[WMCoolmon]

I can't guarantee that anything will get implemented as a result of this, but I thought it would be enlightening to ask:

What are the biggest storytelling limitations of the engine right now?

[NGTM-1R]

I don't think the fiction viewer is something you can flag in FRED, still, or that there's been any real documentation of how to use the feature. (But it IS in last I checked.)

FSO rebels at some attempts to format CBs a certain way. I'm pretty sure Retail does it too. (Like actual message traffic, for example. I've brought this up before but haven't heard anything on the subject.)

The area at the top of the screen for messages can probably stand adding another line with higher resolutions in use these days.

I can think of a variety of issues that are probably more related to the interface art too.

Post subject to revision should anything else occur to me.

[Ransom]

Not an awful lot at this point, WMC. Most of it's minor stuff that can either be worked around or is more presentation-related.

It'd be pretty handy if the engine could play more than one play-sound-from-file at once. I assume there's a reason for that limitation, though.

You can't play regular messages while using cutscene bars, because the bars obscure that part of the HUD. This one's a bother, because it's only the top half I'd want below the HUD - if the bottom half was also beneath it it'd make cutscene transitions look dodgy.

Show-subtitle isn't as useful for storytelling as it could be at the moment because of the fact that, unless it's horizontally and vertically centred, it won't compensate for different resolutions. I think it'd be a far more useful feature if its positioning was based on percentage or something rather than number of pixels.

Like I said in another thread, you can't do subspace transitions yet. Neither can you have storms in subspace. I know that second one's been brought up a fair few times, so I don't have high hopes for its feasibility.

I'd like to see a 'countdown-start' SEXP that functions like supernova-start, but also allows you to set the text to display beside the countdown and doesn't do any of the supernova things like enlarging the sun and killing the player when it reaches 0. Plus another SEXP that can stop the countdown. And a Status SEXP that returns the state of the current countdown! And a pony!

That's all I can think of at the moment.

[eliex]

Well, Freespace is rather good at telling stories - the pilot is the main character.
What I found always annoying about FREDding campaigns is that it is very difficult to get the campaign to go in any direction apart from kill, kill KILL!!.

Like, a scene in my campaign had the main character passing off as as a commoner away from the evil nobles, but the FSO just made it too unconvincing.

Oh, well FS is based around killing.
 

[Akalabeth Angel]

Like I said in another thread, you can't do subspace transitions yet. Neither can you have storms in subspace. I know that second one's been brought up a fair few times, so I don't have high hopes for its feasibility.

     Storms in subspace?   


     What about being able to fade ships in? Right now it seems to be either, subspace jump in, or pop in. It might be cool if you could like, basically have a ship obscured like, some sort of filter on the textures? Like lets say there's a ship in distance, but its unknown design, and it's just some dark object but as the player gets closer it becomes brighter??  I mean that's one thing that always bugged me. You can't reveal anything to the player slowly. If the player's fighting some fighters in an asteroid field, he can see them from 8 clicks away. There's four little dots, four little Anubis!

     But I have no idea how difficult or hard that is to do.


     Another super difficult one. Transition from Nebula to open space? Or . . . like from a dust field to open space? Or even dust clouds in general??? Some non-nebula terrain like . . .I don't know, the trailing stuff behind a comet for example. . . or some other non-nebula phenomenon.

[TrashMan]

support for more Persona ani's in FRED.
So they are automaticely detected if they are named properly and showed in the list. So far anything numbered head-cm7a.ani and higher doesn't show up

And I have to agree with normal messages being visible in the cutscene view..at least as an option. Having the persona ani show up in the black upper line with the text would look sweet.

[Vidmaster]

nothing interactive possible outside of missions.

Thinking of the good-old WingCommander Play along with him    -     Sounds good to me choice during cutscenes 

[NGTM-1R]

Some non-nebula terrain like . . .I don't know, the trailing stuff behind a comet for example. . . or some other non-nebula phenomenon.

This is entirely possible with the current nebula system, you merely have to be clever.

Seconded on subspace transition or nebula to open space transition stuff.

[Solatar]

I always feel like a bystander while my wingmen chat it up. It should be noted it's possible to give the player a "face" (Blue Planet and Shrouding the Light come to mind) but it's hard to put the player into the conversation without putting words in his mouth.

I can't actually think of how this would be rectified, but there you go...

Not necessarily a story thing, but I'd like to have more control over my wingmen. I'd like to be able to give them two kinds of "protect my target" active and passive. Active means they'll pursue ships, passive they'll only attack them when they get close. That way I don't have all my fighters 3 klicks away when the next bomber wing warps in.

And stay near ship/keep away from ship. I should probably post this in the AI thread instead, but story + keeping wingmen alive and useful goes together in my book. Especially in campaigns where the amount of friendly forces is limited, and you know they can't be losing fighters left and right like they do.

[Ransom]

I always feel like a bystander while my wingmen chat it up. It should be noted it's possible to give the player a "face" (Blue Planet and Shrouding the Light come to mind) but it's hard to put the player into the conversation without putting words in his mouth.

It's perfectly possible at the moment to create an RPG-like dialogue tree system. I don't think any code changes are necessary here.

Although I'd like to point out that in most cases it's not really that the player is having words put in his mouth, but that he's simply playing the part of a character. I don't think dialogue options would be appropriate in most of the campaigns that have speaking player-characters so far.