Developing a great mission

[SpecOp9 0]

There may be plenty of certain individuals who are striving to get an extremely high score for their created missions. So, I am going to give small little helpers and hints on creating a great mission to submit at OFPEC.

1. Developing a mission idea

This first step, is one of the most important from anything else. Everything in your mission revolves around step one.

First, believe it or not: try looking for some music. Beggining with music can be a huge helper. When you listen to music you can hear the specific mood it has inside of it. This mood is something you can use, and think of a way to incorporate into your mission. This can be extremely helpfull for your cutscene also.

So try gathering some great music and finding a way to implement it into your cutscenes.

Now you need to think of something more important. Music is basically the symbol for your entire mission. In other words, your music must instantly give the player a in-depth feeling of what your mission is going to be about.

You dont want 'Let the bodies hit the floor" when it's supposed to be sad.

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So now I am going to pick a song from a mission I am going to make.

I have all my music and I have found myself a mission idea.

"End of Days" theme song will be our current example.

The music sounds very mystical and yet severe.

So I decided to change this into a large chaotic religious battle.

Terrorists have invaded the Skye island. They believe that this island is a "holy land" and that they can do whatever they please. The gods of this island will make them un-destructable, while they attempt to turn the island into a nuclear arsenal to devestate places around the world.

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Now that we have the basic situation of the mission under control, and we have good music, and a moody feeling to our mission,

it's time to work on charactor plot.

This is a mystical yet severe type mission remember. Along with the music.

You need to balance both of these when creating your mission.

Sending 60 troops vs. 60 troops is not part of the mood idea, and it will completely ruin your entire mission.

So, we will take both these things and think of something.

I have made it so there is only one character who does most of the dirty work, and there is also a small squad taking an airfield.

You play as the lonely black op.

His son is sent on the mission with his dad, however is in a different area of the map during the map. We will get into the mission later.

The Black Op cannot be called a random joe shmo from Idaho.

If you noticed, OFPEC looks for specific things, like character plot and development. Give the Black Op a backstory, give him a name, give your player a solid understanding on the character he is playing as.

By now we have a basic understanding of what we will be creating.

We have our mood, and plot so far.

This may be the most easy part, however it was the most important.

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2. Development of your cutscene

All cutscenes are best when they are scripted cameras. If you don't know how to script cameras, I suggest you either contact somebody for basic camera scripting help, or check the numerous tutorials here.

The music we have aquired for our mission, no doubt should be used

in-game somewhere along the lines. In this case, we will use the intro.

ALWAYS put the music inside your mission before you start anything with cameras. Now, lets think of something... Mystical yet chaotic... using the "End of Days" theme song.

Download the song if you are having trouble understanding what I will be talking about:

The beggining of the theme song sounds mystical, and then to the end it turns into something evil and chaotic. Maybey even scary for some people.

The music sounds like something odd. You would'nt normally use it inside a motion cutscene. This is a great opportunity for something that would help your mission greatly! "PROLOGUE"

Normaly this is the preface or introduction to a literary work.

But we will bend the meaning of PROLOGUE to fit our mission,

an introductory or preceding event or development.

Great! Now lets have a bunch of random scenes. For the mystical side of things, I made a few addons. This includes sacred things like shrines.

I had my first couple of scenes show mystical things, such as Churches, graves, shrines, people making prayers in a graveyard, the cross of jesus, ETC.

Now you need to keep visualization in mind.

The things you hear in the music MUST fit with the visualization onscreen.

So now, I am going to change the appearance of the enviorment. I will leave it day time, however make it cloudy and rainy.

The prologue is up to you. The greatest prologue is always when it comes from your own mind and your own ideas. Always. But always make sure it has SOMETHING to do with the following events of your mission, and a basic understanding of everything. Basically it's letting the player know what your mission revolves around. "The Pearl" novel believe it or not, is a great example of this...

Now we have our first half of the prologue done. All mystical and wierd and crap.

Now the other half of the music changes into something very evil and chaotic.

