Sorry for the delay guys, I've been a bit layed up lately. Just bought a new house, three bedrooms and an extra room upstairs. Well me and the wifey decided to put the computer upstairs last thursday. Well after talking to the dsl guys I got my 4 MG connection and the computer was rocking hot....So I wanted to go down the stairs and tell the wife to come up and look how much faster 4 Mgs is compared to our previous 1.5.....well about half way down the stairs I missed a step and surf boarded on my arse all the way down the stairs.....
Lucky I didn't break something, but just now getting to where i can sit still long enough to post something.
First thing you have to decide is what kind of campaign your going to write:
There are several options limited only by your imagination. But these are some of the options I thought of when I first started writing campaigns>
Go with the standard game campaigns:
Good idea, but a little boring and after you have played it a while, its fairly repetitive. Its of course much easier since the files are already written for you.
Go with the standard game campaign but alter it to your liking:
This is the (middle ground ) if you will and probably your best bet. Simply open up the SCR and RND files within your editor and look at the files themselves. Compared to the SH2 days, this is much more visual and no code writing is needed. Just drop in the ships and put in the sailing data and so forth. Its just like writing a multiplayer mission, only you have much more flexibility with the campaigns. The SCR file is of course scripted. It will appear no matter what happens. The RND file is random elements in the campaign that will happen, but more randomly. You can set this yourself. If your a (newbee) to writing campaigns, its better to start with something already written and then just add to it. It will give you examples to look at and see how the makers of the game set up the ships and groups.
1. Hint: Look over all kinds of things in here. Things such as minefields, sub nets, ship groups, single shipping. Pay attention to the sail times, when they disappear, and in the case of mines, their depths.....look over everything in the standard files, then start building on it however you wish. ( most important ) - Make sure your groups don't collide in the ocean. They do, and you'll get a backlog of ships at patches in the middle of the ocean. Check their courses and ETA's at various locations, make sure they don't overlap with other ships or convoys. This is one of the most time consuming things in making a campaign. You don't want convoys colliding at mid ocean, its unrealistic and gooffy to look at. It also has a cascading effect throughout the entire campaign.
2. Hint: There is a way to create convoys and set their distances quickly. Right click on the commadore of the convoy you put in and click arrange group. This will alllow you quickly to set the distance of the ships appart from one another.
3. Hint: If you want to make duplicate ships quickly in the campaign files:
Hit control "c", then control "v". this will place an exact duplicate of the ship and then you can alter it quickkly.
4. Hint: If you place a convoy in the wrong place or other group of ships,. Simple drag the convoy commadore to the correct place and click "arrange group" after right clicking, then arrange the ships and they will move to the NEW spot on the map.
5. Hint: BACK-UP, BACK-UP, BACK-UP. I can't say that enough. It will really piss you off to put in a 70 ship convoy and have a squirrel get on the transformer outside your house and blow a fuse. Then you will blow a fuse after you have lost your data//////
I usually back up ever time I do 5 new things in the files. Ships, aircraft, or whatever....
Create an ALL NEW campaign......
This is my favorite. More time consuming cause I don't have anything to start with. You really have to know what you are doing to try this. Cause when you open the mission editor, your basically starting with a "blank" ocean. I like it because I can make it historical and use only actual convoys that sailed. I can do anything I want, but this is the long version to the same goal. The last campaign I wrote took me almost 9 months to do this way. But I think was well worth it....The same hints apply above, however you have to be well versed in how to place ships and aircraft, how to do waypoints and pay particular attention to whether the ships are 'delete on last waypoint" or not and when....
Either way you go, even with the hints, your looking at a 6 month job for the newbie at doing this, even with altering the standard campaign to your liking....It takes me a little less cause I'm practiced at it....
The creating your own, will take much longer.
but you'll get better satisfaction from it.
Hint: Make sure to have your messages in the campaign corrispond to the events in the campaign. The messages_en file is where you add messages in the campaign. Pay attention to how they are arranged and in what order, notice they are time sensitive. And in chronological order....keep to that. But make sure they match the other layers in the campaign so your not giving our false information to yourself in the campaign.
Hope this helps....