 Mechstorm's Complete Map Making Tutorial or MCM for Short. Covering Mechwarrior4, Mechwarrior4:BK and Mechwarrior4:Mercs. If you have any questions feel free to drop by our Mechstorm Editor/Scripting help Forum after you have registered on our forums. |
Capture and Hold V4 Tutorial.Introduction to Capture & Hold. Capture and Hold once needed map makers to hand edit the script in order to customize it to their needs. This is no longer the case because since Version 4 all objectives are setup in side the editor it self giving the map maker a lot of freedom to setup his own objective for the game. This document will talk you though a typical installation of the capture and hold script onto your missions and give some optional advanced tips to allow the more experienced map makers to hand edit the script to fine tune it to their needs if they wish to do that. Through out this Howto it is assumed you got the script and this doc via downloading and installing the Capture and Hold Pack I released and that you are installing it on a mission for MW4 Mercenaries. Requirements for reference. Requirements Mw4 Mercs or Black Knight (objective system untested with MW4 or BK) Capture and Hold Pack by Giskard. You will need the following Navpoints on your map. Capture_Point (this is the your base nav the teams will fight over) Team1_Base (Drop point for team 1) Team2_Base (Drop point for team 2) 2 Team drop points Also Requires the following Objectives be setup in the editor. team1wins team2wins team1help team2help noteam Step 1: Getting ready to add Capture and Hold to your mission. Load your mission into the editor and copy the capture and hold script from the mercenaries/mercstorm/scripts folder into your missions own script's folder, usually found at content/missions/yourmission/scripts. By default installing the Capture and Hold Pack installs this document, the players support document and the script it self into the mercstorm folder. Then go to the Options/mission properties menu and then click on select gametypes. Select Custom Team Battle and then select the Capture and Hold script for it using the Select scripts button on the multiplayer gametypes window that appears. Set the teams to two and ok the requestor. This partially sets up the NFM for you. Step 2: Setting up the required Navpoints. In the editor add the following Navpoints to your map using the resources/misc tab and select Navpoint. Add Team1_Base to Team Dropzone1 Add Team2_Base to Team Dropzone2 Add Capture_Point to the location where your objective will be. Your objective can be anything from a noncom to a fully featured base complete with turrets that switch sides according to who controls the base. The distance between the Team bases and the Capture point should be between 1500m and 2500m to give the teams a chance of winning. Also as most of the action will take place at Nav Capture_Point, you may want the objective area to look the part and put in some special effort to make it interesting by placing buildings suitable for your objective. Step 3: Setting up the Objective Messages. The Objective messages are used as follows. Noteam = This is the message that gets displayed when No team holds the objective. This is always displayed at the start of the game or when the objective is left undefended by both teams. Team1help or Team2help = These messages are displayed when one of the teams control the objective area. Team1win or Team2win = These messages are displayed to the losing team if they do not hold the objective area and display the victory messages once a team has held the objective for 4 minutes. So these two are pretty important to Capture and Hold. Step 4: Setting up No Team Objective. We now must setup the Noteam objective messages in the editor. To do this we go to the Options/objectives menu in side the editor. Once the objective window is open we can start adding objectives. Click on add to set up our first objective. Double click on the objective that has just appeared in the objectives window and enter the Objective Name as Noteam as stated below. Set it as primary and Completion Level = Incomplete. All objectives require these to be setup the same way initially. Only the Objective name changes. So remember the settings. You will now see 3 text boxes containing my Capture the pass messages. These where the objectives for one of my Capture and Hold missions. Yours may be different. You can enter anything you want here but they should describe the objective both teams need to achieve at the start of the game. For instance. Suppose your objective was Ride the Donkey. Then your objectives would read something like this. Incomplete = both teams must Ride on the donkey. Success = No team got a ride on the Donkey. Failed = No team got a ride on the Donkey. You objective could just as easily be a Base, A Crossroads, An Airport in fact anything. You need only enter an Objective message that best describes what you want the teams to do. The event it self never happens, it is mearly something to fight over for the teams. So it can be as silly or as serious as you want to make it. 
Step 5: Setting up the Team Help Objectives. Below are two very boring entries that the teams will see only if they control the objective area. You need to make 2 objectives as stated above. One for Team1help and the other for Team2help. Take a look at these 2 objectives and you will see how they should be setup. I am sure your Objective messages will be much more interesting than mine. EG If team 1 held the objective area you might put. "Woohoo Team 1 Rules, Team 2 Sucks!". Or "Team 1: Area Secure, hold until relieved." Basically, use your imagination to set the scene for the players. 
Step 6: Setting up the Team Win Objectives. Now we have to setup the most important objective messages, each team gets its own win objective message which also displays its fail message. Here are two examples from one of my missions. 