These scenes I had a sudden change of heart.

The music goes

from:

"OoooOoOoO AhhhHhhhHhhh"

to:

"Omg! Get it away! AHHHHHH!!!"

So now, I had the time change to a darker color, with nothing but a red skye and silhouettes of stuff everywhere. Now I put the terrorists marching down the airfield "chaotic" type. as if something is about to erupt.

I used the magic words:

ANIMATIONS, AND CUSTOM ANIMATIONS <--MUST USE!

Remember, the prologue can show the future of things.

Now that it popped in my head,

TERMINATOR 3 is a PERFECT example of what I am talking about.

You hear Jhon Conor at the beggining talking diddle smack about a bunch of random evil robots wanting to kill mankind for no reason at all. You see scenes of the machines taking over Earth ETC.

Ok great. Prologue is over with. -kick-

-cutscene ends-

NO! If you ever made the cutscene end there, you would have just screwed everything up.

Now we gotta have it Fade out.

Fade into a town or something. Ever so happy place, with people running around and animals barking and birdies chirping about. (cigarette)

OK, so now we need some more music. keep your new music true to the mood of your mission. We are gonna have a new moody song now!

What fun!

I choose another main theme for my next couple of scenes.

Sleepy Hollow theme song.

These scenes I showed numerous US troops flying in with helicopters and setting up shop somewhere totally deserted. a small little military base where they can track happenings globaly around the Island. Simple.

Have a bunch of crap of them landing, reloading, looking at monitors, dropping off the small mini squad, and most important: The main character, and his son, maybey the commander... people... stuff... anything you feel is important to introduce because it will be used in your mission.

Now we have the EVIL terrorists people make there way to the Island.

But how did the US know about the terrorists, and make it to Skye island before them? I dont know, elaborate, thats your job not mine

Always think about stuff like this, it will cause confusion to the player.

Personally, include it in your briefing is what I would do.

SO anyway here come the bad guys ever so tough... I habe a new song now.... Metal Gear Solid 2 - The Big Shell - .

The terrorists embark to the Skye island by boat. Floating away ever so tough and confident. cooOOooOOol.

Bad guys always seem to be the most interesting characters in everything we see. So in this case, lets create a main character bad guy, only no backround in-depth story behind this menace. You can if you want, but include everything in your briefing rather.

(which would be best to give a good score on briefing section)

Alright neat. This took one hell of a long time to make. But in the end, after confusion and complete annoyance, it's a solid working intro, filled with all sorts of important things.

Your intro is only supposed to be a backround of your mission.

We went beyond this and gave the backround behind EVERYTHING inside the mission.

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3. The Briefing

Simple huh? Lets just give a bunch of letters and words and markers everywhere. Right? Wrong!

There is only one way to create a solid briefing.

I love including sounds in my briefing. If you ever played Ghost Recon where the man reads everything to you, and you just gotta sit back and listen, it's a huge help for your mission. Believe it or not, mentally, the player does'nt need to be annoyed by the every day read this paragraph bull SH*T.

I barely read Briefings because they are so pathetic and boring.

Add some COLOR to these. Give IN-DEPTH information about Skye, the terrorists, the situation.

Give realistic Photos, pictures, Satalitte photos, ETC.

Give time of day, year month, even tempature for god sakes!

And most importantly, organize every single display page. Some of you may not know the html stuff for Briefing, so Un-PBO a mission, and look and see how everything was done.

Notes section: Do whatever you please here... Honestly the notes section is No Biggie here.. At least I would'nt worry too much about it.

WEAPON SELECTION:

OFP has many guns, lets face it.

Some people absolutely hate the HK, like me.

Some people rather use a Bizon, like me.

Now if I am forced to keep a craptastic HK, then honestly that kinda sucks.

So ALWAYS, include weapons selection. Everybody loves it. Fact.

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4. The Mission side of things

This is something that makes me throw my head down in sadness.

Never does anybody seem to realize that the mission is what makes the ENTIRE mission great.

