Things You'll Never Be Able to Make in the MA
By
anachrodragon,
Posted on: 2009-06-06 20:38 in Mission Architect
One of the first arcs I made was originally supposed to have ambush waves, with each wave being custom made with a boss and minions. That got thrown out the window, of course. 
Well, the boss-in-ambush functionality is something I imagine we will get eventually, seeing how many people have requested it. Heck, the devs are probably already tossing around the occasional 'how could we make this work?'
An idea that we'll never be able to make, though? Yeah, I got one of those. An boss fight where players need to fight a stationary boss in a room with several turrets that have cone attacks - and the only thing that can hurt the boss are the turrets, so players have to get in-between the boss and a turret for the cone to hit the boss.
Stationary critters, custom models, custom attack scripting...yeah, not gonna happen. Ever. 
"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi
Characters
I don't think we'll ever be able to make an MA mission resembling the "conference" mission from the RWZ. You know, the mission that starts out with a bunch of NPCs all milling around, some of which you can click for a box of dialogue. Then you go out and click that glowy which spawns a bunch of mobs around the map. Then you fight your way through them to save the hostage.
I really wish we could make a mission like that. Though I'd settle for the simpler "click a glowy in an empty map to spawn enemies" deal.
[ QUOTE ]
I don't think we'll ever be able to make an MA mission resembling the "conference" mission from the RWZ. You know, the mission that starts out with a bunch of NPCs all milling around, some of which you can click for a box of dialogue. Then you go out and click that glowy which spawns a bunch of mobs around the map. Then you fight your way through them to save the hostage.
I really wish we could make a mission like that. Though I'd settle for the simpler "click a glowy in an empty map to spawn enemies" deal.
[/ QUOTE ]
You can sort-of do this, except that you can't place the NPCs as intentionally as that mission does. Just have a bunch of single-ally allies with "nothing" behavior that speak some dialog on rescue, have a glowie in the back, and chained off the glowie are a bunch of patrols of whatever-you-want. You just need to have enough patrols and allies to fill the map's spawn points so that it's not populated before you click the glowy. All we'd need to be able to do is to be able to place spawns - something I'm not sure if they'll ever let us do.
bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenth ur-
nuk!
[ QUOTE ]
I really wish we could make a mission like that. Though I'd settle for the simpler "click a glowy in an empty map to spawn enemies" deal.
[/ QUOTE ]
I've seen this done in @PW's Teen Phalanx Forever. Things that spawn when a condition is met "save" a spawn point for later, meaning nothing will spawn there until the condition is met. If you fill every spawn point on the map with a conditional spawn, then there will literally be nothing there until you click the glowie.
I was under the impression that while it was possible on some small maps(like the map used in the Teen Phalanx arc), most maps were set up pretty specifically to disallow it. (For instance, so you can't make a big empty map with a single glowy for no-risk insta-win.)
I know I tried it on a generic warehouse map once and couldn't get all the enemies to disappear... Maybe I gave up too quickly.
[ QUOTE ]
Well, the boss-in-ambush functionality is something I imagine we will get eventually, seeing how many people have requested it. Heck, the devs are probably already tossing around the occasional 'how could we make this work?'
An idea that we'll never be able to make, though? Yeah, I got one of those. An boss fight where players need to fight a stationary boss in a room with several turrets that have cone attacks - and the only thing that can hurt the boss are the turrets, so players have to get in-between the boss and a turret for the cone to hit the boss.
Stationary critters, custom models, custom attack scripting...yeah, not gonna happen. Ever.
[/ QUOTE ]
I think, Devs already have this functionalty in the game, it just wasn't exposed through MA editior. I remeber few red side missions where boss would ambush you, like Dr. Aeon when you destroy his mainframe, some of FP upon hostage kidnapping, etc.
[ QUOTE ]
I was under the impression that while it was possible on some small maps(like the map used in the Teen Phalanx arc), most maps were set up pretty specifically to disallow it. (For instance, so you can't make a big empty map with a single glowy for no-risk insta-win.)
