Mission Architect Tutorial
100 series - Basics
102 - Basic Story Setting Options
If you haven't done the basic mission creation tutorial guide, you may want to, as I will be using that mission as a basis for this, and possibly future, guides.
All right. We have our basic World Domination (or Saving Kittens) arc. One simple mission. Open this mission up from "My local missions."
We skipped multiple sections when we did the walkthrough. Let's go back and look at the first page, Mission Settings. Specifically, we're going to look at optional sections.
Start by going up to the second icon at the top and pick "Save as." Give it a name such as "Tutorial 2." This will preserve your original so you can go back. When editing, it's a good idea to save prior versions before doing anything - don't rely on the autosave button. If you save, you know where you're at.
Choose Mission Settings options
We're not going into custom groups yet - one step at a time. Under Choose Mission Settings, you will see two optional sections:
<ul type="square">[*]Mission Parameters[*]Mission complete Clue[/list]
We'll look at these individually.
Mission Parameters
Click on Mission Parameters. If you click on the blue square with the quesiton mark, you'll get a simple explanation of the two options in here.
<ul type="square">[*]Mission Pacing
Mission pacing refers to how the levels of the enemies change through the map spawns. You have four options.
Flat - All enemies stay roughly the same level.
Back loaded - Enemies will start off lower level in the beginning and jump up higher near the end.
Staggered - Personal favourite. Enemy levels can vary throughout the mission.
Ramp up - Similar to back loaded, but with a steady progression up in level or difficulty.
The default setting is "Flat."
[*]Time to Complete
If you want the mission to have a time limit (the default is no limit,) this is where you select it. You can't just type in a time, however. You must pick from a list, ranging from 5 minutes to 2 hours.
Your choices are 5, 10, 15, 30, 45, 60, 90 minutes and 2 hours.
Please, if you use this option, be realistic (unless, like Tina Mcintyre's infamous mission, you want the chance of failure to be high.) Also, if you use this option, pay attention to the next section, "Additional Text."
Since this is a tutorial on a very small map, set your time to complete to 5 minutes. [/list] Mission Complete Clue.
This is very simple - you have two fields, one of which lets you give a title to your clue ("An interesting find") and a description.
Write text: Additional Text
This section has multiple options. We'll be filling in everything here.
<ul type="square">[*]Mission Title
When you go to talk to your contact, often you'll see a title and subtitle - Levantra, for instance in the Rikti War Zone has an example of this with "Introduction to Vanguard, Part 1." This is similar to the "Introduction to Vanguard" at the top.
Fill in "Misison Creation Tutorial."
[*]Mission Subtitle
This is where you'd put in Part 1, Mission 1, Beginning, finale - whatever you want to call your chapters.
Fill in "Misison 1." Yes, it's boring. But you only have one mission.
[*]Mission accept text
This is the "Accept" that you click at the bottom to take the mission. By default, it is filled in with "Accept."
Fill in "Now see what you've done!"
[*]Mission entry popup
This is the window you see come up in many missions - "This office is nice. It won't be nice when you're through with it, but it's nice now," for instance. It's a little opening flavor bit.
Type in "Times must be tough. They seem to have gotten a storage unit instead of a warehouse."
[*]Mission Success Popup
This pops up if you've successfully completed a mission. You don't see these very often, actually, but if there's some action you want to imply ("Soldiers come up and whisk your hostage away," for instance,) that's what you put here.
Type in "Well, that was easy."
[*]Mission Fail Popup
This is the same as the Success popup - but obviously only comes up if you fail. If the mission is able to BE failed (timed, prevent X from being destroyed,) you may consider using this. ("You emerge from the rubble. Time to face the music.")
Since we have a five minute timed mission, go ahead and put in "You wake up... oops, bad time for a nap."
[*]Return Fail Dialog
This is what the contact tells you if you failed the mission. This is a bit more important, in my opinion, if you have a failable mission. You can use it to segue into the next mission, or give a story ending ("Well, you failed, and it looks like they now have a biological weapon. We'll have to hope they don't use it.")
Type in "What were you doing, sleeping? It's so hard to get good help these days." [/list]Running the mission
Save the mission again. We won't publish, since this is just for your own use.
When you look in the mission browser, you should have two, possibly three, World Domination 101 missions. If you look closely, you'll see a file name listed under each. One will be "Autosave," possibly. The others will be Tutorial 1 and Tutorial 2. We just finished Tutorial 2, so that's what we want to run.
Start the mission, talk to your contact, enter the mission...
