Mafia OXP

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docwild
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Mafia OXP

Post by docwild »

Hey, so this is what I've been doing today...

Mafia OXP for OOlite.

This is the beginnings of a mafia career type addon in the vain of Driver or GTA.

Something that GTA had in common with Elite was it's open endedness and so with this in mind I have tried to employ
such an approach here. You may start in the Quebe or Raleen for Don Joxxen or Don Trond respectively. You may refuse
the first mission but you will incur the Don's wrath until such a time as you return or seek sanctuary at the other Don's system. Them being
rivals, you may only work for one Don but there will be opportunities to switch allegiances or even sell them all out. The missions will occur over a few tightly packed systems and the action will instensify as the rewards increase.

version 0.5
First missions laid down establishing initial allegiance.
Generic muscleAI established.
Three characters introduced
6 paths to first outcome



It's up and running and bugs appear to be minimised :P


edit: http://www.wikiupload.com/download_page.php?id=121995
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jonnycuba
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Post by jonnycuba »

looks promising... keep up the good work.
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Post by LittleBear »

Great idea! 8)

Assuming though, this mission will be quite "Mission Briefing" heavy as the plot lines play out?

A long standing problem with Oolite is that if two OXPs try to put up a briefing at the same time, then only one is shown. EG if Mafia OXP and say Spyhunter OXP both try to give a briefing, then the player will either see the Mafia breifing and miss the Spyhunter briefing or visa versa.

Not a problem if your OXP only uses a few briefings as the chance of a clash is very small. In Assassins.oxp I used over 50 briefings, so had to find a way round. The easiest way is just to set the OXP in a Galaxy where you know no other OXPs will put up briefings.

EDIT : Downloaded and off to the XXX system!

Suggest moving it in G5, G6 or G8 as then you won't get a clash. G1 is pretty mission heavy (think about 7 OXP missions in this Galaxy) so chance of a clash in G1 is quite high. Nothing much to do in G6 or G8 though!
OXPS : The Assassins Guild, Asteroid Storm, The Bank of the Black Monks, Random Hits, The Galactic Almanac, Renegade Pirates can be downloaded from the Elite Wiki here.
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docwild
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Post by docwild »

It's a good idea, thank you.

I've only been playing for a little over a week and my kill (er.. legal termination) count is just over 200 so I'm limited where I can go and what I can do atm with a purse of about 300k. Changing the setting later on will be trivial though.

I've noticed the problems with the briefing screen and mission description and my original idea was to do most of the mission briefing over the comms link but if I do it will be after getting the logic and story set down.. It's a shame there is no method to test if the briefing is in use and if so create a lnked list or somesuch.


I'm really looking foward to playing your assassins oxp too.
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Post by Commander McLane »

@ docwild: As for the conflicting mission-screens, I posted a (non-perfect) solution in this thread. Basically the idea is to call the mission screen of your mission not when the player docks, but only when he goes to another screen (equipment in my example-case).

It's far from perfect, as the number of possible screens that could trigger the mission-screen is limited, but it's better than nothing.
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Post by docwild »

This is good. I see that it can also be called after exiting witchspace and in a variety of other instances...

Do MissionDescription's clash too?
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Post by Commander McLane »

Theoretically it can, but this is not a good idea.

The mission screen (as any other) doesn't stop the rest of the game from going on. So if you present a player with a mission screen while he is still flying (whether on exiting witchspace or at any other point) he is going to fly blind, as long as he is reading the screen. If he happens to be in a wild system (or if you place some enemy-ships close to his position in your script) he could be killed, before he even notices that he has been attacked. And if he notices and switches to his main view in order to fight first, he never can return to the mission screen and finish reading.

Therefore mission screens--although it is possible to display them during flight--should be bound to being docked only.

-----

Ah, and I almost forgot: mission descriptions don't seem to clash, as long as they are handled correctly (e.g. cleared in the end), see this thread.
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Post by docwild »

Thanks for the extra info.

I've debugged and polished the first mission and set up some extra variables for future use. At the moment when you complete the first mission a series of "kill frenzies" are initiated (depending on your allegiance) until your "respect" score is sufficient for the next mission (not yet implemented). I've left the briefing screens in for now but I will change it to the commsMessage style I have at the beginning of the kill frenzy which is what I've started the "rendezAI" for. I've updated the muscleAIs (it is LIFO right?), Also the two families now have unique laser colours and are for the moment insanely hard. I see this as the beginning of the "engine" that I am imagining.

http://www.wikiupload.com/download_page.php?id=123605
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Post by LittleBear »

Dusted off my Commander and played though (starting at Qube), no bugs to report, everything seemed to work fine. Great fun! As I made Elite and completed all the missions about 6 months ago, havent really played Oolite properly for a while, just been playtesting and developing OXPs! Really enjoyed having a new mission to play rather than playtest! :)

Could maybe do with longer mission briefings, giving a bit more plot and explaining why you're being asked to do things. Trouble with the comms message method is there is no way to give the player a choice and you can't really have more than a line of text in a comms message. Sticking with the mission screen would probabley be better, as you can delvelope the plot and "story" more. A breifing screen clash is very rare and can be avoided just by setting the OXP in G5, 6 or 8.

