Mission Architect Tutorial 100 Series

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Overview

This tutorial will walk you through creating a very basic mission in the Mission Architect, the central feature of Issue 14. If you don't know where the Mission Architect is located, it exists in many zones, with an "AE" icon. Go to one of these locations and do the introduction, which will show you around the place.

This tutorial will not go into detail as to what everything is. The help system, and further guides, will go into much greater detail. This tutorial is here solely to "get your feet wet" and get your first mission created. This will take you step by step through creating a mission with a (very) small map and a bunch of bad guys to defeat.

When you're finished, go to one of the Mission Architect computers and click on it. You will see a list of published arcs. Don't worry about those for now. Click on the button in the upper right that says "Create a new story." A window will come up, filling your screen. This is the mission creation window.

Tutorial 101: Story Settings & a Simple Mission

Story Settings

Story Title

This is what your story will appear as in the browser. This is a text field. It does get checked by the censor list, as does everything. For our first mission, we'll keep it simple. In programming courses, the first program is often called "Hello world." That's boring. Let's call ours "World Domination 101." (OK, if you're feeling heroic, something like "Saving kittens 101.")

Story Description

"Story Description" gives a small blurb about what the story's about. Type in "Tutorial mission" and leave it at that.

Story Contact

Here, you can put in your contact name, if you want (we'll use "Bob.") Beneath that is Contact Type. This is where you pick from a long list of NPCs - including a custom one you can create. We're not creating one now (though it's easy.) Leave it at "Default."

Now lets create the mission itself.

On the bottom of the screen, you'll see an arrow pointing right that says "Mission 1 settings." Use ether one.

You should be on a page starting with "Choose mission settings."

The Choose mission settings page

There are two tabs here, Standard and Custom. Custom is where you would create your own enemy (or ally) groups. We're ignoring that one for now - play with it later.

Under Standard, you'll have a few buttons. The first is "Enemy group." This is a dropdown list. Since I don't know what level anyone reading this would be, we're going to pick a group that anyone can play with.

If you click on the word "None," you'll see the (long) list. All of them have the name and level ranges of those enemy groups. We'll use the very first one there - 5th Column (1-54.) Click that.

Next section - Map Type.

Click on "None." You'll see a list of map sets. Each of these sets has multiple maps inside of it. We're going to go down a bit and use "Warehouse Abandoned - City of Heroes set." Once this is selected, you'll see a new option, "Map length." You have four options - Tiny, Small, Medium, and Large.

Since this is supposed to be fast, we'll pick Tiny.

A new section will open up that says "Map." You can leave this at random... but what fun is that?

This selection only has two maps - Map 0 and Map 1 - as well as the Random option. Other map sets can have very lengthy selections. If you scroll through the maps, you'll see a floorplan represented on the right.

We'll pick the most basic map there is - Map 0. You should see a hall and a room. This will also give you information, much like the base editor, on how much is allowed (X many ambushes, items, etc.) Make sure it meets your needs - for this tutorial, it does.

Again, there are many optional settings. We are ignoring them for the purpose of this tutorial.

Next section - Write Text

This is not optional. In fact, if you click on "Show Errors" in the upper left, it's showing you that none of this has been filled in.

Mission Introduction Dialog - This is what the contact tells you when you talk to them. Type in "Hi there. I see you're learning to use the mission architect. Glad I could help!" (Yes, it's lame, but you'll see where it goes.)

Mission Send Off Dialog is what you see after accepting the mission. For this mission, just type in "Have fun storming the Castle!"

Compass Active Task Text - shows up in your nav window. Here, just type "Beat stuff up."

Still Busy Dialog - is what you see if you talk to the contact without finishing the mission. Just type in "Shoo."

Return Success Dialog - is what the contact tells you when you see them at the end of the mission. Type in "Thanks, you wonderful being you!"

Click "Mission 1 details" on the bottom right to proceed.

Mission Details

There are two sections here - basic and advanced mission goals. Given this is a basic tutorial, we're just going to touch on Basic Mission Goals.

We want to beat stuff up. Pick Defeat All Enemies. You'll have two choices - Defeat: ... everything on the map (literally defeat all) ... everything in the last room.

Either will work for this mission.

Look to the upper right. If you see "No errors," you should be ready.

Click on Save and Test in the lower right. In the dialog that comes up, pick Save and Test again. It will ask for a file name - call it "Tutorial 1" or something.

Click OK, and select "Accept" in the dialog box.

Now what?

Now, if you're in the main floor of the AE building (with the energy cascade,) you'll see some holograms. By default, they're a generic male form (like in the costume creator.) Had you picked a contact (say, Ms. Liberty,) it would appear like that character. Select "Ask about available missions."

You'll see some of the dialog you wrote. ("Hi, so you're learning to use the mission architect...") Click accept, and it'll tell you to have fun storming the Castle. Click "Leave," and go to the energy fountain int he middle. Like a portal, it'll take you to the map.

