Flashpoint Theory

[XCess]

User made missions and campaigns have never really been off the highest quality, they almost always fall apart on one or two levels. This is why, imo, there should be articles written by OFP gurus on their specific area of expertise. Technical rules to missions to give them a sense of polish, atmospheric rules to give the player a feeling of immersion.

So far the editors depot has only seen tutorials on how to make things. not how to make things good, except maybe in the cutscene area but even that needs to be expanded on.

I myself just open the editor, idea in my head, and make the part of the mission i just thought up not five minutes ago. That's why missions often seem dirty to me, any mission i download just doesnt seem right, people implement their ideas generally, not usually thinking about engine limitations.

I might just be rambling, none of this thread may make any sense, so I'll just cut it down a bit.
We need theory before practice in most things if it's going to be anywhere nearing proffesional quality, so it's time to write people. Essays may be boring but they're needed.

[dmakatra]

There are many, many, many examples of high-quality missions in the missions depot. Many of them better than BIS' missions. Airborn, Facile Ground, Hunter-Killer, Operation Firelord and Apache Assault for example. Have you not downloaded these missions or are we simply just disagreeing on how good these are?

So far the editors depot has only seen tutorials on how to make things. not how to make things good, except maybe in the cutscene area but even that needs to be expanded on

I bet my shorts that Macca will be 'ere in a tiny second pointing you in the direction of his tips and hints how to make a good mission tutorial. There's a few others like that as well, such as SnYpir's realistic briefings tutorial. Not too many though, and the reason, I belive, is that everyone got different taste. Someone might like to right his briefing this way, while the other dude likes the briefing that way, etc.

:beat: *Gets Shot* :beat:

[ACF]

Flipping it on it's head - give us some examples of 'low quality' or 'lack of polish' and your thoughts and ideas on how they would be improved within the limitations of the OFP engine.

In a sense, if you've identified the problems you are perhaps closer to the solutions than anybody!

There is a thread on the BIS forum:

http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard311/ikonboard.cgi?s=301c26c5787fd2fc4083120e296ca2b8;act=ST;f=7;t=43585

that may have relevance.

For the record, it's easy to find faults with any missions, user or BIS, 'cos I have too.  But I've tried to see what can be DONE about it.

[macguba]

I understand your sentiment, though as Armsty says its not true that there are no tutes on how to make stuff good.    I've written a specific tute and also have included tips (relevant to the particular topic) in other things.  

creating good missions

macguba's guide to mission editing for beginners

Beta testing board sticky topic

Quick guide to reducing lag

I plead guilty to self-advertisement but you did ask.   There are other things kicking around as well, if you look.   However OPFPEC is a big place and it takes some doing to get round all of it.

There are many excellent missions, and plenty of good ones.   Unfortunately there are many more crap ones, as you say.    There are two reasons for this.   Firstly, mission editing is difficult - to make your first mission takes an enormous amount of learning.     Even quite decent first missions are rarely little more than functional, which is no surprise.     The second reason is that making a good mission is REALLY difficult.    Most people make missions primarily for their own mission making pleasure (not the pleasure of the player, that's a bonus) and actually making a good mission involves a great deal of hard work and tedium.    Many mission makers, quite understandably, do not wish to put the enormous extra effort in to take a mission from ok to good.    

To make a good mission takes several hundred hours work, assuming you already how to make a functional mission.     If you have a job, school or college to go to you can't possibly make more than 1 good mission a year.    And that's assuming you have the talent to make a good mission in the first place.    Practically anybody can make a functional mission if they choose but as with any art or craft some people are better at it that others.

Why is it so difficult?    Here we get to the nub of the problem because many people don't appreciate this.   It's nothing to do with scripting or cutscene making skills.   (Although obviously they help.)    It's nothing to do with good plotting, good dialogue and good characters.   (Ditto.)    It's to do with the interactivity of the game:  you do somthing, it has a consequence.   The hard part of mission creation is setting up a situation where the player has a set of options all of which you, as the mission designer, understand.    You then must create consequences which are appropriate to the player's actions.    

It's impossible to do this completely (which is part of the joy of playing the game) but a good mission does it pretty well, which is why you feel satisfied after playing it.    Expectations have been created and met:   good behaviour has been rewarded and bad behaviour punished.

The three "high level" tips I always give are these.    Firstly, remember that when making a mission you are telling a story.    Think back to primary school - we need a sense of place and time; beginning, middle and end;  identity with the central character;  good supporting characters and so on.

