Talk:Mapping/Entities/misc mission
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General
- Feature request on tracker
- Having this feature would help in many ways:
- We could have something other than "kill all aliens" in our missions.
- A second way to win could shorten some missions for the player. There are often complaints about very long missions on maps like 'Mansion' or base defence missions, where people crawl through huge maps searching for the last single alien. Those missions could be won by the player securing some 'key points' of the map for long enough.
Q&A
- If 'radius' is given, does this count only horizontally or is it meant to be a sphere? --ShipIt (talk) 11:23, 26 July 2015 (CEST)
- We have a message property for the misc_mission, what should we do with it? (Currently it does nothing at all) Should we go with the description and show it upon victory? Or we could use it to fill the mission briefing with objectives (might be difficult to code as we aren't assigned a team until the mission starts), we could also use to have a message to display somewhere on the HUD (along with a turns remaining count if applicable) --DarkRain (talk) 16:55, 1 August 2015 (CEST)
- Showing a message if the player won the mission by achieving the objective given in the misc_mission (instead of killing all opponents) would oc be nice. It could also be used to show a message upon entering the target zone (instead of the default one from the code). This might be more practical, in case of multiple mission objectives, and if I could have only one of them, I´d take this. --ShipIt (talk) 10:15, 2 August 2015 (CEST)
- Giving the player the information he needs might be a task of its own. So, what information should the player get and how do we display them? --ShipIt (talk) 10:15, 2 August 2015 (CEST)
- Whatever it is, in order to show usefull info, we need to identify the misc_mission somehow. --ShipIt (talk) 10:32, 2 August 2015 (CEST)
- My best idea right now is to have a info screen showing a table. This table would identify the mission targets in the map by name and description, and show their current state. Oc this would require to add some properties to the entity ('name' and 'description'). The 'message' could then be shown once the objective is achieved. --ShipIt (talk) 11:32, 24 August 2015 (CEST)
- To both of the above points: Should we consider multi player implications here (messages/info we show the player will likely need to be different from single player) or should we leave that for a later time? --DarkRain (talk) 20:20, 4 August 2015 (CEST)
- Taking mp into account would really complicate thing a lot, so I would simply treat the misc_mission as campaign-only for now. E.g. there might be spawnpoints for up to six mp-teams in a map. The team numbers are given randomly to 2 - 4 teams, so in the map there might be no Team 1. Not sure how to solve this. The player would not even know about his team number. --ShipIt (talk) 11:32, 24 August 2015 (CEST)
- After winning the mansion map, the victory screen marked two alien survivors, but only one alien came to the Containment (I assume it is the one that got stunned during the mission). Should not they all be dead? In case the players loses, his soldiers are all considered to be dead, no? --ShipIt (talk) 11:49, 24 August 2015 (CEST)
- Well depends on how we want to handle the results of a non standard victory, which depends on the kind of mission, it might be that surviving not stunned aliens are considered to flee the area — in which case we would get to keep the stunned aliens, in other cases one could say that PHALANX goes in meet the objective and then pull out — in which case all alive aliens should be considered survivors and we wouldn't keep stunned ones, we could also say PHALANX rounds all surviving aliens and... does what? Subdues and captures them, kills them all? In the case of the player soldiers, originally there was a count of soldiers missing in action, of course it was always 0, as all soldiers left alive when the player loses a mission are killed by the game (except those at the rescue zone if you abort the mission) again what should we do in the case of an alien non-standard victory consider surviving soldiers MIA, KIA or even have them flee depending on the mission? --DarkRain (talk) 22:31, 9 September 2015 (CEST)
- As we can always adjust this later on, I'd propose this approach as a start. --ShipIt (talk) 08:13, 9 February 2017 (CET)
- Player wins - Alien survivors get killed, civilian survivors are saved, player gets all alien equipement and UFO.
- AI wins - Surviving human soldiers, pilot and civilians KIA, dropship lost. Mission disappears from geoscape.
- As we can always adjust this later on, I'd propose this approach as a start. --ShipIt (talk) 08:13, 9 February 2017 (CET)
- Well depends on how we want to handle the results of a non standard victory, which depends on the kind of mission, it might be that surviving not stunned aliens are considered to flee the area — in which case we would get to keep the stunned aliens, in other cases one could say that PHALANX goes in meet the objective and then pull out — in which case all alive aliens should be considered survivors and we wouldn't keep stunned ones, we could also say PHALANX rounds all surviving aliens and... does what? Subdues and captures them, kills them all? In the case of the player soldiers, originally there was a count of soldiers missing in action, of course it was always 0, as all soldiers left alive when the player loses a mission are killed by the game (except those at the rescue zone if you abort the mission) again what should we do in the case of an alien non-standard victory consider surviving soldiers MIA, KIA or even have them flee depending on the mission? --DarkRain (talk) 22:31, 9 September 2015 (CEST)
Goals
- Make this feature work in campaign as the description implies, and use it within the maps. --ShipIt (talk) 11:06, 26 July 2015 (CEST)
- [open] If only a 'target' is given, destroy it once the conditions are met.