Also if you feel like doing it, its real easy with planetinfo to change the descriptions of the planets just with a [gnumber]=[pnumber]=description="type in description", so the Mafia controled planets have a reference to this on the f7 screen.

With the Hails, if you do a hail as [mafia-threat] and then define mafia-threat in descriptions, you can have more variety to the threats. Rather than the same threat everytime, Oolite just picks one at random. eg:-

Code: Select all

<key>triad-threat</key>
	<array>
	<string>Stard! You shouldn't have hit Boss Yankisona!</string>
	<string>You're dead meat!</string>
	<string>You'll regret crossing the Esreatesian Triads!</string>
	<string>In ten minutes you'll be smoking in hell!</string>
	<string>I've got four little friends on my pylons and they all run faster than you!</string>
	<string>You hit us, we hit you!</string>
	<string>It was unwise to prack with the Esreatesian Triads!</string>
	<string>Nobody pracks with the Triads and keeps breathing!</string>
	<string>I'll melt your Iron Ass!</string>
	<string>Feel my lasers! May you rot in Hades!</string>
	<string>Your Boss should've known when to fold 'em!</string>
	<string>I can see you're out of Aces! Die Assassin pig-dog!</string>
	</array>
Really liked the OXP, look foraward to playing the finished version! 8)
OXPS : The Assassins Guild, Asteroid Storm, The Bank of the Black Monks, Random Hits, The Galactic Almanac, Renegade Pirates can be downloaded from the Elite Wiki here.
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Post by docwild »

Thanks LB. "[mafia-threat] " has saved me a great deal of work... thank heaven I hadn't started it already. (I was gonna do it on conditionals depending on what stage of the mission you were on - and I still might do that to some degree.)

Yeah.. I don't think I can get away without using the briefing screen but I think I will make use of the commlink at some stage. You'll be given a choice of missions and you "decide" depending on which system you jump to or perhaps which ship you decide to destroy or somesuch.

And yes.. I do need to embelish the story. I have plans to make it an intricate interwoven plot and sub-plot affair.... but we'll have to see about that.

Thank you for you feedback as well, most appreciated. This would be a lot further progressed but the forces of darkness are against me. (1 blown PSU, 1 failed Hard drive.... and someone put a fullstop where a comma should have been in my initial script - that was a bugger-). But there is some good news: my car got broken into so I wont be going anywhere for a day or so. :-\

peace
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Post by Gareth3377 »

Glad to see GTA influencing Oolite, which in turn (Elite) influenced GTA etc. etc.

Awesome sounding missions - I look forward to playing this one.
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I'd love to try this out, but...

Post by antidoto »

When I download from your wikiupload link and try to unzip the archive, I get an error message saying it's corrupted. Any ideas?
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Post by Commander McLane »

Hi, antidoto, and welcome to Oolite and the boards!

I just gave it a try and had the same problem. The file couldn't be unzipped. Don't know why though.

However, usually I get an error like this when a file isn't downloaded completely. And this usually happens when a download is aborted or terminated too early. And this may be a hint to a server-problem. Or to the communication bewteen the server and my computer not being sufficient, which can have a range of reasons.
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Re: Mafia OXP

Post by Cholmondely »

docwild wrote: Sun Apr 08, 2007 10:54 pm
Mafia OXP for OOlite.

This is the beginnings of a mafia career type addon in the vein of Driver or GTA.

Something that GTA had in common with Elite was it's open endedness and so with this in mind I have tried to employ
such an approach here. You may start in the Quebe or Raleen for Don Joxxen or Don Trond respectively. You may refuse
the first mission but you will incur the Don's wrath until such a time as you return or seek sanctuary at the other Don's system. Them being
rivals, you may only work for one Don but there will be opportunities to switch allegiances or even sell them all out. The missions will occur over a few tightly packed systems and the action will intensify as the rewards increase.

version 0.5
First missions laid down establishing initial allegiance.
Generic muscleAI established.
Three characters introduced
6 paths to first outcome

It's up and running and bugs appear to be minimised :P


edit: http://www.wikiupload.com/download_page.php?id=121995
Download link is kaput!

Does anybody have a copy of this one?



Appendix: DocWild's other OXP is the Mining OXP
Comments wanted:
Missing OXPs? What do you think is missing?
Lore: The economics of ship building How many built for Aronar?
Lore: The Space Traders Flight Training Manual: Cowell & MgRath Do you agree with Redspear?
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