Secondly, think very hard about consequences.   What would the player do in reality?    If you want him to do X, make the reward (or punishment) appropriate.    A general example of this is a defensive position:  if the player attacks it head on he should meet strong resistance.   If he goes round the flank he should meet lighter resistance.    Simple but effective.

Thirdly, playtest, playtest, playtest.    As an example, if you want to make a good mission then you Preview the mission as every single unit in it, just to check his starting situation.   Can he move off ok?   Is he facing the right way?   Is his weapon loadout correct?  

That summarises the problem.   If you want to make a good mission, you have to check every unit.   Half of them will need to be changed, which means you have to check them again.   Then something else in the mission will change, which means you have to check some of them again.   And again.    It can take 15 minutes to place a sniper even after you've decided which bush to put him in.     Later on, you will probably want to change the bush.  That's another 15 minutes.  

If you don't test at this level, some tiny details will be not perfect.    These tiny details, although not that important in themselves, multiply up to make that imperceptible difference between an ok mission and a good one.

[dmakatra]

Macca, come clean my house. My mom will be thrilled when she sees how thourough it is done. ;D

Seriously Macca, do you do this yourself? That's a helluva lot playtesting.

Those tips you gave there are mostly for linear, sort of "simpler" missions. If you make a more open, more scripting based mission it's a totally different way of mission making.

:beat: *Gets Shot* :beat:

[macguba]

Cleaning is not my forte I'm afraid,  ;D but yes I can spend 15 minutes placing a sniper.     I don't actually Preview every single unit - it isn't necessary if they are just standing in a field with standard loadouts - but 2 or 3 loons in each group certainly.   You'd be amazed how often there is a minor problem.

I don't agree that its different if its an open mission.    Umimpossible is as open a mission as there as ever been, and that's where I get half of it from.  It's important that a unit is doing what you think its doing whatever the mission.    

[Morglor9]

yes, I also see the point that XCess is trying to make. Also I see the truth in the counter-points (I don't know if that is actually a word). Mission Editing in OFP requires a Lot of learning. I made my first mission about a year ago, a nice POW Rescue mission. I didn't release it. Point is OFP editing is tough. It's hard to get good (and I mean, REALLY hard), and once you are good, OFP usually decides to screw with you by making something or other not work.

[General Barron]

If you have a job, school or college to go to you can't possibly make more than 1 good mission a year.

Oh thank god that's normal.... I thought I was just really, really slow.


Anyway, I pretty much agree with XCess. There are lots of 'technical' tuts in the ed depot (how to make a briefing, how to script a cutscene, how to add sound/music to your mission, etc), but there is a lack of... um, I guess 'style' tuts, for lack of a good phrase. Examples of that type of tut were already mentioned, but you got to admit, there aren't many of them.

Of course, how to make a great mission can't be written down, just like you can't write down how to make a great painting. In the end, it is up to the creativity and ingenuity of the mission designer. But still, it would help to have some 'guidance' from those who have certain skills down well, like XCess is talking about.

Along similar lines, I've been thinking about this thread here:
http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard311/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=33;t=43535
Basically, it is asking why there doesn't seem to be as many user missions in flashpoint as there should be. Looking at some of the responses, it seems that people just lose interest before they finish their mission. That sounds like what I do too, or rather I learn and then start a more complex mission than the first.

So I was thinking about sometime writing a tutorial about how to quickly and easily "polish" up a mission. The way I see it, there are tons of great resources in the ed depot to make most missions more polished; however, it would be nice to have something to point people to them. Things like the various AI scripts, one of the many artillery scripts, special effects scripts, etc. Basically, the idea would be that if you have a rough mission laid out, you could look at the tut, and it would give you ideas/ways to polish it up, without having to do it all from scratch.

Well, just some thoughts to ponder.

[Sui]

Believe it or not I started writing a 'how to put your vision into practical terms' sort of tute aaaages ago.

Unfortunately I just don't have the time to finish it these days... I'm not an unemployed student any more (damn this working for a living crap ;D).

OFP has a great deal of peculiarities, and familiarity with these goes a long way into cutting short the 'polish' time of a mission.
It's gotten to the stage where I have a basic 'standard operating procedure' of how I make missions... however it still takes a long time to get one out of production.