Now go beat stuff up!

Inside the mission.

You'll note, up top, that you automatically have an "Exit" button as well as "Architect options." Don't get confused - when you actually do finish the mission, you'll get a "Mission Complete" dialog coming up. (If you were playing a published mission, you'd also get a dialog to rate the mission and send a comment.)

The mission we made should only take a moment to defeat - go finish beating things up, and come back. Hit Exit when finished.

Publishing a story

All right, so this is the rockinist mission ever, and you want to share it with the world! How do you do that?

Go back to the computers that you used to get into the MA to begin with. Along the top, click on "My creations." Look for "World Domination" (or "Saving kittens" or whatever you called it.) Click on it, and you'll see it expand.

Expanding will give you two things - more information (map size, enemies and the like,) and a series of buttons. PUBLISH sends it to the Architect servers. It will take a little time to show up, usually a couple of minutes. This is the one we want.

Note that you can only have three published arcs out there. Yes, this is taking one up. You can have as many unpublished ones as you have space for on your computer.

Er, wait, I don't want that taking one up!

No problem. In the same section, you'll see "My published stories," "My unpublishes stories," "My characters" and "My enemy groups." Once it shows up in "My published stories" (again, it takes a bit as the story is reviewed," you'll get another button that says "Unpublish." Select that, and it will free up a slot.

Now that you've done it once, feel free to go back and explore your options. I hope this little walkthrough has shown you how quick and easy it is to create the basic framework which will let you expand and tell the stories you want.

Tutorial 102: Basic Story Setting Options

Overview

If you haven't done the basic mission creation tutorial guide, you may want to, as I will be using that mission as a basis for this, and possibly future, guides.

All right. We have our basic World Domination (or Saving Kittens) arc. One simple mission. Open this mission up from "My Local Missions."

We skipped multiple sections when we did the walkthrough. Let's go back and look at the first page, Mission Settings. Specifically, we're going to look at optional sections.

Start by going up to the second icon at the top and pick "Save as." Give it a name such as "Tutorial 2." This will preserve your original so you can go back. When editing, it's a good idea to save prior versions before doing anything - don't rely on the autosave button. If you save, you know where you're at.

Choose Mission Settings options

We're not going into custom groups yet - one step at a time. Under Choose Mission Settings, you will see two optional sections:

• Mission Parameters
• Mission complete Clue

We'll look at these individually.

Mission Parameters

Click on Mission Parameters. If you click on the blue square with the quesiton mark, you'll get a simple explanation of the two options in here.

Mission Pacing

Mission pacing refers to how the levels of the enemies change through the map spawns. You have four options.

• Flat - All enemies stay roughly the same level.
• Back loaded - Enemies will start off lower level in the beginning and jump up higher near the end.
• Staggered - Personal favourite. Enemy levels can vary throughout the mission.
• Ramp up - Similar to back loaded, but with a steady progression up in level or difficulty.

The default setting is "Flat."

Time to Complete

If you want the mission to have a time limit (the default is no limit,) this is where you select it. You can't just type in a time, however. You must pick from a list, ranging from 5 minutes to 2 hours.

Your choices are 5, 10, 15, 30, 45, 60, 90 minutes and 2 hours.

Please, if you use this option, be realistic (unless, like Tina McIntyre's infamous mission, you want the chance of failure to be high.) Also, if you use this option, pay attention to the next section, "Additional Text."

Since this is a tutorial on a very small map, set your time to complete to 5 minutes.

Mission Complete Clue.

This is very simple - you have two fields, one of which lets you give a title to your clue ("An interesting find") and a description.

Write text

This section missing description of 5 fields

Additional Text

This section has multiple options. We'll be filling in everything here.

Mission Title

When you go to talk to your contact, often you'll see a title and subtitle - Levantra, for instance in the Rikti War Zone has an example of this with "Introduction to Vanguard, Part 1." This is similar to the "Introduction to Vanguard" at the top.

Fill in "Mission Creation Tutorial."

Mission Subtitle

This is where you'd put in Part 1, Mission 1, Beginning, finale - whatever you want to call your chapters.

Fill in "Misison 1." Yes, it's boring. But you only have one mission.

Mission accept text

This is the "Accept" that you click at the bottom to take the mission. By default, it is filled in with "Accept."

Fill in "Now see what you've done!"

Mission entry popup

This is the window you see come up in many missions - "This office is nice. It won't be nice when you're through with it, but it's nice now," for instance. It's a little opening flavor bit.

Type in "Times must be tough. They seem to have gotten a storage unit instead of a warehouse."

Mission Success Popup

This pops up if you've successfully completed a mission. You don't see these very often, actually, but if there's some action you want to imply ("Soldiers come up and whisk your hostage away," for instance,) that's what you put here.

Type in "Well, that was easy."