I know I tried it on a generic warehouse map once and couldn't get all the enemies to disappear... Maybe I gave up too quickly.
[/ QUOTE ]
I've been able to hide all spawns on Demon's farm map, but I had 11 destructible objects, each of them was a trigger for separate conditional spawn
[ QUOTE ]
For instance, so you can't make a big empty map with a single glowy for no-risk insta-win.
[/ QUOTE ]
I don't know if every map allows you to fill the spawn points, but on this one point, I just want to point out that this is not actually a problem, since MA arcs don't give you any end-of-mission XP, and the end-of-mission ticket bonus is based on how many critters you killed in the mission. So a mission where you simply clicked one glowie to complete it would, AFAIK, give you no rewards at all.
bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenth ur-
nuk!
Trap room
When you enter, door's shut, then Turrets & what not pop up, blast away at you & some robots teleport in, etc..
But we can't have Turrets & Pop-up Guns for mobs.
JJ
I delete more 50s, then you'll ever have.
http://www.pandora.com/people/jjdemon
[ QUOTE ]
Trap room
When you enter, door's shut, then Turrets & what not pop up, blast away at you & some robots teleport in, etc..
But we can't have Turrets & Pop-up Guns for mobs.
JJ
[/ QUOTE ]
I could see them adding this at some point.
They'd have to:
- let us use turrets as mobs
- let us place spawns at least to the level of specific rooms if not specific spawn points.
- add either a "proximity" or "aggro" event, so you can trigger details off a location or when a particular detail becomes active.
- add the door detail, which is probably the most difficult to implement. But it would have to be a door you can place on the map that you can trigger to close.
bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenth ur-
nuk!
[ QUOTE ]
I really wish we could make a mission like that. Though I'd settle for the simpler "click a glowy in an empty map to spawn enemies" deal.
[/ QUOTE ]
I have a mission sort of like that in my 'Out of the Gutters' arc.
And as people have said you can do mostly empty maps by loading them up with triggered patrol details. (Again, I have one like this in Gutters)
#2409 - The Mystery of the MAGI vaults. Azuria has contacted you to help her stop the thefts from the MAGI vaults.
#68054 - Out of the gutters. Left for dead, you swore that you were through with being a victim (alt villain beginning story)
I'd really like to be able to place glowies at specific spawn points. I can understand to some extent them not letting us place mobs specifically, but glowies seem like they'd be less fraught with abuse possibilities.
So I don't know about all of you, but I've had several ideas for Mission Architect arcs that just won't work. They might have been fun, they might have been original, but they just aren't possible within the restrictions of the MA and probably never will be.
So now I'll share one of mine and you share some of yours. I've got a few more, but if I share all of mine all at once I won't have an excuse to bump the thread if it dies off now will I?
The folks I play with know I'm a huge music nerd, especially for my favorite band R.E.M. I have several characters who are either inspired by lines from songs or that are lookalikes with names just different enough from their real world counterparts as to be plausibly deniable. Mister Stipe is my main one, "inspired" by a certain bald man with a flair wearing blue eye makeup during live performances.
So when the MA was first announced and a few of us were throwing around ideas, my first thought was to take something from my love of R.E.M. and make it work as an arc. I proceeded to take a few days and during my off-time at work (there was a lot at that time) I came up with an arc that strung together the titles of all of R.E.M.'s album titles into a single, mostly cohesive story.
Of course, to keep things simple I stuck to studio albums.
All 14 of them.
That's right. Each album was a mission that created one over-arching plot involving a dimension of music-based beings, Nemesis, and (everyone's favorite) time travel.
I still have a rough draft and just have to say: This is exactly why we're only allowed 5 missions per arc and 3 arcs per account.
Assuming mine was clever (which it kinda was and kinda wasn't), it would still be an enormous chore to get through. Imagine some of the worst writers out there in the MA with that kind of power.
So what are some of your more out-there ideas that you just can't pull off?