Siergen

If you're familiar with US broadcast television, then aiming for prime time TV sitcom levels is probably your best bet. Don't forget that you can leave a lot the player's imagination without explicitly describing or showing it. A little innuendo can go a long way.

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That's what I was thinking for a quick fix, just add the boss objective and have her call the dialogue from that same room--just have the minions casting the spell say something brainless, the captive and the boss say their own story-advancing pieces.

Then my only issue would be proximity, which I can't fix.

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Not necessarily. Some maps have "back" defined as a single small room, so both spawns would be overlapping each other. One of the Longbow maps I use is like that - two spawn points right next to each other in the "back" in a very small room.

The third mission of my villain arc "MAGI Vault Heist" starts out with nothing but allied Mook patrols, then the police bust in after you complete a mission objective.

I haven't checked since Beta, but there were at least a few maps where the allowed number of patrol spawns plus objectives took up every spawn point, so you could get a map with no enemies, ever.

Click on mission 2 in the editor and drag it to the left in front of mission 1. After you are done testing, drag back to its normal position.

I've been doing well with my VEAT Bane Spider. That gives me stealth and both ranged & melee damage output, as well as decent defenses.

Yeah, I do that all the time. Makes it very easy to find maps where front, middle, back don't always work as expected.

Unfortunately, every medium tech map I've tested does not consistently spawn "middle" in the middle. Without stealth, it would have taken much longer to test each map multiple times.

I had patrols with custom groups in Beta with no issues, but the story sucked so i didn't port it live. To test it, try making a test-only one mission arc with nothing but patrols of your custom group. If they show up there, then there's probably something wrong with how you configured the custom patrol in your "real" story arc.

One bug that I can't squash in my mission with medium length Tech Maps: I have the escort NPC location set to "middle", but every tech map I've tested sometimes puts the NPC in the very front, before spawns set to "front". It's not consistent, so I can't just swap the spawn location in the mission settings. If anyone knows of a tech map that [u]always[u] spawns NPCs and items correctly for front, middle, and back, please let me know.

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I'm pretty sure if you designate them an AV they will always be an AV and the only thing that scales is there level

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The AVs I have used dropped down to EBs for small teams and low difficulty levels. However, I have only tried a few AVs that fit my plot ideas, so it's possible that not all of them drop to EBs. I did test one Giant Monster (the hydra blob guy, forget his name), and he didn't scale down at all, even when solo.

That's what happens when the agents change something in the matrix - sorta like seeing the same cat walk by you twice.

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I beg to differ. 2 or 3 stars I'd agree, but there are too many confessed preference, difficulty and theme one star bandits going around to mark that up to bad arcs.

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Yeah, such as people who say they'll one-star any arc which contains even a single long map. I'd prefer that they simply not play an arc which contains an element they don't like, rather than one-star it, but I really don't have a say over how they rate.

I'm afraid that we will simply have to learn to live it, and accept that some good missions will be one-starred arbitrarily, just as some bad arcs will get five-starred by the author's buddies.

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3858 but i seem to not be able to find it any more

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The author might have taken it down. Also, when searching check the radio buttons which control whether or not you can see arcs you're completed or rated yet. That bit catches me a lot.

Arc Name: Capture Black-Thorn!
Arc ID: 2134
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Night Blade
Difficulty Level: Ninjitsu damage is bugged - mission is currently very hard
Synopsis: The infamous assassin Black-Thorn is back in town. Capture her and foil her diabolical plot.
Estimated Time to Play: Short (if you live)

Arc Name: Introducing the Hentai Squad!
Arc ID: 2431
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Night Blade
Difficulty Level: Easy
Synopsis: The Hentai Squad is a popular new group of teenage girl super-heroes. When they are captured, their manager asks you to rescue them.
Estimated Time to Play: Very Long
Link to More Details or Feedback: screen shot

Any outdoor maps with large bodies of water? I have an idea for an aquatic invasion, but so far I have only found small pools.

Arc Name: MAGI Bank Heist (will change title to "...Vault Heist" on live)
Arc ID: 11452
Faction: Longbow, Hellions
Creator Global/Forum Name: Bonewalker2
Difficulty Level: Easy (although the first mission can be hard to "fail", the plot allows arc to continue if you succeed)
Synopsis: The real reason why Azuria keeps losing arcane artifacts from the MAGI vault
Estimated Time to Play: 30 minutes

Arc Name: Capture Black-Thorn
Arc ID: 5839
Faction: Custom
Creator Global/Forum Name:Black-Thorn
Difficulty Level: Hard (although a Brute buddy of mine soloed it)
Synopsis: The assassin Black-Thorn has returned to Paragon City. Capture her before she leaves town again.
Estimated Time to Play: 30 minutes

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So is has there been any talk of eventually increasing the amount of published mission-arcs a person can make beyond 3? I can understand the server capacity issues. But still I have so many ideas I'd like to try and if I don't want to erase anything I've put so much work into, one of my prior mission-arcs, then I could see my interest in Architect waning rather fast.