Mission Fail Popup

This is the same as the Success popup - but obviously only comes up if you fail. If the mission is able to BE failed (timed, prevent X from being destroyed,) you may consider using this. ("You emerge from the rubble. Time to face the music.")

Since we have a five minute timed mission, go ahead and put in "You wake up... oops, bad time for a nap."

Return Fail Dialog

This is what the contact tells you if you failed the mission. This is a bit more important, in my opinion, if you have a failable mission. You can use it to segue into the next mission, or give a story ending ("Well, you failed, and it looks like they now have a biological weapon. We'll have to hope they don't use it.")

Type in "What were you doing, sleeping? It's so hard to get good help these days."

Running the mission

Save the mission again. We won't publish, since this is just for your own use.

When you look in the mission browser, you should have two, possibly three, World Domination 101 missions. If you look closely, you'll see a file name listed under each. One will be "Autosave," possibly. The others will be Tutorial 1 and Tutorial 2. We just finished Tutorial 2, so that's what we want to run.

Start the mission, talk to your contact, enter the mission...

Then go get some coffee or something. You should have a 5 minute timer to let run down. This will let you see the "failed" dialogs and contact response. After you do, run it again and play it, beating those wuss 5th Column troops. You should see an end of mission dialog box, and different dialog from your contact.

Tutorial 103: Adding a second mission (and beyond)

Overview

The Mission Architect file you've been saving is a .storyarc file. As the name implies, it doesn't have to be a single mission - and I'm willing to bet, more often than not, it won't be. An arc, of course, consists of two or more missions. You've likely run these either as mission arcs or strike forces, task forces, or trials.

Any arc you create can have from one to five missions in it (at time of I14 Open Beta. The restrictions may be changed later through various awards or at the whim of the developers.) This tutorial will expand the "World Domination 101" mission into a two mission arc.

As always, open the most recent local copy of the file on your machine (Tutorial 2) in the Mission Architect. Click on Save As... and save it as Tutorial 3. This is the copy we'll work with.

Creating a second mission

Adding another mission to your arc is very simple. Select Tutorial 3 and hit "Edit," then look at the editor window. If you look to the right of your mission "books you'll see a button that says "Add mission." Click that.

You will now have a new, blank mission called "Mission 2 (1-54)" ready for editing. These titles (Mission 1, Mission 2) cannot be changed, but they have no impact on how anyone else sees your missions. The 1-54, as you might have guessed, is the level range. This will be determined by the critters in your mission - it can change from mission to mission. We'll get into that in a later tutorial.

Page 1 of Second Mission

For now, let's make a second, fast mission. Under Choose Mission Settings, Type in or select the following:

• Enemy Group: 5th Column (1-54). Again, we're ignoring custom groups.
• Map type: Again, we want something small, but we'll pick something a bit bigger this time. Pick Office Abandoned - City of Villains Set.
• Map Length: Small
• Map: Office Abandoned: City of Villains - 8. This is a two story map.

Skip to Write Text, for now. If you want to play with the settings dealt with in 102, come back to do it. We want to get you a second, working mission. Under Write Text:

• Mission Introduction Dialog: We've found more 5th Column for you to clean out. They're in a warehouse down the way. Go get 'em!
• Mission Send Off Dialog: Show those goons who's boss!
• Compass Active Text: Clear out the 5th!
• Still Busy Dialog: Are they gone yet?
• Return Success dialog: Great job, $name, you really showed them!

Page 2 of Second Mission

(We'll get into the dollar strings later.) Now click on either "Mission 2 Details" or the "2" page on Mission 2.

Oh, didn't I mention that? Yes, the "1" and "2" in the mission books actually have a purpose. You don't have to arrow through each mission! If you need to fix an objective in Mission 4 of an arc, you can just click on "Page 2" of your "Mission 4" book, and it'll jump right there!

The first mission was a defeat all. Let's pick a different one - Fight a BossItalic text, under Basic Mission GoalsItalic text. We'll go over each basic goal in the next lesson. Right now, just fill in the blanks.

• Boss name: Put in Bob. Because that smiling guy is just creepy.
• Boss Enemy Group: 5th column (1-54)

Optional settings will be explained in the next tutorial.

Click the first check mark to save your mission.

Testing your mission

Just click Save and Test, right? Well, hold on a minute.

Yes, our first mission was short, and wouldn't be hard to play through to get to your second mission. Before finally publishing an arc, you'll probably want to do just that - play the whole thing through. Right now, though, we just want to see mission 2. How do we do that?

We rearrange the books up top.

The books aren't just for show and quick navigation. If you've just finished Mission 5 of an arc and JUST want to test that, you don't want to play through the first four missions. So, click on Mission 2, hold down the mouse... and drag it in front of Mission 1. The cursor will indicate it's dragging the mission by turning into a hand clenching a bunch of pieces of paper. Anywhere on the "ribbon" in front of the first mission will do.

