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Some initial feedback on the Mission Builder


jurgy

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I know it's soon after the release, but I wanted to get out some early feedback on the Mission Builder because I love the idea behind it.

Checkpoints are a really useful feature to quickly test changes in the mission plan. I'm not yet sure how extensive it is if the whole structure before the checkpoint is changed, but after some short tinkering with it, I found that it atleast works if the nodes after it are changed. The Celestial Body window is a great way to see the parameters of the nodes. However there are some things I encountered that I'd like to see added and I found some bugs.


Bugs

  • Inconsistent behavior with the 'Ignore Surface Velocity' flag between the 'Landed Vessel' and 'Splashed Vessel' nodes.  
    • Current Behavior: I both cases when toggled on, the 'Max Surface Velocity' Slider and input box disappear. Then when the node is deselected and then reselected, even though the flag remains on, for the 'Land Vessel' node the slider and input button are shown while for the 'Splashed Vessel' node the two are hidden.  
    • Expected Behavior: The behavior for the 'Splashed Vessel' node is expected. The input box and slider should be hidden.
    • Urgency: Low
  • The Celestal Body window in the GAP (Graphical Action Panel, right side bar) remained open for longer than expected.  
    • Current Behavior: After editing a node that uses the Celestial Body Window and clicking another node the Celestial Body window remains but goes to black. Only after clicking on a third node (or going back to the first one), the window disappears.  
    • Expected Behavior: Close the window immediatly after clicking on a second node. Optionally if that second node does use the Celestial Body window, keep it open and switch the view to the correct body.
    • Urgency: Low
  • Can't immediatly launch for the launchpad right at the start of the testing.  
    • Current Behavior: After creating a mission with the VAB/SPH enabled and creating a vessel and saving it in a previous test, when in the Astronaut Complex overview and clicking on the Launchpad all parts are locked. This is fixed by first going into the VAB/SPH and launching from there.  
    • Expected Behavior: Allow to launch directly by clicking on the launchpad.
    • Urgency: Low
  • 'Dialog Message' and 'Display Message' don't support newline characters.
    • Current Behavior: Newline characters/line breaks do show up in the message input box, but do are ignored/removed in the game.
    • Expected Behavior: Line breaks should not be ignored in the game. 
    • Note: I noticed  that the newline character and tab (\n and \t respectively) are interpreted in the input box, kudo's for supporting that, but could it be the source of the bug?
    • Urgency: Medium
    • Edit: '<br>' does work, but this introduces the 'Input box caret position'-bug I describe bellow.
  • Input box unfocuses on scroll
    • Current Behavior: After editing an input box, scrolling in it, and clicking on a specific location the whole text get's selected as if the box was not focused/selected.
    • Expected Behavior: Clicking should move the caret to the position in the text of the click.
    • Note: All input boxes select their whole text on focus. In most programs that behavior is reserved for double click, the first click moves/places the caret.
    • Urgency: Low
  • A node was sticking to the cursor, not sure what caused it.
  • Reclaiming a vessel with the VAB/SPH locked can get a player stuck during a mission.
    • Current Behavior: After reclaiming a vessel, there's no way of progressing further in the mission.
    • Expected Behavior: Roll back to the last 'Spawn Vessel' node.
    • Urgency: High
  • Vessel requirements not checked properly on vessel load.
    • Current Behavior: When loading a ship in the VAB, not all requirements are checked propperly. Example; 'Vessel requires x stages' stays at 0.
    • Expected Behavior: Check all requirements
    • Note: A workaround is to add and remove a stage.
    • Urgency: Low
  • A small bounce on the launchpad triggers the failstate during the Dawn of Space Age mission (tested at the third, the Jebnik 1, launch)
    • Urgency: Medium
  • Input box caret position doesn't always match with where the text appears.
    • Video.
    • This bug is caused by inputting newline characters ('\n' or '<br>') instead of pressing enter. Each character in these tags offset the caret by one, so 2 for '\n' or 4 for '<br>'.
    • Urgency: Medium

Feature requests

  •  Some nodes should be able to output their state or completion variables.
    • Urgency: Low

Examples:

1) Use the output of the Time of Mission node as a variable in a Dialog node.

2) Use the the body that statisfied the 'Any Celestial Body' option in a previous node as an input in a following node so that mission can dynamically adjust to different planets.

3) Use the ship that statisfied a previous node as the requirement for the following nodes. If a mission is structured as follows: Reach orbit --> Land on Kerbin. The player can launch a ship into orbit, then instead of returning to Kerbin, can just create a new ship, hover for a second and then land the ship.

4) Use the time the mission took as modifier for the score.

  •  Add an option for the node 'Land Vessel' to also include allow splash down. This can ofcourse be done with a separate 'Splashdown' node, but this clutters the objective window for the player.
  •  Concurrency for events. What I mean with this is adding a way to support event loops that don't interfere with the main objective tree.