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I suspect that at least part of the reason for limiting the number of published arcs is database performance/size. The screenshots of the mission builder include a "file size" progress bar at the bottom, so arc size seems to have at least some impact.

I don't recall the current number of subscribers, but few hundred thousand users simultaneously loading and downloading large files could cause some concern for the database administrators. Once MA has been deployed for awhile, and they know how their systems handle the load, they might be more inclined to up the limit.

That said, they also may be limiting the number of arcs per player to try and force the players to prune their lower-quality efforts, and only publish the ones they are most proud of.

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First and foremost if any of these questions have been answered, forgive me for not thumbing through the 88 pages of this thread.

1) How much out, of the normal size restrictions, will we have to play with a characters size? Not an idea I planned on implementing, but if you were sent to another realm where magic was vital and creatures like Cyclops were a reality, could I make them all 15 feet tall? or Fae only 1 foot tall? This would include elongating limbs for something like a Troll (mythological, not Cox)

2) Will we be confined to prefab levels, i.e. Office building #12 that we have seen before a thousand times, or will we be able to piecemeal these together like building a base?

3) Will submitted material have a limited in game copyright? I.e. Joe the Plumber doesn't come along and recreate the same levels he sees with high ratings and calls it his own?

4) Will we be able to select the skeletal movement, i.e. rikti monkeys movement versus generic hero X?

I have other questions, I will keep thumbing through to see if they have already been answered.

Thanks in advance

[/ QUOTE ]As far as I can tell from reading these forums daily:

1) Player-created NPCs will have same size limits as existing player-characters. However, you will have access to some (though not all initially) of the current NPCs. You can't edit their appearance, but apparently you can rename them and possibly give them new powers.

2) Only the current prefab levels. Also limited to mob and object placement by pre-existing map set-ups (can't position mobs in ceiling rafters unless there is already a spawn point there).

3) Not sure how you can prevent someone from creating a mission like your after they have seen it. However, I believe that they will have to do so manually - they won't be able to just click a button to download your entire mission to their disk.

4) We will not be able to create our own animations, nor alter the animation sets already assigned to a model. For example, if Ritki monkeys do not already have an animation for dual blades assigned, they will not animate properly if you give them the dual blades power set. However, the screenshots appear to show how we can pick the starting animation of mobs we place, such reading a book, beating something with a bat, etc.

One feature that I haven't seen confirmed yet - branching contact dialog trees. I am hoping to use branching dialog trees to reveal much of the backstory for my arcs, instead of hitting the player with a big "wall of text".

For example, my contact could offer the mission "Defeat (character X)", and the player choices would be: <ul type="square">[*]Sure, I go do it now![*]No thanks.[*]Isn't (character X) your father? Why do you want me to defeat him?[/list]If player is not interested in my contact's motivation (or they've been through this arc before) they can skip right to the mission. However, the backstory is available, if they want it.

Will we be able to give our mission-arc contacts branching dialog trees?

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In case of a hard drive crash or file corruption, will there be a "Reverse Engineer" feature for us to recover files from the actual arc?

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Not sure if this what you're asking, but the devs have said that all the information that makes up your arc can stored on your PC as an editable text file. This sounds like how the "Save costume to file" option currently works.

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I'm sure this has been answered already within the 81 pages, but I'm too lazy to look so I'm hoping someone will answer. Will the architect provide the ability to re-create existing characters within the game? Such as if I wanted Statesman or Recluse to be in it, would I be able to do this?

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It seems so, but I suspect that some of the NPCs, such as Statesman or Recluse, may require you to "unlock" them in a yet-to-be-announced manner before you can include them in your custom missions.

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On the other hand, I say that it is a case of "buyer beware." Since the system, in the lore, is created by a collabaration of Crey and Aeon, neither known for their upstanding citizenship, I think any Hero should approach the system with a healthy sense of caution. What you do may have moral consequences, whether or not you believe it to be little more than a game.

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A collaboration between Crey and Aeon? What could possibly go wrong?

However, you do raise an interesting point. There have long been hints that some day there would be some method for a hero to go bad (and vice-versa for villains). Could playing too many "evil" virtual reality video games lead to the "Dark Side"?

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I didn't. Time to reread all 75 pages with an all new spin on things!

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There are some who say that Arcanaville is in each Beta before the devs. Some even say Arcanaville never actually leaves the test server, even when it is supposedly off-line...

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I know the details are not in place yet for exactly what can be bought with tickets. However, I think it would help a lot if you could just name one recipe that will be purchasable/attainable with tickets.

[/ QUOTE ]I think the tickets can only purchase things in the MA, such as the ability to create a mission with Statesman in it (hypothetical example, I'm not in Beta).