Note that when you drag a mission it switches places with the one you drag it over. It doesn't insert itself in the order an move everything over, it's a swap-places with another mission.

Now, click Save and Test. Go wipe that smile off Bob's face!

Remember to drag them back into order when you come back, then re-save the storyarc.

Deleting a mission

All right. So you want to delete a mission. Maybe it's so messed up a little tweak won't help. Maybe you accidentally clicked "Add mission" twice instead of once and now have a blank mission. So how do you do it?

For the purposes of the tutorial, click "Add Mission" again. You should now have "Mission 3" available.

Looking at the mission "books" up top, you should see a little red dot next to them. Click that, and it will delete that mission. Take a look at the mission first -- click on the "1" on the book to see the first page, just to make sure you're deleting the right one. In this case, it will still be "Mission 3." It will disappear from your list.

I personally recommend saving your arc before you delete a mission, JUST in case. (Call it something like "Delete M3") -- we're not going to do this for this tutorial, but when you really get into editing, just assume you WILL make this mistake at some point. This little precaution will save you grief and headaches. (Note that you might want to check into CVS systems suggested in open beta for versioning and archiving. Or, you can back up your MA files stored locally on your hard drive in some other manner, such as putting on the list of files to be backed up with your back-up software.)

Tutorial 104: The basic mission objectives

{Work in progress}

Tutorial 105: Tips & Tricks

Some of these have been mentioned before. This is purely a reference.

Rearranging missions

You can rearrange your missions by dragging the "book" (Mission 1, etc.) up top over to the front. This allows you to test missions out of order.

This swaps the mission you're dragging with the one you drag to. For example, if you have an arc with missions A-B-C-D-E and drag D to A, the new order is D-B-C-A-E, not D-A-B-C-E.

Errors And Jumping

Ah, so things don't always go as planned. If you look in the upper right hand corner, you'll see a little speech bubble and, hopefully, "No errors" in grey. If there IS an error (forgotten mission objective or other, required piece of text, for instance,) that will turn bright orange and give you "Errors found."

Well, that's not useful. But wait! Before you go laboriously digging through your missions to try to figure out what's wrong... click on that bubble. You'll see that it expands, listing specifically what's wrong!

Now, that's useful. But wait, there's more! Yes, for no extra charge, it will actually take you TO the area that's causing problems! Just click on the specific error (say, "Boss Name not provided") and faster than you can say COH/V, it takes you to the page the error is on and highlights the field in red for you to fix!

Handy little bubble, isn't it. You'll find little tricks like that all over.

In fact, you'll find it just below, too, in the Mission Description. Don't like some of your dialog? Click on it -- it'll take you to that line so you can edit it. Want fewer (or more) glowies to find? Click it! Nice little time saver, wouldn't you agree?

But the clicking doesn't stop there. See the Pen Icon on the top ribbon? Click it! It will take you to the Story Settings page (the page the pertains to the whole arc). Clicking the 1 and 2 of each mission book will also take you directly to those pages.

Tricks with Text

Right Click Formatting

Aside from copying and pasting, you can do several things to bring attention to specific pieces of text -- much like the orange text seen in more recent story arcs. How?

Click and drag the cursor over a section of text to highlight it, then right click. A menu will appear. From this, you can not only copy and paste, but add things like emboldening, color, text size, or text replacement.

Text replacement and variables

Text Replacement is available, for starters, from the menu when right clicking on highlighted text. You have five options from the menu - Hero Name, Class, Origin, Level, and Supergroup. But that's not all. You can manually put in *other* variables in some text and dialog fields. For instance, you have a boss you want to notice the player and say "Get him" or "Get her!" How do you do that?

• $supergroup: that person's supergroup, if they have none, then "no supergroup" will show up
• $class: their Archetype ($archetype also works)
• $level: their Level
• $origin: their Origin
• $name: their name ($target also works)
• $heshe or $Heshe: substitutes "he" or "she" depending on gender (capitalized will cap the substitution)
• $himher $Himher: same as above, using "him" or "her"
• $hisher $Hisher: same as above, using "his" or "her"

And so, "It's $name! Get $himher!" will automatically replace the $name with the name, and say "him!" or "her!" where appropriate.

Mix and match

OK, we're not into "Creating custom critters and groups" yet, but one of the things to be aware of is the size of the mission. To keep it interesting, find critters that "logically" fit with your group and already exist in game. You can fill out a group without filling up your space that way.

The big stuff loads once

Again, not something we're touching on yet, but if you load a custom group and see it's taking half of your space - don't worry. It will not do that for each mission. Instead, it loads *all* the critter descriptions first. Individual missions are small, typically. It will refer to the information throughout the rest of the missions.

Republish!