We need to focus around a few things.

Always include animations. Have terrorists talking, have them walking around, looking at a map on the table, sitting down, doing stuff that involves REALISM.

I hate sneaking into an occupied hostile area, and seeing EVERY SINGLE enemie being on patrol...standing still...guns on back...standing... walking....standing some more... some more walking...some more standing....

Get these AIs to act like human beings. Give some scripted events. For example, I had a rather funny moment where there was 2 guards talking to each other.

There was a man on patrol using his binocs scanning the horizon at ease.

As he walks he trips and falls behind the 2 chatting guards. The one facing the opposite direction of the falling guard takes a quick head check to see if it was anything hostile, and then the 2 chatting guards both laugh.

This wasnt even scipted for god sakes, a simple use of switchmove commands makes this moment something original and unique. I'm sure you can think of many others.

My mission is about going from area to area. Players choice on how to do things.

After completeing certain missions, specific things happen. For example, I kill everything inside a town, and clear out the place of terrorists.

INGAME CUTSCENE. First thing you should do is use markers.

name a marker "playerpos1" and then use the command when the mission has finished for him to warp to that location. And then no matter what, the camera will always focus on the character of choice.

The cutscene is him letting home base know "City is secured, advance the squad South to attack the airfield"

Cutscene of the squad assaulting the air base.

Do this numerous times, with different situations each time. it keeps the player interested, and wanting to keep playing more and more.

Now lets set up an interatable enviorment using scripts.

POP! You get shot in the legs yet manage to live, and there is no Medical Tent. Who you gonna call?

MORPHINE INJECTION SCRIPT!

Not sure about an enemie occupied area.

Take out a monitoring base, and take control of the enemie security cameras.

Via: CAMERA VIEWING SCRIPT!

Need a better view around the island... Satallite Script!

Bridge is blocked off by guarding tanks that can rip your head off.

Instead of being sneaky, be a grunt and blast into the radio center, blow the radio mans face off, and pretend to be the radio man and ask the tanks to pick somebody up by fooling him. Allowing you to get across the bridge no problem.

These simple things make the mission something incredible play. OFP can be used in so many ways. Time to start using them.

Think of a few on your own, they are probably easily possible.

Also, I made a few mini games inside my map. Mostly for replay value.

The mini games was : Find the 10 shrines

You may have seen my post about how to set that up if your a common thread opening Ofpec freakazoid

Make it so you can interact with civilians who are completely freaked out, or who have seen a convoy drive by them recently.

Who knows, maybey you can learn more about this convoy.

Learn that it does a specific route,

learn that it it is transporting weaponry.

Hmm... 2 things combined = ASSAULT THIS MOFO AND STEAL THE WEAPONS FOR YOUR OWN USE!

These are all examples.

Making your mission fun to play is simply by switching things around.

Go here, Attack this, Blow this up, gets very boring.

Give your player his own decisions he wants to make.

Let the player infact create his OWN mission.

This is what makes a mission great.

Sudden plot changes can also be used.

For example:

OK, I deactivated the power. But ohh SH*T! The backup generator activates laser sensors for possible enemie threats!

You trigger one of these mofos, and it's POW time for you.

How do you escape? Thats your decision.

Instead of something amazing happening, like a random idiot comes and frees you,

make it so you find a rock on the ground, and you can pick it up and knock the guard out to happy land. Hes dead, activate a addaction script

"Pick Up Keys from guard" Ok, new addaction, "Unlock POW gates"

TADA! Now your unarmed! Aww sh*t! And picking up an AK and firing a single shot will but the entire base on complete lockdown and guards would be guarding every single nook and crany of the POW camp.

Thus, it's time to sneak out of the POW camp. Hop in the back of a cargo truck, sneak out, and VOILA! your home free.

Again, these are all ideas you can use.

Enough with that.

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5. Ending

The final step. Sad but true

Your outro can be anything. I choose the main characters son getting KIA.

A sad ending for the entire mission.

