OFPEC Forum
Missions Depot => Mission Discussion => Topic started by: Azraell on 01 Oct 2002, 21:20:16
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is the submission area gonna be up soon? it says down till 9-29, but that was a couple of days ago. just wondering, completed my 1st mission and wish to upload it:)
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Argh yes, the feeling of finishing your first mission.
You are so excited you just can't wait to have it ripped apart by some reviewer.
;)
The submission area and review system is almost finished.
News will be posted when it's ready to rock.
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hehe, and to boot, i want u to review it first hand. :D
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What did I do to deserve that honour?
;D
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cause u got the most stars ;) :D
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And it receives a score of 2/10. :D
*ducks Azraell's mouse*
Oh yeah, maybe I should play it first... ;D
*side steps as Azraell's keyboard flys by*
;)
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Azraell -
completed my 1st mission and wish to upload it:)
Then for goodness sake, take it to the beta-testing forum and have it tested before you upload.
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pffft, u saying that because this is my first it must be crap? been taking my time and its been under construction for a month and a half... since the submission is down ive been overhauling and tweaking, waiting for it to come online. just because others have submitted below par 1st missions, doesnt mean all will be that way....i beta test for myself....i have 2 pc's and 2 ofp packs, and every trigger, waypoint, and whatever, works like a charm on q! ur post served no purpose other than to berate me. :-\ :P
Azraell dotarget Archangel_Scream
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When he says "finished mission" this does include beta testing in my understanding... ::) Why post a finished mission in the beta testing forum and have the thread locked?
On the other hand you should think about also having this mission tested by other persons than you, Azraell. Experience has shown that others use to find errors in your mission you didn't think would even be possible.
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... yep, sefe is completely right.
ive tried to beta my missions by myself - but i always thought the missin through how I[/b] planned it. This could be saying there is a large Russian base to avoid, but when some1 decides to go looksey there is nothing there...
its just a matter of having other peoples style of play. Some like Rambo tactics and some like stealth. Some may go full frontal assult, and some may surround the enemy.
its all a case of different minds ;)
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Yes - that's what I mean about beta-testing.
Some people produce quite accomplished first missions.
Most don't.
Beta-testing is essential. Every mission builder must work on the premise that, no matter how much thought and care has gone into a mission construction, there will still be errors that flaw the mission.
Accomplished first missions have almost always been thoroughly beta-tested by a group of other people, providing active input and feedback.
OFP is a non-linear game, but some mission builders treat it as a linear game, and thus run into probloms when the player decides to do things the builder didn't anticipate. It can quite mess things up.
There's nothing more embarrassing than submitting an untested mission which the reviewer finds filled with errors.
And there's nothing more annoying for a reviewer than to review a mission that is so obviously untested.
A lot of missions are like that - why do you think so many missions in the mission depot have such low scores?
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well, for 1, ive been playing ofp since day 1 when it hit US stores. i looked around the beta testing forums, and i see someone say" i think it should be like this, or i think more backup is needed and the builder goes, ok!, and posts the next day with exactly what the tester wanted, and only then will the tester approve of his/her mission..... im not a n00b, im an advanced player and i know what the player wantsand i know what lengths a player will go to complete a mission, even if it mean jumping into a hummer and trying to run over every enemy or running out of the mission area and trying to get the enemy from another direction than intended i dont need some super unknown telling me "this is what a player wants, or that is what a player wants to see". mine outshines alot of bis's missions....ground attack? gimme a break, my 10 year old nephew can make a better mission than that. i was making massive, complex doom maps(tho you cant compare doom to ofp, it is one of the forefathers of 3d gaming) while a lot of you were picking your nose and wiping it under the desk in 3rd grade. :P besides, if u guys test and test and test a mission b4 its released then all suprises and suspense is lost that the person might have had for you. besides again, its pretty big, 2.11megs, and im on dailup and im not uplaoding for 4 hours or more :P
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No need to be so hard Azraell ;) You may not be the case, but there are a lot of great mission makers and being some of them the best, like Anmac,Icarus and so on, and you can be sure that all of them, do have a lot of beta testers, and why is that? Well because a mission can work pretty well in two,three, four,five... but than fail in another five cpus. You know, the first thing I learned when programming C++ and Visual Basic, was that there are no programmes with no bugs, it's impossible to make a programme that works well for everybody, there is always something screwing things up, it may be the grapic card, it can be another programme, it can be the processor, the memory,some supi* piece of hardware well it can be a lot of stuff, that's why in my opinion any reasonbale good mission maker, would like to be sure that his mission as been tested in a lot of differnet cpus in different countries, with different operating systems and so on, and why is that, well to be a hundred percent sure that is work is almost free of bugs and I say almost because you may sure that there will always someone finding problems in it.
