Mission Architect Tutorial 100 Series

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Overview

This tutorial will walk you through creating a very basic mission in the Mission Architect, the central feature of Issue 14. If you don't know where the Mission Architect is located, it exists in many zones, with an "AE" icon. Go to one of these locations and do the introduction, which will show you around the place.

This tutorial will not go into detail as to what everything is. The help system, and further guides, will go into much greater detail. This tutorial is here solely to "get your feet wet" and get your first mission created. This will take you step by step through creating a mission with a (very) small map and a bunch of bad guys to defeat.

When you're finished, go to one of the Mission Architect computers and click on it. You will see a list of published arcs. Don't worry about those for now. Click on the button in the upper right that says "Create a new story." A window will come up, filling your screen. This is the mission creation window.

Tutorial 101: Story Settings & a Simple Mission

Story Settings

Story Title

This is what your story will appear as in the browser. This is a text field. It does get checked by the censor list, as does everything. For our first mission, we'll keep it simple. In programming courses, the first program is often called "Hello world." That's boring. Let's call ours "World Domination 101." (OK, if you're feeling heroic, something like "Saving kittens 101.")

Story Description

"Story Description" gives a small blurb about what the story's about. Type in "Tutorial mission" and leave it at that.

Story Contact

Here, you can put in your contact name, if you want (we'll use "Bob.") Beneath that is Contact Type. This is where you pick from a long list of NPCs - including a custom one you can create. We're not creating one now (though it's easy.) Leave it at "Default."

Now let's create the mission itself.

On the bottom of the screen, you'll see an arrow pointing right that says "Mission 1 settings." Use ether one.

You should be on a page starting with "Choose mission settings."

The Choose mission settings page

There are two tabs here, Standard and Custom. Custom is where you would create your own enemy (or ally) groups. We're ignoring that one for now - play with it later.

Under Standard, you'll have a few buttons. The first is "Enemy group." This is a dropdown list. Since I don't know what level anyone reading this would be, we're going to pick a group that anyone can play with.

If you click on the word "None," you'll see the (long) list. All of them have the name and level ranges of those enemy groups. We'll use the very first one there - 5th Column (1-54.) Click that.

Next section - Map Type.

Click on "None." You'll see a list of map sets. Each of these sets has multiple maps inside of it. We're going to go down a bit and use "Warehouse Abandoned - City of Heroes set." Once this is selected, you'll see a new option, "Map length." You have four options - Tiny, Small, Medium, and Large.

Since this is supposed to be fast, we'll pick Tiny.

A new section will open up that says "Map." You can leave this at random... but what fun is that?

This selection only has two maps - Map 0 and Map 1 - as well as the Random option. Other map sets can have very lengthy selections. If you scroll through the maps, you'll see a floorplan represented on the right.

We'll pick the most basic map there is - Map 0. You should see a hall and a room. This will also give you information, much like the base editor, on how much is allowed (X many ambushes, items, etc.) Make sure it meets your needs - for this tutorial, it does.

Again, there are many optional settings. We are ignoring them for the purpose of this tutorial.

Next section - Write Text

This is not optional. In fact, if you click on "Show Errors" in the upper left, it's showing you that none of this has been filled in.

Mission Introduction Dialog - This is what the contact tells you when you talk to them. Type in "Hi there. I see you're learning to use the mission architect. Glad I could help!" (Yes, it's lame, but you'll see where it goes.)

Mission Send Off Dialog is what you see after accepting the mission. For this mission, just type in "Have fun storming the Castle!"

Compass Active Task Text - shows up in your nav window. Here, just type "Beat stuff up."

Still Busy Dialog - is what you see if you talk to the contact without finishing the mission. Just type in "Shoo."

Return Success Dialog - is what the contact tells you when you see them at the end of the mission. Type in "Thanks, you wonderful being you!"

Click "Mission 1 details" on the bottom right to proceed.

Mission Details

There are two sections here - basic and advanced mission goals. Given this is a basic tutorial, we're just going to touch on Basic Mission Goals.

We want to beat stuff up. Pick Defeat All Enemies. You'll have two choices - Defeat: ... everything on the map (literally defeat all) ... everything in the last room.

Either will work for this mission.

Look to the upper right. If you see "No errors," you should be ready.

Click on Save and Test in the lower right. In the dialog that comes up, pick Save and Test again. It will ask for a file name - call it "Tutorial 1" or something.

Click OK, and select "Accept" in the dialog box.

Now what?

Now, if you're in the main floor of the AE building (with the energy cascade,) you'll see some holograms. By default, they're a generic male form (like in the costume creator.) Had you picked a contact (say, Ms. Liberty,) it would appear like that character. Select "Ask about available missions."

You'll see some of the dialog you wrote. ("Hi, so you're learning to use the mission architect...") Click accept, and it'll tell you to have fun storming the Castle. Click "Leave," and go to the energy fountain int he middle. Like a portal, it'll take you to the map.

Now go beat stuff up!

Inside the mission.

You'll note, up top, that you automatically have an "Exit" button as well as "Architect options." Don't get confused - when you actually do finish the mission, you'll get a "Mission Complete" dialog coming up. (If you were playing a published mission, you'd also get a dialog to rate the mission and send a comment.)

The mission we made should only take a moment to defeat - go finish beating things up, and come back. Hit Exit when finished.

Publishing a story

All right, so this is the rockinist mission ever, and you want to share it with the world! How do you do that?

Go back to the computers that you used to get into the MA to begin with. Along the top, click on "My creations." Look for "World Domination" (or "Saving kittens" or whatever you called it.) Click on it, and you'll see it expand.

Expanding will give you two things - more information (map size, enemies and the like,) and a series of buttons. PUBLISH sends it to the Architect servers. It will take a little time to show up, usually a couple of minutes. This is the one we want.

Note that you can only have three published arcs out there. Yes, this is taking one up. You can have as many unpublished ones as you have space for on your computer.

Er, wait, I don't want that taking one up!

No problem. In the same section, you'll see "My published stories," "My unpublishes stories," "My characters" and "My enemy groups." Once it shows up in "My published stories" (again, it takes a bit as the story is reviewed," you'll get another button that says "Unpublish." Select that, and it will free up a slot.

Now that you've done it once, feel free to go back and explore your options. I hope this little walkthrough has shown you how quick and easy it is to create the basic framework which will let you expand and tell the stories you want.

Tutorial 102: Basic Story Setting Options

Overview

If you haven't done the basic mission creation tutorial guide, you may want to, as I will be using that mission as a basis for this, and possibly future, guides.

All right. We have our basic World Domination (or Saving Kittens) arc. One simple mission. Open this mission up from "My Local Missions."

We skipped multiple sections when we did the walkthrough. Let's go back and look at the first page, Mission Settings. Specifically, we're going to look at optional sections.

Start by going up to the second icon at the top and pick "Save as." Give it a name such as "Tutorial 2." This will preserve your original so you can go back. When editing, it's a good idea to save prior versions before doing anything - don't rely on the autosave button. If you save, you know where you're at.

Choose Mission Settings options

We're not going into custom groups yet - one step at a time. Under Choose Mission Settings, you will see two optional sections:

• Mission Parameters
• Mission complete Clue

We'll look at these individually.

Mission Parameters

Click on Mission Parameters. If you click on the blue square with the quesiton mark, you'll get a simple explanation of the two options in here.

Mission Pacing

Mission pacing refers to how the levels of the enemies change through the map spawns. You have four options.

• Flat - All enemies stay roughly the same level.
• Back loaded - Enemies will start off lower level in the beginning and jump up higher near the end.
• Staggered - Personal favourite. Enemy levels can vary throughout the mission.
• Ramp up - Similar to back loaded, but with a steady progression up in level or difficulty.

The default setting is "Flat."

Time to Complete

If you want the mission to have a time limit (the default is no limit,) this is where you select it. You can't just type in a time, however. You must pick from a list, ranging from 5 minutes to 2 hours.

Your choices are 5, 10, 15, 30, 45, 60, 90 minutes and 2 hours.

Please, if you use this option, be realistic (unless, like Tina McIntyre's infamous mission, you want the chance of failure to be high.) Also, if you use this option, pay attention to the next section, "Additional Text."

Since this is a tutorial on a very small map, set your time to complete to 5 minutes.

Mission Complete Clue.

This is very simple - you have two fields, one of which lets you give a title to your clue ("An interesting find") and a description.

Write text

The required fields were covered in the initial walkthrough, tutorial 1, and should still be filled in with that information. This section will deal specifically with the sections marked (Optional) in the editor.

Additional Text

This section has multiple options. We'll be filling in everything here.

Mission Title

When you go to talk to your contact, often you'll see a title and subtitle - Levantra, for instance in the Rikti War Zone has an example of this with "Introduction to Vanguard, Part 1." This is similar to the "Introduction to Vanguard" at the top.

Fill in "Mission Creation Tutorial."

Mission Subtitle

This is where you'd put in Part 1, Mission 1, Beginning, finale - whatever you want to call your chapters.

