[Black Wolf]

Comments on events would be really useful.

[Bobboau]

yeah, you don't need to pay for an editor for wx, in fact you really don't even need a GUI, doing it be hand really isn't so bad.

[karajorma]

I've tried FREDding some ideas once or twice, but the learning curve is far too steep to make it an easy 'sit down and see what happens' interest.

Sorry but I do find it quite funny when people claim FRED has a steep learning curve given that it's probably one of the easiest pieces of mission design software to use.

I don't think the system could be made that much easier to learn to be honest. More friendly or more powerful, definitely. Easier, I really do doubt it. In fact most of the suggestions I've seen might make it harder to learn because they risk information overload for new users.

[Goober5000]

Precisely.  In fact, when I started to use FRED, I found it so intuitive that I just started making missions.  And that was on FRED1, where I didn't have the benefit of the FRED2 tutorial.

[Tomo]

Sorry I couldn't make it - work popped up.
(24x7 support isn't always so great when you're the one doing the support.)

Precisely.  In fact, when I started to use FRED, I found it so intuitive that I just started making missions.  And that was on FRED1, where I didn't have the benefit of the FRED2 tutorial.

It's one of the better mission editors originally written around those times, but compared to many of the editors I use at work, FRED is awful.
(Ok, it beats the one originally written in 1990 with all the 'secret' functions on CTRL and F keys, but that's finally deprecated now)

FRED is actually now *incredibly* obtuse to a new user:

• How do you choose a Mod?
• Which Mod am I using?
• When does what I'm doing get stored?
• How do I move the camera?

There's very little that's 'obvious' to someone who's never used the editor before.

Anyway - the 'Must Have' features aren't possible on the current FRED architecture, so the discussion now turns to a new architecture, and in my opinion, a new UI.

I would definitely agree with a combined Launcher/Installer-Updater, as that immediately minimises support.
However, I would suggest that it *doesn't* expect to deal with all TCs, but instead the same executable should be 'skinnable' to meet the needs of each TC.
- So a TC distributes the same Launcher app, but with a different skin and config file suited to their particular needs.

[Bobboau]

I think it would be cool if the launcher had package manager like functionality, with an updated online repository of mods, it would allow you to install/uninstall mods from the repository as well as select them, the SCP would have a repo of mods that we support, if a mod wants to do things there own way they can have their own repo and have people add it to their sources.

[chief1983]

The Campaign editor could use a little work.  The rest of FRED isn't too bad though.  Some things could be expanded on, maybe some more use of tooltips or something.  Some easier ways to position cameras, etc.  But it's not a bad layout overall.

[karajorma]

FRED is actually now *incredibly* obtuse to a new user:

• How do you choose a Mod?
• Which Mod am I using?
• When does what I'm doing get stored?
• How do I move the camera?

There's very little that's 'obvious' to someone who's never used the editor before.

Anyway - the 'Must Have' features aren't possible on the current FRED architecture, so the discussion now turns to a new architecture, and in my opinion, a new UI.

While I agree that all of those are nice, I don't think they're significantly going to change the learning curve to be honest. If you want to learn to FRED you're going to need to learn to use SEXPs in order to get anywhere. And doing the walkthrough is about the only way you can teach that.

Sure we can make it easier to play but I consider FRED to be closer to an IDE than a word processor and no one would sit down in front of MSVC and expect to learn C++ by simply playing with the settings.

What we could do is simply have FRED pop up a dialog the first time it runs which gives a "Welcome to FRED newbie. Want to do the walkthrough cause you really should?" message.

I would definitely agree with a combined Launcher/Installer-Updater, as that immediately minimises support.
However, I would suggest that it *doesn't* expect to deal with all TCs, but instead the same executable should be 'skinnable' to meet the needs of each TC.
- So a TC distributes the same Launcher app, but with a different skin and config file suited to their particular needs.

You should probably post that on the launcher thread I posted. The way I envisioned it actually allows something along those lines anyway, I just haven't designed the run game page yet. The idea is that the run game page would take its skin settings and configuration from the currently selected game.

[Tomo]

While I agree that all of those are nice, I don't think they're significantly going to change the learning curve to be honest. If you want to learn to FRED you're going to need to learn to use SEXPs in order to get anywhere. And doing the walkthrough is about the only way you can teach that.

Sure we can make it easier to play but I consider FRED to be closer to an IDE than a word processor and no one would sit down in front of MSVC and expect to learn C++ by simply playing with the settings.

Of course you're going to need to learn SEXPs, but when you first open the software it's not at all obvious where to look to find the 'how to make it work'.
To use the C++ IDE concepts, the Events Editor is essentially the Code windows, while the 3D view, ship/wing and briefing editors are really GUI designers.
The Campaign is the 'project', while a Mod is a 'project group'.

(I know this is all stretched massively out of shape, but hopefully you can see what I mean!)

What we could do is simply have FRED pop up a dialog the first time it runs which gives a "Welcome to FRED newbie. Want to do the walkthrough cause you really should?" message.

'Tis a thought, to be true.
To be honest I'd rather have it as an item under the Help menu - "Help" >"Tutorial"

After someone's played for a bit, they'll usually look under Help. And if they don't, well...

[Mongoose]

To be honest I'd rather have it as an item under the Help menu - "Help" >"Tutorial"

After someone's played for a bit, they'll usually look under Help. And if they don't, well...

There is a "FRED Help" option under the Help menu that opens the FRED help pages, including the tutorial, in a separate browser window.  It might be nice to have a specific link to the tutorial, though.

[karajorma]

I agree with making the links in FRED's help menu more obvious. I still think a popup on first execution linking to it is a good idea though.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

I agree with making the links in FRED's help menu more obvious. I still think a popup on first execution linking to it is a good idea though.

Please if you do this make it so it only happens the first time and not the first time you run a new version of FRED.  That defaulting back to my documents for missions is bad enough.

While I'm thinking of it there are a few other FRED options I would like to see.  Default to the selected mod or TC data\missions directory and a way to save the mission list sort.  Seems like it always defaults back to whatever the sort of the directory was the first time it was run.  So if you had the directory sorted by date you have to select detail listing and sort by name constantly to find things.

Oh and I never did the walk through.  I learned the good old fashioned way.  Opened up a buggy mission and went to work on trying to fix it using other missions as reference.   

[chief1983]

Reverse engineering.  Still easier than trying to start from a blank slate