dugfromthearth

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Chimera are freaking crimefighters!

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Looking back at this now. Did you get Chimera confused with Wyvern? Cause Chimera is the Praetorian version of Manticore, so he's a villain.

As far as slimming down the group. As it stands now it's probably going to consist of field agents, night widows, and Werewolves(From the group titled Werewolves, not the Council's Warwolves). I'm gonna see if I can add some custom minions into the mix and manage to get it up with that IGOR program I was reading about. If that doesn't work, for the sake of space. I may just replace his minions with Malta and say he hired them to guard the base.

A major problem for me has been the lack of high level ninjas aside from the ones that work for Chimera. My character is a Ninja mastermind and the heir thing has been part of his backstory since long before I even heard of the MA.

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Making an arc based on your character instead of the good of the arc is a major cause of bad arcs.

being able to give enemies defense allows them to survive longer for effect.

That's important for a boss if I want to trigger an ambush as they are going down, or have them say text as they are being defeated.

For lt's it is nice to have a healer survive and not just get taken out with one blow.

Sister Psyche's Phone Number
You saw Sister Psyche in Pocket D. She saw how hot and sexy you were and gave you her phone number.

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Mission Architect souveniers are saved in a local text file that either purges itself over time or else limits the maximum number of souveniers you can have at one time (I'm not sure which).

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does this mean we can make our own souvenirs by editing the text file?

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You can make your own souvenirs by making your own arcs.

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sure, and I can earn xp by defeating my own villains - but that's not the fast way to do it.

I am doing reviews on my own thread - so more than one a month. For a monthly (or even weekly) review - you probably want to just review great arcs. Have reviewers choose an arc that they really like and review it. I would be happy to do that.

I am also interested in a column on how to add in-game effects - how to make the enemy win without failing the mission, how to have an ally fight you, that sort of thing

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Mission Architect souveniers are saved in a local text file that either purges itself over time or else limits the maximum number of souveniers you can have at one time (I'm not sure which).

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does this mean we can make our own souvenirs by editing the text file?

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In my new arc (#129684: Cavallo, the Colossus, and the Charm of the Sorceress), the PC villains steal an ancient amulet from where it was buried by Greek sailors. When they have it, ghosts attack and yell at them in Greek. The text looks very cool and ancient.

I *hope* no one understands what it would say translated, since I simply ran babel fish on gripping input text like YO DUDE DO NOT STEAL THAT AMULET.

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did you use Ancient Greek or modern Greek - they are very different

the #1 rule for making arcs is to do what the MA supports.

If you can make a good arc that is level 40-50 by removing a bunch of the groups and having it be more coherent - that is probably better.

You have to make choices, sometimes hard choices, to make your arc good at what it does, rather than doing everything badly.

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When you incorporate recognizable, iconic NPC's from the game in your arc, the average player is not going to tell himself "Ah, these aren't literal Skulls and Council soldiers, they're meant to represent generic minions of this evil mastermind I'm opposing." Hes going to say "Why are Skulls and Warwolves in the same story and why the heck are they working for Evil, Inc.?" Especially when one of those NPC's has the words "Skull Buckshot" or "Warwolf Alpha" over its head.

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This

[I don't really have time or space in the storyline to explain why Evil Incorporated has the things in it that it does.]

[I'll start by saying President Evil is a dark sorcerer and Evil Incorporated is a group similar to Crey, but they use alot of stolen technology. Also Evil's wife is the heir to a clan of Ninjas and a high ranking Night Widow.]

Knowing only this it sounds like your arc will be a bunch of stuff happens and you think it makes sense because you know a lot that the player doesn't.

As to 1 star - everyone means something different with stars. So someone might 1 star your mission because everything isn't pink.

suggestions go on the suggestions forum

I Will Dance On Your Grave (Arc 92630)
Poster: horror, voodoo, necromancy
Lvl 1-50, no EBs or AVs, soloable, 5 missions

A faction of Skulls (custom version) have turned to voodoo and necromancy. Can you stop them from turning Paragon City into the city of the dead?

that's also a good idea.

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...Or keep the destructible object, and somehow make use of the chat fields attached to that object.

I have a detail where you have to destroy a transmitter before it contacts the enemy. At each stage of damage, I put 'radio' text, and each chat bubble was more and more of the message getting through. The last chat bubble, on 'BOOM' is the final part of the message-- it blows up at the exact moment that it is TOO LATE!

The thing I like about this method is it makes the player actually responsible for the object doing what the player is supposed to be preventing.

If you're doing a mystical thing, an altar (IIRC?), you could do 'voices from beyond' or somesuch.

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that is a great idea - I'll have to see what text I can come up with

maybe no doors? That's a problem on some outdoor maps.

you can make them an ally, then have them non-combat and have them run away

Adding bosses to all objective types.

Destroy the computer - which as Dr. Geist standing next to it
Rescue Statesman - from the clutches of Lord Recluse

The lack of being able to have a boss of my choosing appear in other objectives besides "defeat boss" is the biggest obstacle to my storytelling.

it is published. It has 4 stars and 40 reviews - so I don't want to unpublish it.

But based on reviews, I went back and redid the overarching plot. I changed a villain in one mission (from Grave Danger to Grave Dancer, so it's just one character in the text).