As for the surprise factor that you don't want to be revealed, well that shouldn't be a problem, put the mission in the forum and ask people to reply to you by Instant Message rather than in the public forum ;)
You know, I make addons, nothing special but I do the best I can, addons shouldn't be so complexed in terms of bugs compared with missions, you know how many people I have trying my addons before sending them? 12 people, why so many? Wel because I wanna be a hundred percent sure that what ever comes out, it comes out fully working, look at BIS you ever saw their ""demo"" patches ? Look at the amount of beta testers they use ;)
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Skaven, I have not submitted a mission. I love trying to create missions, but I have a couple of flaws. Firstly, I seem to find it hard to finish a mission I start. I really want to submit a top class mission as the first thing I add to OFPEC, so that everyone who reads my name thinks: "Captain Wacky, top class mission designer 'im and all round cool geezer." However, I'll get started on a mission and just not know where to finish, or how. Second, I have a very vivid imagination, but have trouble getting my head around the essence of an idea that hasn't already been done exactly like it by a thousand and one other people. The thing is, I have cool ideas for missions, but I never quite know how to: a) Start it/ and b) finish it. I want my first mission to be one that will please as many people as possible. I have tried creating several missions, which I usually look at a few days later and think: "This is a bit rubbish really" and then scrap it and start a new. I've tried making stealth missions and I've tried making action missions, but I think that I most enjoy making and playing missions that are a mixture of stealth and action. At the moment, I'm not really working on anything proper, except a project with my friend. I taught myself camera scripting after I couldn't get used to the tutorials written on it. They just didn't work for me. I just don't know what I'm doing wrong. Occasionally, I will experiment with cameras and scripts and create cool effects for cutscenes, but I've never made a mission that I've applied them to. I really hope to release a mission soon though that will make you all shout: "Wow!".
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I really hope you do release that mission Captain Wacky, I'll beta test it for you if you need me to ;)
Still for the problem you mentioned, well, why don't you make something for yourself rather than to the public, I'm sure that if you like it, a lot of people will like it to mate, and if they don't well what the hell you like it right? Well that should be enough ;)
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im an advanced player and i know what the player wants
Being an "advanced" player has nothing to do with being an "advanced" mission builder. The two concepts are quite different.
And do you really know what a player wants?? You're next statement suggests not:
i dont need some super unknown telling me "this is what a player wants, or that is what a player wants to see".
That's called feedback. If you can't handle that then you don't know what players want. Every player wants something different, but every player wants a challenge properly presented. If you can't hack that then we shouldn't expect anything too accomplished.
Besides, I've tried to make a point of mission builders being unaware of errors in their construction. If you can't even be bothered to have people check for that then why should anyone want to bother playing your mission, let alone review it?
i was making massive, complex doom maps(tho you cant compare doom to ofp, it is one of the forefathers of 3d gaming) while a lot of you were picking your nose and wiping it under the desk in 3rd grade.
Yeah, and the dooms maps are easy. And Doom was 2-D. But if you want to get technical, the father of 3-D games was quite possibly "And Attack" on the Spectrum 48k.
And who cares what you did in school? If you want to be judged on your missions. then other people supply that judgement - not yourself.
if u guys test and test and test a mission b4 its released then all suprises and suspense is lost that the person might have had for you.
The surprises are usually the errors. Nothing good there.
Listen, Azraell, I've encountered a number of people claiming to be so great and accomplished at mission building - but when it came to reviewing not a single one could even construct conmpetently - mostly because of lack of beta-testing.
The really good builders quietly release their work, and then have praise heaped on them.
When it comes to beta-testing, don't simply post in the beta-testing forum - what you really need is to pass it on to a small group of people you can trust to critically test for you.
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Listen, Azraell, I've encountered a number of people claiming to be so great and accomplished at mission building - but when it came to reviewing not a single one could even construct conmpetently - mostly because of lack of beta-testing.
Archangel_Scream, don't be so quick with your judgements. You haven't played the mission, right? Maybe it's the best mission of the world and works flawlessly. Your statement is out of place and somewhat offending.
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Sefe -
I'm not saying that his mission is going to be bad. I'm saying that in my experience, those who brag about how great their first mission is going to be usually overlook a series of silly errors that seriously flaw their attempt.
