Trying to figure out how to end missions, getting the right debrief to come up and then have the campaign branch off in the right direction based on the mission debrief results has been confusing to me, to say the least. I have spent quite a few hours just trying to get it all to work and I think I finally have most of it figured out and will share it here. If anyone sees any errors in what I have written, please post your comments/corrections in the mission builder forum. Thank you. Also, a special thanks to Bob "Recluse" Tullman, Fred "Baldeagle" Balding and Matt Wagner from Janes for answer questions in the F/A-18E Mission Builder forum which helped save me time trying to figure some of this out.
Ill start off with a post from Recluse that I edited quite a bit to save me some typing and writing
JIf you have N goals in a mission, you need N! + 2 debrief statements. If you forget what N factored means from your high school days, 5! = 1 * 2 * 3 * 4 *5 or 120. Add 2 to that and you have 122. Now lets apply the math equation to your mission that you have set up with 3 goals: A, B, C. These goals can be primary goals, secondary goals or some combination of both. Following the factor formula above, substituting the N with the number 3 for 3 goals, you have 3!+ 2, which gives you will 8 possible cases of goals. Bob put the following pattern to uniquely specify the true cases (statements) for 3! which equals 6:
|
A not B,C |
C not A,B |
AC not B |
|
B not A,C |
AB not C |
BC not A |
So we have 8 cases. From what we have discover with the debrief process, a separate debrief must be written for each case so we must write 8 debriefs. I tell you this as C.J. Martin warned us early when we found out able the campaign builder to keep things simple. You will see why. J Just keep this in the back of your head as you read on.
If you do decide that you want something like 5 goals, just remember that is 122 separate cases/debriefs is you what the debriefing process to work properly for your mission!!! As Recluse noted, probably more than the game can handle and it really cuts down on the ability to use the Debrief process to tell the PLAYER what HAPPENED vs. SUCCESS or FAILURE.
Per Recluses discussion with Matt Wagner, this structure was necessary for the campaign engine. When I get into the campaign linking below, I think you will start to see why. Then, again, you make have to read through this several times to see why. ;-)
Here is an example I put together, based on what Recluse has laid out above. I have both a primary and secondary goal for my mission. The Primary Goal is the "Cruiser is not Destroyed" and the Secondary Goal is "Escort ship is not Destroyed. Using the formula from above, the number of cases for having 2 mission goals is 2! + 2 = 4, which means I have 4 cases of SUMMARY debriefs to write out if I want my debriefing process to work right. You have to think of all the possible cases for these 2 goals. Below are all the cases needed to cover all the possible goal outcomes:
The 2! cases are:
1) Cruiser is not destroyed, Escort is destroyed
2) Cruiser is destroyed, Escort is not destroyed
Now add 2 for the cases:
3) Total Success Cruiser is not destroyed and Escort is not destroyed
4) Total Failure - Cruiser is destroyed and Escort is destroyed
So I now know that I need to write 4 debriefs for the above goal cases. I would hate to think of all the possible outcomes that belong to 122 cases. ;-) With that out of the way, I will start off with ending a mission 1st properly if we want the right outcome for our debrief process.
Ending Missions
I decided to throw this in the debrief process because of something I discovered while working on my CVBG under attack mission. I had one primary goal for the mission, which was "CV is destroyed". I used it as a condition (CV is destroyed = false) for the Total Success case above. When I did this, I found that if I exited the mission at any time, if the CV was not sunk, the mission was rated a success, even if I had only been in the mission for 1 minute. I didnt want to use the End Mission Event as you will see why below so I used the "Time Event" instead. I set the starting condition for however long I think the player should be flying the mission for minimum flight time. For my CV mission, most Soviet bombers should have made their attack run with 20 minutes of the mission start and all their missiles should have reached the carrier within 30 minutes of the mission start. So I set the "Time Event" for 35 minutes. At the end of 35 minutes, it sets flag 29 to the "true" condition. I then added 2 conditions to my Total Success case: "CV is destroy = false and flag 29 = true". If both conditions were true after 35 minutes, the mission would be debriefed as a Total Success and that would be 1 point to the campaign mission score. Oh! I also made sure that I stated in my briefing that the player had to fly for at least 35 minutes to complete the mission. I worded it so it fit into the mission. J
You can use the "End Mission Event" (manual pg. 6-170) to end a mission and this is what the Janes campaigns and single missions used. Everyone has seen the effect of what happens when using this. The dreaded Quit Message Window (call the "end mission box") pops up right in the middle of your flight and asks "Do you want to quit?" It really kills the immersion factor.
This event has 3 check boxes associated with it: success, failure and no message. All the "success" or "failure" check boxes do is change the text in the Quit Message Window so you have some idea immediately if you success or failed a mission at that point in time. Of course the "no message" check box just leave the "Do you want to quit?" message as is. There is a minute timer option that you can use to have the Quit Message Window pop up later after you have meet the conditions. But who knows where you will be at that time, maybe 2 seconds from touchdown on the CV, which will be annoying to say the least!
Well the F/A-18 development team listened to us and put a fix in the patch to turn this Window off if you dont want to see it. If you havent downloaded the patch, go ahead and do that. You can now turn off the "end mission box" by creating a f18misc.ini file. The patchs readme.txt file explains how to do that so I will just say that you add the following statement in the f18misc.ini file to turn it off: END_BOX = 0.