Fill in "Misison 1." Yes, it's boring. But you only have one mission.

Mission accept text

This is the "Accept" that you click at the bottom to take the mission. By default, it is filled in with "Accept."

Fill in "Now see what you've done!"

Mission entry popup

This is the window you see come up in many missions - "This office is nice. It won't be nice when you're through with it, but it's nice now," for instance. It's a little opening flavor bit.

Type in "Times must be tough. They seem to have gotten a storage unit instead of a warehouse."

Mission Success Popup

This pops up if you've successfully completed a mission. You don't see these very often, actually, but if there's some action you want to imply ("Soldiers come up and whisk your hostage away," for instance,) that's what you put here.

Type in "Well, that was easy."

Mission Fail Popup

This is the same as the Success popup - but obviously only comes up if you fail. If the mission is able to BE failed (timed, prevent X from being destroyed,) you may consider using this. ("You emerge from the rubble. Time to face the music.")

Since we have a five minute timed mission, go ahead and put in "You wake up... oops, bad time for a nap."

Return Fail Dialog

This is what the contact tells you if you failed the mission. This is a bit more important, in my opinion, if you have a failable mission. You can use it to segue into the next mission, or give a story ending ("Well, you failed, and it looks like they now have a biological weapon. We'll have to hope they don't use it.")

Type in "What were you doing, sleeping? It's so hard to get good help these days."

Running the mission

Save the mission again. We won't publish, since this is just for your own use.

When you look in the mission browser, you should have two, possibly three, World Domination 101 missions. If you look closely, you'll see a file name listed under each. One will be "Autosave," possibly. The others will be Tutorial 1 and Tutorial 2. We just finished Tutorial 2, so that's what we want to run.

Start the mission, talk to your contact, enter the mission...

Then go get some coffee or something. You should have a 5 minute timer to let run down. This will let you see the "failed" dialogs and contact response. After you do, run it again and play it, beating those wuss 5th Column troops. You should see an end of mission dialog box, and different dialog from your contact.

Tutorial 103: Adding a second mission (and beyond)

Overview

The Mission Architect file you've been saving is a .storyarc file. As the name implies, it doesn't have to be a single mission - and I'm willing to bet, more often than not, it won't be. An arc, of course, consists of two or more missions. You've likely run these either as mission arcs or strike forces, task forces, or trials.

Any arc you create can have from one to five missions in it (at time of I14 Open Beta. The restrictions may be changed later through various awards or at the whim of the developers.) This tutorial will expand the "World Domination 101" mission into a two mission arc.

As always, open the most recent local copy of the file on your machine (Tutorial 2) in the Mission Architect. Click on Save As... and save it as Tutorial 3. This is the copy we'll work with.

Creating a second mission

Adding another mission to your arc is very simple. Select Tutorial 3 and hit "Edit," then look at the editor window. If you look to the right of your mission "books you'll see a button that says "Add mission." Click that.

You will now have a new, blank mission called "Mission 2 (1-54)" ready for editing. These titles (Mission 1, Mission 2) cannot be changed, but they have no impact on how anyone else sees your missions. The 1-54, as you might have guessed, is the level range. This will be determined by the critters in your mission - it can change from mission to mission. We'll get into that in a later tutorial.

Page 1 of Second Mission

For now, let's make a second, fast mission. Under Choose Mission Settings, Type in or select the following:

• Enemy Group: 5th Column (1-54). Again, we're ignoring custom groups.
• Map type: Again, we want something small, but we'll pick something a bit bigger this time. Pick Office Abandoned - City of Villains Set.
• Map Length: Small
• Map: Office Abandoned: City of Villains - 8. This is a two story map.

Skip to Write Text, for now. If you want to play with the settings dealt with in 102, come back to do it. We want to get you a second, working mission. Under Write Text:

• Mission Introduction Dialog: We've found more 5th Column for you to clean out. They're in a warehouse down the way. Go get 'em!
• Mission Send Off Dialog: Show those goons who's boss!
• Compass Active Text: Clear out the 5th!
• Still Busy Dialog: Are they gone yet?
• Return Success dialog: Great job, $name, you really showed them!

Page 2 of Second Mission

(We'll get into the dollar strings later.) Now click on either "Mission 2 Details" or the "2" page on Mission 2.

Oh, didn't I mention that? Yes, the "1" and "2" in the mission books actually have a purpose. You don't have to arrow through each mission! If you need to fix an objective in Mission 4 of an arc, you can just click on "Page 2" of your "Mission 4" book, and it'll jump right there!

The first mission was a defeat all. Let's pick a different one - Fight a BossItalic text, under Basic Mission GoalsItalic text. We'll go over each basic goal in the next lesson. Right now, just fill in the blanks.

• Boss name: Put in Bob. Because that smiling guy is just creepy.
• Boss Enemy Group: 5th column (1-54)

Optional settings will be explained in the next tutorial.

Click the first check mark to save your mission.

Testing your mission

Just click Save and Test, right? Well, hold on a minute.

Yes, our first mission was short, and wouldn't be hard to play through to get to your second mission. Before finally publishing an arc, you'll probably want to do just that - play the whole thing through. Right now, though, we just want to see mission 2. How do we do that?

We rearrange the books up top.

The books aren't just for show and quick navigation. If you've just finished Mission 5 of an arc and JUST want to test that, you don't want to play through the first four missions. So, click on Mission 2, hold down the mouse... and drag it in front of Mission 1. The cursor will indicate it's dragging the mission by turning into a hand clenching a bunch of pieces of paper. Anywhere on the "ribbon" in front of the first mission will do.

Note that when you drag a mission it switches places with the one you drag it over. It doesn't insert itself in the order an move everything over, it's a swap-places with another mission.

Now, click Save and Test. Go wipe that smile off Bob's face!

Remember to drag them back into order when you come back, then re-save the storyarc.

Deleting a mission

All right. So you want to delete a mission. Maybe it's so messed up a little tweak won't help. Maybe you accidentally clicked "Add mission" twice instead of once and now have a blank mission. So how do you do it?

For the purposes of the tutorial, click "Add Mission" again. You should now have "Mission 3" available.

Looking at the mission "books" up top, you should see a little red dot next to them. Click that, and it will delete that mission. Take a look at the mission first -- click on the "1" on the book to see the first page, just to make sure you're deleting the right one. In this case, it will still be "Mission 3." It will disappear from your list.

I personally recommend saving your arc before you delete a mission, JUST in case. (Call it something like "Delete M3") -- we're not going to do this for this tutorial, but when you really get into editing, just assume you WILL make this mistake at some point. This little precaution will save you grief and headaches. (Note that you might want to check into CVS systems suggested in open beta for versioning and archiving. Or, you can back up your MA files stored locally on your hard drive in some other manner, such as putting on the list of files to be backed up with your back-up software.)

Tutorial 104: The basic mission objectives

This is going to be less a tutorial than an explanation of the Basic Mission Goals. Advance mission goals will each have their own tutorial in the 2-series.

Basic mission goals overview

There are four basic mission goals, most of which will seem very familiar from multiple missions in the City Of franchise. We'll go over each in detail shortly, but they are Fight a Boss, Collect an Object, Defeat All Enemies, and Free a Captive.

Each mission can have multiple goals, depending on the mission map selected. We will not be using our tutorial mission for this. Go ahead and select "Create a mission," and select an enemy group.

• Map Type: select the first one, Arachnos Set.

• Map Length: select Medium.

• Map: select Arachnos Set - 1

Look on the right hand side of the mission editor window. You should see a map. (If not, click on the + next to Choose Mission Settings. Under Description, you should see Mission Map Details. This will tell you how many details, ambushes, bosses, rescues and such are allowed on the map. Some, typically the small or tiny maps, are very limited. Others will allow you to put in quite a lot. If what you want to use (say, two Collect an Object types, such as crates and body bags) won't fit or isn't listed on the map, you will need to either revise what you want to do, or select another map. Each map is different, even in the same "size" - if one Medium map won't work, look through the others.

Adding and Removing objectives

Adding objectives are easy. Pick one of the basic mission goals, and click. The appropriate section will appear and you can fill in the details which we'll go over below.

Clicking on the title of the section (say, "Boss:Bob" from our last tutorial) will "roll up" that section, hiding the text and other settings to help clean up the window.

The left hand side of the objective title bar will have an icon (for example, a skull for "Defeat a boss") in a circle. It may also have a star next to it - objectives with stars are ones you have set for "Required for mission completion" in optional settings.

Last but not least, the right side of the objective "title bar" ("Boss: Bob") will have a small red tab with an X on it -- if you click on this, it will delete the objective.

Fight a Boss

Required Settings

• Boss Name
• Boss Enemy Group
• Character (appears after standard enemy group chosen.)

These are pretty straightforward.

• Boss Name: This is just that - the name you want for the boss. "Bob" or "The Evil Lord Darkety Dark" will work, as long as it's (a) not copyrighted or offensive (the censor will catch it,) and (b) under 75 characters.

• Boss Enemy Group (or Custom Group under Custom): This again should be self explanatory. For either Standard or Custom groups, you will have a drop down list of available groups to choose from, as well as the level ranges they occupy.

