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Page 8

SDOE Mission Making Tutorial - Part 1
By Scott Verge

Well it's running pretty good. A simple mission but one that the AI can fly all by itself in every role. Something that’s just not going to happen if you just threw some planes in the sim with a couple waypoints and targets. All that work has paid off. We now have a mission that can be played online and you can be proud of. It has 9 planes in close proximity to a town so it might be a little hard on some computers. On my system, which is pretty crappy, it drops down below 20 FPS at certain points in the action. But I don’t fly online with all my graphics cranked and a Word document open in the background, so it should be cool for online.

As good as it is so far it can be made better. So in the advanced section we shall pick up from this point again.

Mission Basics Conclusion:

Ok so what did we learn?
Well, since I did all the hard work, all this should work for you on your first try provided you followed the instructions exactly. Since you didn’t run into all the problems I did, I outlined them below so you know what to watch out for.

1. The AI is stupid. I’m talking dumb here. If you want it to attack something you have to set it all up EXACTLY. And you have to tell it EXACTLY what to attack so it doesn’t start picking its own targets.
2. The AI can’t effectively use the rockets under a sweep command like we would wish it to. That means you will have to tell the AI to bomb a target but load the fighter with rockets too for the option while flying online. That’s why I loaded the P51's with both bombs and rockets even though they aren’t used in the offline mission.
3. Using the runway headings is a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating process. Sometime a squad won’t follow that order or do something crazy and kick the other squad into an air start; or sometimes they will conflict and end up on the same strip falling all over each other. So just try and try again until you find a combo that works.
4. The individual runways aren’t all suitable for each plane nor each loadout. So don’t lose your mind when a runway doesn’t work for your plane / loadout combo. On the flip side, I find the Lanc's are pretty good at getting off even on difficult runways.
5. Don’t have your mind dead set on what planes you want to use in a mission before you start making it. Unless you are prepared for compromises in other areas---such as different airfields and targets and possible air starts. It took me at least ten tries to get the type of planes to do what I wanted and to have them take off from the same field. So you are looking at some serious testing.
   
6. Expect to test>tweak>save>test>tweak>save>test>tweak>save>test an awful lot. To make a good mission where the AI can carry out the mission on its own and pretty much fly a mini-battle for your enjoyment. There is really no way around this; it's part of being a good mission designer. And that’s what you are a mission designer, not just a mission maker anymore. We have to separate the men from the boys here. :)
7. One last thing: On my computer it takes a while to open a mission---a good 45 seconds. An agonizing 45 seconds when you just want to get in there and tweak one thing and get back in the air. I’m just warning you now that if it does that on your computer you will bitch and scream, so be prepared. Also, like I said earlier, it seems to use a lot of system resources so you can’t just leave it open. I would if I could but it sucks so I won’t.
   

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