- [open] If only an 'item' is given, win the mission once the conditions are met.
- "Bring item to win mission."
- [done] If a 'target' and an 'item' are given, destroy the target once the conditions are met.
- Note: Default radius if none given for misc_mission is three map grid wide (always was that way, it's just that before a bug prevented it from being correctly set and all misc_mission ended being one grid wide) this might not give the intended results see for example fueldump with the fixed code (the item will be placed upon entering the area — a few steps before reaching the door) --DarkRain (talk) 06:38, 29 July 2015 (CEST)
- "Bring item to destroy target."
- This is used in fueldump map and already works.
- [open] If none of the above paramters is given, win the mission once the conditions are met.
- [open] Status report window.
- As an overview for the player, I propose a gui element that can be opened (like inventory or soldier stats window). This should show a table which contains the targetname, group, team properties and current status (either "Occupied", "Open" or "Contested") for each mission target on the map. --ShipIt (talk) 09:36, 9 February 2017 (CET)
- [open] Depending on the type of the mission, a status needs to be determined. --ShipIt (talk) 09:52, 9 February 2017 (CET)
- status = triggered - "Occupied"
- status = blocked - "Blocked"
- status = untriggered and not blocked - "Open" (or maybe "Free"?)
- status = triggered and blocked - "Contested"
Current state
- As given by DarkRain:
- ... in theory there are the "bring object", "occupy area" and
"destroy object"objectives available ... - The AI actually already takes misc_mission into account in its calculations.
- All objectives must be accomplished to win the mission.
- ... in theory there are the "bring object", "occupy area" and
- The AI moves to the general area of a misc_mission — within a predefined radius of the entity, which, depending on the radius assigned to the misc_mission (if any), might not be close enough to activate the objective.
- The AI doesn't know how to handle the 'bring object' type misc_mission at all.
- Need to check each possible mission type to confirm current state.
- [open] mission type "Occupy area to win mission."
- Mandatory keys set to default, team, message and targetname properties set. Item and target properties are not set.
- [open] Works as expected, but ignores the radius (only works if standing in the trigger spot).
- [open] Alien team
- Had a case where the alien stood next to the trigger, ending in an infine loop. Game was still responsible, can move camera around, open inventory and such. Could not reproduce this so far.
- Often the alien ends the turn standing next to the trigger and nothing happens (radius set to 3), finally alien ends at the spot in the trigger and the mission ends as intended.
- Mandatory keys set to default, team, message and targetname properties set. Item and target properties are not set.
- [open] mission type "Occupy area to win mission."
Known problems
- The fact that the AI can only plan for their current turn, they will have all kinds of trouble trying to path to anything that is beyond their TU's.
- It was reported that winning a mission this way resulted in an overall loss in nation happyness. We need to look into this and make sure mission targets are a valid way to win a mission. --ShipIt (talk) 06:47, 9 February 2017 (CET)
Bugs
- In my testmap it works fine, but adding a civilian breaks it. --ShipIt (talk) 17:01, 27 July 2015 (CEST)
- It actually works, but there's a catch: If anyone from any team other than the target team enters the area the turn counter is reset, I'm guessing the idea was that if so the area is considered contested instead of occupied, we could probably use an exception here for non hostiles --DarkRain (talk) 06:07, 29 July 2015 (CEST)
- Furthermore if someone from other team enters the area of a 'bring object' mission the counter will also be reset! Which might or might not make sense (I still consider it a bug), in any case we also need to add a message to the player that they have lost control of the area, instead of silently resetting the counter --DarkRain (talk) 06:29, 29 July 2015 (CEST)
- Resetting the counter might not make sense in case of a 'place bomb to destroy gate' kind of mission. But I think this will rarely happen in game, because the radius will be small and the player should usually control the area around the mission target. So I am not sure if it is worth the effort to find/do a better solution for this. About the messages - what happens if there is more than one mission target? The player will have a hard time to find out where he is in control and where not. --ShipIt (talk) 21:26, 30 July 2015 (CEST)
- Furthermore if someone from other team enters the area of a 'bring object' mission the counter will also be reset! Which might or might not make sense (I still consider it a bug), in any case we also need to add a message to the player that they have lost control of the area, instead of silently resetting the counter --DarkRain (talk) 06:29, 29 July 2015 (CEST)
- It actually works, but there's a catch: If anyone from any team other than the target team enters the area the turn counter is reset, I'm guessing the idea was that if so the area is considered contested instead of occupied, we could probably use an exception here for non hostiles --DarkRain (talk) 06:07, 29 July 2015 (CEST)
Next step
- We need to give the player more usefull information about what is going on.
