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"Breaking The Peace" Nod Campaign
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redfox34
Vehicle Drone


Joined: 16 Feb 2012

PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 12:50 am    Post subject:  "Breaking The Peace" Nod Campaign Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread



A ten mission campaign for DTA detailing the Brotherhood's campaign between the wars against the remnants of the Allied powers

Download link:
https://www.mediafire.com/?voisajaq32x9548
\edit LKO: added as attachment, since external hoster like to delete downloads after a few days.

Details
This campaign is a largely straight conversion of a 1999 campaign for Red Alert 1 by Matthew Beckett.  Some things have been changed for lore consistency, balance and adaption to DTA.

The campaign uses slightly modified variants of standard DTA multiplayer maps rather than all new maps, so all credit for those goes to their original authors.

The difficulty could be described as "Easy-Normal", but if I had to pick one I'd lean more towards "Normal".  People completely new to C&C will probably get squashed by a few of the missions, but if you've ever played C&C before then there will only be a few moments where you'll feel like the situation is out of control.

As I'm the only person who's tested the work and this is my first attempt to build a campaign for the TS engine, any constructive feedback or bug reports are much appreciated!

I'd hope to be able to have the DTA team consider this for inclusion with the rest of the missions, if that is something they'd like to do.

Cheers.



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Bittah Commander
Defense Minister


Joined: 21 May 2003
Location: The Netherlands

PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 1:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Looks like I'll have something to play this weekend #Tongue I'll have a go at these missions on hard soon.

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redfox34
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Joined: 16 Feb 2012

PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 2:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Already found one bug, probably related to switching house settings, radar doesn't seem to work once a construction yard is deployed

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Bittah Commander
Defense Minister


Joined: 21 May 2003
Location: The Netherlands

PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 3:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

See if changing FreeRadar=yes to no (under [Basic]) helps. Also, in exactly which mission are you encountering this issue?

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Lin Kuei Ominae
Seth


Joined: 16 Aug 2006
Location: Germany

PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 6:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I've allowed myself to add the zip as attachment here. External filehoster aren't very reliable when it comes to offer the file after a few days/months.

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redfox34
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Joined: 16 Feb 2012

PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 3:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Thanks, LKO.  Encountering it in Mission 3 (BTP3.map), and freeradar is set to no, oddly enough.

Edit: Basically, scenario starts and you have free radar.  Deploy and radar dies.  Building a comm center doesn't give you the radar back, but later at an arbitrary point the radar will come back for seemingly no reason.  Very odd

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Sombracier
Rocket Infantry


Joined: 03 May 2014

PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 5:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Try 1 : I have a bad feeling when I see my army are all flame thrower...
I begin to go to the south but I have see a GDI tower so I try to search for an another way, I have encounter a medium tank so I try to kill it, one flame thrower dead -> all dead. game over...

Try 2 : I have found an another way to the east so I try to go here, the medium tank chasing me, so I try again to kill him, after kill the tank, a soldier spawn from the tank and kill one flame thrower : one flame thrower dead -> all dead. game over...

Try 3 : I go to the east and don't fight the medium tank, after reach the east border I go to the south, after a while "a wild guard tower appears ! Guard tower use attack, it's super effective !" one flame thrower dead -> all dead. game over...

Try 4 : Same way, but I try to avoid the guard tower, this time it's a "wild grenadier"... one flame thrower dead -> all dead. game over...

Try 5 : I go to the east and stop to the middle, then go to the south, a new "wild guard tower" appears but I have destroy it, I have discover a civilian building but a rifle infantry kill one flame thrower : one flame thrower dead -> all dead. game over...

Try 6 : Same way but this time it's one of my own soldiers when he attack a civilian building... one flame thrower dead -> all dead. game over...

I have stop this map, flame thrower are cool but it's a pain to play with them...

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Lin Kuei Ominae
Seth


Joined: 16 Aug 2006
Location: Germany

PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 5:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

redfox34 wrote:
Thanks, LKO.  Encountering it in Mission 3 (BTP3.map), and freeradar is set to no, oddly enough.

Edit: Basically, scenario starts and you have free radar.  Deploy and radar dies.  Building a comm center doesn't give you the radar back, but later at an arbitrary point the radar will come back for seemingly no reason.  Very odd

Sounds like the player doesn't has enough power.
A radar (also FreeRadar) works only with a positive power output. When you deploy the conyard, the power consumption and all the checks with it are started.
I assume on the map are some preplaced player buildings (maybe even hidden under some shroud) which drain power, so when the conyard is deployed, you immediately run in low power.