I tested the changes on test, but I haven't had a chance to play through the whole thing and I'm just too tired (and I won't get a chance to play it tomorrow - early work, and then after work get together).

So it could be amazingly good - or it might just be a chaotic jumble. With how tired I am, it might seem amazingly good to me and still be a chaotic jumble.

yeah, I just hate to advance the plot of a mission in the conclusion. I think I have to. I can just force so much - I have to accept the limits of the system.

I hate forcing players to fail - and I think they hate it too

standard - hostages being held, dark altar for sacrificing them.

You have to destroy the altar to stop the ritual. But the next mission requires that the ritual succeeded.

So how do I set up this mission so that you can get a mission complete but explain that the ritual succeeded?

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Please try my arc.

I Will Dance On Your Grave
author: @dugfromthearth
arc# I don't know

5 mission arc. Custom version of the Skulls so it is levels 1-50. Dark magic, voodoo, and necromancy. No EBs or AVs.

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Mission 1: Well, I get that she is a voodoo woman and would talk like that, but it is very distracting and takes away from the story you are trying to tell. Not a bad first mission. It was an outdoor scavenger hunt for 8 hostages, one of whom was possessed. Nice job on a custom group modeled after the skulls and that other group was very nice as well.

Mission 2: The story creeps forward a bit here as now we are going after the Boss of the guys in the first mission. We are once again going to rescue 5 more hostages as well. The mission was pretty fun. Once again the custom group of skulls is fun to fight against. They feel like a higher level version of the real skulls. Nice job on the custom boss.

Mission 3: The story seems stuck in the mud at this point. Each mission is basically: The Skulls have taken people, go get them. I did get the tip during the loading screen of Go. Hunt. Kill Skulls. Nice! The custom zombie group here look real good, but feel a little overpowered, particularly when I had 2 or 3 Lt.s aggrod at once. With the 3rd mission in a row of saving people I decided to stealth most of it. Bonus points for making the hostages easy to find with the green glow.

Mission 4: The story sidetracks to a shaman that we have to go rescue. The mission was a real disaster. It is the burning forest map and for as far as the eye can see there are hostages in a the green glow, but no enemies guarding them and they are not part of the mission objective. There are destructible objects everywhere but they are not the objective either. I finally find the ally and rescue him, and a new mission goal pops up, but I have absolutely no idea what it means. I wait for an ambush or something and get nothing. I look all around the map in stealth mode and still nothing. I have to quot the arc at this point because I just don't know what to do.

I didn't rate, but up to this point I think it was a 3 or 4 star arc depending on how it ended.

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Thanks for the review. I just added the possessed police officer in the first mission about 30 minutes ago.

I've now gotten a few comments that the first missions are repetitive with the rescue hostages. I like each mission, and each map is different - but I see that one after the other it does repeat the theme. I am torn about dropping the 2nd mission, but it does not advance the plot. I could move the custom boss to the first or third mission.

Plotwise the 3rd mission is different - you are rescuing kidnap victims - and encounter different villains. I'll check the difficulty on the summoner spawns and make sure they are easy or medium.

I just love the look of the 4th mission. The mission that came up was to find the spirit of the boss you defeated in mission 2. I'll check the text to make it more obvious. Unfortunately he is hard to find as he is dark armor - I need to switch him to a different, more obvious defense type I think. (Also you can't see his costume much because of the dark armor.)

I have to ponder this - my problem is that the arc is about trying to create zombies - with no other plot. I need a reason for the zombies being created so that there is more variety of things to do.

You gave me a lot to think about - and reinforced what others have said.

Thanks

"curious" "isn't" "I" "to check" "that's" "suppose" "like" "dialog"

There you go

The reality is this is a huge project. They worked for months on it. It is not perfect, polished, and done. A lot of things are missing. A spell checker is one of them.

Edit: and a spell checker is not required - you have to fix critical bugs. Nice to have features come last.

I tried an arc - Hunter of Beasts - where the contact was a radio. But it wasn't Radio - as far as I got it was just a radio.

The mission intro was stopping while on patrol outside a window and hearing a radio playing inside. It named the music, the music switched to a new song - and at the same time you hear screams and gunshots down in the street. It commented that it was odd how the music switched to such an appropriate song.

It was totally unique, very moody, and I wanted to know where it was going. I quit in mission 1 because I had no idea what the objective was and couldn't finish the mission (it just said "search for clues" and "stop the riot")

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For a brief few shining moments, I was dead excited about writing my own missions...until I came to the Forum and found that apparently I was one of the stupid, banal, unwashed masses.

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There are three general possibilities:

You will write a bad arc - but you can through work add and refine it so that it becomes a good arc.

You will write a good arc - but it will have a bunch of bad stuff in it, suffocating the good. You can edit it so that the good remains.

You will have good stuff and bad stuff and need to edit, add, and refine to make it a good arc.

The key to all of these is getting feedback and being willing to alter your arc so that it improves.

just imagine me doing "air quotes" as I type this.

A post on a different thread made me think of this - he had a deliberate misspelling in his arc. Players just thought it was a typo.

The real term I want is annotations - but the title field is too short. Annotations are extra comments about the arc - where the names come from, any allusions or references, or just author comments.

Until IGOR gets perfected, space is at a premium for long arcs - but it would be cool to have a standard place where you added annotations to arcs so that players could check for author comments.