The evolution of the mission editor

[peanuckle_00 0]

I think for the most part we as pc gamers have seen the best games to come out in a long time. We've pretty much seen the peak of gaming but thats not to say that it won't come back again. I think right now what gaming companies need to focus on is this new little invention called the mission editor. Out of all the technical ingenious that has been brought about by scientists, its the creative little mission editor that I'm most happy about. It's such a good thing that some people notice but they don't give much attention or focus too. I'm interested in seing soldner: secret wars come out with a better mission editor than flashpoint. If they can do it, that'd be great. Overall I think Ofp2 could use a better one. Let's talk about the mission editor that we have in flashpoint and its oddness. I think one thing that is odd about it is that when you put a waypoint on a house it won't move.

[KingBeast 0]

I love the editor, its handy as hell but there are a few niggly things that annoy me with it. One of those things is definately as you say, when you place a waypoint on a house it kind of gets locked there. Other waypoint woes are that vehicles are very fickled with following waypoints. They like to jiggle about, reverse and sometimes go in circles rather following a straight line. There should be an override that jsut makes the vehicle go in a complete straight line, ignorant of any obstacles in the way.

[FallenPaladin 0]

/me stares at Kingbeast`s sig

...uuuuuhm... whatdya say?? ...

[cam0flage 0]

One little thing I hate about the editor is that when you place a unit, sometimes you are not capable of changing the type of unit from the menu, but instead you have to delete the unit and place it all over again to achieve the wanted result. Are there any solutions to this, or is it just a "bug" or something?

[KingBeast 0]

cam0flage ive never seen that before :/ The only thing i can put clsoe to that is that once you place a soldier you cant change what side he is on. I am always able to change what unit type he is though.

Tagchen Paladin With all of these "I Support war with iraq" and "I dont support war with Iraq" sigs, I thought I would support something far more important

[SpeedyDonkey 0]

Are you, cam0flage talking about like if you have a western soldier and want to change it to, say a eastern sniper and that wont work? Well it seems like once you've placed a unit you cant change the unit to another side. I hope you get my point

[DracoPaladore 0]

If BIS ever wants to change the mission editor, I think they should also add a height changer. Leave it at default or move him up and down.

[doc1011 0]

You still gotta love it tho, I mean when i first got the game i played the Campaign for about a week and then just started making my own missions for about a month! I only finished the game two weeks ago cause i thought i should.

I just love creating your own missions and then seeing if other people like them. The mission editor created a whole after market game culture that makes OFP have some real lasting power. I mean if there was no Mission Editor how many of you would say you'd be on these forums as long as you have been? I'm sure there would still be die-hards but i bet not half as many. With other games you get like 20 missions that's it. With OFP, new user missions are coming out all the time. It was a great idea and hats off to BIS!

[FSPilot 0]

I think scripts are too confusing or hard to learn. programmers shouldn't be the only ones that know how to do them.

[DarkLight 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (KingBeast @ April 06 2003,22:09)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Tagchen Paladin With all of these "I Support war with iraq" and "I dont support war with Iraq" sigs, I thought I would support something far more important  <span id='postcolor'>

Kingbeast for president!

[Guest]

Moving to General since this is an OFP related discussion

My 0.02€: The possibility of scripting is what separates flashpoint from all other games. The editor is just a little front-end to a limited part of a much greater system.

[Milkman 1]

I enjoy using the editor. I think there is a bit of a learning curve but there are plenty of excellent turtorials from the basics to the most advanced teaching you how to operate it.

The mission editor and the release of Oxygen have made this game far more long lasting and fun than anyother game I can think of right now.

If more companies started making easy-to-use official editors Operation Flashpoint would lose its edge on the market.If they want to keep up with other Gaming Studios they must make the mission editor even BETTER than it already is.

If and when OFP:2 is released, the mission editor (that we all pray that it will have) should be even more user friendly. It must be bug free and more usable. One thing that always bothered me was that you couldnt view the briefing, waypoints, or overview without doing something that just wasted time, like haveing to press Shift+Preview to get an briefing to show or having to play a mission in the game to get waypoints to show in the editor. And their is still no way to view the Overview for a mission in the editor without sending the file to Single Player.

If they can fix these flaws and add in official FAQs on how to make scripts BIS would beat any competitor on the market with their new Editor.