\Edit
oh you said you set FreeRadar=no. hmm that is strange then.

\Edit
checked the map in FinalSun and couldn't find anything strange.
I only noticed that the walls of the AI base have on some spots the wrong segment (there is T segment where it should be only a straight segment). There is also a piece missing in the north. If this is intended to be a hidden backdoor, the adjacent pieces should show some signs of damage, so the missing piece doesn't stands out that much.

There is also a tiberium patch under the repair bay and another under the refinery. They should be removed.

Last edited by Lin Kuei Ominae on Fri Oct 09, 2015 6:08 pm; edited 1 time in total

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Bittah Commander
Defense Minister


Joined: 21 May 2003
Location: The Netherlands

PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 6:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Alright, I tested it and it appears that the changed player house is indeed the cause, although I have no idea why (I haven't seen this happen before).
When I tested it, I received a free radar at the start, which automatically gets disabled again after a few seconds if you don't deploy your MCV and it immediately gets disabled when you do deploy your MCV. I did regain the radar after building the radar structure however (regardless of whether I deployed the MCV before or after the free radar was disabled).

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Bittah Commander
Defense Minister


Joined: 21 May 2003
Location: The Netherlands

PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 6:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I just played through the first mission and although it was doable after a couple tries, it was quite annoying with your flamethrower infantry constantly killing one another.
This made me wonder: was this intentional or is this campaign actually meant for Enhanced mode (since your own flamethrower infantry don't kill each other there)?

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redfox34
Vehicle Drone


Joined: 16 Feb 2012

PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 7:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

The campaign's definitely meant for classic mode.  In the original mission the flamethrower infantry were flame tanks, but since those weren't invented until TD campaign I replaced them with flamethrower infantry at all opportunities.  

I figured people would know how to use the flamethrower infantry and micro them (since who ever uses them normally?) but maybe not?  Open to suggestions, only kept the original design as a starting point.

Noticed a game breaking bug at BTP6 where completing the objective fails to complete the mission now.   Wish I had tested everything again after changing the player house, should have figured it would have had unforeseen glitches on an old engine like this.  It had all worked fine when the house was Nod.

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Bittah Commander
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Joined: 21 May 2003
Location: The Netherlands

PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 7:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

While some people indeed do know how to micro flamethrower infantry, they're still unpredictable and tedious to play with. In TD you also never started with this many flamethrower infantry because they're just not fun to play with.
I suggest for you to either make them Type Immune like in Enhanced mode, or to provide the player with some other units as well (such as buggies for example).

I just got to mission 4 and there I start with just a Chinook. I obviously can't beat the mission with the Chinook alone, so I'm pretty sure that mission is also broken.

Edit: Oh, apparently the commando starts top-right and I never even noticed him. For some reason pressing N or B only selects the Chinook and never the Commando Confused

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redfox34
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Joined: 16 Feb 2012

PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 7:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Got it.  Did the screen not scroll to the right to show you the commando?

I think the commando is unselectable via "N" because of where he is on the map.  That also keeps the area guard infantry from charging him immediately.

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Bittah Commander
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Joined: 21 May 2003
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 8:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

The screen did scroll towards the commando, but I initially didn't notice him there and just assumed it was showing me where to attack with whatever unit the Chinook was supposed to be carrying.
It's possible to add a script that makes the commando flash for a few seconds; this'll surely make him much easier to notice.

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Lin Kuei Ominae
Seth


Joined: 16 Aug 2006
Location: Germany

PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 8:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I don't know if you used them already,
but DTA also has wide variety of talkbubbles. Much more than TS had.
At times some of these can be helpful too.
e.g.
-a talkbubble with a "target" symbol shown on enemy units
-a talkbubble with an "enter" cursor on your engineers to show they should capture something
-a c4 talkbubble for your commando
etc

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redfox34
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Joined: 16 Feb 2012

PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 9:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I'll definitely consider that.  Probably what I will do is make all the suggested revisions in one go as a "version 2" once people have played through the first go.

Attached is a fixed version of BTP6.  More hacky than I'd like but at least will allow you to keep playing once you beat the mission.