I've lost count of the number of missions I've gotten to beta stage (or just before beta stage), and scrapped due to various reasons...
Still, the couple I've managed to get out have been worth the effort in my humble opinion

I'll have to dig around and see if I can find that tute I started... I'm going to need something to do on the plane rides I'm taking to get home for Xmas. Maybe I should finish them up...

[XCess]

Woah, great response people. Looking at mac's tut's they don't really go into the theory of mission atmosphere which is what i really meant to say but couldn't think of the words at the time. In my opinion missions should provoke a sense of fear in the player. I remember two moments in OFP more than any. One was the After Montignac mission in the CWC campaign, being all alone apart from a whole battallion (maybe a slight exxageration) of ruskies looking out for anyone not wearing a red star and trying to make it alive to the... extraction point. and one moment from my own mission, the only one i released I believe, Take Le Port.

It was a simple beach assault mission, not a single script, i don't think I'd even heard of scripting at that point since I didnt have regular net access. 4 or 5 PBRs of US troops dismount at the beach, you make your way up the hill under heavy, and i mean heavy fire. about 6 m2s and a couple of full squads of ruskies i think it was. There were also a few mines placed around randomly from Gunslinger's editor pack that would explode when hit by the gunfire.
You eventually make it to the top of the hill and see the russians in chaos after the surprise attack, so now as you've got the upper hand you sit on the hill and pick them off. Out of pure OFP AI they started hiding, so I moved into the town, most of my squad dead or injure by this point, although other squads were still alive and shooting.
I get into the town hiding from a t80 id placed around somewhere, hoping for air support to blow the sh*t out of them soon, still the bullets flying everywhere. So i look up looking around for air support, to my relief i see an a10 swooping in low from the nearby hills, i look towards the tank... still alive. I look back at the a10... it's armed with 6 GBU's..... One is released.

I see the bomb slowly fall down as if time had slowed down... this was not lag or any kind of scripting. The bomb comes closer and closer to the ground then i notice it's getting a little too close..... then a little more too close... then way too close. So i ducked. In my chair. i almost shat myself when i noticed the bomb was heading for me and not the tank, thanks to the atmosphere of the mission, the unending gunfire. It was great, something I'll never forget even though it was me dying.

Now.... flashbacks over..... this is what i mean by atmosphere in missions, and what i meant when talking about tutorials on the theory of mission making. It would be good to give people a general idea of the theory behind the atmosphere of a mission.People are too worried about the technical side of missions and not the feeling of being there. That is what makes a game or mission good, the sense of being there, actually thinking you're going to die when you see a grenade being thrown at you or a couple of licks of tracer in your direction. It's possible, we just need to remember how.

If i made no sense.. Sorry
 

[dmakatra]

This, I belive, is very, very personal. You can't define an atmospheric mission. They just become that way. Such as Sui's Airborn. Nothing special really, I mean it's a good mission but no 9/10, but damn it got such a great atmosphere.

This is why I sometimes sit and play poorly rated missions, 'cause I think they got a great atmosphere. When I then tip my friends, they hate it. They didn't feel a thing, "just another shoot-out", so I think it's very personal.

I can say ONE thing, just one, that can severley boost the atmosphere of a mission and that is sound. We've seen it in games like Call of Duty or Doom 3, but I've never seen it fully used in OFP. That is because it takes bloody many sound resources, which OFP missions in general don't have.

Another atmosphere booster would be this: http://www.ofpec.com/yabbse/index.php?board=10;action=display;threadid=17158
But since we probably never gonna see it we can forget it. :-\

:beat: *Gets Shot* :beat:

[XCess]

There's simply too many arguments, too many opinions to have a single thread on the subject of mission design theory, so I've been thinking about creating a website dedicated to articles, tutorials and examples of mission design theory. Every aspect should be covered with time and user interest.

Now I'm gonna have to find my OFP disc and re-install thanks to my mate's gf destroying my comp... let's just hope it hasn't been thrown out or Im gonna be talking theory with no practice.
If anyone wants to host the site PM or email me. Thanks people, and again, the replies have been great.

[dmakatra]

I can put up a forum if you want.

:beat: *Gets Shot* :beat:

[dmakatra]

I've put up a board for you under "other". The other forum parts are not official yet so it's kinda empty.

http://dmakatra.mine.nu/forum/index.php

Tell me when you've registerd and I'll make you moderator.

:beat: *Gets Shot* :beat:

[XCess]

Thanks dude. Everyone, move on to the dmakatra's forums and discuss.