Learn what to think about before building your missions.

About Mission Design

Before we launch the Mission Editor, we will discuss how you should approach designing your missions. You will learn that the Mission Editor has a large number of features and the missions that you create can be very complex and unique. Once you have learnt the basics of the application you will have enough knowledge to begin making your own missions. Before you begin placing soldiers and vehicles on the Mission Editor, you should consider writing down your ideas on paper. By writing your mission ideas down on paper you will have a detailed log of what units, locations and objectives are contained within your game and will make the process of creating more complex missions easier.

Some high level things to consider when creating missions:

• Number of Missions: Is this going to be a one off mission or a number of missions connected together to form a longer campaign.
• Story: Is there an overriding story that will link your objectives or missions together.
• Actors: Who are the main protagonists within your mission(s). Will they be the same people throughout the game.

Once you have written this initial draft on paper, you will get a better idea of the number of missions and the overriding story that needs to be told over the course of these missions. Now you need to break down your missions into further details, this will help you detail as much information about the missions before you start placing items within the Mission Editor..

Some ideas that you can use to document your missions:

• Mission Name/number: Name and number of the Mission
• Basic Mission Description: Key details of the mission, such as what the player has to achieve, any particular challenges they will have to face.
• Mission Start: How does the mission start?
• Mission End: How does the mission end?
• Key Locations: Detail the key locations in the level, such as Beach Landing, Enemy Guard Post etc.
• Player Side: The side that the player will control
• Date and Time: The date and time of the mission. This has an impact on how light/dark the mission area will be.
• Weather: What is the current weather situation in the area of operations, is it sunny, cloudy, or perhaps there is a fog front.
• Number of player based forces: This could be a simple number of the total number of soldiers or a complex breakdown of the forces involved, including land, sea and air vehicles.
• Number of Enemy forces: The number of enemy forces and the type of soldiers that it contains. Including land, sea and air vehicles.

It is expected that you will make small changes to your missions through-out the mission design process. Writing down your ideas on paper before you begin will help reduce any wholesale changes to your missions and make the whole process more enjoyable.

Here is a simple example of how you might document a campaign and its missions. Even though this is a very simple example it should allow you to get a good idea on how to structure your mission design documentation. You are free to add or remove the different headings to suit your own style of working.

Here is an example of the missions involved in the campaign.

Mission 1.

Mission 2.

Mission 3.

Mission 4.