Verbal briefings for campaign missions?

[33LIMA 972]

I always liked the EAW-style campaign mission briefings. Yes they were short and simplified but they really helped the immersion factor. While you studied the map there was a murmur of voices which died out as the CO got into his stride...

 

So I was thinking, maybe the same could be done for FE, by replacing the 'CampaignScreen' wav file with a verbal briefing. As you can't make it mission-dependent as in EAW, it would have to be a bit generic. So to avoid boredom after the first time, you would need multiple versions (plus a set for each nationality you could swap in or out manually or using maybe the JSGME mod editor). It could start with some EAW-style murmering, then something along the lines of "Right, chaps, pay attention now. The names for today's show are on the roster, so find out who you're up with. Don't forget to mark up your own map with the route. Note the bearings, speed and altitude for each leg - anyone who gets lost will be buying the drinks in the mess tonight, if the Huns don't get him! And I hope you have checked your belts are clean and properly loaded -the Armourer's life doesn't depend on your Vickers working but yours will! See you outside in 5 minutes - and good hunting!" You can see how it would be possible to produce multiple variations of that sort of thing, maybe with a bit of banter between pilots - a bit like you got in Crimson Skies, which did that unusually well, with a good deal of tongue-in-cheek banter between Nathan Zachary and his air pirates, which brought them to life!

 

So, does anyone know if you had, say, six different wav files in the Menu folder, all called "CampaignScreen.wav", would FE (a) crash (b) play just one or © pick between them more-or-less at random, so you got the variety? I suppose I could experiment and find out. But I daresay somebody has already tried this sort of thing and knows the answer already.

 

Another possibility, requiring just one track (for each nationality ideally) would be something to replace the pilot record screen music. Maybe based on the EAW nissen hut concept, where you had radio music, bedsprings creaking, and a bloke coughing, with a flypast engine sound every so often. Scratchy period gramaphone music, or maybe an RFC singsong like "The Only Way" in 'Aces High', some tinkling of glasses and other background noise or banter like you were in the Mess with the boys, an engine starting up from a test run outside, just something to give you the impression you are on a WW1 airfield, not staring at your monitor.

Edited April 10, 2011 by 33LIMA

[33LIMA 972]

Have just realised the CampaignSceeen.wav file plays only BEFORE you enter the campaign mission breifing so replacing that would not work. The separate screens for the planning map and the roster have no associated wav files and are silent...which made me thing that MAYBE if I create a .wav file with the same name as each screen, it might just be played then - the convention with the screens that have a wav file is mostly that the filename is the same barring the extension, so I tried using a copy of the main menu .was renamed RosterScreen.wav but it didn't play...so much for that idea. Assuming it's the menu's .dll file that points to the music to be used it's presumably possible to edit that but obviously thst's a whole new ball game.

[33LIMA 972]

Have just realised the CampaignSceeen.wav file plays only BEFORE you enter the campaign mission breifing so replacing that would not work. The separate screens for the planning map and the roster have no associated wav files and are silent...which made me thing that MAYBE if I create a .wav file with the same name as each screen, it might just be played then - the convention with the screens that have a wav file is mostly that the filename is the same barring the extension, so I tried using a copy of the main menu .was renamed RosterScreen.wav but it didn't play...so much for that idea. Assuming it's the menu's .dll file that points to the music to be used it's presumably possible to edit that but obviously thst's a whole new ball game.

 

Update - not QUITE beaten yet. The menudata file has an ini file for each menu screen and in that it specifies the name of the .wav file to be used for that screen. So it's simple enough to add a .wav file to the mission briefing screen and to each if its component parts - the planning map, roster and loadout screens. But the same verbal briefing for each of those is gonna get a bit tired. Can't have multiple identical file names, so that's out. How to get the menu to choose at random or in rotation from a small bank of .wav files? Those who know about hand-editing these .ini files, is there any way, any syntax I could try, to offer multiple selections? Can I use wildcards, like 'RosterScreen*.wav' so that it would pick from 'RosterScreen.wav' one time, then possibly 'RosterScreen2.wav' the next?

[Wrench 9,733]

briefings, or mission descriptions like we had, say, in ATF or FA are not available in any of the 3W games.

 

The only way to do it, is like how YAP and Rising Sun does it ... seperate txt or pdf files in a seperate folder, that you'd read before starting the game (and the mission)

 

would be great if we had them ... would really help with things like the novel conversions I used to do for FA. But, that's the way it is!

 

wrench

kevin stein

[33LIMA 972]

I remember seeing - think it was in the planningmap.ini file - somewhere the syntax seemed to allow wildcards - think it was to do with choosing which labels to apply to air and ground units in that particular map, they looked like they were calling a filename with a variable or wildcard in it, the '@' sign it was.

 

IF that is right, and IF it can be set up so as to allow multiple variants of a .wav file to be called with each of the briefing screens, we could have a set of non-specific but variable verbal briefings to accompany each screen - briefing, loadout, roster and planning map. Obviously, mission-specific sound file briefings would not be possible. Will keep poking around; thanks for the feedback.