So far with all the mission builder stuff I have been looking at, I dont see why I would use the "End Mission Event" as it just ruins the immersion factor with that "Quit Window Message" box popping up. It has no effect on any of the debrief messages that I have been testing. It is just a device to tell you the mission is over, instead of you hitting the ESC key when you think it should be over. If you want to let a person know that they have completed their mission so they know that they can turn around and head for home, trying using a Goal State Event, Area Event or Time Event in combination with user flags to do the same thing. You can then add a message to the event saying the mission is completed (make it sound like it is coming from an official source). Maybe attach a .wav file to the message so if the player misses the text because he is busy, this will at least grab his attention.
I prefer, like Falcon 4.0 did, to let the player decide when he wants to end his mission by using the ESC key. Of course, there is an issue with multi-player, that if you hit that key at the wrong point, you are force to exit the mission without completing it. In the f18misc.ini file, you can add the statement ESC_OPTION = # where # = 0, 1 or 2. 0 is normal operation, 1 means you have to use "SHIFT-ESC" to quit (best option, I think) and 2 means the ESC key can not be used and you have to map SIM_DONE to another key. To me, that last option could be just as bad as the using ESC key, if you are only using a single key for this command.
Debriefs
This is the area that was driving me crazy. :^) I would have the success box checked in the End Mission Event, yet nothing was showing up in the debrief summary or detail debriefings. I finally figured out that the End Mission Event had nothing to do with debriefing text. It was just a way to terminate a mission. :-)
What I did discover was that the debrief text can be broken into two parts. When a mission ends, the Mission Debrief Screen appears and a Summary Debrief Area can be found right above the pilots pictures. At the bottom of the same debrief screen is an icon with a document in it. When you click that, you are taken to the Detail Debrief Screen which, if set up right, should expand on the information provided in the summary debriefing. The question is, after you read all this and are building a campaign, do you really need to use that screen? It will be up to you to decide if you want to use that screen or not.
Both the summary and detail debriefing text are set up using the same process. The only difference in the process is that a certain check box is selected in the "Debrief Logic Group Box". I will talk more about that a little later. When you are using the mission builder, you select the debrief tool by clicking on the icon that looks like a video tape. From here, the whole process is as follows for both the summary and detail debriefs: Mission Debrief Box > Debrief Logic Group > Debrief Logic Statement > Debrief Item Select. I think once you have complete this a few times it will become second nature. Just getting there the 1st several times is confusing. :^)
If you have made it down this far without me putting your head into a tailspin ;-), congratulations! You may want to print this out so you can actually use the mission builder and try to follow along. I want to keep my mission goals simple so I am going to use the ship example from up above and work with the "Total Success" case. This contains both a primary goal and a secondary goal. Just remember, no matter what conditions I use to trigger the debriefing that I am going to write, the debriefing results are linked to the campaign in a "true/false" (win/lose) condition only. There are no partial win conditions. I will try to make this clear as we go on.
Okay, if you have printed this out, select your mission from the mission builder, then click on the video tape icon for debriefs.
Mission Debrief Box
This is where you add, modify and delete the Logic Groups also referred to as debriefs (cases). The Janes format for the campaign missions was to use just 3 Logic Groups or debriefs: success summary, failure summary and detailed debrief. The 1st two can be considered your primary mission goal while the "detailed debrief" could contain your secondary goal(s). If you set it up this way, the secondary goals will have no effect on the "Master Win Count". If you want a secondary goal to count toward your "Master Win Count", you will need to add it as a condition in the "success summary" debriefing. If you do this, using my example of the Cruiser and Escort, you will need to expand the debriefs in this box to cover all the cases I listed in the example up above. So you would have 4 debriefs (2! + 2) and you would drop the detailed debrief. If you do not include all 4 debriefs, there is a chance that a case condition will be meet where there is no debrief and the Summary Debrief Area is blank for the player, leaving him/her to wonder what went wrong. J
So from my example up above, I will need to create 4 Logic Groups (or Summary Debriefings):
*) Total Success - Cruiser is not destroyed and Escort is not destroyed
*) Partial Success 1 - Cruiser is not destroyed, Escort is destroyed
*) Partial Success 2 - Cruiser is destroyed, Escort is not destroyed
*) Total Failure - Cruiser is destroyed and Escort is destroyed
Oh, forgot to mention, when it comes to debriefs, the debriefing process will stop running when it comes upon the 1st Logic Statement that is true. From what I have read from others, if there is a second debrief after this that is also true, the process has stop already so it will not appear in the Summary Debrief Area. If someone has proven this to be wrong, please let me know so I can correct it here. You can however, make one of these Logic Statements a Detailed Debrief and by not checking the Debrief Summary Only" check box, it will appear in the Detail Debrief Screen. You will see further down.
Taking my "Total Success" case example, I click on the add button and this will put me in the Debrief Logic Group Box. I type "Total Success" at the top to add my debriefing (case) title. This will have conditions for both a primary and a secondary goal. There is nothing to prevent you from having 2 primary goals instead of what I have set up, just remember to account for all the possible "true" cases that can occur.
Debrief Logic Group Box
This box consists of a condition statement area for Logic Statements (debriefs), 2 check boxes and buttons to add, modify, delete and advance/demote Logic Statements. Since the Logic Statements are processed in the order they appear in the condition statement area, you may have forgotten a certain Logic Statement should be near the top of the list. Just add it, then click on it and use the advance button to move it up the list.
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