After the whole entire night mission, the sunrise is the main character bending over to his sons grave, promising to avenge his death.

I also made it so the evil main character slips away and becomes a most wanted criminal. Thus leading to part 2, a completely new mission.

Main Characters revenge time

This obviously had sad music....

So I choose the Gladiator ending theme song.

What is part 2?

Before you start making part 2, see what comments your mission gets.

What did they like about the mission? What did they dislike?

Use this as a guide for part 2 of your mission.

(if you plan to do so)

This wraps everything up. I hope this is used by many people around the community.

[John C Flett 0]

Speaking as a player rather than a designer I have a different perspective but I'd have to say I always have music turned off so number one goes up in smoke. I couldn't care less about music because I never hear it. I don't WANT to hear it.

The only exception might be if you moved into a building where somebody was playing a radio, then you'd hear music while near the radio. Simple environment detail.

Point 2 has a place but mostly I'd rather play a mission. A cutscene should only be used where required and should be brief. I'd rather have scripted events happen while I play. Have my CO look me in the eye and brief me to my face, not suddenly have an out of body experience while its happening.

Choice of weapons, I know where your coming from but in a lot of cases it seems to me soldiers, grunts especially are given their gun. Not everybody has a choice.

A lot of good points about mission play though. Point 4 should be point 1. This is what counts to a player.

Or this player at least.

[SpecOp9 0]

Part 1 is for the beggining cutscene, not ingame music ;)

[John C Flett 0]

Either way I still don't hear it. And I may be mistaken, but I seem to remember a poll a while back which showed a large percentage or even a majority play OFP without music. It doesn't stop anybody using it but it can't be counted on as a tool. For a number of players it may well be counter constructive.

Again though that may just be an issue of my taste.

[SpeedyDonkey 0]

John, are you talking about music in cutscenes, in-game or both? In my opinion custom music makes cutscenes much better so i have no problem with that. In a mission it might be a bit annoying but as allways there exceptions, if you, for instance play some rambo style mission and the action gets intense there could be some kind of suiting background music played.

SpecOp9 i agree with point 1 as well. I usalually do something similar myself, even though it might be a bit different music then you sugested

[Winters 1]

I usually have the mission finished first and then i add the music if any. It can take me weeks to find the right music and i usually end up changing the track numerous times before i settle on something.

I think many players miss the point of how dynamic missions made in OFP can be and they just want to play CS style run and gun missions which i have ZERO interest in playing. People tell me "There is no music in war" and i usually respond with some thing like "Oh? and there is respawn in war?"

Anyway, my point is you can't please all the people all the time. If you try to make missions and wonder if people will play them you wont make creative missions. Make your mission how YOU see fit and not by the way some guy on a forum is telling you how it should be done

[Guest DKM-jaguar]

I just read through my own post (below) and decided you could take it as a flame, but i am not trying to flame you, just constrcutive (i hope) ciriticism.

Also i added what i include in what i do so far, so this can help people.

I saw this topic and i thought: Great, a topic where i can learn all the things i need to finally make complete missions. But i am very disapointed. Dont get me wrong, at least you tried to help people, BUT:

When you talk about missions i want to see realism. ALL my missions are based on maticulous planning. For instance, if i am using a platoon of tanks for the east, i use a book to find out what kind of armour is placed where in a battalion. Like, BMP-2's and BDRMs form the scout section, then there is the heavier amour, artillery, etc. and the flank protection, so i can say:

"In this mission the force you are fighting is the flank protection for a Russian tank battlion", and I would ONLY use the armour i found in that book. In this case, it would be BMP's and mabe BTRs with a few other light armoured vehicles, and i ONLY use relative sizes of units. This is what makes a great mission. I also look at SOP's and other details to se exactly how the troops behave. REALISM is the key to all missions.

Another point is: when in real life do you hear music? Believe it or not, you dont get music coming into your ears from apparently nowhere when fighting a battle.

