Consideration of Knowledge (65341) - Use AE to learn AE

[ZamuelNow]

Consideration of Knowledge - Arc ID: 65341

Wandering into your local Architect Entertainment building, you discover that the game may be talking to you. Is Mission Architect using an arc to teach you tips on writing in Mission Architect? Low XP but high knowledge! [SFMA]

 

---

 

This has been in the planning stages for a while but December put me in a sprint to completion.  With this arc, there's two specific reasons why it exists...

 

For the first bit of inspiration: Back in the retail days there was an arc called Knowledge Is Power (by @Paula) that used a witty style to teach tips about Mission Architect.  It managed to earn a Dev's Choice and had mild popularity.  I was disappointed to not see it on Homecoming.  Don't know if the author isn't on HC or chose not to republish.  I felt there needed to be something like it. Not an exact copy but I don't remember it clearly enough to copy even I wanted to.  From that, eventually came the second inspiration...

 

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Architect_Edition

 

While the AE hologram stream is acid green in game, a quiet portion of my brain thinks of AE with a blueprint blue.  I joined CoH in I14 with the retail copy and with that I stumbled upon the idea of: Why not give back by making the teaching arc heavily reference the mission from the inside cover?  With my own twists of course but it felt like the right way to handle things. I decided to recreate Tough Love and Cosmic Bleed from scratch as the main stars of the arc and make the whole thing self aware.  I'm also gifting their costumes to the rest of the community.

 

 

ToughLoveAndCosmic Bleed.zip

Edited December 16 by ZamuelNow

[Darmian]

Intriguing!  On my (eventual) to do list.  

[Clave Dark 5]

Whoa, I need to run this one and be ready to take notes.

 

ETA  OK, ran it, and I guess I've been here too long because I knew I knew most of this, ha ha.  But, I have run arcs before by people who clearly didn't know this stuff, , it reminded of tricks and stuff that I'd forgotten, and I did make note of four newish things to me, so it wasn't at all a waste of time. 

 

Great idea and a good way to help out the community.

Edited Sunday at 02:36 AM by Clave Dark 5

[ZamuelNow]

I figured regulars would know most of it and would be more useful in suggesting additions, considering I deliberately left some spawns Empty.  But since some things were newish to you, I'm wondering what they were.

[Clave Dark 5]

My written notes:

1. Same title for different objectives, incl. required AND optional -- I may have known this but semi-forgotten it, so helpful reminder
2. Pop-ups to re-tell the story so all players, not just the team leader, can keep up -- The way every story in this game is mainly just player/known by the team leader is a a real failure, imho, so it's nice to be reminded we do have some work around (all my stuff's been written assuming solo play).  Which reminds me of a question, when a clue drops, do all players get to see them, or just the leader?
3. Test Mode allows you to jump to next objective -- whoa, really?  Totally new to me, I should have looked I guess.  Then again, I like running around a map a number of times to get a feel for it for the mission.
4. Make custom teams of 3 minions, 2 Lt.s and one boss -- I remember reading this on the old forums (maybe from you even) but had forgotten this good rule of thumb.
5. Don't use long interaction timers for collectables -- That's the perfect barrier to hide "set decorations" behind as you demonstrated, which is helpful as I'm currently working on a mission with a lot of such decorations.

Oh, and a late #6:  Don't walk into a level ten mission sets at x4/x8  😛

[ZamuelNow]

14 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

Which reminds me of a question, when a clue drops, do all players get to see them, or just the leader?

 

Everyone on the team can see the clue but just the person who clicks it gets the notification.  Actually, most of the team can read the mission text, it's just the text when you return to the contact or the contact's waiting text that can't be seen.  It's just that teams often don't slow down to read those, while pop ups are more in your face.  I might expect solo play but I try to plan for teams when I write an arc.

 

Quote

Test Mode allows you to jump to next objective -- whoa, really?  Totally new to me, I should have looked I guess.  Then again, I like running around a map a number of times to get a feel for it for the mission.

 

Jumping to next objective is the most useful when you think a glowie might be stuck in geometry.  If you jump to it, you can be stuck in a shipping container, too! :)