I have a mission in my upcoming plug (i.e., when I finally get the $$^#@ plug finished- summer? :)) that has a HUGE breifing. How do you make a breifing fit two+ EVO breifing pages? Can you?
Also, somebody posted a set of shipyard links a while back. Could someone get me the list? I might add a ship.
All the best,
U-99
We had the same problem in NOVA continually. First of all, none of the descs can be over 1024 characters in length. If they are, then they just simply get cut off after the 1024th character. That is every mission desc.
Secondly, you can resize the DITL's (or is it DLOG's? - go and look, I can't remember off the top of my head) to be larger. Beware however, after a certain distance of increasing their size vertically, you again get a mystical cutoff point where (regardless of how many characters have been displayed onscreen up to that point) the text just stops. However, you can make it significantly wider. Trouble is, long lines of text suck to read. The trick is to create a desc box big enough to hold all your text without being too hard to read. We're still trying with NOVA.
Of course, this might all be bad news to you. You could make the mission non-refuseable (there's an option to do that in the misn resource), which would mean that you would have 2 briefing texts; the initial text that you get whenever a misn is offered, and the Initial briefing. Another suggestion could be to break the mission up into several misns (this could mean a slight revision of your original misn idea - sorry - we've had to do this many times on NOVA). For example you could only explain the first part of the misn you want the player to do and then in the completion text say something like, "yadda, yadda, yadda (whatever applicable to your mission)... meet me in the bar in an hour and we'll discuss the next stage of our journey." You could even break the mission up even further. A number of NOVA misns have been broken up into 3 or even 4 missions just to get everything done and reasonably so.
Any other questions, email me. I'll be happy to answer if I can...
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Thanks!! I'll take the "non-refuseble mission" idea, though I don't want my missions to be a pain. (I hate it when I get a non-refusable mission that will hurt my rep, give me a heavy combat mission is a scoutship, etc.)
Thanks for the offer,l I'll be sure to use it.
Now all I need are those shipyards......
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To each his own,
U-99
Now all I need are those shipyards......
Try (url="http://"http://matrix.crosswinds.net/~evula/links/shipyard.html")http://matrix.crossw...s/shipyard.html(/url)
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Micah L.
(url="http://"http://micahl.cjb.net")Micah World(/url)
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Here are the ones that I posted:
(url="http://"http://members.tripod.com/~nukky/")http://members.tripod.com/~nukky/(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.jps.net/btaenzer/shipyard/")http://www.jps.net/btaenzer/shipyard/(/url)
(url="http://"http://members.tripod.com/captain_joze51/")http://members.tripo...captain_joze51/(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.geocities.com/kelaarin/Caernarvon.html")http://www.geocities...Caernarvon.html(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.grand-novice.com/")http://www.grand-novice.com/(/url)
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Bubbles
Frandall wrote:
**We had the same problem in NOVA continually. First of all, none of the descs can be over 1024 characters in length. If they are, then they just simply get cut off after the 1024th character. That is every mission desc.
**
1024 characters, eh? I bumped into that limit recently without realizing exactly what had happened. Is ther a quick way to recognize when one is reaching the limit without actually counting characters? maybe the size of the resource?
**
Secondly, you can resize the DITL's (or is it DLOG's? - go and look, I can't remember off the top of my head) to be larger... However, you can make it significantly wider. Trouble is, long lines of text suck to read....
**
The resources are ID#s 1016 for the 'mission offer' and 3003 for the 'mission desc.' Both DLOGs and DITLs must be changed. (DLOGs control the location and size of the dialogue boxes, DITLs control the contents of the boxes. If you only resize the DLOG, the text area and buttons will still be in the places and the same size.) Acceptable width (line length) varies with the size of the type, but for the smal text used for missions, probably 3 to 4 inches (8 to 10 cm) is best.
**
Of course, this might all be bad news to you. You could make the mission non-refuseable (there's an option to do that in the misn resource), which would mean that you would have 2 briefing texts; the initial text that you get whenever a misn is offered, and the Initial briefing....**
You could conceivably use the 'load cargo' text also to provide additional information about the mission: "go to (spob) and someone will neet you there with further instructions." Also, if the structure of the mission allowed it, the 'drop cargo' dialogue could be used in this way. As far as I know it's not necessary to actually transfer cargo for these dialogues to be activated.
"Free advice is worth what you pay for it" 
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Joe Burnette wrote:
** <font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial" color="808BAD">Frandall wrote:
We had the same problem in NOVA continually. First of all, none of the descs can be over 1024 characters in length. If they are, then they just simply get cut off after the 1024th character. That is every mission desc.
</font>
1024 characters, eh? I bumped into that limit recently without realizing exactly what had happened. Is ther a quick way to recognize when one is reaching the limit without actually counting characters? maybe the size of the resource?
**
You got it in one. The size of the resource is equal to the number of characters (makes it much easier!!).
**
<font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial" color="808BAD">
Secondly, you can resize the DITL's (or is it DLOG's? - go and look, I can't remember off the top of my head) to be larger... However, you can make it significantly wider. Trouble is, long lines of text suck to read....
</font>
The resources are ID#s 1016 for the 'mission offer' and 3003 for the 'mission desc.' Both DLOGs and DITLs must be changed. (DLOGs control the location and size of the dialogue boxes, DITLs control the contents of the boxes. If you only resize the DLOG, the text area and buttons will still be in the places and the same size.) Acceptable width (line length) varies with the size of the type, but for the smal text used for missions, probably 3 to 4 inches (8 to 10 cm) is best.
**
Those'd be the ones... But be careful about running into the magical cut-off point. Especially if you use return tabs between paragraphs to make them easily distinguishable AS paragraphs, you can somtimes run across this annoying problem.