Althought, I am trying to use music for cutscenes and the VERY begining of a mission, but with little success. Your guide depends on knowing people with enough time and patence to explain to other people about camera scripting, etc. I would ask the people i know, but they are far to busy with things like making the MI28 work. Now, that isnt your fault, but couldn't you have put these detials in?  

Also, you say about switchmoves and how this makes it all very cool, i would have been happier if you had accutally told HOW to do switchmoves. I might be lazy, but i HATE having to go through thousands of spam topics and posts just to find one post vaguely relevant to creating decent mission effects.

If there was one place where all this "mission scripting stuff" was, then i'd be a happy person.

Also, same with breifings. I know that you cant just create a breifing, you need special tools etc, as well as the command to get them to show at the begining of the mission. Same with music, what the hell is the command to get music into your mission and playing correctly, i can never get this! lol

It seems that all this stuff is just a wish-list of things you want to see in a mission, not acctually how to do it.

Sorry, i am NOT flaming you.

BTW: only special operations groups get any real choice in what weapon they hav,e and even that is limited to what is available to hand. Very rarely will they go out of thier way to aquire weapons not essential to the mission.

[GoOB 0]

Making a briefing is fairly easy. If you don't know HTML code I assure you that you know someone that does. There are a lot of little helpers out there

I agree on most of your points Specop9, but not on the weapon selection. If the mission maker has done things right you will be so full of things to do that you won't have time to worry about if you are carrying a MP5 or not. And you will have a role cut out for you. And hopefully the mission maker has made the weapon selection right for the type of mission he is making.

[John C Flett 0]

For myself I'm not too concerned about music especially but if its turned off all the time it doesn't matter when its used it will never be heard. Anybody whos counting on it to involve me whether intro/cutscene or ingame is wasting their time.

I want to play a mission. I want to be involved and active. I cannot be bothered with missions which are trying to be little cinematic masterpieces. This is the kind of crap that spoils so many Playstation type games. Stopping the player every few minutes to make them watch some coders attempt at emotionally involving us.

SpecOp9 has many good points but I think from the first post his priorities are a long way from what I want. I consider myself a typical gamer and I want to spend as much time as possible 'hands on'. Secondly I want detail and variety within my playtime. Lastly come the cutscenes which I want brief, only where essential and best of all I want to be able to interupt them so I only ever need watch them once.

I'm not saying SpecOp9 is wrong but the way he structures the article suggests that the least important aspects come first while the stuff that matters isn't mentioned until more than half way through the post.

All I'm saying, and I hope most people would agree; I want to PLAY OFP first and WATCH a mission last. Cutscenes, music etc are all optional extras.

[Guest DKM-jaguar]

Hmm. i made a decision. I am gonig to look through as many posts i can on finding out exactly how to do all these things i need to learn, and then i am going to write it ALL up in one usefull thread, so that people can avoid what i am about to do. (btw, i am not promising anything, least of all soon. I have some havok missions to make first.)

EDIT: there is already a post like that, in the mission editing section. Thats where a topic like this belongs.

[Winters 1]

Not everyone agrees with you, and what may be a "typical gamer" to you, won't be the same to someone else. The bottom line is if your a mission make you stick to your guns and make what you want, if people don't like what you do they just won't play it. But plenty others will like it and will play it.

I love how people will piss and moan to a mission or addon maker about their work when they only make missions because they like to and not because they are getting paid. Take this thread for example, SpecOp9 is kind enough to give some hints to aspiring mission makers and instead of getting constructive criticism he gets complaints about music and weapons.

If it was not for the mission and addon makers this game would have died a looooooong time ago.

This is a GAME its not real, if someone wants music in a battle scene so be it. If they want to make one without any music thats fine as well.

I am not trying to flame anyone here but really why come in here and say "this is no good and thats no good, blah blah blah". What sucks to you may be great to someone else.

[John C Flett 0]

Well apologies if I've come on too strong. I tried to make it clear that I was expressing my own opinion and of course anybody is free to disagree. And of course any designer should do what they feel is right for them.