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Bittah Commander
Defense Minister


Joined: 21 May 2003
Location: The Netherlands

PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 10:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

In mission 8 there's some helipads in the north-east corner of the map with some Longbows hovering above them. After attacking them with my Phase Tank, they flew towards my still unretrieved MCV and destroyed it Confused

Also, when the Phase Tank gets destroyed, it doesn't make me lose the mission.
Edit: The Longbows actually often even attack the MCV when I don't when I don't attack anything.

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redfox34
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Joined: 16 Feb 2012

PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 10:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Yikes.  That'll need fixing.   The AI should have built the longbows themselves so I don't know why they'd be hovering around -- and I would think too that they wouldn't attack a target marked "Harmless" as the MCV is marked.  There must be a way to disable that behavior until the MCV is deployed

And the Phase tank loss condition not firing...mark that as another notch on the bug list too

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Bittah Commander
Defense Minister


Joined: 21 May 2003
Location: The Netherlands

PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 11:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

The problem is that the AI's production triggers are apparently activated long before you retrieve your MCV and this causes the AI to produce a swarm of Longbows when you take a while to get to your MCV (I spent a while because I decided to scout as much of the map as possible before retrieving my MCV).

By the way, in missions where the player gets a Chinook and the player is not supposed to or doesn't need to use it to carry vehicles, you can add this to your map:
Code:
[TRAN]
Carryall=yes

This prevents a Chinook that's filled with infantry from automatically unloading them when it lands and it'll also no longer unload them one at a time, while taking off and landing again in between unloading every infantry.
Mind that this does have one side-effect however: if the Chinook docks with a helipad and the player then orders it to unload, the infantry will disappear. So don't use this in missions where the player can build a helipad and the player is unable to lose when he still owns infantry (because the infantry this disappeared will actually still "exist", which prevents the player from failing a mission by losing all units).

Edit:
I think I'm going to have to give up on mission 9. As you can see, I start with barely any build space and am forced to destroy trees at the start to create extra build-space and I get a ton of useless flamethrower infantry that often all instantly die after getting slightly too close to the AGTs.
After destroying the trees as quick as I can and building as many units and defenses as I can in the time I have, I get entirely overwhelmed by a swarm of Medium Tank (sometimes including Rocket Launchers).
The same thing happens if I rush my starting units towards the east and then build next to the ore field there, but then I'll just have less money considering ore is worth far less than gems.



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redfox34
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Joined: 16 Feb 2012

PostPosted: Sat Oct 10, 2015 1:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Definitely the hardest mission of the set as far as I'm concerned.

The way I did it was:

1.  Use the expendable infantry to lure the mediums at the start into your light tanks. Use the flamethrowers to kill the rocket infantry that follow.

2.  Clear out the barbed wire with the phase tank.  Set a waypoint along the path.

3.  Send the light tanks and MCV along the waypoint, they will hardly take any damage as they will barely be in range of the AGT.  Deploy to the east.

4.  Shuttle the flamethrowers via phase APC to the build site.

5.  Use rocket infantry, light tanks, flamethrowers to hold off mediums and send the phase APC after the rocket launchers until you have a stable defense line.

Once you have an airstrip + comm center you can build SSM launchers to clear out the towers.

Again, here too there probably needs to be a "wait till deploy" flag on the AI.

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Bittah Commander
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 10, 2015 2:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I tried moving to the east, but the result seemed the same aside from the fact that I had less money since I couldn't harvest gems.
Also, while using rocket infantry to hold off medium tanks does work to some extent, that's over as soon as the AI sends a couple Rocket Launchers along.

Were you also laying this on hard difficulty by the way?

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Einhander
Cyborg Soldier


Joined: 17 Apr 2014

PostPosted: Sat Oct 10, 2015 8:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

So far I have managed to reach (Mission 6 Repo Men)

Mission six is very confusing as the player starts with a commando a handful of rocket infantry and for some reason incarcerated engineers.

First I want to point out that having 4 engineers held prisoner on this map sets up a false flag for what the player should be expecting. Because if there are engineers being held prisoner here and there are only 4 buildings on the initial island it would be logical to assume that those 4 engineers are for those 4 buildings. Instead they are all the engineers you get in that mission and if you used them your out of luck. I made the mistake in deducting that there would be more engineers being held hostage throughout the map, I was wrong.

The pillbox that is guarding the engineers is a bit much as 90% of the time while attempting the mission the pillbox remains at half health after the barrels have exploded. Once the player reaches that point all they can do is restart the mission and hope the rng rolls in their favor. Also the pillbox gets repaired by the AI when damaged making acquiring said engineers more difficult.

