Better Briefings - work in progress

[Feathered_IV]

I'm really loving the new career.  I haven't enjoyed a flight sim so much in years.

 

One area I thought could do with a little embellishment was the  mission briefings.  The default layout didn't appeal to me quite so much.  I would imagine the commander coming out to deliver the morning's briefing and right off the bat telling the assembled crews: "Gentlemen, the airfield is 80 metres above sea level!"

He'd then go on to talk about waypoints to somewhere.  Then the weather.  Finally as an afterthought he'd say: "Oh, and the target is a rail depot...  Byeee!"

 

Hopefully I can manage to improve things a bit. 

 

Thanks to Ankor's great new gtp extractor, I was able to read the files and start doing some work on the briefings and their presentation.  The aim is to see them auto-generated in a more natural way.  Remove modern air combat phrases and words, correct grammar, improve hud subtitles, delete unnecessary gamer notes in block capitals, and never see the phrase "action point" ever again.

 

Early days yet, and things are still very much a work in progress.  However here's a few shots of things so far. 

 

After a day of messing about, I found I was able to add randomised historical quotes at the beginning of each briefing.  Rise of flight had a similar arrangement in the career mode, and I found I could copy some of the RoF  config settings into the BoX briefing template that would allow them to be read from a separate "Cites" file.  I really need a lot of them to make it varied and interesting.  I think I wrote about 60 for an RoF mod, and something like that here would be ideal.  The really cool thing is it is possible to have separate quote files for each phase of the campaign.  So you could have historical information appear solely about the Stalingrad chapter for example.  Or entirely about Moscow or Kuban.  It would really help set the tone and be quite educational too. 

 

Other things like action point is changed to Target Area.  The capslock briefing message about getting rtb permission is removed.  This was a bugger because removing it made the entire text disappear.  Luckily I found that adding the "}" symbol as an over-and-out restored the rest of the text.  Very happy about that.

 

Hope you like it.  I'll add more shots as things progress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 26, 2018 by Feathered_IV

[SCG_Space_Ghost]

Will definitely be using this at some point in the future.

[Brano]

I'd like to see your work included in some future official update. You should contact Sasha (B6).

[Bando]

Looks promising Feathered. Thanks for your time in this.

[keeno]

Looks really promising!

 

Cheers

 

[Stlg13/Sgt_Schultz]

Sounds awesome Feathered, can't wait for this! .

[MarcoPegase44]

Quote

 

Hello,

It would be interesting for the resumé of the mission to appear in a real squadron diary and a pilot's logbook with mission dates hours of victory and total flying hours of war inspired by those of time.
PWCG already does this partially

The log file contains the information PWCG already uses in part, it must be technically possible, but it's a big job and you have to be computer literate, that's not my case.

 

 

 

 

[Feathered_IV]

Getting there.

 

I've been concentrating on fleshing out the briefings so they read a little more human.  All the standard information is beneath the introduction, so players will hopefully get the benefits of both. 

 

I've also spent a lot of time trawling for quotes too, and hope to have about 60 per chapter.  Rise of Flight shipped with 10, chosen from people such as Napoleon Bonaparte, Martin Luther King and Confucius (seriously).  I'm hoping to include ones that are pertinent to each part of the campaign.  So far there's about 40 each for Moscow and Stalingrad.  I've got a lot of reading ahead of me though for Kuban.  If anyone can contribute some quotes for that I would be very grateful.  Post them below or provide a link and I can add them in if they help shed some light on the times.

 

Here's a shot of one of the latest briefings:

 

 

[Bando]

Looking very good. 

[Indigene]

As a professional writer, and a person who loves to write, I very much appreciate little things like this. I do hope you finish this because I like what I've read. I see a few sentences that could be polished a little more, but you're shooting for a more conversational approach. Keep up the good work! :-)

[RadioCitizen]

Is there a release on this? I would KILL to have this mod. Give the career mode some actual humanity to it!

[Extreme_One]

Great job.

 

Should be incorporated into an official patch! 

[I.JG3_CDRSEABEE]

Maybe add some general orders from both dictators around the dates they were issued.