-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
It's occurred to me, this feels like planning an encounter as a GM for a TT RPG. I'm digging through the planet tags and descriptions looking for one liners I can use as a hook. "The moons serve as bases for pirate activity..." appeal to me. It allows cramming a lunar mission in to a otherwise conventional planet and FP. After I got the general theme and hooks in to the existing universe now I need to choose the flow of one encounter to the next and where they would fit in to the narrative best. I used the MDDB to show me a list of every map and what contracts can appear on them, turns out Lunar is pretty limited with only two named maps for Battle and Destroy Base. I'll probably copy/paste that map+encounter list and clean it up in to a googledoc soon.
One thing that has occurred to me is that after each deployment, it would be good if you could customise the amount of delay until the next deployment. This would be a way of increasing or decreasing the difficulty.
Perhaps it might be best if the minimum delay was set in the parameters at the start of the campaign?
Perhaps it might be best if the minimum delay was set in the parameters at the start of the campaign?
It might be possible to put a fail timer on starting the next contract in a FP. Seen some options that would suggest that but no idea if they work.
I'm slowly gathering useful reference sheets of things I keep needing to look up. Things like what maps can support what contract types and what the names of viewscreen portraits are. Will put out some FP author's aids if I can get some conversations to work. Trying to build a single conversation FP that plays each music track and maybe cycles through each image the viewscreen can display.
Making my first real FP from scratch to get confident I could make some guide videos without having to annotate corrections every 30 seconds.
Making my first real FP from scratch to get confident I could make some guide videos without having to annotate corrections every 30 seconds.
Amechwarrior wanted me to bring these out for you guys to look at. I have done a couple now borrowing from Amechwariors design. (all of them can be found in the latest public alpha of roguetech).
But the ones he wanted me to show you guys is the limited light challange ones I have implemented in RT. they have no dialog outside the starting box and inside mission.
The mission is quite explanatory. you get 1 40 ton or less mech of your choice, have to figure a way around the opFor and make it to the landing zone.
You get this screen when you select which mech you want to drop with.
I have attached the files if you want to go through them. I have some extra contracts and data in the milestones, ignore them for now, and enjoy.
(P.S.) Ty amechwarrior for showing us da wey.
But the ones he wanted me to show you guys is the limited light challange ones I have implemented in RT. they have no dialog outside the starting box and inside mission.
The mission is quite explanatory. you get 1 40 ton or less mech of your choice, have to figure a way around the opFor and make it to the landing zone.
You get this screen when you select which mech you want to drop with.
I have attached the files if you want to go through them. I have some extra contracts and data in the milestones, ignore them for now, and enjoy.
(P.S.) Ty amechwarrior for showing us da wey.
FP Removal Warning
WARNING: Adding a FP is like adding a new 'Mech. You can't remove them without breaking the save
So I disabled a FP and tried loading my debug save, it failed. Mod FPs add files to the VerMan and MDDB like new 'Mechs and weapons. Once those items are a part of the save, you seem to need them forever to make that save work. I'm considering releasing some debug only FPs (working on some aids) disabled by default to help make users aware they shouldn't leave them on when playing normally.
So I disabled a FP and tried loading my debug save, it failed. Mod FPs add files to the VerMan and MDDB like new 'Mechs and weapons. Once those items are a part of the save, you seem to need them forever to make that save work. I'm considering releasing some debug only FPs (working on some aids) disabled by default to help make users aware they shouldn't leave them on when playing normally.
Hmm - but you can sell off 'Mechs/Weapons and continue on with your game as if you never had them. I wonder if it has to do with the flag/milestones being set in the Save rather than the FP itself causing it.
Or maybe something with the StarSystems, does it toggle something for those in the save? I had an awful time with saves whenever I messed with adding/removing StarSystems.
Or maybe something with the StarSystems, does it toggle something for those in the save? I had an awful time with saves whenever I messed with adding/removing StarSystems.
More testing is needed. Right now, my saves with FPs spawned on their planets is enough to make the save fail to load. I might try a very early debug save and then activate one FP, beat it, and see if it can be removed then. Maybe once it's out of the FP pool and leaves no tags (training wheels shouldn't have left any tags) that might be enough.
Since there was talk of a FP "deck" and unfinished FPs being "shuffled back in", my guess would be that it's tracking completion status of all available FPs.
This news made me so happy. Already remembering those good old days of playing user created content for Shadowrun. Thanks for the effort!
Given i´m not good with computers, what´s the most user friendly way to play these?
Given i´m not good with computers, what´s the most user friendly way to play these?
@CWolfs provided this to us a while back. It has helped me run the Mods that have interested me. : )
Right now you will need ModTek/BTML to load my FP. But that's not really built to be played "for real" and just a prototype. I'm working on one now and in RogueTech, they have some simple challenges that use the FP system. RT is basically a total conversion mod at this point and brings the game to the 3070+ timeline.
So, while working on a fully featured FP I had an issue with picking a track for a scene. There is no good way to preview the music without a lot of hassle. So I made a FP to fix that.
Flashpoint: The Sound of Music
So, this is the first FP Aid I've got polished for general use. I'll probably make a "Building Custom FPs" thread tomorrow with some ref. sheets and this FP as aids. A proper guide is still just on paper. I feel I need to finish my first real FP to get a handle on every step. I'll write a basic OP for now, but it won't be everything.
