MA Open Beta: Soon™

[AncientSpirit]

FN, you just asked a VERY important question ... one I learned the answer to the hard way.

Once you're published, ONLY edit the version in your My Published Stories section.  Where you would see a save key under the Local Story tab you will get a REPUBLISH tab instead.  That saves all your existing ratings.     (The first time around I made my revisions to local, and published them again ... putting a second copy on my arc on the live test server with the same name, different ID number.  When I realized what happened, I had to Unpublish the first version.)

[BlueBard]

Any one else having crashing issues while working on your missions? It's happend to me 4 or 5 times over the past 2 days.

This happened to me my first try.  Which leads me to ask: how well does the auto save function work?  It appeared to be turned off by default.

[Funeral-Pyre]

Also, I'm currently working on my first arc.  Is there any way to add dialogue to a boss within a mission?  I would like the bosses to say something, even if it's just "Oh no, it's [character name]."  I haven't been able to find that option.

[Viking]

To answer a few questions with what I have seen:

1) Regarding the auto-save, it is definitely worthwhile to make sure that during your time working with the Mission Architect, the bottom of the screen is affirming for you, "Autosave is On."  If you have not yet saved your work to a named local file, and the autosave feature is on, it will save your work locally to your hard drive (somewhere in your CoH directory) under a filename of autosave.  (At least, I believe it would be under that filename, based on how the game refers to it in-game.)  After you choose to deliberately save your work to a filename of your own choosing, however, the autosave will keep saving to that filename at regular intervals.

2) Regarding boss dialogue, yes - it is most definitely powerful to give basic dialogue to bosses that you insert into your missions.  After you have inserted a boss as a basic mission goal, check out some of the details for said boss under the tab that has been created for it.  This includes three sub-tabs:
Optional - Boss Settings
Optional - Boss Text (this is the one you're interested in for this case)
Optional - Boss Clue

By opening the Boss Text tab, you will find that you can insert text that the boss can say at various cues:

Boss Unaware Dialog - the Boss will say the text when you're in range, but before you've drawn his aggro.

Boss Attacks Dialog - the Boss says this once he notices you.

Player Deals Damage to Boss Dialog - the Boss says this when you first hit him.

Boss at 3/4 Health, or Boss at 1/2 Health, Boss at 1/4 Health, Boss Defeated Dialogue - these are all intervals where the Boss can say something when his health hits that marker.

Boss Defeated Player Dialog - The Boss says this when HE defeats a PC or one of the PC's pets.

[Funeral-Pyre]

Thanks for the info!   

[Funeral-Pyre]

To answer a few questions with what I have seen:

1) Regarding the auto-save, it is definitely worthwhile to make sure that during your time working with the Mission Architect, the bottom of the screen is affirming for you, "Autosave is On."  If you have not yet saved your work to a named local file, and the autosave feature is on, it will save your work locally to your hard drive (somewhere in your CoH directory) under a filename of autosave.  (At least, I believe it would be under that filename, based on how the game refers to it in-game.)  After you choose to deliberately save your work to a filename of your own choosing, however, the autosave will keep saving to that filename at regular intervals.

2) Regarding boss dialogue, yes - it is most definitely powerful to give basic dialogue to bosses that you insert into your missions.  After you have inserted a boss as a basic mission goal, check out some of the details for said boss under the tab that has been created for it.  This includes three sub-tabs:
Optional - Boss Settings
Optional - Boss Text (this is the one you're interested in for this case)
Optional - Boss Clue

By opening the Boss Text tab, you will find that you can insert text that the boss can say at various cues:

Boss Unaware Dialog - the Boss will say the text when you're in range, but before you've drawn his aggro.

Boss Attacks Dialog - the Boss says this once he notices you.

Player Deals Damage to Boss Dialog - the Boss says this when you first hit him.

Boss at 3/4 Health, or Boss at 1/2 Health, Boss at 1/4 Health, Boss Defeated Dialogue - these are all intervals where the Boss can say something when his health hits that marker.

Boss Defeated Player Dialog - The Boss says this when HE defeats a PC or one of the PC's pets.

I can't seem to locate a Boss Dialogue options tab.  The only place I see a tab is in the edit character, and there is no option there.  Help!

[Viking]

On the second page of a mission, using the Mission Architect:

1) Basic Goals - Fight A Boss.  Click this option, and it will add a tabbed window at the bottom of the queue on the left-hand side of the screen.  Scroll down to find it.

2) This window, when it first appears, will default to showing the following:

Boss
Boss Name (starts empty, you need to fill this in)

Boss Type (two tabs are available, Standard and Custom.  It defaults to Standard.  Regardless of which one you pick, a drop-down menu will prompt you to pick what group the Boss is from.)

Optional - Boss Settings (This is a tab.  Click on it to have it expand to show additional options that you can select.)

Optional - Boss Text (This is what you are looking for!  This is a tab.  Click on it.  It will expand to show the assorted fields that I'm talking about.)

Optional - Boss Defeated Clue (This is another tab.  Click on it to have it expand to show fields that you can use to insert text if you want to add a Clue that will show up when the Boss is defeated, or the like.)

Hope that clears things up.

[Bugbear]

1) Yes, even if certain content is recommended to be done by heroes, or villains, or either, it can still be done by either heroes or villains.  Just not a combination of both, since that would require a Mission Architect site to be present in a cooperative zone.

There is an AE building in the RWZ.

I had a question for people who had been "republishing" their stories - in so doing, have you been unpublishing your story first?  What is the process for editing and republishing a story that you've already published?

Go to "My Published Arcs", select the arc you wish to update, select "Edit", edit as desired, select "re-publish".  Note that when editing a published arc, "re-publish" will occur everywhere that "save" occured when editing locally.

[Funeral-Pyre]

On the second page of a mission, using the Mission Architect:

1) Basic Goals - Fight A Boss.  Click this option, and it will add a tabbed window at the bottom of the queue on the left-hand side of the screen.  Scroll down to find it.

2) This window, when it first appears, will default to showing the following:

Boss
Boss Name (starts empty, you need to fill this in)

Boss Type (two tabs are available, Standard and Custom.  It defaults to Standard.  Regardless of which one you pick, a drop-down menu will prompt you to pick what group the Boss is from.)

Optional - Boss Settings (This is a tab.  Click on it to have it expand to show additional options that you can select.)

Optional - Boss Text (This is what you are looking for!  This is a tab.  Click on it.  It will expand to show the assorted fields that I'm talking about.)

Optional - Boss Defeated Clue (This is another tab.  Click on it to have it expand to show fields that you can use to insert text if you want to add a Clue that will show up when the Boss is defeated, or the like.)

Hope that clears things up.

Thanks!