Need to fix something in a published arc, but don't want to lose ratings? Use the Republish button. It takes a little time to update - but it saves your information. The down side, of course, is that your local files aren't updated. Just the copy on the server... so if you missed something, you do have to edit it all again.

But I only want one!

When the MA says an ally may be placed with group "single" (Page 2 > Advanced Mission Goals > Add an Ally > Settings > Enemy Group Difficulty > Single) then that means that the ally will appear alone (not with a single enemy).

Clue/Goal Order

The creation-order of the mission goals will dictate the order of the clues in the player's clue-list. Make sure to create and link goals according to the proper required order for both your story and the clue-list!

Tutorial 200: Advanced Mission Goals

Overview

All right. So now you're off and running. You can fight a boss, you've got a mission created, and now you want to stretch your creative muscles a bit. It's time to look into Advanced Mission Goals.

Each goal will be presented as a walkthrough. Some will be shorter than others, but they will all have their own walkthrough covering all options, required and optional. Optional goals will be listed as such, and are listed as such in the MA Story Editor window.

For now, let's start our basic mission we'll be using as the basis for all of these walkthroughs. For each walkthrough, you'll want to "Save as" a new copy, with some designator - such as "Tutorial 200" - in it. Ready? (Obviously I won't be explaining this, this is just a basic starting point for each tutorial to come.)

Create and Save the Sample Walkthrough Mission

Story Settings Window

• Story Title: Advanced Goals Tutorial
• Story Description: Walkthrough of Advanced Mission Goals
• Story Contact: For Contact Name, Type, and Category and Name, just pick something you like. You'll be looking at them quite a bit.
• Optional settings: We'll ignore both Parameters and Clue.

Click to advance to Mission 1 Settings.

Mission Settings Window (Page 1)

• Enemy Group: STANDARD tab > 5th Column.
• Map Type: We want something simple. WAREHOUSE STANDARD - CITY OF HEROES SET
• Map Length: We don't want it too small. WAREHOUSE STANDARD - CITY OF HEROES SET - 3. Why? If you look to the right, you'll see a few settings. This one isn't horrendously large, and has settings and room for things in the front, middle and back.

Ignore Mission Parameters and Mission Complete Clue, as well as Additional Text.

• Mission Introduction Dialog: This is tutorial series 200, number
• Mission Send Off Dialog: Good luck!
• Compass Active Task Text: Advanced Tutorial Series
• Still Busy Dialog: How's it going?
• Return Success Dialog: Grats!

Click on Save As (the check-mark-in-an-open-box icon under the ribbon at the top) and name it "Tutorial 200 Framework" or some such.

Tutorial 400: Mission Architect Browser Interface

Overview

The story browser - the small window with so many possibilities. This is the first window you see when you click on the Mission Architect computer. This little guide is here to help you try to get the most out of what you see.

So what is the story browser?

It's your gateway to endless possibility.

OK, that sounds a bit too ad-like for me. The Story Browser (my name for it) is your main interface for finding, browsing, creating and managing stories in the Mission Architect. It lets you search for stories others have written, check up on your own, see how your published stories are doing, and manage your custom characters and enemy groups.

It's a lot to ask from a little window.

First, a little terminology:

• Published arc: These are arcs that a player has created and sent to the Architect servers. These are available to anyone, on either side (hero or villain) on any server. This does not mean you can team cross server, just that the arcs will be visible regardless of what server you are on.

• Local arcs: These are arcs that are not published, but stored locally on your hard drive. You can email these files, upload them to a supergroup website or the like, and anybody can download them and play them - but they cannot be rated, and will not earn MA ticket rewards.

• MA Tickets: This is an award given while playing through and submitting published arcs, unless those arcs become Hall of Fame or Dev's Choice arcs, in which case they won't drop Tickets, but regular drops of recipes, enhancements, and salvage. These tickets can be turned in at the Architect Engineering building for rewards such as salvage, recipes, and unlockable maps for use in your own adventures.

Your first look

When you first open up the window, you're going to see stories others have been submitting, as well as several tabs. The pages are limited to 25 story arcs per page. But we'll get to that in a moment.

Across the top, you have a few tabs. We'll go through them a tab at a time.

Browse and Play Tab

This is the active tab when you first open the mission architect. This allows you access to published arcs. You can simply scroll through the pages, but that's most inconvenient. Instead, use the Search Options tab.

Search Options

Clicking on Search options expands the screen slightly. You will have one line as a text area, just like a normal search. Just like the forum search, it will try to match the string itself. So if you search on the string POS, you'll find (as examples) arcs Positron has submitted, arcs named The Power of positive Thinking, arcs with "They find their positions reversed" in the description and the like - anything that has 'pos' in it.

Use this window for any text you think will describe what you're looking for. If you're looking for missions about Kheldians, look up "Kheld" (since it might be shortened.) Looking for a particular poster? Well, be careful, as the "by" line gives the name of the character the person was on when they posted it.