I just feel its a shame if anybody spends too much time or effort in areas which I ( and some others ) will ignore or skip out of. I don't think I'm alone in the idea that I'll play a favourite mission many times but sometimes don't even watch a cutscene once.

[Guest DKM-jaguar]

Actualy, all i see here IS constructive criticism of what makes a great mission. You have someone who wants very inventive missions, someone who is giving advice on how to achieve realistic missions.. if we continued this thread there would be an explanation of what to do for each kind of mission.

Yes, ofp is a game, but why cant it be a realistic game?

(second thoughts about bothering to help other people with a thread combininng all the knowledge they will ever need to make a mission on an advanced level.)

So, i am sorry if i offended anyone, it was not my intention, and i take back everything i have ever said, anywhere.

[Jinef 2]

I think it's all a matter of personal opinion, i usually hate OFP blackop missions as they are never like any blackop missions i have ever heard of. So i made my own, no music, no cutscenes just realistic gameplay where each squad member is vital and all people need to work together.

When we played it with us all on TS2 armed with BAS weapons and with the advantage of knowing the general layout of the mission we stayed alive for a total of two minutes. I find it annoying how OFP was intended to convey a more realistic viewpoint on war and people still make missions about one lone guy taking on an army with his tech weaponry. I'm not saying that my mission is good or should be used as an example as it doesn't have many flashy scripts or whatever, it's just a salty taste of how you would actually do in a situation like that.

If you want to have a look at it it's on the zeus addon server, i couldn't think of an original name but it's better that the suggestion 'south American fireworks' that someone *cough*frog*cough* gave me ;-)

It's called co_05_shadow war i think.

it was made for the zeus addon server so it has loads of obscure addons in it ...sorry.

[John C Flett 0]

Don't give up on the debate Jaguar. This will always be an emotive issue. Those people who design and write missions should have strong feelings about their work. Any artist should take pride in what they do.

At the same time those of us who love the game to play have a right to offer opinions.

And its not like this is unique to OFP. If you've followed any of the debate that followed Metal Gear Solid 2 you'll know it came under a lot of fire for its relience on huge cutscenes.

Again its only an opinion but I think anything which removes the player from control and breaks the immersion is a bad thing. Its going back a bit but think about Half-Life. Everything in that game from the opening cinematics, through lab accidents, alien invasion, government betrayal to final curtain is viewed through Gordon Freeman's eyes. Obviously OFP is less flexable but I think most games would be improved by following its lead. Cinema and games should be kept as far apart as possible.

[SpeedyDonkey 0]

Again, it's just a matter of personal taste! In my opinion cutscenes are a really good way to explain the situation and give the player the right atmosphere and so on. I think that a grate example is the game mafia (and *not* my lousy mission called something similar) the cutscenes (in my opinion) made the whole story significantly better. That goes to most other games with ingame cutscenes (unless it's really cheesy)

[Winters 1]

Hey Jag, don't get me wrong, i do get very passionate about my work. When i make an Intro or an Outro i do refer to them as my "Little Movies"

You guys do have a point about cutscenes, i don't usually add one unless its the kind of mission that i can add one that will carry the storyline along. But i am always making an Intro and an Outro for them.

One thing to remember, when we are making missions we are constanlty trying to walk the "Realism V Playability" wire and i am sure BIS knows all about this. I try to set up a balanced squad that i feel is appropriate to get the job done and then i take into consideration that people do have their "Favorites" they like to use so by adding weapons to ammo crates or making them available from the briefing page gives the player the option to arm his squad how he feels is required to get the job done (you can always limit whats available so there wont be 12 snipers with LAWs) and adds to their overall fun.

Music while in combat should never be done as this tends to lag missions very badly (i know form past learning experience, oh man do i ever know this) but during transport is kinda cool to have.

Intros should be done in the intro part of the mission so as not to make you have to watch it everytime you play, at the least make the game save after the intro has played if you dont know how to use the intro part of the editor.

