[nubbles526]

What is the most difficult part of making a campaign? For me, it is actualy the will to do it. I already have my written pieces of work ready to be converted to an actual missions, I always finish making my first mission. However, I have just lost the will on the second mission. So I have loads of unfinished campaigns in my Campaign folder.

[Dark Hunter]

I'll second that. I've gotten quite a bit farther than just the first mission in my own campaign, but lately I've been caught up in real life events and haven't found the motivation to continue...

Still, I refuse to give up. I really like my campaign idea, and besides, people at the Inferno forum are expecting it. Can't let thm down, can I?

[Colonol Dekker]

Most difficult part? 

Taking the time out of RL to sit down and put it together, combined with playtest/balancing.


Plot should be a doddle if you have the "FREESPACE PASSION"

[Dysko]

The most difficult part is convincing all team members to use standardized tables (right Mobius? )

[BlueFlames]

I always have the hardest time with the missions that are near-perfect, but are in continual need of debugging or balance tweaking.  Rooting out all of the bugs involves playing the mission until I'm utterly sick of it, and then I've got to look at it in FRED, while I'm already irritated with it, and finally, I've got to retest it to make sure I've actually fixed what I was trying to fix.  Oh, lordy, and that's just in the alpha stages, before I even have the luxury of having positively awful beta testers, who either disappear midway through the testing process or think that "beta" means "early release."  Yeah, so "tough bugs" and "idiots" about sums up my main troubles with campaign design.

[CP5670]

That summed up my thoughts perfectly, although I don't rely on other testers at all.

[MP-Ryan]

I always have the hardest time with the missions that are near-perfect, but are in continual need of debugging or balance tweaking.  Rooting out all of the bugs involves playing the mission until I'm utterly sick of it, and then I've got to look at it in FRED, while I'm already irritated with it, and finally, I've got to retest it to make sure I've actually fixed what I was trying to fix.

It's even worse when you're fixing someone else's original work.  If I see the characters E, 3, M, and 7 combined ever again it will be too soon.

[karajorma]

Persuading myself not to further complicate the missions.

Halting feature creep.

[haloboy100]

definitely the motivation...i have this big campaign i really think would be awesome, but i'm too damned lazy to start it 

any of the masters have ideas for motivating yourself? don't try to hard to persuade me, your might break a neck 

and blue flames, I'll make a kick ass beta tester! I'm usually too bored to even make my own missions, but i think it's pretty fun testing out other people's masterpieces (or soon-to-be masterpieces ).

of course I'm an amateur, i guess..there are better people here then me!

[Alikchi]

Honestly, I enjoy brainstorming and writing ideas a lot more than the actual work. So I think I'm going to hold off on a campaign until I have such a  good idea that work will be exciting and fun.

[haloboy100]

ditto

[asyikarea51]

Ditto.

I have a story that's two years overdue. Blame the flamers expecting fantastical English that is perfectly correct and loaded with BEEEEEG words that will make EHVREEEEEEEEEEY CHAPTER veeeerrrreeeee EEEEEEEENTEHRESTEEEEEENG...

Man, I have the wrong mindset, for one...

[BlueFlames]

Honestly, I enjoy brainstorming and writing ideas a lot more than the actual work.

That's an easy mindset to fall into, but once you have buckled down and done the work, the final campaign can be a source of great fun and pride.  The real trick is picking which ideas are better to leave to fiction and which are well-suited to turning into a campaign.  If you can get a complete story arc into a reasonable number of missions without throwing an excessive amount of modding on your shoulders, that's something to consider giving the FRED treatment.  If it's something to rival the scope of the FS2 campaign in length and new content, then that's probably better left in your word processor.

Blame the flamers expecting fantastical English that is perfectly correct...

You're bringing up two issues here.  On the one hand, your point about vocabulary is somewhat valid.  I somehow doubt your average pilot in the FS2 universe is going to have a vocabulary of the same depth and breadth as you're going to see in a high-quality essay or research paper.  On the other hand, improper grammar can turn a fun campaign into a headache-generating experience.  Last month, I downloaded a couple of campaigns, and couldn't finish either of them because the authors utterly butchered the language.  (One of them even credited someone as an English editor, and that guy should be ashamed of the mass of crap he let slip through.)  A rare slip can be expected, given the sheer amount of text in any given campaign, but you're working with no set schedule, possibly with other people to assist, so there's really no excuse for averaging dozens upon dozens of mistakes per mission.

I could go on and on about this, as my biggest pet peeve is watching people massacre a language, but I get this funny, funny feeling I've overstayed my welcome in this thread now.

[Alikchi]

That's an easy mindset to fall into, but once you have buckled down and done the work, the final campaign can be a source of great fun and pride.  The real trick is picking which ideas are better to leave to fiction and which are well-suited to turning into a campaign.  If you can get a complete story arc into a reasonable number of missions without throwing an excessive amount of modding on your shoulders, that's something to consider giving the FRED treatment.  If it's something to rival the scope of the FS2 campaign in length and new content, then that's probably better left in your word processor.

I agree totally, and don't get me wrong, I love working on campaigns. My previous effort fell apart because I really wanted to start FREDing before I had a clear idea of how things were going to come together. Right now, I just don't want to start off half-cocked.. so I'm better suited to FRED for others until I have something really nailed down.

Actually, right now I'm really having fun writing fluff pieces and fictional histories. Like the GTD/NTD Cyrene history I've been working on, and the history of Deneb I just started.. it certainly takes less effort.

Blame the flamers expecting fantastical English that is perfectly correct...

You're bringing up two issues here. 

Along with the issue of calling people who like good grammar 'flamers'. 

[nubbles526]

The most difficult part is convincing all team members to use standardized tables (right Mobius? )

Well I guess salaries would a good motivator
Joking by the way...

I would do almost anything for money.

[asyikarea51]

I don't mind writing fluff and fiction... heck, each time I try to write a tech description for a single ship or weapon, I end up writing three to four long paragraphs about it. First set of paragraphs, history. Next set, the ship's/weapon's capabilities. I just can't control myself! It's a techroom, so it's gotta have detailed info, right? And I also believe in good grammar, but I really hate it when things get anal.

Still, neoterran, if I offended you I'll apologise right away.

Though sometimes I feel that I'm long-winded. Who knows, maybe I became like this because of what happened two years ago when I got flamed, and totally gave up writing that story. Even then, I still daydream and brainstorm ideas for it. I term it, "The story that I never wrote".

Tribute to the heavens for the power of the human brain.