Interrogative: Why are the engineers incarcerated? The mission briefing did not state any special variables to the mission or as to how the engineers are being held captive by the enemy forces. Logically I would expect with the current mission briefing that the engineers would have been deployed with the commando and rocket infantry. And if you are only going to give the player a set number of engineers let them know so that they can plan accordingly.

I like the idea of a staging island for the assault on their research complex but the AA makes using the helo's a waste of time due to the fact the player must use the commando to lure out the tanks so the air support doesn't get turned into confetti. I have "completed" this mission at least 6 times without the use of attack aircraft.

Another issue I encountered was after capturing the research complex was the game failed to trigger a mission complete. So far I have replayed this map some were around 30 times and I have yet to complete it due to this bug. I am unsure if it is due to the fact that I saved 1 engineer early on and captured their construction yard and built a barracks to capture the research station for contingency reasons.

My suggestion would be this:

    -Give the player a barracks with the refinery and helo pad.

    -Give the player another harvester.

    -Make the defenses on the island with the research center a lot better, I would very much enjoy having to take essentially a whole base with nothing but infantry.

    -Find a way to make the AI patrol areas of the map. This is the 2nd commando mission I played in this campaign so far and the AI has not been observed to be patrolling areas thus making the missions laughably easy.


Campaign suggestions:

    -Stop with the large groups of flame throwers in the beginning of missions. As I am sure you are aware from others who have stated their increadibly fickle nature as a combative unit. I would suggest Minigunners, they are weak but still versatile enough to be useful. And I believe they would fit fine with the "timeline" you stated.

    -Make the enemy bases harder to breach, for all the missions up to 6 I found all the bases to be mostly unguarded in the forms of base defense structures.

    -You have to keep in mind what units you are giving the player to complete the mission with. If you give them artillery make sure the AI has enough units to make using them more difficult. (Missions with a player base)

    -Scale difficulty with mission progression. As the missions continue the player should feel more challenged, even though I'm stuck on mission 6 due to a bug I have played the 5 previous missions with relative ease with very little if any difficulty scaling.


I hope my input helps you refine your project and I would like to say that I am so far pleased with the amount of effort that you gave dedicated to it. Keep up the good work!

Does anyone have any idea how to fix the mission 6 bug?

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Bittah Commander
Defense Minister


Joined: 21 May 2003
Location: The Netherlands

PostPosted: Sat Oct 10, 2015 2:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

If with the mission 6 bug you mean the fact it doesn't make you win when you capture the Bio lab, redfox already posted a fixed version 5 posts above yours. Simply replace the mission with the one from his attachment and then load a saved game of mission 5 to play the fixed version of mission 6.
I haven't tried this fixed version of the map myself yet though, because I already made an edit of my own to get past mission 6 beforehand.

Also, I agree with all points you made, although I was unsure about the intention with the barrels next to the Pill Box.
I ended up destroying the Pill Box by first blowing up the barrels with rocket infantry to get them out of the way and then using the rocket infantry to distract the Pill Box while sending in the commando to blow it up with C4.

By the way, at times I get the impression I'm not playing some of the missions the way they were intended because it feels like I'm not given the right tools for the job, which just makes the mission take a while to complete without actually feeling like more of a challenge because of it.

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Einhander
Cyborg Soldier


Joined: 17 Apr 2014

PostPosted: Sat Oct 10, 2015 2:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I have been feeling the same about the way the missions are supposed to be played. With what I have played so far I find that a lot of the missions are either very simple to complete or tedious due to the units I am given. While the missions are understandably linear they give me the impression that every time I think out of the box I'm doing it wrong or cheating.

Given time and diligent work I could see this shaping up to be a great campaign. I am very interested to see what it will play like when its development is completed.

Also the fix didn't work. I even tried taking over all the buildings just in case, but it didn't work. (Selling the research center and the surounding buildings crashes the game.)

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Bittah Commander
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Joined: 21 May 2003
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 10, 2015 5:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I just checked supposedly fixed version of mission 6 with the map editor and from I can tell, the settings for the "Victory" trigger are still exactly the same as before, so I'm suspecting that redfox might somehow have accidentally uploaded the old version of the map.