• Character: This appears after selecting a standard group. It is, again, a drop down list - but here's where you have to start paying attention. The names will be color coded by what is available. If it's orange, it's not available in the level range of the mission. Some are available from 1-54. But if I had an arc which was set in the level 30+ range, for instance, I couldn't use a 5th Column Nebel Oberst - as it only exists in the range of levels 1-4.

Custom Character Name only appears for Custom Groups. Custom characters can appear from levels 1-54, so there's no level range to worry about with them.

Custom Groups also give you the Create Character and Edit Character buttons at this point, should you want to edit or create a character and group for your arc. These are, obviously, not available with standard groups.

Optional sections

There are three optional sections with a host of options in them. While you can ignore them, and may want to if just testing, you'll probably want to fill in at least some of them in your own mission. The optional sections are:

• Boss Settings
• Boss Text
• Boss Defeated Clue

Each of these, of course, have their own subsections. (Thus the reason this post is so long.)

Boss Settings

These control when the boss is created, some of what's around him and his behavior. There's a long list of items you can select here.

• Required for Mission Completion: This is important. This radio button shows up immediately below "Boss Settings." If you don't want the boss fight to be a "Must finish" item, uncheck it.

• This mission goal is created when...: The default is None. This allows you to select an event which will spawn the boss. Set to "None," the boss will spawn normally. But if you have, say, a hostage to rescue or collection to complete, you can set that (once you have it) as the trigger for the boss to spawn.

• Quantity: The default is 1. So, do I really need to explain "Quantity?" Note that all bosses will be carbon copies of each other, so this is really best for generic bosses. It will copy *everything,* including dialog.

• Alignment: The default is Enemy. Get used to this setting. You'll see it a lot. You have three choices here, Enemy, Ally, and Rogue. An Enemy is with his own group, and will fight you. An Ally will fight other spawns it runs across. And Rogue will fight everyone.

• Boss placement: The default is Back. The options are: Any, Front, Middle, Back

This determines the general location a boss will spawn. Any will spawn it anywhere, No, you cannot select a specific room. Note that on outdoor maps, there's no real "front, middle, or back" even if you select it - the boss, and anything else with a placement, could spawn anywhere.

• Enemy Group difficulty: The default is Easy. This has no effect on the boss itself, but will affect the enemy group around him. Easy, expect minions. As you go up, it'll select lieutenants or bosses to surround the main boss with. Use with care.

• Enemy Group: This section deals with what surrounds the boss, and what the boss does to interact.

• Surrounding Enemy Group: The default is Same as Boss. Selecting "Standard" or "Custom" makes no difference here in anything but the choices you'll have. This selects the group guarding the boss -- if you want, say, a 5th Column boss surrounded by Devouring Earth in a map otherwise filled with Tsoo, this is where you do it.

• Boss Starting Animation: The default is Default. This is a dropdown list with multiple animations. If you want the boss cowering, captured -- any of the list of emotes, set it here.

• Enemy Group Starting Animation: The default is Default. This is the same as "Boss starting animation," but for the surrounding mob.

• Make the boss run away when hit points drop below...: The default is Boss does not run away (for health reasons). The other options are: Full health, 75%, 50%, 25%, 10%, Boss Does not Run Away. Want your boss to chicken out if he gets hurt? Set it here.

• Make the Boss run when Ally count drops to...: Want him to run if he's down to one guy? Set that here. Pay attention to the help topic -- don't assume there's going to be a big group around him. "Ally count" means the mobs around the boss, not in the entire mission.

• Defeat Condition: The default is Entire Encounter Needed to Complete. The options are: Entire Encounter, Only Boss Needed to Complete. If you don't want a "Defeat all," just "Kill the boss in the last room," this is where you set it.

• Boss Text: Lots of options here, but honestly straightforward.

• Boss Description: The default is imported from mob definition. This is the boss's "bio." You can leave it as is, or type in a new one for either standard or custom characters.

• Navigation Text (Plural) or (Singular): This is what shows up in the nav bar as your objective. Choose singular if you only have one boss, multiple if you have more than one. One trick you can use here, by the way -- if you have multiple *single* objectives (Defeat the Consortium, made up of 5 unique bosses,) use the same name in the Navigation Text (Plural) even if they're different types of objectives (defeat a boss and find an object (pile of bones), for example) and they will combine.

• Boss Defeated Text: This shows up in your chat ox when you defeat a boss. For example, "You have defeated BadDude and retrieved the Doohickey. See what your contact has to say." 300 character limit.

• Boss Unaware Dialog When you first see the boss but he hasn't aggroed -_ for example, the popular "Man, I can't wait for my break" from Mayhem missions, before you're seen.

• Boss Attack Dialog: "Oh, no, it's you!" This is what the boss says when he's aggroed. You can use dollar-sign variables (Oh, no, it's $name! Get $himher!) here, as in many other fields.

• Player deals damage to boss dialog: What the boss will say when you first hit them. "What was that supposed to be, a punch?"

• Boss at X health: Levels: 3/4, 1/2. 1/4, Defeated. Bits of dialog to taunt the player ("Ah, it's only a flesh wound!") as you go on ("You're better than I thought!" "I might be in trouble..." "This is going to raise my insurance premium.")

• Boss defeated Player dialog: What the boss says if you die. "Ha, what a wimp, I hardly broke a sweat!"

• Boss Defeated Clue: Finally, a nice, short one. If you want your boss to drop or say something as a clue, this will show up in the "Clues" window. Name and Description are the only fields.

• Clue Name: Think of it as a title. "A strange relic."

• Clue Description: The body of the clue. "This piece of metal feels hot to the touch, and smells vaguely of cheese."

Collect an Object

This is where you set up a glowie (a clicked object), or group of glowies, to be found. If you want multiple groups of glowies (say, decoys and one real crate,) you will have to set up multiple collections. There's a trick to get around that in the Text section, though.

Required

• Collection name: This is a unique identifier for the collection. It cannot be the same as any other collection. This WILL appear when someone clicks on the collection.

• Collection Type: Options: Floor, Wall. This simply splits up the long list of possible glowies by if they're attached to a wall or not. Body bags and crates, for instance, would be "Floor" objects, where computers, computer desks and such would be "Wall" objects. Some maps may not have a floor option or a wall option.

• Collection Object: This is the dropdown list that appears when you select Floor or Wall. If it doesn't appear in one list, check in the other. A picture of the object will show up on the right hand side.

Optional settings

There are three sections to the optional collection settings:

• Settings
• Text
• Collection Complete Clue

I won't touch on Collection Complete Clue, as it's the same as the Boss Clue.

Settings

There are five settings here:

• Required for Mission Complete: The default is On. Just like the boss. If finishing this collection (clicking all glowies) will complete the mission, set this, otherwise turn it off.

• Quantity: The default is 1. Simple enough - how many glowies?

• Placement: The default is Any. Choices: Front, Middle, Back, Any. Again - where do you want them showing up? For a larger collection of glowies, "Any" should scatter them around the map. Note again that outdoor maps do not have a front/middle/back.

• Interact Time: The default is 4 seconds. This controls how long in seconds you must work with the glowie, without being interrupted (moving, being attacked, etc.) If you want a long "search" on a computer, for instance, set this higher. A quick click? 1 second. Don't set it for too long, or it can get annoying.

• Remove object on complete: The default is Do not Remove On Complete. Options: Remove on Complete, Do not remove on complete. Simple - do you want it to disappear or not? Think about if it makes sense for the object to vanish or not - an urn, perhaps. A desk, probably not.

Text

This is the text related to the collection of items -- the nav bar text and text that shows up in your chat box. It's optional, but typically a good idea to fill in. There are a few sections:

• Navigation Text (Plural)
• Navigation Text (Singular)

I'm lumping these two together. These are what you see in the navigation bar - "Check the computer," "Find the clue." Plural will automatically add a number in the front - "5 Computers to check," for instance.

Here's where you can merge multiple collections. Say you want a clue "found" on one of five computers. The collection names must be unique -- but the Navigation Text (plural) can be the same. List both the decoys and the 'real' computer as "Computers to check" under "Plural."

• Begin Interaction Text
• Interrupt Interaction Text
• Complete Interaction Text

These show up in your chat box when you start working on the object. For instance:

"You begin searching the computer for clues."

"You have been distracted. The computer beeps, resetting your search."

"You have found the file you're looking for!"

Don't be too wordy, though you have a limit of 100 characters each. If you want detail, fill it in in the Collection Complete Clue.

• Interact Bar Text: This shows up over the "countdown bar." It's usually a small phrase, such as "Disarming bomb..." as the time expires. Keep it short.

Defeat All Enemies

OK, this is the simplest of them all.

Defeat...

Choices of everything on the map, or everything in the final room. Pretty self explanatory.)

Free a Captive

This can be a long section, but much of it is very similar to the "Fight a boss" section. When expedient (since this is a lot of typing) I'll refer back to the "Fight a boss" section.

