Registered: Aug 2001
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Making missions with the same intensity as the show

I'm currently (without B5 ships, though, but I suppose I'll refine distances and time frames when the demo is released) designing a mission that is based off of the confrontation during the last part of the "Shattered Dreams" episode. I'm using statistical data from the b5tech.com website to judge distances from ships and such, as well as timing ship movement and other things to get it as in sync with the actual TV episode (the ambience in the fight was absolutely amazing, especially when the Churchhill was in flames and rammed right into that other ship that was with Clark's forces). Is anyone else working on a similar project? This is my first time using FRED2 but I think I'll get the hang of it fairly quickly, and I do have experience using some other mission editors. As soon as I get a decent level that works exactly how I want it to, I'll post it here for you guys to try it out with B5 ships. Also, I was wondering if anyone has data on the music that was played during that part of the episode and where I could find say the script for the episode as well. After seeing that show and this mod, well, I just couldn't resist putting some of my ideas on to paper, so to speak. My current plan is to have the player be a pilot for B5 forces, so I'll see how that plays out and have a Clark's pilot perspective for the mission as well.

Last edited by ColonelWest on 08-10-2001 at 03:55 AM

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Registered: May 2001
Location: Canada
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Hmmm, lemme know how you get the Churchil to RAM the destroyer... I sure dunno how to do it

the Episode's name was "Severed Dreams" I think and you can download the music for that episode in mp3 format from musicofb5.com

go to season 2 section (right?) and then severed dreams... I think its 2 parts...LONG track this one...10 minutes each I think

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Registered: Aug 2001
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Thanks for telling me it was "Severed Dreams" and not "Shattered Dreams", I'm somewhat of a Babylon 5 cherry. Anyway, I have sort of a technical question for the team to ask. I was going to script the Starfury actually LAUNCHING out of the B5 station. You know how they are dropped from the hangers on the side of the station, I think that would be really neat. Timing it with maybe seeing the Starfuries around you launching just to the side of your screen is absolutely essential to ascertaining the ambience I need for the level. I'm going to have to get a copy of that episode to get it down to the very mite of accuracy. That's one thing I didn't like about some FS2 levels... you just started in the middle of nowhere, no sense of time passed or anything. You're just PLOP... there... but it was offset by the feeling you have been traveling in formation with your group by the starting position of your wingmen, which would be, I guess, a suitable dumbdown from launching from a small hanger on the side of the station. Also, is the current station really FIVE MILES LONG?!?! Sheesh, I wonder what ship(s) I'm going to use to simulate that.

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Registered: Aug 2001
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Remember the mission in FS2 where that Orion class destroyer tries to ram the Colossus? I'll try and recreate that effect accept, well, cooler, just takes a little time toying with some FRED2 commands.

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Registered: Jul 2001
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In FS2 there is almost zero collision damage...

they bunked that mission though... they didn't set a minimum distance for the orion to self destruct.... they didn't even force the Collosus to fire at it... i've seent he orion push the Collosus arround abit before it got destroyed.

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Registered: Feb 2001
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You can set the ship to ram by setting it to kamikaze in the ships misc...

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Registered: Aug 2001
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That's why lots and lots of testing is going to go through this mission before it goes out... timing is absolutely essential to faking the collisions and subsequent explosions of the two ships. I can't even really do anything accept put a layout, design the brass lining of the infrastructure of the mission, write the script... and most importantly, research. Does anyone know how far the jumpgate from Babylon 5 was? Right now, I'm simulating the relative sizes of the B5 jumpgate, Babylon 5 itself, the four Omega's, and the various Starfuries that were in the battle with Ulysses, Orions, the Knossos, and the Colossus... I'll get to the event scripting, mission personale scripting, and addition of the fun party knacks (like the Minbari coming in at the end, placing ships inside of hangars, other uniquities that will make the mission a good one) at a probably much later date. Right now I should be worried about gathering correct information to mimic the episode as well as I can.

