What makes a good mission?
Start with
this tutorial. Read it each day for a week until it is engraved on your heart. It doesn't mean you'll make great missions, but it does mean you won't make bad ones.
The fundamental point in creating a good mission is
exactly the same in creating a good novel:
you must cause the player to "suspend his disbelief." (The player/reader doesn't believe what's happening in the mission/book is real, because he knows intellectually that it is a work of fiction. In order to enjoy the work of fiction, he temporarily suspends this disbelief, so that he get right into the mission/book and enjoy it thoroughly. The mission/book creator must do everything possible to help the player/reader achieve that suspension of disbelief.)
This is where talk of 'realism' comes from: the more realistic something is, the more believable it is. And that's why I'm constantly banging on about how you should Preview the mission, imagine that you are the commander, and place your units/static objects accordingly. You want a realistic mission? Well what would the defensive commander do? He'd walk around the village saying "hosptial here ... ammo dump there .... store the vehicles behind that barn ... yes we'll have a machine gun nest here ..... some sandbags and RPGs there ..." and so on. (Yes I know some of that would be subcontracted to his staff and subordinates, but you take my point.)
Reality on its own of course is insufficient: even detrimental. You need a good story. A sound plot with a beginning, middle and end. A powerful sense of place and time. Strong characters. If your mission isn't going to make a good short story, it isn't going to make a good mission. That's why good Intros and Briefings are so important - that's where you introduce the story, and indeed, tell much of it.
The CWC campaign wrote itself becuase there was so much that had to be done to introduce the player to various aspects of the game. Different weapons, driving vehicles, commanding tanks, flying planes, commanding a group ... half the missions were really just training missions. That's parly why Resistance was a much better campaign, there was more time for genuine story.
If you are stuck for mission ideas, read some military history. There are tens of thousands of real historical actions that would make a sound basis for an OFP mission. OFP is very flexible so you can transform almost every detail - the historical thing need only be a starting point. You don't have to do a re-creation.
And in mission editing, isn't there a way to get around external scripting, with only using "scripting commands" in the init fields, condition fields etc?
Most BIS missions don't use script files. However, scripting is a very powerful tool: and if you want to make good missions you'll need to use every tool available to you. Why would you want to "get around" external scripting? It is true you can do some stuff in init fields and so on, but its very limited.
The first step would be to probably place the Russian Soldiers first, that's what I usually try and do.
Wrong. That's about 23rd step. Start with the story in your head. Who when where why which?
? What's going to be in the Intro and Briefing? Who are your main characters going to be?
Right, now get in a chopper and fly round some islands looking for a location. Having found the location, spend an afternoon exploring the area and thinking about how it will affect the plot. Adjust accordingly. Repeat. Now explore the area further away, where the attackers will be. Make similar changes. Repeat. Back to the village again and repeat.
The mission is starting to take shape now, so you can start playing and experimenting: throw some missionettes together in the area and get a good understanding of the lie of the land. It looks attractive to attack from this direction but is that really true? What is the best way to defend from the south? And so on.
Gradually, these missionettes will begin to turn into bits of your mission. You'll probably have have a dozen saved and the moment when your mission starts is the moment when you bring them all together into one mission. Now you can really spend some time on the Mission Editor map, putting things in roughly the right place and adding static objects and so on. Then a few triggers. And then suddenly you have the basic outline of the mission.
Sure you can get to the basic outline part in 10 minutes by just placing some stuff in the editor straight off. That's how you make a mediocre mission.
Final point: like most things a good mission is 10% and 90% perspiration. Assuming you have school/college/job, it takes about a year to make a really good mission. If you've knocked it off in 3 months, it may be a perfectly sound mission but it isn't going to be a great one.
Oh and NightJay if you think that tutorial is good, and its not already in the Editors Depot, get the author to submit it or get his permission and submit it yourself (with him as author obviously). We want to have every good script, tutorial, function and tool that there is, bar none.
Topic: Editors Block (Read 1996 times)