Required

• Captive name: Simple enough - the name of the person you're rescuing. It's a good idea to refer to this person elsewhere ("Oh, try to save Jim") but not necessary.

• Captive Type: As the "Boss type." Select group and type, from either standard or custom groups. Note that custom critters take more space than default ones.

Optional sections

There are four optional sections:

• Settings
• Release Captive Text and Dialog
• Animations
• Captive Rescued Clue

Again, you'll see me refer to the boss section for much of this.

Settings

Most of these sections are similar to the boss section - just replace "Boss" with "Captive." The settings are:

• Required for mission completion
• This mission goal is created when...
• Quantity
• Enemy group
• Surrounding Enemy Group
• Captive Placement
• Enemy Group Difficulty
• Surrounding Group Alignment

The only thing really different here is "Surrounding Group Alignment." Where with a boss you chose the boss's alignment, here you can select Enemy, Ally, or Rogue for the group with the captive. You cannot set the captive to an enemy or to betray you (that's in Escort, an advanced goal.)

Release Captive Text & Dialog

Again, much of this is similar to the boss settings. I'll only be touching on the differences.

• Captive Description (bio)
• Navigation Text (Plural)
• Navigation Text (Singular)
• Release Captive Completed Text
• Enemy Unaware Dialog
• Enemy Attack Dialog
• Captive Inactive Dialog
• Captive Active Dialog
• Person Rescued Dialog

• Release Captive Completed Text: This shows up in your text window when you've rescued the person ("You saved Mr. X from...")

• Enemy Unaware/Attack dialog
• Captive Inactive/Attack Dialog

Like the boss dialog, only (obviously) one's the captive, one's the captors, both unaggroed and aggroed. They do seem to fire off all at once many times -- but they do that in regular missions at times, too.

• Person Rescued Dialog: This is what they say in a dialog bubble when you've finished defeating their surrounding group ("Oh, thank you, I was so scared!")

• Animations: This covers the emotes the captors and captive do. There are three settings, all lists to pick from:

• Enemy group starting animation
• Captive starting animation
• Rescue captive animation

Obviously the enemy group won't have an animation when you're done with them. And yes, get it out of your system -- let your first freed captive use "puke" as a rescue animation.

• Captive Rescued Clue: Same as the "Boss" section - it goes in your "Clues" window. Title and description.

Tutorial 105: Tips & Tricks

Some of these have been mentioned before. This is purely a reference.

Rearranging missions

You can rearrange your missions by dragging the "book" (Mission 1, etc.) up top over to the front. This allows you to test missions out of order.

This swaps the mission you're dragging with the one you drag to. For example, if you have an arc with missions A-B-C-D-E and drag D to A, the new order is D-B-C-A-E, not D-A-B-C-E.

Errors And Jumping

Ah, so things don't always go as planned. If you look in the upper right hand corner, you'll see a little speech bubble and, hopefully, "No errors" in grey. If there IS an error (forgotten mission objective or other, required piece of text, for instance,) that will turn bright orange and give you "Errors found."

Well, that's not useful. But wait! Before you go laboriously digging through your missions to try to figure out what's wrong... click on that bubble. You'll see that it expands, listing specifically what's wrong!

Now, that's useful. But wait, there's more! Yes, for no extra charge, it will actually take you TO the area that's causing problems! Just click on the specific error (say, "Boss Name not provided") and faster than you can say COH/V, it takes you to the page the error is on and highlights the field in red for you to fix!

Handy little bubble, isn't it. You'll find little tricks like that all over.

In fact, you'll find it just below, too, in the Mission Description. Don't like some of your dialog? Click on it -- it'll take you to that line so you can edit it. Want fewer (or more) glowies to find? Click it! Nice little time saver, wouldn't you agree?

But the clicking doesn't stop there. See the Pen Icon on the top ribbon? Click it! It will take you to the Story Settings page (the page the pertains to the whole arc). Clicking the 1 and 2 of each mission book will also take you directly to those pages.

Tricks with Text

Right Click Formatting

Aside from copying and pasting, you can do several things to bring attention to specific pieces of text -- much like the orange text seen in more recent story arcs. How?

Click and drag the cursor over a section of text to highlight it, then right click. A menu will appear. From this, you can not only copy and paste, but add things like emboldening, color, text size, or text replacement.

Text replacement and variables

Text Replacement is available, for starters, from the menu when right clicking on highlighted text. You have five options from the menu - Hero Name, Class, Origin, Level, and Supergroup. But that's not all. You can manually put in *other* variables in some text and dialog fields. For instance, you have a boss you want to notice the player and say "Get him" or "Get her!" How do you do that?

• $supergroup: that person's supergroup, if they have none, then "no supergroup" will show up
• $class: their Archetype ($archetype also works)
• $level: their Level
• $origin: their Origin
• $name: their name ($target also works)
• $heshe or $Heshe: substitutes "he" or "she" depending on gender (capitalized will cap the substitution)
• $himher $Himher: same as above, using "him" or "her"
• $hisher $Hisher: same as above, using "his" or "her"

And so, "It's $name! Get $himher!" will automatically replace the $name with the name, and say "him!" or "her!" where appropriate.

Mix and match

OK, we're not into "Creating custom critters and groups" yet, but one of the things to be aware of is the size of the mission. To keep it interesting, find critters that "logically" fit with your group and already exist in game. You can fill out a group without filling up your space that way.

The big stuff loads once

Again, not something we're touching on yet, but if you load a custom group and see it's taking half of your space - don't worry. It will not do that for each mission. Instead, it loads *all* the critter descriptions first. Individual missions are small, typically. It will refer to the information throughout the rest of the missions.

Republish!

Need to fix something in a published arc, but don't want to lose ratings? Use the Republish button. It takes a little time to update - but it saves your information. The down side, of course, is that your local files aren't updated. Just the copy on the server... so if you missed something, you do have to edit it all again.

But I only want one!

When the MA says an ally may be placed with group "single" (Page 2 > Advanced Mission Goals > Add an Ally > Settings > Enemy Group Difficulty > Single) then that means that the ally will appear alone (not with a single enemy).

Clue/Goal Order

The creation-order of the mission goals will dictate the order of the clues in the player's clue-list. Make sure to create and link goals according to the proper required order for both your story and the clue-list!

Tutorial 200: Advanced Mission Goals

Overview

All right. So now you're off and running. You can fight a boss, you've got a mission created, and now you want to stretch your creative muscles a bit. It's time to look into Advanced Mission Goals.

Each goal will be presented as a walkthrough. Some will be shorter than others, but they will all have their own walkthrough covering all options, required and optional. Optional goals will be listed as such, and are listed as such in the MA Story Editor window.

For now, let's start our basic mission we'll be using as the basis for all of these walkthroughs. For each walkthrough, you'll want to "Save as" a new copy, with some designator - such as "Tutorial 200" - in it. Ready? (Obviously I won't be explaining this, this is just a basic starting point for each tutorial to come.)

Create and Save the Sample Walkthrough Mission

Story Settings Window

• Story Title: Advanced Goals Tutorial
• Story Description: Walkthrough of Advanced Mission Goals
• Story Contact: For Contact Name, Type, and Category and Name, just pick something you like. You'll be looking at them quite a bit.
• Optional settings: We'll ignore both Parameters and Clue.

Click to advance to Mission 1 Settings.

Mission Settings Window (Page 1)

• Enemy Group: STANDARD tab > 5th Column.
• Map Type: We want something simple. WAREHOUSE STANDARD - CITY OF HEROES SET
• Map Length: We don't want it too small. WAREHOUSE STANDARD - CITY OF HEROES SET - 3. Why? If you look to the right, you'll see a few settings. This one isn't horrendously large, and has settings and room for things in the front, middle and back.

Ignore Mission Parameters and Mission Complete Clue, as well as Additional Text.

• Mission Introduction Dialog: This is tutorial series 200, number
• Mission Send Off Dialog: Good luck!
• Compass Active Task Text: Advanced Tutorial Series
• Still Busy Dialog: How's it going?
• Return Success Dialog: Grats!

Click on Save As (the check-mark-in-an-open-box icon under the ribbon at the top) and name it "Tutorial 200 Framework" or some such.

Tutorial 201: Advanced Goal - Add an Ally

Purpose and Setup

As mentioned in the 200 - Advanced Mission Goals topic, we'll be examining each advanced mission goal in a walkthrough on its own. This one covers "Adding an ally." You should have your basic framework (200 tutorial) mission available - open it up, save it as 201 - Ally. On page 1, Mission Introduction Dialog, add "201 - Add an Ally." Click on page 2 or "Mission 1 details," and click on Add an Ally.

While there are sections in the mission marked as "Optional" (and listed as such here,) we will be going through them.

What is an ally?

The typical example will be someone you rescue who fights by your side - think of Flower Knight or Jenkins from the hero and villain tutorials. You cannot have them betray you (that's an escort,) but you can set their behavior -- or just have them run away. You can use standard or custom critters.

"Fights by your side," of course, doesn't mean they have to fight. If you want a buffer following you, a la Amy's Ward, you can do that, too.