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Registered: Aug 2001
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Or you could always set the ships to kamikazie... hehe. I need some coffee. (Reads more FRED2 walkthroughs)

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Registered: Jul 2001
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yes i completely forgot about that!

that mission in FS1 when the HOL cruiser "Tries" to ram that orion is pretty good i think it explodes right when it touches. Doesn't move half way into it then explode...

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Registered: Jul 2000
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When trying for that extra special explosion, to give it a level of coolness that just can't other wise be acheived.

You'll need a small blank model (or a small fighter will do if the player is going to be far away).

Now what you do is set the small "ships" (or a small model of a black cube if you want to make one) along the larger one where you want the explosions to take place. Then set them non-targetable.

Make the ships jump in a few moments before you want an explosion to go, and then have it explode on arrival. That way you can create a chain of controlled explosions with out having to many ships in the mission at once (they are destroyed before the next ones are warped in, prolly have no more than 5 ships in exploding at one time).

For this to work however, you need to have the larger ship stationary and no exactly where it is going to be.

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Registered: Jul 2001
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that would take... a while to set up.

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WOW. I just played my first version of the level with only some very primitive scripting, no music, no pilot chatter, and fighters from just the four omegas (I excluded the B5 fighters except for me) and it worked out ALMOST perfectly. Besides the Colossus' intervening in the fighting (a scripting mistake, I think) with it's super badass beam weapons, the four Orions had a good ol' fashioned slugfist fight. The Ulysses didn't do much damage to the ships unless them swarmed them... which, they did, after briefly tangling on their ways to attack the opposing fighters (I'm planning on the B5 squads to provide anti-fighter support while the opposing Omega squadrons actually carry out the strikes on the ships, with the exception of ever so freedom-fighting Ivonnova... hehe, it'll be really funny scripting a Ulysses exploding when kamikazing into the enemy Omega and an escape pod floating from the wreckage). Beams flying everywhere, enemy and friendly craft being splashed, and most importantly, the trajectories of the Orions were RIGHT ON. If I would have programmed the Churchill to go kamakazie at a given sexp, it would have done so BEAUTIFULLY... I mean the positioning was dead on with the show, even though it didn't show the relative position to Babylon 5... the Churchill was facing the left side (I forget the fancy navy term for the ship) of the other Omega... and of course both stupidly veered away like fighters getting ready to collide, although the final score was 24 enemy fighters down, 19 friendlies down, two enemy destroyers gone, two at critical condition for the good guys (one with 1% (The Churchill) and the other down to 34%... and good ol' Colossus with an 84% hull rating... I need to now:
*Add more ships
*Position them better
*Add music
*Add background
*Script events
*Script dialogue
and most importantly
*Research
*Study FRED2
*Read the rest of my stupid "The American Nation" assignment
*Do some essays and other stupid artsie-craftsie related things for my block class that are due in four days
*Sleep

Goodnight

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Sheffield UK
Posts: 1913

i dont know if its a flaw in the b5 script but the ship the churchill rammed "roenoke??" that how i'll spell it. It wasnt destroyed in the ram...just badly damaged....cos you see later in the battle it is still being attacked before sheridan says "roenoke your badly damaged surrender and let us take on prisoners, we promise safe passage ....BOOM" then it is destroyed...the Agrippa is taken out by the alexander a few seconds earlier.

of the 2 hyperions you see one being taken out by the station and star furies (like goes offline and flames everywhere - not blown up) but the second is a mystery .....

edit :

doh im getting mixed up you dont see the hyperion being taken out at all. i would suggest 1 is taken out by the station - maybe in a big bang and the other is made in operable by very damage from fighters - for the sake of your mission anyway

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Last edited by CptWhite on 08-10-2001 at 10:13 AM

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Registered: Apr 2001
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In the show you see the Roanoke being rammed by the Churchill. and the AGRIPPA is the last vessel of Clarks forces being shot to pieces. However , when they all talk it is the agrippa destroyed by the churchills ramming and the Roanoke was the vessel shot by station and Alexander.
This one is also supported by the interrogation when sheridan is accused of murdering the crew of the roanoke .