[bn880 5]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (KingBeast @ April 07 2003,14:32)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I love the editor, its handy as hell but there are a few niggly things that annoy me with it. One of those things is definately as you say, when you place a waypoint on a house it kind of gets locked there.<span id='postcolor'>

Aha! But it isn't.

Select that waypoint with something else that's movable, press shift, hold the LMB and drag the waypoint off the house. He will still enter the house since the waypoint is bound to the id of it.

(gee, I hope I wasn't imagining this yesterday )

[sanctuary 19]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Select that waypoint with something else that's movable, press shift, hold the LMB and drag the waypoint off the house.     He will still enter the house since the waypoint is bound to the id of it.<span id='postcolor'>

Thanks bn880

It is a great trick, i never thought of that , i will now be able to make some more interesting house waypointing with that nice trick

[doc1011 0]

Oh yah Kingbeast, Love the Sig

[IceFire 0]

I have a great idea.

Howabout we make the planning map 3D.

You can place units, and then actually rotate the map to see the objects from a different angle.

You could move your view to see everything from every angle.

The placed icons for each thing would be a solid 3D model representing your unit.

You could much easier determine landscape such as hills, trees and buildings.

This way you could exactly place a man under a tree canopy, in a room inside a building looking out a certain window, ... etc

It would be a revolutionary design change, but perfect for a sequel.

[RED 0]

There are lots of scripting functions that would be useful, such as setpitch and getmarkertext. I won't go into these as they have been discussed in the editing forum.

An inbuilt briefing generator would save some time.

RED

[doc1011 0]

In the Rainbow Six games they have that sort of idea although it needs to be improved vastly.  But Your right IceFire that would be really key.  The big difference between R6 and OFP is that the maps in R6 are tiny compared to OFP and setting a 3d map and the units for it would be quite a task.  I can see it now tho Icefire...You could place things so perfectly...with half the time!  You wouldn't have to preview, preview, preview!

But i'd pay more for it that's for sure.  There yah go BIS!  An Idea that'll even make a reeeeeeeal tough consumer pay more for your product!

It's wierd though when you think about it  

What this thread wants is the market to shift in a direction so that were not buying games but were buying tools to make our own games....So in the end, were kinda getting riped off.  It's like buying a make your own pizza kit for 15$ instead of buying one from puzza hut for 10$!  

Of course i realize that were not just asking for one part.  We want a whole package of both.  I was just thinking outloud.

[-TU--33ker 0]

the icons of the objects in the editor are really annoying! if you zoom in or out they don't change the size and you never know how big they are on the map! imagine you have to build up a camp but you never know whether you placed the tents in the right place and you always have to preview!

[KeyCat 131]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (denoir @ April 07 2003,23:27)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">The possibility of scripting is what separates flashpoint from all other games. The editor is just a little front-end to a limited part of a much greater system.<span id='postcolor'>

Fully agree... The combination of the mission editor and the scripting capabilities in OFP is a very powerfull thing and I hope BIS continue to improve it in OFP 2 (especially the multiplayer aspect of it).

The learning curve for scripting may seem a bit steep but you don't have to be a programmer to start with simple things (but if you are it does make things easier ;-).

My suggestion for anyone interested is to grab some/all of the great tutorials plus BIS scripting reference and again start out small! It also helps if you have a goal... When I was starting out a few months ago my primary goal was to implement dynamic weather in our co-op missions so that each time we play them the time, weather, fog, forecast weather is randomly generated, making things very unpredictable. After a few days reading the tutorials and with a little help from the script gurus on this and the OFPEC.COM forum it was finished and works great!

I'm far from a pro myself but really enjoy all the possibilities and learning new things each time I fiddle around.

/Christer (a.k.a KeyCat)

[toadeater 0]

There's a problem with having such easy editing. When anyone can make a mission, anyone WILL make a mission. A really BAD mission.

I think easy mission making is a double-edged sword. I can understand why BIS was reluctant to release all their tools to the public. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Do you want someone named 666SupErHaX0R666 flooding OFP sites with junk missions? There's already too many of them out there because some people think that just because you can do it you should.

But saying that, precise placement in the editor, or editing in 3D like in Morrowind and Neverwinter Nights would still be a nice feature.  

[Harnu 0]

I wouldn't want to see much at all changed to the mission editor. Scripting is fairly easy, all it takes is a few trial and errors and you pick it up. Something things take a little longer than if you had a little button somewhere, but hey, can't have everything.