ALLY

• Ally Name: This is the name of the NPC you'll be rescuing. Let's go rescue Tutti O'Reale.

• Ally Type: Again, you can pick Standard or Custom, depending on if you want a custom NPC or not. Since we don't have any created for this tutorial, we'll pick Standard.

• Ally Group: You can rescue a "traitor" and pick your ally from the same group. For the sake of having it visually different, we won't. We're going to scroll down a ways and pick Vanguard Sward (35-54).

Pay attention to those levels in the brackets! If you'll notice, up at the top, we no longer see Mission 1 (1-54) but Mission 1 (35-54). Critters chosen are what affect your arc's level range! Anyone can still run them -- a level 1 will be auto-SK'd up, for instance -- but that range can change with each minion through an arc... and affect what you have available to work with!

• Character: With a name like Tutti... let's pick Vanguard Colonel (Boss 35-54.)

There's that level again. Yes, even if you have a 1-54 group, the individual critter can affect the mission levels!

Settings (Optional)

• Required for mission completion: Since this is our only goal, this should remain selected. You can have non-required allies, of course.

• This mission goal is created when...: The only option you have is none.

This is where you set triggers. Create all of your events first. If you want the Ally to appear only after you find a clue on Computer 2, once Computer 2 is created, you'll pick it here. Setting it to "None" means it will always be there.

• Quantity: Set it to 1. Multiple ally rescues can be done, yes - just be sure, if you're not using generic NPCs, that they make sense (else you're rescuing 5 clones of Tutti, for instance.) They will inherit ALL settings!

• Surrounding Enemy group: None. We're just going to walk up and get Tutti, and kick butt with her throughout the mission. Yes, you can select a different enemy group from the main group if you want! If your story calls for your custom group to be using the Freaks for a smokescreen? Set the Freakshow as the main group -- and your custom group guarding the ally you're rescuing.

• Ally Placement: Consider this in your arcs. Do you want help throughout, or someone to run across and rescue? Since we want help throughout, select Front.

• Enemy group difficulty: Well, we don't have an enemy group. This, however, would affect the group around the ally -- default (easy,) with more of the higher ranked critters showing up around him or her as you go up.

Options are Easy, Medium, Hard, or Single. What is Single? You find only the ally.

• Ally behavior: This controls what the ally does when you rescue them. We'll set this to Follow.

Your options:

• Follow: they follow you
• Run to nearest door: just what it says.
• Run Away: again, just what it says
• Wander: they stroll around regardless of what you do.
• Nothing: they just stay there.

This can lead to interesting combinations with the next option

• Combat Abilities: set to Aggressive. We want this ally to fight!

Your options:

• Non Combat: They won't fight enemies, and they won't be attacked. Most hostages (and "Lead to X") are set this way in game.
• Pacifist: They won't fight enemies, but can be attacked.
• Fight Defensive: Your ally will fight enemies, but will try to stick by you.
• Fight Aggressive:: Your ally is a berserker! They'll run off to fight enemies, even being separated from you to do so!

For every option besides Non Combat, your ally CAN BE DEFEATED! If you use them, strongly consider putting in a Return Fail Message if they're important to your story!

Ally Text and Dialog (Optional)

While not required, this dialog can add some life to your ally encounter - especially if they're surrounded by enemies.

• Ally Description: This is their bio. By default, it will inherit the bio of whatever critter you use - in this case, a generic description of Vanguard. That's boring. Delete it. Notice the little button ("Default") that came up? If you screw up, or decide you really want that bio -- click that, and it will restore the default bio.

We don't want that. Delete what's in there. Type in Tutti fights empowered with Ice Cream and Bailey's! (or whatever else you want.)

• Navigation text (singular/plural): Use the appropriate one. If you're rescuing five Tuttis, or five allies of different types, use Plural. We'll use the singular - Meet Tutti.

• Ally Completed Text: This shows up in the chat window when you rescue your ally. Type in You found Tutti!

• Enemy Unaware dialog: If we had enemies around Tutti, this is where they'd be threatening her or some such before they see you. ("We'll make you talk!" or the like.) Leave blank.

• Enemy Attack Dialog: Again, leave blank. This is what they'll say when they aggro on you.

• Ally Inactive Dialog: What the ally says before seeing you. Use "Where are they?"

• Ally Active dialog: What the ally says when they see you. "Get me out of here!" for instance. Use "Hey, glad you could make it!"

• Ally Rescued dialog: What the ally says when you finish off their surrounding group. We'll put in "Let's go fight stuff already, I'm bored."

• Ally Stranded dialog: This is what the ally will say if you lose them. Put in "Where did you go?" Keep it short. This can get annoying.

• Ally Reacquired Dialog: And what they'll say when you pick them up again. "Welcome back."

Save your mission before continuing. (Get into the habit. Really.)

Animations (optional)

• Enemy starting group animation: All enemies in the group will be doing this animation, if they can. Not every enemy can do every animation. If it doesn't work, pick another one. Since we have no enemies, leave as "Default."

• Ally Starting Animation: By default, none. Often you'll want them cowering, or in an energy field or some such. We're going to use "Waiting."

• Ally Rescue Animation: "None," by default. This is what they do when you free them from the group or come into range. Select "Big Wave."

• Ally Stranded Animation: "None" by default. This is what they do when they get lost. We'll leave it at none.

Ally Rescued Clue (optional)

If you want to give more information to move a story along, and it's information that wouldn't make sense in a bio - use this.

• Clue name: The title of your clue. We'll call it Finding Ms. Tutti.

• Clue Description: The body of your clue. We'll just leave it at "She's a little bit odd."

Testing and Revising the Mission

Save your mission, and test it out.

What happened? Very likely, you saw some dialog and the mission completed right away. This is intentional -- go find your ally and play, then come back to your mission. Setting this to "Single" and "Front" doesn't necessarily mean they'll be waiting at the door! If you're in their detection range -- even if you don't see them -- they'll be "rescued" with that setting.

Let's give her some guards

• Surrounding group: 5th column

• Enemy group difficulty: Easy

• Enemy Attack Dialog: "Get them!"

• Enemy Inactive Dialog: "I told you before, we don't have any donuts!"

Save and test again.

Tutorial 202: Advanced Goal - Add an Ambush

Preparation

Open up your 201 tutorial blank mission. Save as 202 - Ambush.

Ambushes are unique among the various mission goals. Unlike the other selections, hey cannot be created on their own, and cannot be a required objective. Normally, we'll start with the 200 blank mission, but this is a special case.

Under Mission 1 Settings, change Write Text: Mission Introduction Dialog to read "tutorial 200 series, number 202 - add an ambush."

Select mission 2 Objectives. You should already see a starred "Ally: Tutti O'Reale." Click on "Advanced Mission Objectives," and click on "Add an Ambush."

Ambush settings

• Ambush Name: We're just going to label this Ambush 1.

• Create Ambush When...: This is where you select the trigger for the ambush. By default, it says "No mission Goal Selected." Click on the drop down list. Unavailable triggers are in orange, available ones in blue. Select the only one available, Ally: Tutti O'Reale is Completed.

These are the only required settings. There are two other optional sections, Settings and Dialog. For this tutorial, we will fill them in.

Settings

• Ambush Enemy Group: We're going to stick with Standard. By default, it's set to Same as Mission, which means if we tested right now, we'd have 5th Column ambushing us. To make the ambush stand out, we're going to pick a different group - Nictus (1-54.)

Remember, any enemy group you pick at any point can affect your mission's levels!

• Ambush Alignment: Options Enemy, Rogue, and Ally. Yes, you can spawn reinforcements by picking Ally. Rogue will make them fight anyone - you or other NPCs -- they come across. And Enemy will make them fight you. For now, pick Enemy.

• Ambush Placement: Front, Middle, Back, Any. This controls where the ambush comes from. They will run toward you! For this, pick Front. We do want to see them. (Per its notes, Middle is more typical.)

• Ambush Difficulty: Leave at Easy. As with most spawn settings, this controls the rank and (somewhat) number of mobs in the ambush.

Dialog

There is only one section here - Ambush Creation Dialog. This is the dialog that comes up when the ambush is spawned. Type in "Here we come!"

Save your mission and test.

Warning to Kheldian players

This may set you up with a bunch of Void Hunters, so be prepared. Or switch mobs. Personally, I find them fun, but a full ambush of them might be a bit much for some.

Tutorial 203: Advanced Goal - Add an Escort (and Betrayal)

Preparation

Open up your tutorial 200 blank. We will be starting a new mission. Save it as 203 - Escort. Also under Mission Settings, Write Text, write "Number 203 - Escort" under Introduction Dialog.

Click on Mission 1 Details, "Advanced options," and select "Add an escort."

Escorts

These are the ever popular "Find someone (or several someones) and lead them to the exit" missions. At launch, the only thing you can lead them to is the door -- other destination objectives may or may not come later. Also, if you want someone to betray you, this is where you do it.