The problem is that when the Engineer captures the Bio Chem Lab, the trigger's action specifies Allies as the faction to win the game (instead of BTPNod), which does nothing.
To fix this yourself, just open the map with a text editor, search for [Actions] and under it, replace
Code:
01000024=1,1,0,2,0,0,0,0,A
with
Code:
01000024=1,1,0,14,0,0,0,0,A



Edit:
I just managed to get past mission 9; moving east towards the ore field was indeed the way to go since it was extra difficult to defend your base at the initial position.
Whether I survived at the start still depended on whether or not I was lucky enough that the AI didn't send Rocket Launchers along with the early Medium Tank rushes however. So provided that doesn't happen, I do like the challenge the mission offers.

I also had a go at mission 10, but it crashed after just a few minutes when I destroyed the GDI structures in the south-west corner.
The cause is that the structures there are overlapping and when an overlapping structure is destroyed, the game will almost always crash.

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redfox34
Vehicle Drone


Joined: 16 Feb 2012

PostPosted: Sat Oct 10, 2015 6:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Sorry for the crashes/bugs, everyone.  Einhander, does Bittah's line fix work for you?  If not, I'll look into it more tomorrow.  You can also set the battle.ini line for [NDC] to BTP7.map to skip levels, although this will break the map selection process for each subsequent map.

I'm taking all your comments/feedback into consideration.  It's all really helpful so please keep providing it and once it's slowed to a halt I'll make a list of proposed changes that I can act on for a more comprehensive revision.   If nothing else this is teaching me how easily things can go wrong with just a few small changes to code.

Bittah: That overlapping structure bug is very common and I had to fix quite a few scenarios to do that.  Do you know which structures are overlapping?  Is it the bottom left most power plants?  I had to move those up because they were too far down the edge of the map in the first version.

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Bittah Commander
Defense Minister


Joined: 21 May 2003
Location: The Netherlands

PostPosted: Sat Oct 10, 2015 10:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

If you enable the "Show Building Outline" option, it becomes very easy to tell which buildings are overlapping.

Edit:
Apparently mission 9 has overlapping power plants as well.

Edit2:
I just had another crash while playing mission 10, which happened while destroying the south-east Allied base. The helipads are overlapping there.

Edit3:
I just finished mission 10, which was quite easy again (especially compared to mission 9).

It's a bit confusing that there's a Bio Research Facility in the Allied base, which somehow lead me to convince myself that it must actually be the Technology Center that had to survive according to the second game objective, even though it was uncapturable (and yes, I just realized that there's actually a tech center in your main base Laughing).  So at the end of the game I had destroyed everything on the map and ran out of options, I finally just tried to destroy the Bio Research Facility to check whether it'd make me win or lose and I properly won the game.
The miss-assumption is probably my own fault, but it still makes me wonder what that Bio Research Lab is doing in an allied base.


Anyhow, something I noticed in almost all the missions of the campaign is that the AI would almost always sell its structures when I attacked it. It only does this when it has no money, so I think it's best to make sure any enemy houses that own structures on the map have at least some money.

Something thing I'll recommend for at least future reference is that when you use existing maps to create your missions, it's a good idea to only use parts of those existing maps and possibly even copy/paste some chunks together to create something that looks less familiar.
Right now every map you used is completely identical to their original versions, aside from the structures and units that were placed on them, which allows players that are familiar with the maps to instantly recognize them and especially symmetrical maps (many of the maps you used were symmetrical) can look too unnatural to be fitting for a mission. On the other hand, if players would only get to see a region of some larger map (possibly with different lighting), it'll instantly look a lot more interesting and will no longer be symmetrical, without even requiring you to do any extra work (although making some slight edits to the terrain or copy/pasting different areas would of course be even better).



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Einhander
Cyborg Soldier


Joined: 17 Apr 2014

PostPosted: Sun Oct 11, 2015 3:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I'm a little confused about mission 8. Every time I try to get my mcv out of the area it gets torn to pieces by the surrounding enemy units. If I attempt to defend it with the phase tank then they both get turned into modern art. Plus once I reach the area of the mcv the AI goes after my 2 units with artillery and medium tanks.

Am I missing something? It also seems all the areas with a small amount of build space has either units or defensive structures.

Am I not to attempt to move the mcv out of its starting location?
If not then why is it in such a position?

Also mission 6 when the harvester deploys into the refinery it no longer deposits funds.

Mission 7 made no sense to me, were is this tiberium truck in the briefing?
Why did I not have to rescue it?
The helipad doesn't have a build list, there is no refinery to help supply reinforcements which make all the buildings given to the player useless.
The mission is easily completed by selling the airstrip and building an engineer. With that the player can send the 4 chinooks over with 1 engineer and complete the mission in seconds.