Then go get some coffee or something. You should have a 5 minute timer to let run down. This will let you see the "failed" dialogs and contact response. After you do, run it again and play it, beating those wuss 5th Column troops. You should see an end of mission dialog box, and different dialog from your contact.
Mission Architect Tutorial
100 series - Basics
102 - Basic Story Setting Options
If you haven't done the basic mission creation tutorial guide, you may want to, as I will be using that mission as a basis for this, and possibly future, guides.
All right. We have our basic World Domination (or Saving Kittens) arc. One simple mission. Open this mission up from "My local missions."
We skipped multiple sections when we did the walkthrough. Let's go back and look at the first page, Mission Settings. Specifically, we're going to look at optional sections.
Start by going up to the second icon at the top and pick "Save as." Give it a name such as "Tutorial 2." This will preserve your original so you can go back. When editing, it's a good idea to save prior versions before doing anything - don't rely on the autosave button. If you save, you know where you're at.
Choose Mission Settings options
We're not going into custom groups yet - one step at a time. Under Choose Mission Settings, you will see two optional sections:
<ul type="square">[*]Mission Parameters[*]Mission complete Clue[/list]
We'll look at these individually.
Mission Parameters
Click on Mission Parameters. If you click on the blue square with the quesiton mark, you'll get a simple explanation of the two options in here.
<ul type="square">[*]Mission Pacing
Mission pacing refers to how the levels of the enemies change through the map spawns. You have four options.
The default setting is "Flat."
[*]Time to Complete
If you want the mission to have a time limit (the default is no limit,) this is where you select it. You can't just type in a time, however. You must pick from a list, ranging from 5 minutes to 2 hours.
Your choices are 5, 10, 15, 30, 45, 60, 90 minutes and 2 hours.
Please, if you use this option, be realistic (unless, like Tina Mcintyre's infamous mission, you want the chance of failure to be high.) Also, if you use this option, pay attention to the next section, "Additional Text."
Since this is a tutorial on a very small map, set your time to complete to 5 minutes. [/list]
Mission Complete Clue.
This is very simple - you have two fields, one of which lets you give a title to your clue ("An interesting find") and a description.
Write text: Additional Text
This section has multiple options. We'll be filling in everything here.
<ul type="square">[*]Mission Title
When you go to talk to your contact, often you'll see a title and subtitle - Levantra, for instance in the Rikti War Zone has an example of this with "Introduction to Vanguard, Part 1." This is similar to the "Introduction to Vanguard" at the top.
Fill in "Misison Creation Tutorial."
[*]Mission Subtitle
This is where you'd put in Part 1, Mission 1, Beginning, finale - whatever you want to call your chapters.
Fill in "Misison 1." Yes, it's boring. But you only have one mission.
[*]Mission accept text
This is the "Accept" that you click at the bottom to take the mission. By default, it is filled in with "Accept."
Fill in "Now see what you've done!"
[*]Mission entry popup
This is the window you see come up in many missions - "This office is nice. It won't be nice when you're through with it, but it's nice now," for instance. It's a little opening flavor bit.
Type in "Times must be tough. They seem to have gotten a storage unit instead of a warehouse."
[*]Mission Success Popup
This pops up if you've successfully completed a mission. You don't see these very often, actually, but if there's some action you want to imply ("Soldiers come up and whisk your hostage away," for instance,) that's what you put here.
Type in "Well, that was easy."
[*]Mission Fail Popup
This is the same as the Success popup - but obviously only comes up if you fail. If the mission is able to BE failed (timed, prevent X from being destroyed,) you may consider using this. ("You emerge from the rubble. Time to face the music.")
Since we have a five minute timed mission, go ahead and put in "You wake up... oops, bad time for a nap."
[*]Return Fail Dialog
This is what the contact tells you if you failed the mission. This is a bit more important, in my opinion, if you have a failable mission. You can use it to segue into the next mission, or give a story ending ("Well, you failed, and it looks like they now have a biological weapon. We'll have to hope they don't use it.")
Type in "What were you doing, sleeping? It's so hard to get good help these days." [/list]Running the mission
Save the mission again. We won't publish, since this is just for your own use.
When you look in the mission browser, you should have two, possibly three, World Domination 101 missions. If you look closely, you'll see a file name listed under each. One will be "Autosave," possibly. The others will be Tutorial 1 and Tutorial 2. We just finished Tutorial 2, so that's what we want to run.
Start the mission, talk to your contact, enter the mission...
Then go get some coffee or something. You should have a 5 minute timer to let run down. This will let you see the "failed" dialogs and contact response. After you do, run it again and play it, beating those wuss 5th Column troops. You should see an end of mission dialog box, and different dialog from your contact.