The walkthrough

We're going to make one escort, but we'll swap him in two missions -- one normal, and one betray. Head to Mission 1, page 2 (Objectives.) Click Advanced Mission Goals to expand the list, and click on Escort.

We'll split this into two missions down the line.

Basic Escort

Escort Group: Arachnos (1-54)

Character: Arachnos Drone (1-54).

Settings

Required for mission Completion: Yes

This mission goal is created when: None. We have no dependancies for this, we want them right away.

Quantity: 1.

Enemy Group: Standard. Surrounding: 5th Column.

Escort Placement: Any. Let it place them wherever it wants.

Enemy group Difficulty: Easy. As mentioned before, this affects enemy rank.

Enemy Group Alignment: Default. Your enemy, of course. This does actually affect your escort, as well - if you set it as a Betray to rogue, they will attack you as soon as they're rescued.

Combat Abilities: Set to Non Combat. This will keep the enemy from attacking them, as well. If you set this to Aggressive, Fight Defensive, or Pacifist, they can be defeated - remember to put in a Fail message then.

Arrival Behaviour: For the normal escort, Run to Nearest Door. This will take him off of the map.

Betrays on Arrival: - Obviously, one Does Not Betray, the other one Betrays on Arrival.

Escort Text and Dialog

Navigation Text (singular/Plural) Singular - Hostage to find.

Lead Escort to Objective Text (singular/plural) Singular - Hostage to lead out. This will appear when you rescue the hostages, before you actually lead them out. Escort Completed Text - This shows up in the chat window.Type in "You got the hostage out safely."

Way Point Text - If you have text enabled on your mini map, you'll see this. Just use "Exit."

The rest of the dialog options are similar to Ally missions with Unaware, Attack and Active dialog. You do want to know when the hostage loses you (if they do,) especially for characters with Stealth. We'll keep this simple. Fill in the following fields.

Enemy Unaware Dialog - "You're not going anywhere."

Enemy Attack Dialog - "Get $himher!"

Escort Inactive dialog - "Let me go!"

Escort Active Dialog - "Help me!"

Escort Rescued Dialog - "Let's get out of here!"

Escort Stranded Dialog - "Where did you go?"

Escort Recquired Dialog - "Whew. OK, let's go!"

Escort Arrived Dialog - "Finally! Thanks!'

Animations

These are similar to the Ally animations. Refer to 202. We'll leave these as Default except for the Escort Starting Animation. For your "real" rescue, use Captured (Hands Up) as the Escort Starting Animation. Of course, he doesn't have arms... but it's generally easy to see.

Escort Delivered Clue

Leave blank for this tutorial.

Save and test.

Betray settings

Open and save the arc as "Tutorial 203B Betray," altering the description to Betrayal.

Change the following fields:

Combat Abilities: Aggressive. If you leave this at "NOn combat," it won't do anything, and you won't be able to do anything to it.

Arrival Behaviour: Follow

Betrays on Arrival: Betrays on Arrival

You may, if doing this in a "real" mission, want to note that "X must survive." You may also want to add additional goals chained from the betrayal so the mission doesn't end, if the fight is important to the story.

Save and test.

Tutorial 204: Advanced Goal - Add a Patrol

Preparation

Open up your tutorial 203 from the last walkthrough. Patrols cannot be required objectives, so they must be added to an existing mission. We will be starting a new mission. Save it as 204 - patrol. Also under Mission Settings, Write Text, write "Number 204 - Patrols" under Introduction Dialog.

We will be adding to this mission for the rest of the 200 series.

A side note, I know these ones aren't long, yet are under "Advanced." Just for clarity, "Advanced" is referring to the "Advanced mission options," not difficulty so much.

Patrols

Patrols are nothing more than roving bands of enemies. They're meant to add a bit of life to a mission, and perhaps some extra difficulty if one comes up on you unexpectedly. You can add multiple patrols to a mission if you so choose, mixing groups of varying alignment or difficulty as your story or whim requires.

Patrols don't have many settings, so this will be a short tutorial.

Click on the second (details) page of Mission 1.

Select Advanced Mission Goals, then Add a Patrol.

Patrol settings

• Patrol Name: like the others, this is a label. Just call it "patrol 1." You may want to use something more descriptive in your own missions if you have multiple patrols, so you can tell at a glance what they are.

• Enemy Group: Again, you can pick from standard or custom. We're going to stick with 5th Column for this. Since the patrol is the only moving group, you'll be able to tell where they are.

Settings (Optional)

Again, there's no "Required for mission complete" selection here - a Patrol can't be a mission goal.

• The Mission Goal is created when... Use None. "None" refers to what it's dependant on to spawn - set to none, it will exist when the mission starts. If you look at the dropdown list, you'll see options for when your hostage is rescued, and when the rescue is complete. Use those options in your own missions if you want to simulate increased activity from "security breaches" or the like.

• Quantity: Set to 3. That should ensure you run across at least one. There's nothing wrong with having just one.

• Patrol Alignment: Set to Enemy (the default.) Yes, you can have an Ally or a Rogue patrol, as well.

• Patrol Placement: use Any (default.) This controls where the patrol starts.

• Patrol Difficulty: Leave at Easy. Again, this affects the rank of what's in the patrol.

Patrol Dialog (Optional)

There's not much here. Just the initial dialog for each patroller (Patroller 1 and 2.) You can use this to indicate (as mentioned above) a heightened sense of alarm for any new patrol triggers. Since we're not getting fancy, I just used "Man, I'm beat" for patroller 1, and "Me too, I could use a donut" for patroller 2.

Save and test. You should now have a patrol wandering through your mission.

Tutorial 205: Advanced Goal - Add a Battle

Preparation

Open up your tutorial 204 - Patrol or 203 - Escort. Battles are another item that cannot be used as an objective on their own. Save it as 205 - Battle. Also under Mission Settings, Write Text, write "Number 205 - Battles" under Introduction Dialog.

Battles

Another way to add "life" to the NPCs is to have battles. These, when triggered, will result in two groups of NPCs -- with one as an ally to you if you choose, or both hostile -- fighting it out. Yes, they can (and will) defeat each other. A prime example of this is the three-AV fight (no, we can't do three like that right now) at the end of Agent G's Faultline arc.

All right, let's fill one in. Go to mission 1's objectives, select Advanced Mission Goals and Add a battle.

• Battle name: Your players won't see this label, so use something reasonably descriptive or meaningful to you. We'll call it simply The Brawls.

Next we pick our groups. We'll make them somewhat distinct, so if they smack each other down before you get to them, you can see where they were.

• Enemy Group One Type: use Arachnos (1-54.)

• Enemy Group Two Type: use Hydra (1-54.) I'm not sure this is a fair fight.

Settings (optional)

• This Mission Goal is Created When...: again lets you set a trigger for when this will appear. Pick "None."

• Quantity: Let's make this 2. If we miss one, we can catch the other.

• Battle Placement: pick Front. Again, we want to catch this before it ends.

• Battle Difficulty: Affects the rank of the critters. We'll pick Easy

• Battle Alignment: if you want one group or the other to be your ally, set it here. The default is Both Groups are Enemy.

Battle Dialog (optional)

This is similar to what we've seen in other Dialog choices - Inactive and Active dialog. The main thing to pay attention to here is getting the right dialog to the right group - you don't want the group you have "invading" another group to say something about protecting the leader they're hunting or whatnot.

• Enemy Group One Inactive Dialog: "You call that a punch? OOF!"
• Enemy Group One Active Dialog: "Not the face, not the - Hey, a hero!"
• Enemy Group Two Inactive Dialog: "Yes, I do. Try another one."
• Enemy Group Two Active Dialog: "Good, a real fight!"

Save and test.

Tutorial 206: Advanced Goal - Add a Destructible Object

Preparation

Open up your 203 - Escort mission (or one of the later ones we've based this off of) for editing. I suggest going back to 203 solely so this doesn't get too cluttered. Save it as 205 - Destructible. (Yes, we'll hit naming limits here.)

Open up advanced goals, and select "Add a Destructible Object."

A Destructible Object

These are objects you send your players to destroy. (Objects they keep from being destroyed will be the next lesson.) Whether it's machinery, spy gear, drugs or schoolbooks, if you want them to break something, this is where you go.

Destructible Object - This label WILL be seen by the players, so keep that in mind. We'll call ours "The Thingy."

Destructible Object List - Unlike placing a glowie, you don't have to select "Wall" or "Floor" for this. This goes right into a (shorter) list of objects, typically the "Floor" objects. We'll pick Energy Probe (1-54) for ours.

Settings (optional)

• Required for Mission Completion: Select this. This CAN be set as a required mission goal, unlike battles, patrols, or ambushes.

• This mission goal is created when..: Your trigger, again. Select None.

• Quantity: Just one.

• Guarding enemy group: Leave as None Selected. This should leave our Thingy standing by itself.

• Object Placement: Any.

• Enemy Group Difficulty: Easy

• Enemy Group Starting Animation: Default.

Text and Dialog (optional)

This can be an... interesting section. Yes, you can give an object dialog - whether it's possessed ("Free me from this soul crystal!" "You're almost there!") or some sort of status ("Internal damage... summoning allies!") you have the option. Just be aware of how odd it may look.

