BlackLight

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Yeah, I'll be tweaking, but not starting from scratch or anything. Especially on my Comics 101 arc, where the robots in the second mission were just brutal.

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Comic 101?

I generally play around 7ish-8ish Central time, which seems quite compatible with your play time.

Which server are you on? Mine is mostly Pinnacle.

Look me up under @Black Light

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Ah, got it working now, thanks! Actually had to toss Tyrant in there as a non-required objective that appears after the final required objective is complete. Hmmm, secret bosses... I kinda like it.

Sure would be nice if this was just a setting for us to change as we see fit, but oh well eh?

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Indeed, at least a setting when designing custom bosses or groups.
We could then work around with that without major troubles.

I would not be surprised is such an option was in the work too.

Ho yeah...
I didn't thought about the Battalion, but it does make a certain sense.


*Old spoiler*

I think to recall that there were suspected to be the alien race that metamorphosed the ritkis in their original dimension.

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Shiva, Rularuu, The 5th, Nemesis, whoever's using Kheldians as rocket fuel, all make their bid for world domination/world destruction either all at once or one right after another (while everyone is still recovering from the last crisis) until the universe implodes in a great big ball of DOOOOOMMMM!!!!

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Don't forget the Second Rikti Invasion. Not this namby pamby one we're having now, the one in twenty years that destroyed humanity utterly and chased Holsten Armitage to our time.

I had a piece of fan fic that I ought to finish some day, that had this idea as the foundation. That is, that you could change the nature of the Apocalypse but the Apocalypse itself was
inevitable.

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You wrote Terminator 3?

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Well, it's a classic science fiction concept.

It was used in the recent (relatively) movie version of the the Time machine.
And, to some extent, it seems to be how it now works in the Terminator universe, mostly so that they can continue produce sequels, money grabbing jerks!

It is the way to deal with time paradox, the time stream sneak around and the paradox does not really happen.
After all, in our situation, if we manage to prevent the Coming Storm, Nemesis would have no motivation to travel back in time. Ourobouros would not be founded, hence, and the Coming Storm would not have been prevented, after all. Which means, Nemesis would travel back in time, and it would be. Which means, it would not...


While I am typing that, I am wondering if we are going to see some zone changes (maybe like in Recluse victory)

Clave, I think that is the dev's idea.
But it seems that many maps do not work well in term of automated spawning. The devs basically have to place some glowies by hand.

In this case, they know that putting the maps into the MA will generate problems and won't do it before fixing the maps.

Hopefully, they will do just that and get a fixed version of every map in game and put into the MA a few at a time.
Hopefully.

Are you using copy/paste?

This seems to cause problems for some reason.

In which case find the faulty text bubble (testing the mission should tell you which one) and make sure to erase everything in it.
Then retype it or copy/paste again, if you are adventurous.

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"Spoils: to victor!"

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Oh yeah. This is it.

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Yep, I agree, nailed it!

Each time, you prevent a particular scenario for the coming storm, you change the time stream (that is the idea, after all).

This allows for another menace to come to maturity.
Maybe this new menace then blossoms into a full blown catastrophe that is considered the 'coming storm'.

So, you take care of this particular storm... And allows another scenario to play out and another serie of events to receive the label 'coming storm'.

In this view, each of the Mender is correct and their own particular pet project is/was/will be, the 'coming storm'.

I guess you can do something a bit similar already.

You put an objective and accomplishing it triggers an ambush. Defeating this ambush could be set to trigger another one and so on...

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You can only have one "base" group.

You can use any number of groups as bosses, patrols, guards, etc.

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I see.
Yes; I did that.
I was just under the impression that you could have the game alternate the spawns between two groups.

Ok then, thanks!

From reading the description of the MA; it seems like there is a way to have two groups spawning in the same mission.

But I could not find how to do it.

Am I mistaken? Just dumb?

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I have a similar problem, since I'm using unicode characters to simulate someone speaking an alien language.

I had a text overrun in RewardText, (I think that was what it was called) which is the text displayed on the console when a Captive is freed.

RewardText might apply when glowies are clicked, or hostages are successfully escorted etc, I can't definitively say.

BTW, if I have the field name wrong, please correct me, I'll try to recreate the error when I get home today and update this post if I was in error.

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Yes; please, let me know and I'll update the OP.

I was copy/pasting text yesterday and a ' got replaced by a Venus symbol, so unicode is definitively accepted, even if I don't know how it works.