Anyways thats my additional thoughts.

[Guest DKM-jaguar]

I have nothing against cutscenes, if Icould do them I would. BUT not in the middle of gameplay. That is disruptive and makes the story harder to folow if anything. I beleive, like you Winters, that outros and intros are a nice touch, but i dont think they should be as lngo as the mission itself

BTW: looking at the Mission editing FAQ in the editing section, I learned so much in half an hour I am almost certain I will have an entire pack of completely finished missions for the release of the MI-28. I hope you will download my first released work.

BTW: thanks to Jap for his work in that thread...if he still posts here.

one thing i DO NOT know from that thread is how to create a breifing. something to do with an Description.ext file or something... but i dont know how to create them

[SpecOp9 0]

Well one reason why Resistance Campaign was better to play, is because it was much more interesting.  More decisions, and choices ETC.

John C Flett , I agree with some of your "realism" discussions.

Medal of Honor for example, the beggining Normany mission.  While not realistic, it had barely any cutscenes.  The entire cutscene was infact the gameplay itself, and it made that one of my most favorite missions..

But basically you can skip anything I have said if you want

When it sums everything down to make a good mission,

- Needs a plausible reason

- Needs scripts

- Needs to get players "involved" with your mission

- Needs ingenuity

If the mission is to blow up a few tanks, I might as well just hop into my mission editor and set it up myself.

[lonesoldier 0]

A few tips:

1. Make sure the music isnt too loud if you include it. I found that some players (testing my missions) liked to have the music "there, but not really there". i.e. not blaring out at you. More like it is in the background and can be heard if you want it to be heard, but can also be easily ignored by the player.

Sound should always come before music - FACT

2. When making a briefing, have it thorough, but not too much. With long breifings i tend to read the first few lines, then just skip to the objectives.

3. Add small details. Small details are always appreciated. Such as custom actions, via the addAction command. Dialog boxes. Resource overlays. etc...

4. Id really have to say that atmosphere is probably THE biggest thing i consider when making a mission. That nice blend of fog, rain, background music/sounds, location, time and environment can make a truly awesome mission.

When making missions i usually tend to have them more on the scary/suspense side of things.

5. SOUND!!! Im a sucker for using shitloads of custom sound. Mostly from shadowman, rainbow six and medal of honor.

I fucking really love sound. I use it for everything in missions. Such as "Tango Down", "Threat Neutrolised", "Objective Acheived" etc... I even use it for rain pounding on rooftops when you walk in buildings. So that it gives that creepy atmosphere of the roof getting flooded with rain!

6. Attention to detail. Put every single little detail in your missions. I NEVER use a prebuilt play area by BIS. I ALWAYS create my own play area. So that i can have what building i want where, and what plant i want where etc...

Put plants in essential spots, put fences around, make it look REAL.

If the mission is around some old abandoned place, then put dead trees, and plants with no leafs. And smashed up fences. Make it LOOK abandoned.

Anyway, thats my 2 cents for now.

[Guest DKM-jaguar]

Long breifings over a page long do some bad stuff apparently.

[SpecOp9 0]

For briefings, would be cool to have it just one big image with the text on the image ;)

Quote[/b] ]4. Id really have to say that atmosphere is probably THE biggest thing i consider when making a mission. That nice blend of fog, rain, background music/sounds, location, time and environment can make a truly awesome mission.

Bingo

[lonesoldier 0]

Quote[/b] ]For briefings, would be cool to have it just one big image with the text on the image ;)

That is actually possible. Its pretty easy to do, once you know what you're doing.

[SpecOp9 0]

yep, all it would require is Photoshop or PSP to make it look fancy and attractive.

[lonesoldier 0]

Yup. You should see some of the resource overlays ive used in my new mission.

Got about 12 i think... Has a working, fully detailed health bar through clever use of 10 resource overlays, and some other cool stuff...

Ive also used resource overlays for my ww2ec mission for displaying large satelite photographs via dialog box buttons etc...

Its really fucking cool IMO.