We have no guards, so most of this will remain blank. Make only the following changes:

• Destructible object description* - "This is a Thingy. Not a Whatsit."

• Navigation Text: (Singular) - Destroy the Thingy!

• Object 1/2 destroyed: Yes, we'll give it something to say. "Status: Damaged. Ow. Please stop that."

Object destroyed clue (optional)

We won't fill this in. Just the standard title and body text for any clue you want to have drop when the item is destroyed.

Save and test.

Tutorial 207: Advanced Goal - Add a Defendable Object

Preparation

Load up an earlier mission - I suggest the Escort mission, 203. Save it as 207 - Defend. Go to Mission 1 Details, click on Advanced Mission Goals, and Add a Defendable Object. Delete the Escort objective.

Defend an Object

Two words. Crey Desks.

There aren't many of these missions in the COH world - I can think of the Crey desks and War Wall Defender missions off the top of my head. Simply enough - you keep an object from being destroyed. So let's get to it!

This is a failable objective, so be sure to add fail messages in.

Let's begin the walkthrough. This is going to be almost exactly the same as the Destructable Object. You may want to read that first.

A Defendable Object

Defend Object List - What you want to defend. In the spirit of the Crey mission, pick Desk (1-54.)

Defend Object Name - What you want the object called. Players WILL see this! Call it An Old Desk.

Settings (optional)

• Required for Mission Completion: Leave this selected. (If you're using any other "required" objectives, such as the Escort, deselect or delete them.)

• The Mission Goal Is Created When...: Select None here. We want these in place right away.

• Quantity: How many copies you want. Pick 3.

• Attacking Enemy Group: Select 5th Column. Yeah, they're everywhere.

• Mission Goal Alignment: OK. This can be odd. You still have your Ally, Enemy, and Rogue groups. This affects the guards and attackers... as well as the object. Ally means it can't be destroyed by the enemy (It is, strangely enough, targetable by you until sucessfully defended.) Enemy and Rogue means it can, so the mission can be failed. Set it to Enemy. (the default.)

• Object placement: Any.

• Enemy group difficulty: Easy

• Enemy Group starting animation - Default.

Text and Dialog (optioanl)

This will be a mix of attacker and object dialog. As mentioned in the last walkthrough, the object dialog will appear to be spoken by the object, so use it only if it seems to make sense. (A status report, a possessed widget, that sort of thing.)

• Defend Object Description: The "bio" of the object. "This desk holds many secrets," for instance. Most objects should have something there by default. We'll leave this as is.

• Navigation Text (Singular/Plural): Plural. This appears in the nav bar. Use "Desks to defend."

• Object Defended Text: This shows up in the chat window when the object is successfully defended. (It shows up for each.) Use "You have saved the desk." You

• Attacker 1 Dialog: for those smashing the object. "Hit it harder!"

• Attacker 2 Dialog: "Smash it!"

• Attacker Alerted Dialog: When they "see" you. "Break this up before they break us up!"

• Object 1/2 Destroyed: for illustration only. Fill in "Ow! Ow! Ow!"

All other dialog leave blank.

Save and test.

Making it an ally

The one change for this is that it cannot be a required objective if the object is set to Ally - since it can't be destroyed by the enemy. Be sure to have multiple objectives (a rescue, a boss fight, etc.) if you choose to have an Ally object. It can, as mentioned, be destroyed by you until defended, so be careful.

Tutorial 300: Custom Critters and Enemy Groups

Preparation

No real prep for this. This is going to be more of a discussion and overview of custom critters and groups, how to plan and what to expect.

What's a 'critter?'

Critter. Mob. NPC. Anything that's not a player, essentially, is a "critter."

No, I didn't pull this term out of thin air. It has been used before -- but it's being used primarily because that's what the file on your drive for each one of these is called -- a .critter file (from the extension used). It's what the Devs call them.

These are your custom bad guys (or allies) that you create for your missions. They are not necessarily arc-specific -- you can create critters and critter groups for multiple arcs.

Files - what inherits what from where

This is somewhat of a mini-version of another guide.

There are a few things you can bring in when creating a custom mob or group.

.costume files: From the tailor. The "Save" button will save a .costume file you can use later. Handy for copying your character's look in game to use as a critter later.

.critter files: Add a bit of extra information (such as name, group, powers and such) to the .costume file.

.CVG (CustomVillainGroup) file: Adopts all the critter and costume information from the .critter files. Piles them all together.

.mission files: Brings in the entire .cvg or .critter file you use.

This comes into play when we consider mission size.

Mission size

Storyarcs cannot be larger than 100kb on the server. Now, if we look at the files on disk, they may *be* a bit larger there -- the server throws away some of the human readable information and compacts it in other ways. Arcanaville, our Lady of the Numbers, did her typically thorough research into it, finding some of what changed, and what didn't. (For instance, a myth had started coming around that a black costume took less space -- it doesn't.) I'll leave any real explanation of it to her.

That said, if your storyarc is taking up half or more of the available space, it's custom critters doing it.

Size, number of critters and stories

I feel it's best to mention this here: Some people have put in one mission with their custom group and seen a 50-70k storyarc. They've then reacted, essentially, with "That's one story? How can I do all five? That's not enough space!"

There's one very important thing they're missing, however. Custom critters are only loaded once. At the very beginning of the arc. If you look back at the tutorial missions we've done already which have had no custom critters, most are very small - if any are 5k, I'd be surprised.

And so, even though the first mission is up to 70k (and 70%) full because of the space hogs that custom critters are, if you don't add in any more custom critters and just use the ones already in the first mission and maybe add some of the standard NPCs, then you can easily add four more missions without going over the cap.

As I look at my initial batch of missions from beta -- not counting the tutorials -- I see my custom critter arcs. One has only a boss as a custom critter, and runs 31kb for five missions. One has a pretty full group of several minions, two LTs and a boss. Four missions, 61k. And another, with two custom groups (one with a minion, two LTs, a boss, and another group with a LT and Boss) -- 63k for five missions total. The missions themselves are *small.*

Standard NPCs, however, are called with only one line, since they don't have to be created piecemeal like custom critters. Thus, they add very little to file size. Keep this in mind.

Creating custom minions - whys and wherefores

I foresee much playing with custom minions. They're fun, and you can get combos that you just can't get elsewhere. You can make copies of yourself to fight against or alongside.

It's somewhat easy to gimp the critters -- and even more so, and tempting, to make them overpowered. Robotics/Radiation Mastermind, anyone? Mind/Illusion Controller? KINETICS mastermind? If you use them, play them with a variety of characters and ATs before publishing... and ask yourself honestly if they're fun or not.

Creating custom groups

The very first thing you need to ask yourself is, "Do I have to?" If the answer is yes, which I'm sure it will be... go for it.

With the file size limits, assume you can't have more than 12 custom critters - and that's going to be pushing things, quite often at the expense of the story.

Several mixes have come up for "good" groups. 4/4/2, for instance, of Minions/Lts/Bosses - you may want fewer LTs and more Minions for more variety in spawns at all levels. A mix of range and melee, buff/debuff and attacking can be had with that size.

Now, the astute among you may have noticed my bolding of the word "Custom." You can, with a bit of thought, put pre-existing mobs in a custom group. Use them as filler mobs. Just be aware that, unlike with purely custom groups, they will affect your group's level range (and thus the mission level range. Pay close attention to that.

You may also notice I didn't mention putting an AV or Elite Boss in. I find you have a bit more control if you make them their *own* group. We'll get into this shortly.

Group management and working with size restrictions

So you have this wonderful, varied group you want to work on. Go for it! Make ten of each, minions, LTs, Bosses...

Just don't try to load it into a mission.

Save your group as a "name-Main" group. Then look over your critters when you're creating the story arc. Pick a good mix, and create a second set -- a sub-group -- to load into your arc. If they need fillers, use standard NPCs for variety. Save the "main" groups as libraries for future ideas.

This is the same idea of using Master documents from which you make other copies to use. You do not use the Master copy. If you do, then it's no good to make other copies from. And so, in the same way, you're going to make Master or Main groups that you do not use for any missions, but instead, create a new group for that mission or arc and copy over your critters from the Master/Main group to the arc-specific group. This way, any edits to the arc-specific group isn't going to affect any other arc.

Consider how you see, say, Council or Longbow at various ranges. You're not going to be restricted by range, particularly. You may have a rifleman, machine gunner, Eagle, specops and flamethrower for minions, the ever-popular Nullifier as a LT, and two or three Wardens or Officers as bosses (or LTs). That's nine or ten critters, and they mix things up enough to give you a good fight.

With too many -- especially with very flashy powers -- it can be overwhelming, to the player or file size. Too few? Think of the levels with nothing but Sorcerers and Blue Ink Men, or Earth Thorn Casters as seemingly every spawn.

Find a good balance both of numbers and powers. This isn't something that can be told, just done through experimentation. And again, don't be afraid of using preexisting NPCs to fill out your ranks, if you can find some appropriate ones.