- [open] status report for mission type "occupy area"
- At beginning of the round, we give the status of each mission target.
- "Team team target targetname (of group) is currently occupied/open/contested."
- "Team Alien target Firebird Dropship is currently contested."
- "Team Phalanx target Entrance of Alien base important locations is currently open."
- At beginning of the round, we give the status of each mission target.
- [open] status update for mission type "occupy area"
- Whenever the status of a mission target changes, we inform the player.
- "Team team target targetname (of group) changed status from [former status] to [new status]."
- Whenever the status of a mission target changes, we inform the player.
- [open] status report for mission type "occupy area"
Obsolete
- Make the "occupy area" feature work for all teams. So, if a team reaches one of the given objectives, it wins the mission.
- Provide some maps using this feature. This should aim for testing in the first place and maybe getting feedback. We can decide whether to keep them or not later on.
- Imo the best map for this is the baseattack map. Aliens should try to reach either the Power plant, Antimatter storage or Command centre and blow up the base. Players are forced to play those missions, so we get feedback? --ShipIt (talk) 11:06, 26 July 2015 (CEST)
- This is probably the best use we can make of misc_mission right now, giving the aliens some threatening objectives in base attacks is long overdue IMHO, and we'd get the much needed feedback on this feature, but of course this will need to deal with the AI pathing problem if we are to see any real effects here --DarkRain (talk) 04:58, 27 July 2015 (CEST)
- I added mission targets for team 7 to the Command centre, Power plant and Antimatter storage tiles of the base map. --ShipIt (talk) 07:33, 28 July 2015 (CEST)
- The alien base could be used for the player the other way around. Secure the Command centre and win. --ShipIt (talk) 12:03, 26 July 2015 (CEST)
- What about making the dropships a target for the aliens? --ShipIt (talk) 11:06, 26 July 2015 (CEST)
- This is an interesting idea, specially if we can make the AI pull a sneak attack on the dropship while the team is somewhere else, but that would require some further AI tweaking --DarkRain (talk) 04:58, 27 July 2015 (CEST)
- I added a mission target for team 7 to each Firebird dropship. --ShipIt (talk) 07:33, 28 July 2015 (CEST)
- I added a mission target for team 7 inside the building of fueldump. So aliens win if the player is too slow. --ShipIt (talk) 07:33, 28 July 2015 (CEST)
- I added a mission target for team 1 inside the main building of the Mansion map. So the player wins if he secures the area for some turns. --ShipIt (talk) 07:33, 28 July 2015 (CEST)
- Imo the best map for this is the baseattack map. Aliens should try to reach either the Power plant, Antimatter storage or Command centre and blow up the base. Players are forced to play those missions, so we get feedback? --ShipIt (talk) 11:06, 26 July 2015 (CEST)
- Provide some maps using this feature. This should aim for testing in the first place and maybe getting feedback. We can decide whether to keep them or not later on.
- What is the misc_mission_alien good for at all? It does the same as misc_mission, doesn´t it? --ShipIt (talk) 11:06, 26 July 2015 (CEST)
- In-game it actually spawns a misc_mission, but sets the team property to the alien team, sets the radius to 3 map tiles (96 units) and ignores all properties set with uforadiant (yes, every single one of them, even radius is always set to 96). --DarkRain (talk) 22:05, 26 July 2015 (CEST)
- After the first round of fixes the 'time' property should be recognized, still I'm not sure about having two entities that do nearly the same thing (you can create alien mission objectives with just misc_mission, and it is more flexible and less broken) --DarkRain (talk) 04:58, 27 July 2015 (CEST)
- Destroy object' type misc_mission are mostly useless, since misc_mission aren't brush based they aren't tangible and can't be damaged by the player.
- I almost always think things like that (does not work, no intention to get it working) should be removed, simply to avoid confusion. --ShipIt (talk) 11:06, 26 July 2015 (CEST)
- Probably the best option for now, I can't think of a way to make this work without making it convoluted and counter-intuitive to map. --DarkRain (talk) 04:58, 27 July 2015 (CEST)
- Removed this kind of mission, if we really want a 'destroy object' mission we'll have to implement some func_breakable_mission or something like that --DarkRain (talk) 18:26, 30 July 2015 (CEST)
- I almost always think things like that (does not work, no intention to get it working) should be removed, simply to avoid confusion. --ShipIt (talk) 11:06, 26 July 2015 (CEST)
- In-game it actually spawns a misc_mission, but sets the team property to the alien team, sets the radius to 3 map tiles (96 units) and ignores all properties set with uforadiant (yes, every single one of them, even radius is always set to 96). --DarkRain (talk) 22:05, 26 July 2015 (CEST)