**
<font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial" color="808BAD">
Of course, this might all be bad news to you. You could make the mission non-refuseable (there's an option to do that in the misn resource), which would mean that you would have 2 briefing texts; the initial text that you get whenever a misn is offered, and the Initial briefing....</font>
You could conceivably use the 'load cargo' text also to provide additional information about the mission: "go to (spob) and someone will neet you there with further instructions." Also, if the structure of the mission allowed it, the 'drop cargo' dialogue could be used in this way. As far as I know it's not necessary to actually transfer cargo for these dialogues to be activated.
**
True, but in NOVA we often used the two cargtexts to provide extra info/background/story development/character development. Just a note, you cannot use loadcarg texts if you set the misn to pick up cargo at mission start. And like the man said, you do not have to actually be picking up any cargo for these texts to appear, but you do have to tell the misn resource WHERE you want the cargo picked up (then just set cargo type and cargo quantity to -1).
**
"Free advice is worth what you pay for it":D
**
And much appreciated too. Thanks...
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Quote
Frandall wrote:
** <font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial" color="808BAD"> Is ther a quick way to recognize when one is reaching the limit without actually counting characters? maybe the size of the resource?
**
You got it in one. The size of the resource is equal to the number of characters (makes it much easier!!).
(/B)
I suspected that, but it's good to have it confirmed. Does make things easier.
Thanks for the info on the cargo texts. Of course another similar trick is to specify cargo to be delivered at the end of the mission and then you can get 2 text boxes in sequence, the 'drop cargo' and the 'mission complete' texts. It would be possible to use the "completion' text field to start providing info for the next mission, that way the test could 'flow' from one mission to the next.
Also a note about non-refusable missions: A player does not necesssarily incur penalties for aborting a mission; this is determined by a flag in the misn resource. So if it required both the mission offer text field and the mission brief text field to describe the mission, a player should still be able to 'refuse' the mission by aborting it.
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You know, it occurs to me... Why not use a dëqt with mission text in it, and an EV-style button that you could use to close the movie? I'm sure that QT 3 and higher can do that kind of interactive stuff. If you could actually get quicktime to work in EV, then you could have up to 128 descriptions which were as long as you liked. If you did it right, with the proper button graphics, you could make it relativly seemless. You could also divide the text mission into as many "pages" as you liked.
BTW, has anybody actually gotten QT to work?
-reg
Quote
Joe Burnette wrote:
**Thanks for the info on the cargo texts. Of course another similar trick is to specify cargo to be delivered at the end of the mission and then you can get 2 text boxes in sequence, the 'drop cargo' and the 'mission complete' texts. It would be possible to use the "completion' text field to start providing info for the next mission, that way the test could 'flow' from one mission to the next.
**
True, but you have to be aware that the dropcarg text will appear at any time you land at returnstel while the mission is active. For example, if the mission is set up so that the player has to go to some travel stel and then go to some return stel, if the player lands on return stel before going to travel stel they will, for no apparent reason, be shown the dropcarg text. They will be shown the dropcarg text as many times as they land on return stel until the mission is complete.
**
Also a note about non-refusable missions: A player does not necesssarily incur penalties for aborting a mission; this is determined by a flag in the misn resource. So if it required both the mission offer text field and the mission brief text field to describe the mission, a player should still be able to 'refuse' the mission by aborting it.
**
I'm with you on this one. This is absolutely true, but no mission bits will be set so the mission could be offered again.
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Quote
Regulus wrote:
**You know, it occurs to me... Why not use a dëqt with mission text in it, and an EV-style button that you could use to close the movie? I'm sure that QT 3 and higher can do that kind of interactive stuff. If you could actually get quicktime to work in EV, then you could have up to 128 descriptions which were as long as you liked. If you did it right, with the proper button graphics, you could make it relativly seemless. You could also divide the text mission into as many "pages" as you liked.
BTW, has anybody actually gotten QT to work?
-reg**
Uh look at FH, and AFAIK, people have only been able to put them in mďsn dëscs.
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Andrew Meilstrup / JAE / Coruscant Software, unInc.
(url="http://"http://www.blackrockmac.com/ajm/")My website(/url), (url="http://"http://www.blackrockmac.com/ajm/corusoft/")the Coruscant Software website(/url)
(url="http://"mailto:ajmeilstrup@mac.com")mailto:ajmeilstrup@mac.com(/url)ajmeilstrup@mac.com
Quote
Andrew M wrote:
**Uh look at FH, and AFAIK, people have only been able to put them in mďsn dëscs.
**
Uh, Andrew, the EV version of FH does not have working movies - and mission descs are the whole point of this thread, in case you hadn't noticed.
One more note about long misn texts: If you can't fit all the text you need into the game, move it outside. If enlarged dialogue boxes andusing additional dialogs doesn't provide enough space for all the information, just include a SimpleText or Docmaker file with the plug for players to read at the appropriate time. It's a crude and clumsy method, and will annoy many users, but will do the job.
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Quote
Joe Burnette wrote:
Uh, Andrew, the EV version of FH does not have working movies - and mission descs are the whole point of this thread, in case you hadn't noticed.
Excuse me for not being awake yet.
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Andrew Meilstrup / JAE / Coruscant Software, unInc.
(url="http://"http://www.blackrockmac.com/ajm/")My website(/url), (url="http://"http://www.blackrockmac.com/ajm/corusoft/")the Coruscant Software website(/url)
(url="http://"mailto:ajmeilstrup@mac.com")mailto:ajmeilstrup@mac.com(/url)ajmeilstrup@mac.com
