Saving Private Brian full playable campaign

[rf900]

Download: http://anyone.hol.es/Files/SAVPRIV_v13.zip

Wanted to share with you my WIP on a campaign, probably too ambitious as I have just started modding, but cannot get it out of my head

As my knowledge of WWII comes mostly from movies and games I have taken the easy approach to follow the famous movie story. I wanted to use the carryover option that is present in Market Garden campaign to show more of a progression/story of units during several missions.

To achieve this I have added a visual indicator to units that will be carried over to the following scenarios, you should take care of this units as without them the missions can get much harder. It is expected that these units get more promotions so the will even be more useful.



Summary:

During the missions you will need to keep alive the main squad, it will have an elite (or even better) status so it is a powerful unit that should not die or you will loose. To help with this you will always have the medic aid and you will be able to merge infantry squads with a customized action. There is also a new swap action that will let you change the positions of two friendly units, it takes up some APs.

It is intended that you play the missions in order to view the story progression and also for the last mission to recover previous used units and some extra changes depending on other mission results. You can play any mission as standalone, most of them will be nearly identical, except the last one. In the last mission the previous used units willl be replaced but green ones, it probably will be a bit harder if you didn't play the full campaign.

Carrover mechanic:

The game will save automatically your progress in the campaign, when selecting a mission it will ask if you want to load a previous state or start a new one. If you choose to load the state it will remember the mission you have to play next and recover the carryover units that survive in previous missions. Still these units will only be available in the last mission.


Missions:

1. Landing on beach (beta): You are part of the DDay assault, take out the enemy positions on the beach fast (10-12 turns). A few of the units are carryover units, use them wisely and try not to loose them.



2. Chase retreating units (beta): Bring some armor in to chase down some retreating German units, armor will carryover to other mission, mostly the last one.


3. Snipers in small town (beta): Help some friendly British units trapped by sniper in a small town.



4. Help French resistance by taking one or two objectives (beta)



5. Help Brian on convoy ambush, both squads need to survive (beta)
To Do: Improve AI movement



6. Defend town with Brian's squads, wait for reinforcements, nearly all previous carryover alive units (beta)
To Do: Check AI movement, revise victory conditions

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks:

GottaLove88s, for reviewing the texts
Devs, for their support
Morge4, for feedback

Notes:

v13. Fixed some bugs in last mission and adapted code to beta 2.0.6 improving AI behavior.
v12. Full playable campaign
v11. 4 playable missions in alpha state
v1. 2 Missions playable
v0. Prototype first mission

Download: http://personales.ya.com/anyone/Files/SAVPRIV_v13.zip

[pipfromslitherine]

Are you going to record some custom voice to go with it? I want to hear Tigger screaming "Man down!"...

Looks very cool

Cheers

Pip

[rf900]

I am deviating from the movie and reading more real info about the WWII, but I was wondering if I pick elements from the movie, script, voices, images, names... will than hinder the possibility to distribute the campaign?

[pipfromslitherine]

You are in a grey area there. Wholescale inclusion of assets from the film will almost certainly be copyright infringement and we would probably not want to host the campaign at that point, which reduces your audience. If possible you should use either public domain assets, or sufficiently rework any assets to be derivative works under fair use.

I would err on the side of caution and generally avoid using things directly from the film if possible.

Cheers

Pip

[rf900]

Will take care then... BTW I managed to loose the 7 men main unit on the first turn, need to take care of it.

[k9mike]

Played through it twice...Lost first time...Put "Brian" abit too far forward and those mortars killed me...Damn, they are brutal in this map. I won the next time I played..
Was wondering if you could implament the slight movement(without transport) for the mortars. They get to move like 1 hex but cant fire that turn. I have seen this used on a couple of other maps.
It would help out abit. Cause they can only reach certain parts and then they are useless after that and you get really slaughtered by all the German mortars. I really liked it so far...good work.
Mike

[rf900]

Ha ha, thanks for playing it and the feedback. Did you try the last version with the 7 men unit? I also lost that one on the first turn. I wanted high bombardment rate to avoid the player to concentrate forces on a single section of the map. I will surely put the one movement to mortar team, I always wanted to have it in other campaigns, some sort of short repositioning, makes sense.

Want to keep the maps small and fast, except the last mission. BTW, the main squad is Millers one, Brian is the one that you will have to rescue

[morge4]

Played this the other day. Very enjoyable. all the mortats do keep it interesting but fun. Can't wait for future games in this campaign

[k9mike]

Played this the other day. Very enjoyable. all the mortats do keep it interesting but fun. Can't wait for future games in this campaign

+1 on that...
I was hoping maybe he would implament the US Mortars to be able to move 1 hex. Could sure use the support. Overall it gives a idea how much it was like on the beach...it was a slaughter at first...Especially near WN62...
Mike

[morge4]

I was hoping maybe he would implament the US Mortars to be able to move 1 hex. Could sure use the support.