As you can see, the Incomplete box tells the teams what they have to do. The Success box gives the name of the winning team and the fact they they did win and the failed box gives the name of the team that lost and informs them that they did lose. If you where to make an objective based on our poor Donkey again, your objective messages might read like this. Incomplete: Team1 is still chasing the donkey. Success: Team 1 gets a free Donkey Ride. Failed: Team 1 gets to watch team 2 ride the donkey. Or if it was a Base then the objectives may read like this. Incomplete: Team 1 must capture the base. Success: Team 1 has Captured the base. Failed: Team 1 Failed to Capture the base. Again, just like above this is just a message your sending to the players, so whilst it must describe what is going on it need not match my examples. You can us it to make fun of the losing team or make the objective sound more serious by saying "Team 2 has capture the base and Team 1's staff are being executed". Anything you want basically as long as it informs the player what has happened. Step 7: Making the NFM entry for Capture and Hold. Now you have successfully added Capture and Hold to your map you must make the NFM entry for it. The NFM editor will screw up the entry if you use it so you must hand edit it your self. Here is an example entry from one of my Capture and Hold missions. Feel free to examine any of the others. The lines marked in bold print are the lines that will need editing by you. Italic print is optional editing and can be left as it is. Again I assume you installed the Capture & Hold pack and have the some files at the locations stated. Capture&Hold1CH={ !preservecase=true [server] name=Capture and Hold ruleset=7 TeamAllowed=1 TeamCount=2 gameLength=30 scriptname=ContentMissionsCapture&Hold1Scriptsdsrp_capture_and_hold_v4.abl scenariotext=resourceUsermissionscapture_and_hold.txt team_0={ !preservecase=true [teamdata] maxPlayersOnTeam=8 } team_1={ !preservecase=true [teamdata] maxPlayersOnTeam=8 } } The first line should be your map name and a number with perhaps a brief name for the gametype. This is used by dedicated server admins when setting up their map cycle. EG mymission1CH The name line should be the name that appears next to your maps real name in the lobby. So use it to name the gametype, in this case Capture and Hold. Scriptname and Scenariotext are very important lines. Scriptname should point to your missions script folder in resources. As you can see my script is in the ContentMissionsCapture&Hold1Scriptsdsrp_capture_and_hold_v4.abl folder in my mercs directory. Scenariotext is the mission briefing file. You can make your own text files and save them off under a different name if you wish or use mine Capture and Hold text file. By default users mission briefings should go in side usermissions and not in the devteams own missions folder. Whether you use my briefing or make your own, you must remember to pack it up along with your mission. It will be displayed in the lobby for the players to read. Step 8: Testing your Capture and Hold Mission. When you have edited your NFM and Capture and Hold appears under Custom Team Battle in the lobby you are ready to test it. Drop as Team 1 or Team 2 on your Capture and Hold map. Hold down tab once the mission has loaded and see if you can see the mission name, in this case Capture and Hold should appear. If you do see it, everything is fine. If you don't then the script failed to run and you will have to double check all the steps before Step 8 to make sure you did not make any errors. If the mission works, run to objective are listed as Capture Point on the navbar and wait for 4 minutes. If the game respawns and your team wins you will know it works and can consider Capture and Hold installed and working. Optional Advanced Tricks and Trips. If your a new map maker or this is your first Capture and Hold mission you had best not go any further. Your mission is working and you can safely ignore this. If your an experienced map maker and feel confident enough to edit abl scripts then the following tricks and tips will allow you to customize Capture and Hold to suit your needs. Open up the Capture and Hold script in a text editor. Scroll down to line 100 which says radius = 400; This line controls the size of the area the script uses as its Objective area. You can edit this to better suit your own objective area. Making it match the size of your base for instance. Scroll down to line 102 which says SetCustomBucketName("Capture and Hold"); You can edit the game name here so holding down Tab describes your Capture and Hold mission more precisely. Scroll down to line 124 which says Total = 240; // 4 minutes. This is the 4 minute timer counted in seconds. You can increase this or decrease this according to your tastes. Scroll down to line 142 which says chatmessage("Welcome to Capture and Hold. Press O at any time to see your teams objectives. Press N to cycle to the Capture Point Nav. Hold the Objective for 4 minutes to win."); This is a message that appears in the chat window at the start of the game. You can customize this to suite your own missions requirements. I also make use of several sound files within the Capture and Hold script. If you know which other sounds work you can swap these for your own. However the ones I chose fit the closest with the objectives the players must get. They are not an exact match though as the Hill contested message proves but no other message comes as close as that to describe what is happening when that sound is played. Finished. That's it, everything you need or don't need to know about Capture & Hold. If you have any further questions you can contact me at... http://www.respawn.co.uk http://www.mercstorm.com email: giskard@respawn.co.uk |