Alright, it seems some of the editor is still in programmer speak, particularly the acknowledgement flags. This is fine and dandy for those with the knowledge but many of us don't have it. Any guide to this function either as an outside resource or by a player or by the Development team would be helpful.

As far as I can tell, the accomplishment flags allow you to create criteria that carry from one mission to another. This allows you to create mission strings that must be taken in a certain order, missions that must be completed a certain number of times, etc.

The "flag" can probably be any text you want (I haven't tested if they are ever shown to the player or not).

You could also set a limit on failures (increment a flag if the player fails or aborts the mission, and set a requirement for the flag to be below a limit to take the mission).

Some more criteria/options I'd like to see:
* Objectives, events and actions based around cargo (pick up X widget, bring X to station, etc).
* Custom message options for when a player does not meet requirements for starting the mission.
* Option to require the player to use a particular ship/equipment setup
* Ship/equipment configuration for NPCs (within faction and other in-game restrictions. perhaps these could require some form of approval before being submitted, but allow such NPC templates to be viewed and used by other players in their missions)
* Ability to add new objectives when something happens (not just switch to a predetermined stage with objectives, but create them based on live data).
* For the "NPC Died"/"Player Died"/"Someone else died" events, record the character that got the kill to a variable for later use (Could lead to some very interesting possibilities when combined with dynamic objectives, above)

Some items that I imagine need careful consideration:
* Faction rewards/penalties
* Related to the above, is it possible to dock XP or credits from the player for doing something wrong in the mission?

Having fun so far figuring out what I can create and playing with the results.

[Edit: Bah, that's what I get for trying to think straight so late at night...]

Ok, I've written up a basic explanation of how the mission editor works. If you click on the "Whoa, what's going on here!" link at the bottom of the editor (that is, in the real editor once you've click "Create a new mission"), it will show my new general tutorial. It's simplistic, and only covers the very basics, and is the best I could do in a couple of hours.

For those who want to get to it quickly:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/h/missioned_help.html

Thanks Incarnate, just what i needed

What in the world is an "acknowledgment" flag?

Very nice Incarnate. That really helps, especially just to speed things along. Thanks.

I think tumbles idea is a good one , a "test group " to try out missions and provide sensible feedback to the creators. I would certainally be willing to help with that sort of thing.

Ecka

Test groups are required for beta testing of the missions, yes.

We also need a list of all those < > commands you write to the message log. The only ones I'm aware of so far are <update>, <hr/> and <button>.

Aesthetic suggestion:

Make the "Event 1" or "Stage 4" or "Objective 3" tags (just examples here) bold or a different color. They blend in with the rest. Just to cause less missteps and more clearly see what one is doing.

Also, can the @#$!@!!! checkboxes for the mission timers please be set that they don't uncheck themselves everytime.

Incarnate, can you give us an example of how to do a mission fork. I want to have 2 buttons come up and each button leads to a different stage.

So I kill the bot that was my objective. I bring up a meesage on the mission log saying you can either quit and get payed or continue with the next part of the mission.

I can make buttons, but I don't know how to make the buttons functional. I want one button to activate 1 stage and the other button to activate another.

In the stage with your button use the "wait for user input" objective and as many "message from player" events as you have buttons. The parameter of "message from player" is the action value of the corresponding button. From that event you can jump to whatever stage you want to...

Thank you very much Mr. Spuck!

OK, I have another question. How do I make my objective to be the survival of an NPC? I want an NPC making it to its destination an event just like in the escort missions.

I've been making my objective to destroy the NPC's I send after my transport, but then if my transport kills the attacking NPC's, I can't complete the mision.

I can't make the general death of certain NPC's an objective and I can't make survival an objective. I'm sure there's a way to make it work right.

Well, you could make the death of that NPC into an event handler that causes the missions to fail. Set it in the "Event Handlers" section so it applies to any stage of the mission and it should do what you want.

Yeah, I already knew how to do that. But how does the mission end? What's your objective?

Well, you could basically create an NPC with the "follow" behaviour, who follows the player (and fair warning, I don't know how well the follow behaviour works). And then have the player go from A to B with an overall mission failure if the NPC should die. When the player gets to the remote station, they could be instructed to dock, and that the station docking authority would take care of the NPC from then on. Then the user would dock and the mission succeed.

It's inelegant, but we don't have all the express behaviours and objectives to duplicate the Escort missions in the current version of the editor. The mission editor is a work in progress, like everything.

If you're sending individual NPCs, there's an event option for NPC died called Success: someone killed it or something like that.

Incarnate: the "Follow" behavior works like using gravel to lubricate ball bearings. It doesn't work.

Not well, at least--it hasn't worked well as long as I've been using the editor.

miharu: it used to just make the bots attack you. But if they're the same faction as the player, I think they may try to follow. There's some funky requirements like that. But I agree, it's been fairly broken in the past, hence the warning.