Therefore it is OFFICIALLY believed the 3d-artist accidentally exchanged the names of the two Omegas when they made the animations.

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Registered: Aug 2001
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Does anyone know where I can buy a VHS of the episode (or possibly, well, download it from the internet) so I can etch every little detail from it? Also, would it be safe to assume that of the 36 fighters that the Omegas carried, maybe a squad of those were Thunderbolts? I can remember from the episode that the Aurora's and T-Bolts that flew in didn't really have more than a staggered formation, so I'm trying to mimic that in the mission. Yet AGAIN how is it possible to get an mp3 and convert it to mission music?

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I'm recalling certain aspects in a crystal-clear manner while some are still pretty fuzzy to me, but does it seem like the jumpgate in other episodes varies in distance from the station? The most recent episode on Sci Fi was the one with Psi Corps tracking down the renegade to Babylon 5 (the dude who went crazy from being training in attack probes)... I remember because instead of the B5 Shield & Sword, there was the Omega sliding up onto the Psi Corps's trapezoid with the words, "Trust the Corps" or something like that. Really smart idea from JMS, I laughed when I saw it, and wondered how many other people really noticed it because it happened so fast.

On the b5tech site, there isn't any reference to the top speed/cruising speed of the Omega's ion/particle accelerator thrust engines, so if time is warped in that episode, the only REAL way I can find the "X" for alot of the variables needed to judge speed and time, I HAVE to find out the distance from the station to the jump gate.

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Registered: Jul 2001
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i know the churchill had some t-bolts coz the surviving fighters of the churchill are stationed at B5 and that included some t-bolts

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Registered: Aug 2001
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Well, I added more ships and that seemed to horribly imbalance the gameplay. I mean the two enemy orions fell FAST, and the enemy fighter cover got completely crushed. I'm going to take a little assumption room here and put both the Churchill and the Alexander at around half-fighter compacity for the battle, which would likely give an explination to the Churchill still launching fighters but not being at full compacity... again, on the wonderful B5 tech site, it said that an Omega could, under emergency conditions, be able to launch ALL their fighters in about two minutes. I don't know how long the battle lasted, but if the Churchill couldn't get all of it's fighters out (maybe because of damage), then it's releasal time would have been significantly hindered. I also included some breaching pods (six) which will provide another interesting dimension to the mission (shooting a certain number down in order to keep the station from being over-run), even though those got completely blown to bits.
In order to establish balance, I'm probably going to:
A) Set the friendly Auroras to be damaged at the start
B) Cut down on the number of friendlies
C) Set the AI for the enemy Orions to a higher level than that of the station and the friendly Orions

Well, I'm off to eat and do some reading, then to research more on FRED2

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Registered: Jul 2001
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well the alexander's fighters can be damaged coz the destroyer was runin from earth ships and at the start at the episode u see it havin a fight wiv a hyperion and the fighters would of been damaged and sum destroyed in that battle.

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Registered: Aug 2001
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Right now, ship numbers are going to be as follows:
-Clark's Forces:
*48 Auroras (100% hulls)
*24 Thunderbolts (100% hulls)
*6 Breaching Pods (100% hulls)
*Two Omegas (100% hulls)
-B5 Defense Force
*Babylon 5 (100% hull)
*Churchill (60%-80% hull)
*Alexander (80%-90% hull)
*48 Station Defense Aurora's (100% hulls)
*24 Omega Attack Aurora's (60%-80% hulls)
*12 Omega Attack Thunderbolts (60%-80% hulls)

With the extra targets to persue, and spacing between objectives mission wise, I should hope to be balancing the mission... already the visuals are pretty cool, being in a 96 fighter dogfight is definitely exhilerating :^)... even if it is just with Hercs and Ulys.

I'm also re-structuring orders and such, and am going to group fighters for specific purposes to be executed to establish less of a nasty-ass orgy of death where stupid enemy fighters fly through a meat grinder and don't even make it to their ship targets. I've also got to replace alot of stuff, which will be even more fun.

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