mission briefings

[joejoe 0]

hello all, first i have to say excellent job on the work done so far. Ive been watching the videos and am eagerly awaiting a demo. anyways, as far as mission briefings go, i do not like the lomac style-read a page and go- type briefing. i do however like the USNAVY FIGHTERS full motion video briefings or even the medal of honor:allied assualt type briefing where there is a voice talking to you while you watch a projector screen fill you in on the important data.

 

i feel that if you want an immersive game the player has to be prepped before they go out and actually play the game and the briefings i think are the best way to do it. the briefing and debreifing are the only parts of the game that a player doesnt actually play, he just experiences these moments, no matter how brief, and clicks continue to get back in the action. perhaps if it were possible for you to make these moments more cinematic and meaningful or even interesting enough for the player to sit through them, your product would be just that much better.

 

at any rate, i hope you complete the game and are happy enough with it and that it meets your standards so that you have something youll be proud to be a part of.

 

keep up the good work!

[+Dante-JT 6]

I agree completely, a good overall front-end should be in place instead of just bureocratic spreadsheet like menus. It should be something that creates a moving atmosphere, to immerse the player and build the feeling that he's participating in something big.

 

As you mentionated, rescent WWII first person shooters did it very well, with a polished frontend setting making the whole experience more cinematic - this is the joint effort of art directors, animators, professional musicians, and in some cases even advice from movie directors. The problem is that this is costly, and flight sims today are quite a small business, that's why the developers lately prefer to focus in the flight sim itself.

 

But we'll try to follow the high profile approach, actually in my daily job I work in the game industry in a rather high profile MMOG title, so I'm getting from this experience some hints at how it is made and how much this frontend production costs.

[Baco-ECv56 0]

Sorry but I disagree. A cinematic cutsceen before every mission is either quite dull being allways the same sceen or a hole lot of work that esencially does not amoun´t to the simulation.

Let me explain: Thunder Works is a very small enterpirse. if it undertook the tremendous work of creating a whole buch of renderizations for the missions it would take forever.

Besides, you can have cutsceeens in an oficiall campaign, not in multiplayer missions or custom made missiosn (althow Jane´s F/A-18 permite you to ad your own AVI in the mission editor :D:D:D). This would make the game to have no balance, since you would be getting cinematic briefings in the campaign, but not in other modules of teh game.

 

What I mean is that to do it right, it would be an enormous effort taht I radder see dedicated to in game features or characteristics.

 

Perhaps it would be more efective to have cinematics in different stages of the campaign or when special events take place. Say you sink a Capital ship, or you manage to make the landings in the islands...

 

Regarding brefings I woulds like to see a more traditional lay out, like a document resemblimg a real briefing (in the argentine case the Orden Fragmentaria- a document transmited to the base by the Estado mayor, asigning the flight number, pilots and mission to acomplish with the coordinates of the suspected contacts) I don´t now waht form the British Flight orders had, I suppose they were more like US briefings ina ready room in the carrier.

I wouls like to be able to have a detailed map with the waypoints and the lastest enemy activity.

 

Maybe a voice over coment on the curent conditions and objectives.

 

Maybe some identification charts of the target.

 

Think of a mix between EAW and Gunship 2000.

 

The background images sould resemble documents of the time, like typed or Telex kind of socuments. And the map being like a navigation chart.

Then whlie loading we could have images of the carrier or the Base with some planes on the bacground, maybe a bit of motion Crew moving or planes roling...

[joejoe 0]

baco, your idea is just the kind of thing i want to see done for a briefing. anything that can give you bigger perspective of a mission is going to help, i was just using the FM video cutscene as an example. i know that there arent alot of resources to go around for things like actors for missions, and i definitly dont want to see a cutscene of an airplane flying between missions, so perhaps if it were possible to do short briefings consisting of maps and aerial photographs of the objectives or other data that may have been used at the time would be all thats needed to really put you in the experience. just as long as its not to wordy, hehe.