Campaigns - Dynamic and Story Driven?

[Dekzar]

Hey guys,

Well, I'm gearing up my mod for when StarShatter is finally released, working as fast as I can to get more done (Still need help...).

Anyway, I was curious. I know that StarShatter's campaign is dynamic, and the missions are all randomly generated based on the current situation...but, what if I wanted some missions specifically added? Is there a way to force the game to display a certain mission at a certain time? Or, a way to make a closed-ended campaign like FreeSpace, where you just follow the story?

Thanks,
-Dekzar

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Well, you could make a bunch of Single Missions, label them Campaign 01 - 10, and tell people to play through em in order. I'm not sure about the dynamic campaign's capabilities. It could probably do it...dunno.

[John DiCamillo]

The dynamic campaign engine allows you (well, it allows me) to insert scripted missions that may be triggered by time or events. The tricky part is that scripted missions are always written for a single type of ship - e.g. this mission is a fighter strike, that one is a destroyer duel - but the player may not be assigned to that type of unit when the mission is triggered. So if there is a scripted mission that is critical to the story, it must be written once for each of the different fighter and starship classes that the player might be assigned to.

However, the dynamic campaign engine is only available for total conversion type projects. In the context of a normal mod, you can create a sequence of scripted missions that are meant to be played in order, just like Freespace. There are no branch points in the campaign, and in fact the player can see all of the missions from the moment he loads the mod. You don't have to beat mission two before you can see mission three. Starshatter is a bit like a DVD in this respect; you can play the missions in any order you choose, but for maximum enjoyment it is better to play them in the order listed.

[DamoclesX]

Ya, that would be a lot of work, we have a system worked out for the project 7 mod for a dynamic camp, but thats so far in the future its not even worth looking at right now, we have about 80 ships still to make.

Maby a gropu will come together and bang one for the b5 mod, that would be something sweet.

[Mehrunes]

ORIGINAL: John DiCamillo

However, the dynamic campaign engine is only available for total conversion type projects.

What about for aspiring ne'er-do-wells with too much free time?

[Isil`Zha]

That's how I've been doing it - making a list of numbered missions, and telling the player to play them in order... though I'm not really doing anything with the player in a fighter, mines' going to be all about captial ship assignments. There are a few things I need to know though... for instance, I noticed there's a "sound" parameter in the events box, I want to know what type of sound files and what folder or folder(s) does it read them from? I already saw the thing on music, but this is different. For one, messages at the top are easy to miss and I want to add a sound in when they pop-up.... along with that, we want to add voiceovers too.

[John DiCamillo]

Sound files should be in .wav format. You can use whatever resolution you like, but most of the sounds in the game are 16-bit mono at 22.1 KHz. Sound files should be placed in the /Mods/Sounds directory.

[Isil`Zha]

hmmm, it's not working for me.. unless I'm doing the sounds wrong? Just to test it out I grabbed chimes.wav from the windows sounds. I put in a time triggered message event and put "test" just to see when the sound should play (I put "chimes" and "chimes.wav" in the sound parameter), but nothing happens. [&:]

And I did move it to Mods/Sounds

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Are you using -filesys?

[Isil`Zha]

No.... [&:]

[Isil`Zha]

Oh! Now it's working [8D][:D]