That may sound harsh, but it's quite true.
As I've tried to state, beta-testing is essential to deal with such issues and address them. Even then, it's not a flawless process - but it should allow the more major problems to be corrected.
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hey scream, you point out where i said i was a great and accomplished mission builder? funny u dont have a quote for that and i didnt say it was the greatest mission either, i didnt say father of 3d, i said forefather, meaning it got everybody hot over fps....from which 3rd person games erupted , the craze wasnt started by castle wolfenstein, thats for sure! and when you got over 10000 vertices and over 100 triggers in a doom map, then yes it gets hard to track em and figure problems out. you cant stuff everything that every1 wants into 1 mission, if your gonna do that then u might as well make a super omega mission with every possible way of play the game....different ppl like different stuff, i for 1 hate specops missions in ofp, ill play rouge spear for stealthy stuff b4 i play ofp for stealthy stuff, but for raw warfare, i turn towards ofp, some like helo missions or, godforbid, a-10 missions. dont ever send an application into EGM, since you like condeming missions b4 you even play them, youd be giving everything 0's......... Skaven, im not trying to be hard on you guys, just at scream. im not trying to be some professional mission maker here, i just wanted to do it for fun and upload them somewhere. hell, im learning more than i really wanted to,all trigs in my mission run off logics(didnt want some1 running everywhere setting off trigs early) custom music,heavy duty camera scripts, but when i get it done done finally, i get some1 like scream stating that its most likely filled with errors and sucks and should be tested ....you didnt say that but thats what you meant, im not some freaking moron that cant read between the lines! now you pissed me off, must smoke now b4 i put fist thru monitor....... sry to u other dudes for making ripples...
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Yo, Azreall. Calm down mate! I'm sure that you think your mission is great. Notice I said, "You think." Archangel_Scream, Skaven, Anmac and Sefe are all here for one reason: To help people out. So, you've built Doom maps? Why mention Doom? OFP is entirely different in almost every way in its editing. I've learnt by reading the various comments of the Beta Testing board that this is the most vital thing you need to do to a mission. Get it tested by OFP players. When people play missions they notice bugs easily. You may play your mission and think "This is great! I'm the greatest Editor in the World!" Then, you submit it. It gets 3 out of 10. Why? Because the reviewer didn't play it the way you wanted it to be played. He found the most large, horrible bug ever! That is why beta testing is useful. Because people tell you the bugs THEY find. So that you can fix it. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not putting you down. Your mission COULD BE awesome. But, without beta testing 99 times out 100 it won't be.
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Well I'm sorry but I didn't mean it sucks or that it was full of errors,trust me you don't have to be much good to be better than me making missions, so I would never say that, essencialy because of a metter of respect and logic ;)
But if you took it that way, than please accept my apologies because I didn't want to mean that, I just wanned to state that beta testers are needed, but i respect your opinion if you don't agree,still,and if you decide to beta test your mission, well it would be an honour to test it for you ;)
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Azraell -
No problem - be as hard on me as you like - not taken personally here.
My comments to yourself aren't intended to be personal either.
I guess I should ask you to just ignore whatever I've written, because I can condense it all to just a single sentence -
Do try to get it beta-tested, otherwise you may be letting yourself down.
That fair enough?
Not intending to sound like I've singled this to yourself - it's an essential point for any mission builder, regardless of experience.
What's frustrating is watching people with the skills build a mission full of scripts, only to find some simple oversight flaws the mission.
OFP is great, but it does have limits, and that's the hardest thing to work within.
When you've finished building the mission, if you can zip it somewhere on the web, then I can try and download it for next week and give it a run through and some feedback.
Arch
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Beta testing is very important, I agree with Archangel Scream on this because on my mission he reviewed he spotted a number of mistakes I didn't notice.
As mission submission is down you may aswell get it tested out can't do any harm.
RED
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Now, that last post by Arch was a much better approach.
We can all learn from this topic.
How you respond to a post can be meant one way but come out rather differently.
:o
In my view, as a mission designer, beta testing is worth its weight in gold. But that is my opinion. You don't have to make any or all of the changes suggested by the testers, but at least you will have other players approaching the mission in a different way than the author.
That is how bugs the author never comes across are found.
Testing is not compulsory, but is recommended.
At the end of the day, it's your mission. As long as it meets the OFPEC requirements for submission, it will be reviewed.
Happy gaming.
Please lock this topic as it has served its purpose.
;)
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As requested, topic locked :)