I agree...they can reach a good portion of the map but allowingthem to move would be nice

[drjeff21]

I just downloaded and played the first scenario. Challenging, but I won. I like the premise. Thank you for your hard work.

[rf900]

Added missions 2 and 3, still need more work on them though. Miller unit always starts with 7 men as I cannot retrieve the men that are alive from previous mission yet.

Also I have trouble adding the texts in game, the boxes appear blank. Can anyone help me?

For the second mission you have to chase down a couple of convoys, without briefing texts it is hard to know what you need to do sorry.

For the third one you need to rescue a few trapped British soldiers in the town church and then defend the position, again without the briefing and dialogue texts it feels a bit empty.

I wanted to introduce characters in each mission, in the second you have a special tank commanded by Frank. In the third you will meet Rooney and his team of elite British paratroopers.

[rf900]

As I am going out a few days I wanted to share the current version, the 3 first missions are playable the last 3 also but need more work, specially the last one. I added a few light tanks in some missions as most of them were infantry based.

[GottaLove88s]

Hey RF, Managed to play your first mission during a "study break"...

Quick feedback:

Overall, I really like the feel of this (normally, I only play MP because I like the randomness of human opponents, but you've set up Saving Pvt Brian nicely, so it's a fun challenge)

Likes
+ Good first beach map; attractive, logical, well arranged
+ Mixture of MG42s, mortars and scout enemies is no walkover
+ Feels like D-Day... there's a whole lot of noise and dying out there; success is all about volume movement together; please shoot some other guy
+ Nice storyline so far
+ You've included walking mortars, merge and swap functions (nice icons by the way )

Suggestions
? Can we have one more round of play after succeeding... I had a "medic" and "morale" button leftover that I would like to have used on my carryover units
? Can you add a tick box to your pre-play messages from eg. Capt Miller; they flash on and off the screen very quickly if I'm not paying total attention
? The text on the pre-play briefing mini-map is showing as blank white boxes; the words aren't showing for some reason

Questions
? Does achieving any of the starred tasks actually trigger any advantages for the next mission
? Please may I re-use your swap and merge icons for Fast_N_Sneaky MP and Ortona MP... where are they? icons.dds?... is there anything else that I need to change to my existing swap1.bsf, merge.bsf or $default.bsf to trigger your icons?

Nice job RF. You might even get me back into SP for awhile, hehe More feedback once I get a chance to play mission 2...

[rf900]

Thanks,

There are so many things I wanted to do but I would need more time and I am still learning the mod engine. I wanted to put more random enemies to give variation, right now it is only probably good for one playthrough. Also for carryover I cannot control which units do move from mission to mission, it is either all or none, that is why only Millers unit is in all and always starts with 7 men, but I am working on that. All the carryover units will appear in the last mission, not what I wanted really, but the best I have for now.

About the suggestions, I will take note of them. This was my first map and I used the victory plugin, bad idea as then I have less control over it, other missions use the script for victory conditions so I can tweak them better. The briefing message is a temporary solution until I get the texts in the briefing map that as you say are blank, but I will add that tick box, it stays for too short time.

The achievements are only, as in the main game, to try and get them. There is a mission (4) in which you can take two objectives, only one is needed to complete the mission but each gives advantages to the last mission. There is really a lot of possibilities with the scripts just exploring them and learning as I go.

I sent you the instructions to use the new icons, they are also in the forum post about merge and swap units.

[GottaLove88s]

It's a great scenario RF... Definitely re-playable more than once... Actually, I'm re-trying the beach because I'd like to keep more of my carryover units...

The easiest way I've seen to add a tick box to your mission prep chatbox is by adding...

ShowUIScreenX( "BattlePop0", "Anim1", "IDS_MP_INTRO_NEUTRAL", "BHead0Image:US_infantry_head") ;
to your SCENARIO.bsf

Then add...

IDS_MP_INTRO_NEUTRAL_BP0TEXT,"Listen up, Gentlemen... Here's what I have to tell you",
to your TEXT1.txt

BA will then automatically include a tick box and wait until you click it, before removing your message.

Looking forward to playing Mission 2!

[pipfromslitherine]

Just a note, when using the VP plugin, you can disable the default victory conditions by using

SetUniversalVar("Slith_VP_EndBattleLogic", 1)

at the start of the mission. You can then do your own checks as per normal. E.g. checking for a given VP ownership with

GetScriptGlobal("Slith_VictoryPoints", "VP#5")

for example for VP 5 (base 0). Where values can be -1 (neutral), 0 (player or side 0), or 1 (AI or side 1).

Hope that helps

Cheers

Pip

[rf900]

Another great tip, you could write a book with them THanks

[pipfromslitherine]

It's pretty new, from the last update, and there are still things for a year ago that I haven't fully documented anywhere (let alone on the wiki) so I probably could take a year off and write a book

Cheers

Pip

[rf900]

Hum, so does the INTRO_NEUTRAL tag make the tick appear? I didn't know why sometimes it appear and sometimes not, and thought it was the camera movement but may try what you say.