Above all, look at what *others* have done before actually using your own groups.

Tutorial 400: Mission Architect Browser Interface

Overview

The story browser - the small window with so many possibilities. This is the first window you see when you click on the Mission Architect computer. This little guide is here to help you try to get the most out of what you see.

So what is the story browser?

It's your gateway to endless possibility.

OK, that sounds a bit too ad-like for me. The Story Browser (my name for it) is your main interface for finding, browsing, creating and managing stories in the Mission Architect. It lets you search for stories others have written, check up on your own, see how your published stories are doing, and manage your custom characters and enemy groups.

It's a lot to ask from a little window.

First, a little terminology:

• Published arc: These are arcs that a player has created and sent to the Architect servers. These are available to anyone, on either side (hero or villain) on any server. This does not mean you can team cross server, just that the arcs will be visible regardless of what server you are on.

• Local arcs: These are arcs that are not published, but stored locally on your hard drive. You can email these files, upload them to a supergroup website or the like, and anybody can download them and play them - but they cannot be rated, and will not earn MA ticket rewards.

• MA Tickets: This is an award given while playing through and submitting published arcs, unless those arcs become Dev's Choice arcs, in which case they won't drop Tickets, but regular drops of recipes, enhancements, and salvage. These tickets can be turned in at the Architect Engineering building for rewards such as salvage, recipes, and unlockable maps for use in your own adventures.

Your first look

When you first open up the window, you're going to see stories others have been submitting, as well as several tabs. The pages are limited to 25 story arcs per page. But we'll get to that in a moment.

Across the top, you have a few tabs. We'll go through them a tab at a time.

Browse and Play Tab

This is the active tab when you first open the mission architect. This allows you access to published arcs. You can simply scroll through the pages, but that's most inconvenient. Instead, use the Search Options tab.

Search Options

Clicking on Search options expands the screen slightly. You will have one line as a text area, just like a normal search. Just like the forum search, it will try to match the string itself. So if you search on the string POS, you'll find (as examples) arcs Positron has submitted, arcs named The Power of positive Thinking, arcs with "They find their positions reversed" in the description and the like - anything that has 'pos' in it.

Use this window for any text you think will describe what you're looking for. If you're looking for missions about Kheldians, look up "Kheld" (since it might be shortened.) Looking for a particular poster? Well, be careful, as the "by" line gives the name of the character the person was on when they posted it.

You'll see the text that you're filtering by show up next to "Search options" in blue (Filtering by: Text: pos, for example.)

The selections below it, though, are most useful.You have three dropdown menus and two radio buttons. Let's take a look:

Rating

Every arc can be rated. They will be anywhere from zero to five stars. In addition, there are two additional ratings - Hall of Fame (a "players choice") and Developer's Choice.

Every option except for "All" acts just like the team search window - you can choose multiple settings (for instance, if you just want to see unrated and five star missions, you can select both and not see missions without those ratings.) The only one that doesn't act that way is "All," which clears all the other selections.

Length

Length gives you five choices, as well as "All." Very short, short, medium, long, and very long. The arc length is not dependant on the number of missions, but instead is based on the maps used - so you could have a two mission arc that's "Long," because of huge, multilevel maps, or you could have a five mission arc that's showing as "Very short."

Morality

This, I think, will get a lot of use. By default, it's set to "All." But this is also where you can search for missions of Villainous or Heroic inclination - so those of you making missions, be sure to mark this in the editor if you've got a target audience in mind! Note that any character can play any mission whether a hero playing a villainous mission or vice versa. The Morality setting is a suggestion.

Only show me arcs

Here we have two radio buttons that will help you find new content. You can select either one of these so you only see missions you haven't played, or that you haven't voted on. They are exclusive - if you select one, the other cannot be selected. And of course, just click on whichever IS selected to remove that selection completely.

Search

When you have the options you want, click the "Search" button on the right and it will bring up your results. To start a whole new search, click "Clear" and it will set it back to defaults.

Pages

As mentioned, just scrolling down the list will give 25 missions. There are sure to be many more than that published. You can just jump to a page of results by clicking on the page number. There is, at time of writing, no page back/forward functionality.

Sort tabs

There are also three tabs you can sort by. Rating, Length and Date. Click on each to select it as a sort criteria. Click again to switch between ascending and descending results.

The mission list/search results

Now for the meat of the window - the mission (or search result) list. The results look pretty straightforward:

• Mission title
• By Publishing character (space) Publish date (space) Length: Rated: (raters)

So an example listing would look like:

• The Rockinist Arc Ever [+]
• by publishing character 05/15/09 Length: Long Rated **** (57)

There are also three other things you may see that highlight Celebrity Author, Dev Choice, and Hall of Fame. Hall of Fame missions will have a gold background and a green "badge" with a yellow star by the play button. Developers Choice will be a lighter green and have a gold trophy on a red background.

Now, while all this is good information, it may not tell you enough to help you decide if you want to play it. Here's a tip - click the plus sign in mission listing. The information will expand, and give you more information, like so:

The Second Rockinist Mission Ever

by Leet Missioneer

Arc ID 449

Rated **** Excellent! (5)

Length: Medium

First published 9/19/2009

Morality: Villainous

Mission 1: Large size map, level range 31-45, contains Ally

Mission 2: Medium size map, level range 10-25, contains Patrol

Mission 3: Unique map, level range 1-4, contains boss

Mission 4: Medium map, contains Collection

Mission 5: Unique map, level 40-50, contains Boss

Enemy groups: 5th Column

Description: It's a really really good mission, really!

Celebrity Authors will also have an "About the author" listing.

As you can see, you now know the enemy groups (including "Custom") you will face, you can see the level range jumps around a lot, get an idea of what you'll be facing (bosses, glowies, allies, etc.) and the designer's comments, as well as that it's a Villainous mission.

When you find the mission you want, click "Play." You'll get a warning that you're entering Architect mode. Hit accept. The hologram in front of you will turn into a contact - talk to them, and gooooo into the liiiiight...

Exiting a mission arc

There are two ways to exit a mission arc.

1. Architect options: This window will pop up a new screen where you can send a comment, rate the mission and quit the arc.
2. Team window: Just like in Ouroboros, select "Quit task force."

Story Browser: My Creations Tab

This window is mostly the same as the "Browse and play" window, including how arcs are presented and how you can get information on them. What you'll notice differently are four tabs.

• My local stories
• My published stories
• My characters
• My enemy groups

We'll go over these, and the files they may make on your local system.

Local system?

Yes. PC users (sorry Mac and Cedega/WINE, I have no idea about you guys) will find, if you go to your installation directory (by default c:\program files\city of heroes) a few new folders once you make missions:

• \Missions
• \Custom_Critter
• \CustomVillainGroup

The contents of these are related to what you see in the tabs. First, though, a bit of information.

Each account (not character) can have up to three published missions on the Mission Architect. Having one of those missions rated Developers Choice or Hall of Fame will move them from your published slots, and free one up. On the other hand, you can have as many unpublished missions as you want - these are just local files you can share. Each local mission can be up to 110 kb in size.

Now, let's look at the tabs.

My Local Stories

These are all of the files stored locally in your /mission directory. They end with a .storyarc extension. There is no limit, other than disk space, that we've found yet on these. This will also include, by the way, an .autosave while you're editing, so you will see duplicates at times. This is also a live list - if you're in the Story browser and someone emails you their .storyarc file, drop it in and it will show up immediately in your Local Stories.

They are listed, by default, as such:

ARC NAME

filename

So if you're editing an arc - we'll call it World Domination 101 -- and saving versions as you go, you may see five copies of it, but the filename would be different:

World Domination 101

File name: WD101

World Domination 101

File name: WD101-1

World Domination 101

File name: WD101-2

World Domination 101

File name: WD101-3

World Domination 101

File name: Autosave

Note that other that autosave, you must name them manually.

My Published Stories

This is much the same as the regular "Browse and play" section, except you have three buttons - Unpublish (which can switch to Republish,) Edit, and Play. If you pick Edit, be sure to use SAVE AS... to save the file with another name. Yes, it will autosave, but should anything happen with republishing (say, having all your arc slots full,) it will cancel and the changes will disappear.

Aside from being an easy way to find and replay your own missions, it's a fast place to reference your rating, too.

My Characters

Location: /Custom_Critter

File extension: .critter

This can be a long list. Every custom character you create will go into this list. If you just want to edit one, this might be the fastest way to go.

Note that if you have no local files and edit someone else's mission or a mission file from another system, the information on the critters WILL show up here. To save them, be sure to save them in the editor ("Save as...") or they will be gone when you restart (until you reopen the mission.)

My Enemy Groups

Location: /customvillaingroup

File extension: .cvg

Every group you create, whether it has custom critters, a mix of standard ones, or a combination of the two, becomes a Custom Villain Group (sometimes called in the interface an Enemy Group and by Developers as a Critter Group). This file takes all the information of each critter and compiles it into a Custom Villain Group.

Just like the Critter mention above, it can make a cached copy from an editable mission.