You'll see the text that you're filtering by show up next to "Search options" in blue (Filtering by: Text: pos, for example.)

The selections below it, though, are most useful.You have three dropdown menus and two radio buttons. Let's take a look:

= Rating

Every arc can be rated. They will be anywhere from zero to five stars. In addition, there are two additional ratings - Hall of Fame (a "players choice") and Developer's Choice.

Every option except for "All" acts just like the team search window - you can choose multiple settings (for instance, if you just want to see unrated and five star missions, you can select both and not see missions without those ratings.) The only one that doesn't act that way is "All," which clears all the other selections.

Length

Length gives you five choices, as well as "All." Very short, short, medium, long, and very long. The arc length is not dependant on the number of missions, but instead is based on the maps used - so you could have a two mission arc that's "Long," because of huge, multilevel maps, or you could have a five mission arc that's showing as "Very short."

Morality

This, I think, will get a lot of use. By default, it's set to "All." But this is also where you can search for missions of Villainous or Heroic inclination - so those of you making missions, be sure to mark this in the editor if you've got a target audience in mind! Note that any character can play any mission whether a hero playing a villainous mission or vice versa. The Morality setting is a suggestion.

Only show me arcs

Here we have two radio buttons that will help you find new content. You can select either one of these so you only see missions you haven't played, or that you haven't voted on. They are exclusive - if you select one, the other cannot be selected. And of course, just click on whichever IS selected to remove that selection completely.

Search

When you have the options you want, click the "Search" button on the right and it will bring up your results. To start a whole new search, click "Clear" and it will set it back to defaults.

Pages

As mentioned, just scrolling down the list will give 25 missions. There are sure to be many more than that published. You can just jump to a page of results by clicking on the page number. There is, at time of writing, no page back/forward functionality.

Sort tabs

There are also three tabs you can sort by. Rating, Length and Date. Click on each to select it as a sort criteria. Click again to switch between ascending and descending results.

The mission list/search results

Now for the meat of the window - the mission (or search result) list. The results look pretty straightforward:

• Mission title
• By Publishing character (space) Publish date (space) Length: Rated: (raters)

So an example listing would look like:

• The Rockinist Arc Ever [+]
• by publishing character 05/15/09 Length: Long Rated **** (57)

There are also three other things you may see that highlight Celebrity Author, Dev Choice, and Hall of Fame. Hall of Fame missions will have a gold background and a green "badge" with a yellow star by the play button. Developers Choice will be a lighter green and have a gold trophy on a red background.

Now, while all this is good information, it may not tell you enough to help you decide if you want to play it. Here's a tip - click the plus sign in mission listing. The information will expand, and give you more information, like so:

The Second Rockinist Mission Ever

by Leet Missioneer

Arc ID 449

Rated **** Excellent! (5)

Length: Medium

First published 9/19/2009

Morality: Villainous

Mission 1: Large size map, level range 31-45, contains Ally

Mission 2: Medium size map, level range 10-25, contains Patrol

Mission 3: Unique map, level range 1-4, contains boss

Mission 4: Medium map, contains Collection

Mission 5: Unique map, level 40-50, contains Boss

Enemy groups: 5th Column

Description: It's a really really good mission, really!

Celebrity Authors will also have an "About the author" listing.

As you can see, you now know the enemy groups (including "Custom") you will face, you can see the level range jumps around a lot, get an idea of what you'll be facing (bosses, glowies, allies, etc.) and the designer's comments, as well as that it's a Villainous mission.

When you find the mission you want, click "Play." You'll get a warning that you're entering Architect mode. Hit accept. The hologram in front of you will turn into a contact - talk to them, and gooooo into the liiiiight...

Exiting a mission arc

There are two ways to exit a mission arc.

1. Architect options: This window will pop up a new screen where you can send a comment, rate the mission and quit the arc.
2. Team window: Just like in Ouroboros, select "Quit task force."

Story Browser: My Creations Tab

This window is mostly the same as the "Browse and play" window, including how arcs are presented and how you can get information on them. What you'll notice differently are four tabs.

• My local stories
• My published stories
• My characters
• My enemy groups

We'll go over these, and the files they may make on your local system.

Local system?

Yes. PC users (sorry Mac and Cedega/WINE, I have no idea about you guys) will find, if you go to your installation directory (by default c:\program files\city of heroes) a few new folders once you make missions:

• \Missions
• \Custom_Critter
• \CustomVillainGroup

The contents of these are related to what you see in the tabs. First, though, a bit of information.

Each account (not character) can have up to three published missions on the Mission Architect. Having one of those missions rated Developers Choice or Hall of Fame will move them from your published slots, and free one up. On the other hand, you can have as many unpublished missions as you want - these are just local files you can share. Each local mission can be up to 110 kb in size.

Now, let's look at the tabs.