Example:  
I was trying to have an event happen every 5 minutes (such as a dialog), and could achieve this with the following setup: 'Always True' --> 'Display Message' --> 'Time Since Node'(5m, "Display Message") --back to the Display Message node-->  
And set the 'Catch All' flag at the 'Always True' node, and disable the 'Activate only once' flag for the other two nodes.

This worked and the event did fire every 5 minutes, but if I then connect other goals to the 'Start Node', they are somehow getting disabled (the goals that is, not the event loop). Presumably this is caused because the event nodes are the active nodes.

  • A 'collapse all' and 'close all' button in the GAP.
    • Urgency: Low
  • Add a "Revert to vehicle assembly" option during the mission.
    • Urgency: High
  • Add an option to limit the number of allowed launches so that you can force the player to create one ship and complete the whole mission with it. Just found out you can do this with a 'Spawn Vessel' node.
  • When adjusting the 'Mission Start Time' Box at the Start Node, open a Celestial Body viewer so that we can see the position of the sun with respect to the planets or a moon with respect to their planet.
    • Urgency: Low
  • Add an option in the 'Parts Selection' window to allow or disallow whole categories (for example with right mouse button on the Group Icon). Apparently the hotkeys are Shift + Click and ALT + Click
  • During a mission, add a 'Revert to last vehicle creation' or 'Revert to last Checkpoint'.
    • Note: This is different than 'Revert to launch' since this should also work after saving/loading and does not require the player to be in flight. This can also act as a temporarily bandaid solution to many bugs that are currently in the game.
    • Urgency: Medium
  • Add icons to nodes so you can easilly see what type of node it is without having to click on it.
  • Add a way to support vessel restriction groups 'Must have a docking port', 'Must have a science module' and 'Must have an LV-T30 or LV-T45'
    • Urgency: Low
  • Ability to copy and paste nodes. Sometimes you want to create highly similar nodes, so copy pasting would be nice This is already in the game :)
  • Add an 'Any Orbit' option to the Orbit Node. Sometimes you don't really want to specify an orbit, but use the objective as a in-between step which doesn't really require any specific orbital parameters.
    • Urgency: Low

Suggestions

  • Replace the 'Vessel: Unknown' text with 'Vessel: Any' if the Vessel option for a node is set to 'Any'
  • Why is 'Modify Score' a separate node when the 'Change Score' can do the same thing. Furthermore, why is adding score not an option in the 'Modify Score' node? Lastly, it is unclear what has a higher precedence level Completion Bonus or Modify Mission Score. I suggest to combine the two nodes and remove the Completion Bonus option. Add an 'Add score' option to the pull down menu of the current Modify Mission Score.
  • During a mission, the mission pannel is quite cluttered. I think it would be nice to remove/hide objectives that were completed in previous check-points (i.e. after completing a bunch of objectives with a vessel, if the mission requires the player to create a second vessel, hide the objectives of the first one).
  • Input boxes for Dialog nodes are really small, only 3 lines (on 1920x1080 resolution). Perhaps scale a bit with the content.

 

 

Update 1 - 14/03/18

I will continue updating the lists as I come across other things

Added 4 bugs

Added 4 feature request

Added 2 Suggestions

Added an example to the Variables feature request

Update 2 - 14/03/18

Removed a feature request about creating vessels during a mission, since this is already in the game, but added a bug that also has to do with the 'Spawn Vessel' node.

Update 3 - 15/03/18

Added 3 more bugs.

Added 2 Feature Requests

Added 2 Suggestion

Added urgency measure.

Update 4 - 20/03/18

Updated the two newline bugs with info from @Lupi

Edited by jurgy
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On 3/13/2018 at 4:11 PM, jurgy said:

I know it's soon after the release, but I wanted to get out some early feedback on the Mission Builder because I love the idea behind it.

Wow, that's great!

And welcome to the forums.  :)

 

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3 hours ago, Snark said:

Wow, that's great!

And welcome to the forums.  :)

 

Thanks! I've been moderately active on the reddit community, but I figured that since these sorts of posts on the forum are more likely to be seen by the dev's I'd place it here :)

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On 3/13/2018 at 5:11 PM, jurgy said:

 

  • Add an option in the 'Parts Selection' window to allow or disallow whole categories (for example with right mouse button on the Group Icon).
    • Urgency: Low

Try with Shift + Click and ALT + Click

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On 3/13/2018 at 7:11 PM, jurgy said:

Bugs

  • 'Dialog Message' and 'Display Message' don't support newline characters.
    • Current Behavior: Newline characters/line breaks do show up in the message input box, but do are ignored/removed in the game.
    • Expected Behavior: Line breaks should not be ignored in the game. 
    • Note: I noticed  that the newline character and tab (\n and \t respectively) are interpreted in the input box, kudo's for supporting that, but could it be the source of the bug?
    • Urgency: Medium

Use <br>. I can't remember how i found that out, but <br> is for line breaks. Be aware, though, it makes your text cursor move weird. Sometimes it will be 3 or 4 characters off from where you're actually typing.

 

Edited by Lupi
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