Flashpoint: The Sound of Music
So, this is the first FP Aid I've got polished for general use. I'll probably make a "Building Custom FPs" thread tomorrow with some ref. sheets and this FP as aids. A proper guide is still just on paper. I feel I need to finish my first real FP to get a handle on every step. I'll write a basic OP for now, but it won't be everything.
So I figured out how to insert custom Viewscreen Images:
You need this manifest entry in your mod.json's manifest entries:
You need this manifest entry in your mod.json's manifest entries:
Code:
{ "Type": "Texture2D", "Path": "textures", "AddToAddendum": "ConversationTexture" },
FP Stock Photos
I've made a mod that has some really basic "stock photos" for other FP authors to use. I figured if I wanted to use the Local Rep in a FP, someone else would too. As it is, that would mean each of us would need to package and load our own "uixTxrConv_localsrep" icon in to the game, which is wasteful if we don't happen to give it the same filename. If we did, one of the mods would overwrite the other's and this is also a potential problem. So, what if I just packaged some universal icons for everyone to use? Then they just need to require this pack to load their FP.
FLASHPOINT STOCK PHOTOS v1.0
I've got just 5 images, I want to keep this lean and useful. A blank image, because we can't turn off the screen. A Locals Rep that HBS didn't think we'd need to chat with. An "Audio Only" signal feed to differentiate from the "lost signal" icon. Then two maps, the Aurigan Reach and the Inner Sphere, taken from the old KS updates and formatted for the Holoscreen. All of these images come to a lean 1.7mb and are in the .dds format preferred by the performance fix oriented modders. I don't want to clutter your PC's memory with a hundred slightly different MW portraits for every nicha faction and unit crest known to sarna. The individual FP's can have that for themselves as they are likely only to be used once or twice for an entire playthrough. I feel these 5 images are general enough that they can get some usage once others start making FPs.
Ignore the text not matching the image context. Just threw it in the convo I was working on to see how it looks.
I'm about 60% done with my FP "The Raid" which will put your companies combat capability to the limit. Or at least I hope it will. The combat and missions are done. I've got the opening conversation about 90% done and I have about 5 more conversations to write once branching is factored in. I'd say by the end of the month, but don't hold me to that.
Afterwards, I want to take my training wheels FP and turn it in to a living trainer FP so other players can enjoy creating challenges and telling stories as well.
If you're already trying to find your own path with creating a FP, just let me know and I can help out answering questions. I've broken just about everything along the way and I still got more to break before "The Raid" is done. I know far more now than when I started and a proper text/video guide is going to take a long time.
FLASHPOINT STOCK PHOTOS v1.0
I've got just 5 images, I want to keep this lean and useful. A blank image, because we can't turn off the screen. A Locals Rep that HBS didn't think we'd need to chat with. An "Audio Only" signal feed to differentiate from the "lost signal" icon. Then two maps, the Aurigan Reach and the Inner Sphere, taken from the old KS updates and formatted for the Holoscreen. All of these images come to a lean 1.7mb and are in the .dds format preferred by the performance fix oriented modders. I don't want to clutter your PC's memory with a hundred slightly different MW portraits for every nicha faction and unit crest known to sarna. The individual FP's can have that for themselves as they are likely only to be used once or twice for an entire playthrough. I feel these 5 images are general enough that they can get some usage once others start making FPs.
I'm about 60% done with my FP "The Raid" which will put your companies combat capability to the limit. Or at least I hope it will. The combat and missions are done. I've got the opening conversation about 90% done and I have about 5 more conversations to write once branching is factored in. I'd say by the end of the month, but don't hold me to that.
Afterwards, I want to take my training wheels FP and turn it in to a living trainer FP so other players can enjoy creating challenges and telling stories as well.
If you're already trying to find your own path with creating a FP, just let me know and I can help out answering questions. I've broken just about everything along the way and I still got more to break before "The Raid" is done. I know far more now than when I started and a proper text/video guide is going to take a long time.
Last edited:
So I've made it through a full non-debug playthrough of my next FP "The Raid" and this is how I came out:
As this was with my OP campaign save, no CT dest, normal OPFOR levels and Mechs come assembled. But this was with the corrected OPFOR pilots from cFixes and my Better AI was active for all of the missions. This is about where I want to be. If CT loss was on, I'd only be out the GRF. My mechs and pilots are down for about 59 days all in all, but just sitting and healing for that entire period still put me ahead of where I started with gear and money, only real loss was the pilot when the GRF went down.
I got to tweak some events/stat adjustments and then write a few more convos and it should be ready for release! This might take anywhere from 2-4 weeks as life really got in the way recently.
As this was with my OP campaign save, no CT dest, normal OPFOR levels and Mechs come assembled. But this was with the corrected OPFOR pilots from cFixes and my Better AI was active for all of the missions. This is about where I want to be. If CT loss was on, I'd only be out the GRF. My mechs and pilots are down for about 59 days all in all, but just sitting and healing for that entire period still put me ahead of where I started with gear and money, only real loss was the pilot when the GRF went down.
I got to tweak some events/stat adjustments and then write a few more convos and it should be ready for release! This might take anywhere from 2-4 weeks as life really got in the way recently.