My Local Stories

These are all of the files stored locally in your /mission directory. They end with a .storyarc extension. There is no limit, other than disk space, that we've found yet on these. This will also include, by the way, an .autosave while you're editing, so you will see duplicates at times. This is also a live list - if you're in the Story browser and someone emails you their .storyarc file, drop it in and it will show up immediately in your Local Stories.

They are listed, by default, as such:

ARC NAME

filename

So if you're editing an arc - we'll call it World Domination 101 -- and saving versions as you go, you may see five copies of it, but the filename would be different:

World Domination 101

File name: WD101

World Domination 101

File name: WD101-1

World Domination 101

File name: WD101-2

World Domination 101

File name: WD101-3

World Domination 101

File name: Autosave

Note that other that autosave, you must name them manually.

My Published Stories

This is much the same as the regular "Browse and play" section, except you have three buttons - Unpublish (which can switch to Republish,) Edit, and Play. If you pick Edit, be sure to use SAVE AS... to save the file with another name. Yes, it will autosave, but should anything happen with republishing (say, having all your arc slots full,) it will cancel and the changes will disappear.

Aside from being an easy way to find and replay your own missions, it's a fast place to reference your rating, too.

My Characters

Location: /Custom_Critter

File extension: .critter

This can be a long list. Every custom character you create will go into this list. If you just want to edit one, this might be the fastest way to go.

Note that if you have no local files and edit someone else's mission or a mission file from another system, the information on the critters WILL show up here. To save them, be sure to save them in the editor ("Save as...") or they will be gone when you restart (until you reopen the mission.)

My Enemy Groups

Location: /customvillaingroup

File extension: .cvg

Every group you create, whether it has custom critters, a mix of standard ones, or a combination of the two, becomes a Custom Villain Group (sometimes called in the interface an Enemy Group and by Developers as a Critter Group). This file takes all the information of each critter and compiles it into a Custom Villain Group.

Just like the Critter mention above, it can make a cached copy from an editable mission.

Tutorial 500: Mission Architect File Structure

Summary

TL;DR info:

If you want to delete a critter group from your story arc, do it from the story arc you're creating first, THEN from the critter creator if you want to completely get rid of them, or they will be recreated. The mission itself - local or published - holds all the information about them, and can be imported into other missions from that.

Overview

How the Mission Architect files interact, and custom critters.

This is more of a "for curiosity's sake" posting than anything, but it may save some frustration for some when trying to get rid of a critter group.

There are potentially four sets of files that your City Of client will create when working with a custom critter group for a mission. To a point, they duplicate each other. These are files that end in .costume, .critter, .cvg and .storyarc.

OK, now the details. I'll be giving examples of these from a mission created while the mission architect was in testing. All of these files, by the way, are text files - despite the ending, you can open them with Notepad or a similar text editor. Make a copy and open it if you want to look - I suggest a copy so that if you make changes, or the editor adds its own formatting, it doesn't screw up the file itself.

OK, let's look at the files:

.costume files

Location: (COH install directory)/Costumes

Extension: .costume

We've had these since we could save costumes at the tailor. They're simply a description of the costume you've created and decided to save for use elsewhere. Of all the files, this one has no impact on mission creation or group recreation. The costume description is imported into the .critter file. These are for your own character's use as well as your critter group. These have no information about who uses them, the group or anything similar, they are purely a description of costume (for gender.)

Sample:

{
CostumeFilePrefix male
HeadScales  0,  0,  0
BrowScales  0,  0,  0
CheekScales  0,  0,  0
ChinScales  0,  0,  0
CraniumScales  0,  0,  0
JawScales  0,  0,  0
NoseScales  0,  0,  0
SkinColor  239,  173,  132
NumParts 27
CostumePart ""
{
	Geometry Tight
	Texture1 Cargo_01
	Texture2 none
	DisplayName P887196332
	RegionName "Lower Body"
	BodySetName Tight
	Color1  0,  0,  61
	Color2  51,  0,  0
	Color3  0,  0,  61
	Color4  51,  0,  0
}


CostumePart ""
{
	Geometry Baggy
	Texture1 Tunic_02
	Texture2 none
	DisplayName P566009771
	RegionName "Upper Body"
	BodySetName Baggy
	Color1  51,  0,  0
	Color2  31,  31,  31
	Color3  0,  0,  61
	Color4  51,  0,  0 

.critter files

Location: (install directory)/Custom_Critter

Extension: .critter

These are a description of each custom critter - ally, hostage, contact or villain - that you make.

These copy the costume file you use directly into the .critter file, and add a header with their name, villain group, description, difficulty and other pertinent information - really a small block of information.

