Daya Montress

@Egos_Shadow: That's a good observation.

I'm thinking about the placement of map objects like contacts and exploration markers in contrast to some bosses. The first two objects are probably loaded in the default map page file just like any building or lamppost.

How is it that a boss like FrostFire can always be expected to appear in the same location?
--I use FF here because that mish is referenced in the MA resources;

For that matter, when you return to a map after exiting (e.g. reentering from a trip to the hospital), a memory cache must place the boss in the same location - otherwise, you'd have to repeat the search for the boss again.

Could a coordinate system work on this caching principle and place a boss in a specific location without modifying the underlying default map page?

Dunno... eating lunch here.

Has using map coordinates for specific placement of objects been considered for Mission Architect?

Effectively, these values would be expressed rather than a randomized set for map objects. Authors would be instructed to first explore a map during Build to find the desired location using the /loc slash command. Obstructions would result in a raised error or be compensated for by a bump factor.

I’m developing a mission that features rescue goals. In this mission, I run a high probability for nearness in NPC placement despite FRONT, MIDDLE, and BACK reference locations. Reading this thread, I see that this is a common occurrence and I'll follow up on the recommendations. However, using coordinate positioning, I could hardcode at least one of the NPCs to always appear in a precise location given the other’s higher spawn area probability.

Nevertheless, if it's an undesired predicament for a majority of customers, then it's time to modify.

This feature would exploit three-dimensional power. If I want a boss to always appear at a precise location at a specific time, -say on a catwalk in an industrial sector setting up a climatic fight scene, then a pertaining section of the GUI would have fields for entering values for the three axes. Extending this, I could station a lieutenant under the scaffolding to greet the player first. The boss could even be triggered to appear in the desired elevated location (not to exclude flying/hovering) to enhance the gameplay.

Since this isn't an available feature, the author is left to contrive a solution that best meets this effect. In short, the author, or artist, or customer must shorten his vision to meet design parameters.

The painter is limited by the proportions of the canvas and also to the color green.

By enabling exact placement by map coordinates, a more robust field of design is created. Authors would scale missions more to their preferences and in-story environments would have higher accuracy and precision levels, thus benefiting overall successful gameplay.

Thanks for the guide. It has helped in my determinations of which build to pursue.

Cutting and pasting sections of text across applications will cause character entities like the non-breaking space and non-printable characters (ASCII 0-31) to appear in your code. The best way to avoid this is to script the text or code directly into the source file -whether it be thru MA or in the underlying .txt file. (Notepad is good about stripping these characters out, but strange things can still occur). Watch out for pasting text blocks directly from MS Word -or especially, MS Excel, into MA or into HTML editors. If you use an IDE designer, use the split view to check the HTML code being generated. It may seem tedious to retype lengthy descriptions, but doing so allows proofing of the text and removes the need to run the additional Find and Replace on the source code.
I'm new to MA and haven't looked carefully at what's generated. Has anyone attempted span or div tags to format their text? If the text falls within a JavaScript function, special characters like double quotes might be allowed if preceded with a backslash -like \"Hello World.\"