Advanced Architect Entertainment Tips & Tricks

[brigg]

Advanced Architect Entertainment Tips & Tricks

Just a brief rundown of some tricks to enhance your Story Arcs that you won't find in the Mission Architect Creator.

For most of the Mission Arc Creator, there are tips above the text windows that give you a brief description and example. They are pretty self explanatory, but for a more in-depth description, visit the link by@Charlie for more information.

 

PERSONALIZED CODES

These codes will return a word based on the Player speaking to the contact.

• $name

• $level

• $class

• $supergroup: will display “No Supergroup” if unaffiliated

• $sirmam or SirMam

• $heshe or $HeShe

• $hishers or $HisHers

• $himher or $HimHer

 

HTML TAGS

You can also use basic HTML codes to enhance your text. Not all text can be enhanced however. Navigator Windows displaying the Mission Title and Objectives cannot be enhanced. And although the preview will show enhanced text for the Story Description, it will not be enhanced in the search window unfortunately.

• <br> will force a return starting the next line.

• <color #ffff00>Yellow Text</color> will return Yellow Text

• <b>Bold Text</b> will return Bold Text

• <i>Italics Text</i> will return Italics Text

• If you combine them <b><color #ffff00><i>Combo Text</i></color></b> will return Combo Text. Make sure to cancel out the codes in the exact reverse order. In this case, we do bold, color, and italics. Close them with italics, color, bold.

 

UNKNOWN OR HARD-TO-FIND RESOURCES

Contacts 

There are some Objects you can use as contacts that you won't find in the Contacts/Objects. These objects you have to search in Standard Contacts/All.

• Aspect of the Pillar - An Ouroboros Crystal
  
  
• Golden Roller - a car
  
  
• Locker - a set of lockers
  
  
• Medicine Cabinet - a cabinet of medical supplies you'd see in a doctor's office
  
  
• Number 204 - a giant spider bot
  
  
• Slot Machine
  
  
• Televisioin - A TV on cinderblocks surrounded by trash
  
  
• The Radio - a boombox radio
  
  
• Twilight's Son - a Nova (squid form) Kheldian
  
  In addition, this is also where you'll find the most mundane of NPC's all the way up to the Signature Heroes and Villains.
  
  

Maps

The more popular and/or unique maps.

• Atta Cave: Unique Maps - Caves (Unique) - Trolls
  
  
• Cavern of the Transcendence Trial Map: Unique Maps - Caves (Unique) - Batzul Hell
  
  
• Tyrant's Throne Room and Lava Pits: Unique Maps - Caves (Unique) - Tyrant's Lair
  
  
• The small space meteor: Unique Maps - Unique - Shiva Fragment
  
  
• The caved-in tunnel: Unique Maps - Unique - Road Tunnel
  
  
• CoV's Breakout Tutorial: Unique Maps - Unique - The Zig Breakout
  
  
• A giant space map in fog: Unique Maps - Unique - Space Island
  
  

 

Hope this information helps you creative people out there!

[GammaSoldier]

On 10/16/2019 at 2:49 AM, brigg said:

HTML TAGS

You can also use basic HTML codes to enhance your text. Not all text can be enhanced however. Navigator Windows displaying the Mission Title and Objectives cannot be enhanced. And although the preview will show enhanced text for the Story Description, it will not be enhanced in the search window unfortunately.

I came across this point by editing my latest story arc. I did use html tags for coloring in the story description and it was displayed correctly in the search window. I also found story arcs from other authors with colored text in the description which was displayed correctly. 

 

Then after I edited the story description text, none of the sory descriptions of any story arc is displayed correctly in the search window anymore. Each one shows the HTML tags as text. I can't get it to work again, but I'm absolutely sure, that it had been displayed correctly. 

 

Can anyone see colored text in story descriptions?   Take Acr ID 17699 as an example and please report whether there is colored text or just HTML tags displayed.

 

Edited April 26, 2020 by GammaSoldier

[brigg]

7 hours ago, GammaSoldier said:

I came across this point by editing my latest story arc. I did use html tags for coloring in the story description and it was displayed correctly in the search window. I also found story arcs from other authors with colored text in the description which was displayed correctly. 

 

Then after I edited the story description text, none of the sory descriptions of any story arc is displayed correctly in the search window anymore. Each one shows the HTML tags as text. I can't get it to work again, but I'm absolutely sure, that it had been displayed correctly. 

 

Can anyone see colored text in story descriptions?   Take Acr ID 17699 as an example and please report whether there is colored text or just HTML tags displayed.

 

Unfortunately, Story Descriptions will show up enhanced in preview but not in the actual search window. Not sure why. They'll work in the contact window however.

[GammaSoldier]

I'm sure that I saw correct coloring, and many of the story descriptions use text coloring. Why would anyone do this, if it does not work at all? 

 

Again, can anybody see colored text in story descriptions or is it always HTML tags? Maybe someone who has released story arcs with colored descriptions can give an awnser to this.

 

Edit: Funny, right after writing this post I checked Arc ID 17699 and have a look to the screenshot. You can see colored and bold text there which wasn't the case yesterday. 

 

 

 

So I did some more research on my own story arc. When I list it without any search filter settings, it is displayed like this:

 

 

When I do a search for it, it's displayed like this:

 

 

I know, the source code of CoH has always been a mystery. I don't think that anyone from the community could explain this strange behaviour. Maybe someone who is familiar with the source code. I would guess, the reason is, that the search result is colored in orange, so for this purpose HTML-tags are interpreted by the source code and are not, when no coloring is done by the search window. This looks like bad programming style  to me. 

 

Edited April 27, 2020 by GammaSoldier

[Heraclea]

One interesting thing I have discovered about NPC Allies.  If you want them, turn them into Escorts instead.  I have not found any maps where rescuable allies are allowed but escorts are not. 

 

Just turn off the escort as a required mission goal.  That way the player won't be made to do each one.  Turning the allies into Escorts does the player a small favor, though.  Make the escort's goal a mission objective rather than the door.  Then the player gets a waypoint on the map that leads to the objective.  If there are multiple objectives you can create an escort for each and multiple waypoints to the several objectives appear.  This way the player can decide if they just want to beeline to the goals and get them done, without having to search for them. 

[Ankylosaur]

Quote

Again, can anybody see colored text in story descriptions or is it always HTML tags? Maybe someone who has released story arcs with colored descriptions can give an awnser to this.

On a semi-related note, in my last arc I played around with using the HTML color codes to color and scale bubble-text of bosses and allies in missions. The AE editor does not support this (via a right click that is) but it did seem to work most of the time if you only used the open tag and not the close tag. I had the need to represent one single being's voice speaking through several different boss enemies and I thought color-coding could help there.

 

Its the "most of the time" that is issue though, which is I am sure why the AE Editor does not officially include it. On testing it worked a lot, but then once in awhile revealed the HTML tag as part of what the person said without coloring it - as far as I could tell without rhyme or reason. 

 

I ended up going with All Caps instead and just saying I AM SOANDSO every time, which is not optimal but worked well enough. The lesson for me with the AE is to accept what you cannot change and get creative within those constraints. 🙂