{
Name "Red Assault Unit"
Description "The Redshirt assault squads have little but rifles, tricks, and guts."
VillainGroup Redshirts
Difficulty Standard
PrimaryPower Mission_Maker_Attacks.Assault_Rifle
SecondaryPower Mission_Maker_Secondary.Sonic_Debuff
TravelPower None
Rank Minion
Ranged 1
Costume
{
	CostumeFilePrefix male
	HeadScales  0,  0,  0
	BrowScales  0,  0,  0
	CheekScales  0,  0,  0
	ChinScales  0,  0,  0
	CraniumScales  0,  0,  0
	JawScales  0,  0,  0
	NoseScales  0,  0,  0
	SkinColor  234,  160,  137
	NumParts 27
	CostumePart ""
	{
		Geometry Tucked_In
		Texture1 Cargo_01
		Texture2 none
		DisplayName P887196332
		RegionName "Lower Body"
		BodySetName TuckedIn
		Color1  0,  0,  0
		Color2  85,  0,  0
		Color3  0,  0,  31
		Color4  85,  0,  0
	}


	CostumePart ""
	{
		Geometry Jackets_Sleeves
		Texture1 !Chest_FancyShirt_01
		Texture2 none
		DisplayName P566009771
		RegionName "Upper Body"
		BodySetName Jackets
		Color1  85,  0,  0
		Color2  85,  0,  0
		Color3  0,  0,  31
		Color4  85,  0,  0
	}

.cvg files

Location: (install directory)/CustomVillainGroup

Extension: .cvg

These are where you can start to see the size of custom critters adding up. For my rather small group (3 minions, 2 lts, and a boss,) the file is 51kb. Which may not sound like much in this era of terabytes of storage, but due to network and loading considerations the final .mission size can be no larger than 110 kb. Watch your group. This incorporates all of the prior files into itself - the .critter and .costume files. (As an explanation, when I say it incorporates them, I mean specifically that it imports all of the information from the prior files - the .costume file's contents get added to the .critter file, which gets added here.)

{
DisplayName "Redshirt 2"
CustomVillains
{
	ReferenceFile BRAWLER.CRITTER
	Name Brawler
	VillainGroup Redshirts
	Difficulty Standard
	PrimaryPower Mission_Maker_Attacks.Super_Strength
	SecondaryPower Mission_Maker_Secondary.Willpower
	TravelPower None
	Rank Minion
	Costume
	{
		CostumeFilePrefix male
		HeadScales  0,  0,  0
		BrowScales  0,  0,  0
		CheekScales  0,  0,  0
		ChinScales  0,  0,  0
		CraniumScales  0,  0,  0
		JawScales  0,  0,  0
		NoseScales  0,  0,  0
		SkinColor  234,  160,  137
		NumParts 27
		CostumePart ""
		{
			Geometry Pants_China
			Texture1 Pants_Poofy_01
			Texture2 none
			DisplayName P887196332
			RegionName "Lower Body"
			BodySetName Pants
			Color1  0,  0,  0
			Color2  38,  26,  0
			Color3  0,  0,  61
			Color4  38,  26,  0
		}

and so on.

.storyarc files

Location: (install directory)/Missions

File extension: .storyarc (and .storyarc.backup)

Now, here's a trick for you.

Go and create a couple of quick critters and groups. They don't have to be fancy. Add them to a mission or two -- you don't even have to run it. Just save it so you have .mission files.

Now go into your City of Heroes directory (or test directory, depending on where you're trying this out) and move the Costume, Critter, and CustomVillainGroup files to the recycle bin, so all you have left are the custom missions with your group(s) in it.

Go to "My creations," then before opening anything up take a look at "My characters" and "My enemy groups." You'll see "no custom characters found."

Now go to your mission (under my local files) that has the custom group in, and select edit. Exit the MA and reenter - then go back to My Characters and My Enemy Groups. You'll see your custom groups again.

If you now exit the game and go to your install directory, however - you won't see the CustomVillainGroup, Critter, or Costume directories recreated. The .mission file on the server holds all the information needed to completely recreate the group. Even if you go to another computer that has never run the mission architect before, while you won't see unpublished missions (those being local files,) if you hit "Edit" on a published mission - the custom critters and the group they're in will be available to you to use. It does not recreate the files locally unless you hit save. (Also, if you have no local files, you will not have them available again until you edit the published mission. They are, however, cached for your session.)

So, functionally, what does all this mean?

Other than generic interest - if you want to get rid of an enemy group completely, delete them from any mission they're used in first, then go ahead and delete the .critter and .cvg files they're in. (The .costume is purely optional.)

Please note - Local vs Cached

Testing seems to indicate that if you have a LOCAL group or character of a specific name, and open up another local mission without those files but with a similar name, your local files will overwrite the information in the file you're editing.

Example: You have a local mission you've worked on called "My great mission." In it is a villain group called "ABC" with a character named "Fred," a tank.

Your friend sends you a mission to look at called "Blastermania." He also makes a group called ABC that happens to have Fred, a blaster, in it.

When you go to open the file for editing, YOUR version of XYZ, with Fred the Tank, will appear.