huh? You're supposed to get quicker at doing the same task once you get better).

Oh I don't know, back in the rendering days, my earlier works all came out in less than an hour because I simply ran out of things to improve after working at an image for that long. Eventually my repertoire grew, my standards heightened, and I stopped whenever I saw fit (which, inevitably, was far later than when I had less skill). I guess it works both ways.

[Shade]

I'd agree with that. It's simply a matter of becoming more of a perfectionist as you get better. At first you just throw some ships and events in there and think "Hey, this is a pretty cool mission", and then proceed to play it and enjoy the explosions. Later you tend to think "Decent... but I think this briefing icon is off by a few millimeters, I could use some more wingman chat during the lulls, and maybe a few bonus goals for dedicated players to chase. Oh, and the background needs to be completely redone to suit the mood of the campaign".

Takes forever to finish once you start nitpicking your own missions.

[CP5670]

I know that feeling very well. I think I have always been a slowpoke to some degree, ever since I started making FS1 missions eight years ago, but now it's quite a rare day when I can call a mission totally completed.

[Polpolion]

You guys do know that if it's a nebulea or subspace mission you don't need to bother with all that background crap?

[NGTM-1R]

Yeah, but we like our scenery to change every once in awhile. Can't build a whole campaign in subspace. (Though you could in a nebula...)

[Polpolion]

My ego forced me to try, and I failed.

The mission so far isn't actually isn't that bad (after an hour), but the brifeing took about 10 minuites. After the 10 minuites of what I was trying to think of what to do it about.

[Shade]

Import background means you don't need to bother with it regardless, as long as you already have a background for the system the mission is set in.