The idea of this thread is to report the error messages we get when creating a mission and their solution when we finally figure them out.
This way, architects will save time rather than reinventing the wheel every time...

So, I'll start with a couple of error messages I had this week and, if you guys have more, please post them here.


First of all a word on the use of Word documents.
I like to type the texts and dialogues into word, use the proof reading options and then copy pasting it.
Be aware, however, that this can lead to problem. For some reasons, the game might insert 'phantom characters', characters that do not show up on the screen but still take room and might get the text above the text limit, without you having any way of knowing...


So, here are the two error messages I had:

Field DeathSpeech exceed text limit.
This refer to the text one of my bosses gave upon defeat.
It was above the text limit due to the word bug I mentioned.
I erased it and re-copied it and it worked.

Field Attacker2Speech exceed text limit.
Was the same problem but 'Attacker2Speech' referred to the dialogue of the mobs attacking a defendable object. The second line of dialogue, as you would expect.


So, hopefully, next time you encounter these error messages, you will be able to find and correct the guilty fields more quickly...

Ok.
My laptop is reasonably recent, and I suspect that they did away with notepad...


Anyhoot; I fixed it.

I you are curious, I started by coyping the arc (as was suggested in this thread). Then, I did erase objective after objective, using the 'save and test' option every time, to narrow the problem and then went back to the original copy and looked into the details.
Interestingly, I suspect that the error message did not discriminate. Field DeathSpeech, for example, probably can correspond to the death speech of any of the 4 bosses I put in the mission...


Field DeathSpeech appear to be the text a boss gives upon defeat.
I think the problem came from the copy pasting, as suggested, there were 'phantom characters' that did not show up and put the chatty boss over the limit.
I also had a line break that might not have helped.


Field Attacker2Speech exceed text limit.

Was the text of the second attacker of a dependable object...


I am going to start a thread of error message, to help the people that might also encounter them...

Interesting; I'll try using Works... It might help.

Could be both then.

I typed my text into Word and did copy/past (using the ctrl shortcuts).
I also use paragraphe breaks and macro such as $name (quite a lot of them, really).
So, yeah, I'll have a look at the file, it didn't cross my mind to open it as a text file...

I think to recall the cape mission taking place in a blue lab map... But I have not run it in a while.


They have a few snow filled maps in the system from the winter event but I don't know if they are available in MA.

When I try to test my latest mission, I get the following message:

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Field DeathSpeech exceed text limit
Field Attacker2Speech exceed text limit.

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I am not sure what it means, I went through all my bosses' dialogues (there is 4 of them) and they all seem to be within the the character limit. And, after all, the game would not let me type anything beyond that limit.

The orange error icon is also not lit.

So, I was wondering if any of you had encountered this problem before and any suggestion regarding how to solve it...

Thanks for the help.

Definitively.
There are also, a lot of people in 3.5 and before that did not give much care into their alignment. They knew what their character was like and did not really need the somewhat constrictive double descriptor.

It just make me a bit queezy philosophically, the implication that you can not be good without being law abiding or that you can not be evil if you follow rules.




Anyway, we kinda derailled the thread...

Highlight the text and right click on it.

I posted a very similar question yesterday

Hoooo... Me learny.

I had not thought about right clicking it.
Thanks a lot...

Silly question, as I said, but I want to highlight portions of the mission briefing in different colours so that they are easier to pick up in a quick, casual reading.

How do I do that?
Should I do it in html like that: [ color:red ] [ / color ] ?

Thank you.


Frankly, I don't really care about the map themselves all that much. Not nearly as what they look like and the feeling/atmosphere they bring to the story.
Especially as we already have quite a large assortment of floor plans already)

If the corridor turns left or if it turns right is less important is less important than if it looks like a sewer or a cosy museum...


Now, the problem I can see with that is that there are objects on the maps, for example, the office maps are full of copiers, cubicles, whiteboards on the wall...) and it might be too complex to let us choose the objects.

Maybe the devs could design a few featureless maps, covering a few basic floor plans (a few corridors connecting 4 bigger rooms at each corner, a donut shape of corridor around a central patio...), and have us decide the texture to put on them?

Funnily enough, I do criticise other people for using that expression:
'If you opinions come from your gut, I consider logical to treat them as s...'

SO, yes, my unsubstantiated opinion is that this Nemesis is a good guy...