The amount of allied naval units in the map could prove to be problematic without the ability to build your own naval units. (Luckly I am darn good at microing naval units).

Does the nod outpost need sam sites? And if the player starts with buildings with the obvious undertone for use then why does the mission start with no money?

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redfox34
Vehicle Drone


Joined: 16 Feb 2012

PostPosted: Wed Oct 14, 2015 11:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

OK, here is my suggested revision list.  If anyone wants to dispute any of the points or add to them, let me know.

Quote:
General/All Missions
--------------------
Free Radar enabled on some missions where shouldn't be -- radar doesn't necessarily come back when Comm Center built
Less flamethrowers in general in starting unit makeup
Harder base defenses
Difficulty feel/progression consistency
Fix any/all overlapping structures
Check AI money totals
Modify map terrain/lighting if possible/where appropriate

Mission 1
---------
Take out Medium Tank at beginning
Add more waypoint reveals/dialogue for Guard Towers

Mission 3
---------
Walls of AI base have T someplaces where should be straight -- missing segment in north
Tiberium under repair bay and refinery in AI base

Mission 4
---------
Use flash/talk bubble triggers to make mission path more apparent

Mission 6
---------
Mission potentially not completable
Talk about Engineers in briefing
Stop AI from repairing prison pillbox
Add more barrels around pillbox
Remove AA guns around Allied base
Patrol routes, possibly
Add barracks to island, possibly 2nd harvester

Mission 7
---------
General revision of concept (objectives, order, units provided, etc)

Mission 8
---------
Don't start AI production until MCV deployed
Fix Phase Tank Loss trigger

Mission 9
---------
Don't start AI production until MCV deployed
Make more obvious that you're supposed to head east
Move starting AGT line back a bit to enable stealthier approach
Troubleshoot difficulty on Hard (no AI rocket launchers in attack waves?)

Mission 10
----------
Increase difficulty substantially
Remove allied bio lab


Einhander, regarding mission 8:  Use the MCV to lure out the Medium tank to the west, then the Phase tank to kill it.  You can use a similar tactic with the Light Tanks.   Deployment zones are possibly either to the center-right or the village site in the south.

Mission 6 fund error: Likely I'd think this was a result of the refinery being at capacity.

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Bittah Commander
Defense Minister


Joined: 21 May 2003
Location: The Netherlands

PostPosted: Wed Oct 14, 2015 11:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

One thing that I forgot to mention is that just like in mission 8, the MCV in mission 10 can often be destroyed while it's still "in captivity". I think it's best that you give the Nod MCV a different house that's allied to GDI and then change its house to the BTPNod when the player moves a unit close enough to it.
redfox34 wrote:
Add more barrels around pillbox

Rather than adding more barrels around the pillbox, I recommend that you instead use a trigger that destroys the Pillbox when the barrels are destroyed.
I intend to make the barrels more damaging in the next public update, but I'm not certain exactly how damaging they will be just yet.
redfox34 wrote:
Einhander, regarding mission 8:  Use the MCV to lure out the Medium tank to the west, then the Phase tank to kill it.
I never bothered with that. I just destroyed the walls around the MCV and then deployed it right there, after which I built some rocket infantry to assist the Phase Tank with taking care of the Medium Tank.

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Einhander
Cyborg Soldier


Joined: 17 Apr 2014

PostPosted: Fri Oct 16, 2015 5:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I strongly feel mission 6 needs a complete overhaul before it could be considered viable.

Consider this suggestion:

Remove the commando and replace it with a reasonably sized squad of all purpose units. Honestly I felt the Commando was overkill from the beginning since the commando is used so little in the map. (NO FLAMETHROWERS.)

Remove the pill box, fence, and engineers. Instead have the engineers deploy with the starting forces.

Along with the starting base enhancements you could then let the player assault the "island" with general purpose infantry.

And since the player now has a "safety net" they can explore the map more. So that means you could easily buff the defenses on the island they need to seize.

(Try to picture a scenario similar to the assault on D-day but with nothing but infantry and air support.)

You could add additional defensive structures, units, and patrols. Which in turn could easily make this an enjoyable and challenging mission. Make the player fight for control rather than having them just beat it easily.

But keep in mind it isn't your intention to punish players, so if you can't get constant results with something then don't implement it. (Like the pillbox and barrels.)

Over all the best way to go about designing anything is to ensure the player has options at their disposal, you want the players to flex their creativity and feel a sense of satisfaction after they complete a level.

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