That's interesting, but you know what I wish? I wish they'd add a short cut scene that shows the -outside- of that station. Of you traveling to it.
Actually, that might be difficult to pull off, as they'd have to design a whole bunch of things for that. And animate them. They may in fact be planning on eventually doing just that (as I think they've wanted space-based or moon-based stuff for a long time) but they might not be able to devote the resources currently away from whatever they're doing now.
A more realistic alternative would be not to have a cut-scene per-se, but to have a still image of the station as the loading screen to the mission. Like the loading screens you get as you enter each City Zone. They have random images or partial screenshots that serve as that for generic missions. But I've also seen them "pin" certain images as loading screens to certain specific missions as well. If they just had a concept image painted of the space station and added that in as a load screen to that specific mission, that might help with the sense of immersion to add just the right amount of "Oh THAT's where we're going!" feel to it. Sure, you're still going to wind up in "generic tech lab A-6" but because you had the preview image of the space station, you now can imagine that the lab map is on board that station rather than some random underground area.
One of the things that inspired this line of thinking was an AE arc I ran when a post was made about it on the CoH boards. It was called The Tannhauser Gate (that's a link to the CoH forum post where I saw it, here.)The creator of the arc had actually gone to the trouble of making a voice acted trailer for the story to introduce you to the concepts behind the story. They largely used Orenbega maps (and showed footage of same in the trailer) but they also had a still-image in the trailer that showed a gigantic tower that was where all of the action was taking place within. And I must say just having that one image really helped in the immersion factor.
SAAAAAAY... (light bulb gets brighter still)
Maybe that is something to ask the Devs if they could give us for Architect mission design that would actually be DOABLE with the current tech!
Allow us as mission designers in AE to select specific load screens for our missions!
Like - say, if you have a mission that you've designed where you're going to the map of Atlas that has the fashion show in it? That you can select the load screen that goes with it. Or have load screens that involve themes of villain groups. If you're going up against Circle of Thorns, have an image of one of the more picturesque sections of Oranbega as the load screen. Or if you've set up a mission in a tech lab in Neutropolis, in addition to the text telling the players where they are going, you could show them the specific part of town they are going to. Even though they won't necessarily see the outside of the tech lab. By showing them a still image of the neighborhood it's located at in the form of a load screen, then you've given the players of your mission more of a sense of "we traveled through this area to get here."
I wonder if we could add custom images to our missions? Hmmm... No wait... no that's not doable... Any imagery in the game has to be generated from the game engine or included as pigg file images stored on each person's game client. In order to add custom images, even simple ones, to An AE mission arc would require... well, a complete re-write of the game engine and a public place to store files and such that the game client could access.
Still, being able to access specific loading screens that already exist in the game client and "pin" them to the front of missions would help greatly in ways I've mentioned above.
What do you think? I could clean up this post and post it in the official Mission Architect forums and see if it gets a good response.
Actually, that might be difficult to pull off, as they'd have to design a whole bunch of things for that. And animate them. They may in fact be planning on eventually doing just that (as I think they've wanted space-based or moon-based stuff for a long time) but they might not be able to devote the resources currently away from whatever they're doing now.
A more realistic alternative would be not to have a cut-scene per-se, but to have a still image of the station as the loading screen to the mission. Like the loading screens you get as you enter each City Zone. They have random images or partial screenshots that serve as that for generic missions. But I've also seen them "pin" certain images as loading screens to certain specific missions as well. If they just had a concept image painted of the space station and added that in as a load screen to that specific mission, that might help with the sense of immersion to add just the right amount of "Oh THAT's where we're going!" feel to it. Sure, you're still going to wind up in "generic tech lab A-6" but because you had the preview image of the space station, you now can imagine that the lab map is on board that station rather than some random underground area.
One of the things that inspired this line of thinking was an AE arc I ran when a post was made about it on the CoH boards. It was called The Tannhauser Gate (that's a link to the CoH forum post where I saw it, here.)The creator of the arc had actually gone to the trouble of making a voice acted trailer for the story to introduce you to the concepts behind the story. They largely used Orenbega maps (and showed footage of same in the trailer) but they also had a still-image in the trailer that showed a gigantic tower that was where all of the action was taking place within. And I must say just having that one image really helped in the immersion factor.
SAAAAAAY... (light bulb gets brighter still)
Maybe that is something to ask the Devs if they could give us for Architect mission design that would actually be DOABLE with the current tech!
Allow us as mission designers in AE to select specific load screens for our missions!
Like - say, if you have a mission that you've designed where you're going to the map of Atlas that has the fashion show in it? That you can select the load screen that goes with it. Or have load screens that involve themes of villain groups. If you're going up against Circle of Thorns, have an image of one of the more picturesque sections of Oranbega as the load screen. Or if you've set up a mission in a tech lab in Neutropolis, in addition to the text telling the players where they are going, you could show them the specific part of town they are going to. Even though they won't necessarily see the outside of the tech lab. By showing them a still image of the neighborhood it's located at in the form of a load screen, then you've given the players of your mission more of a sense of "we traveled through this area to get here."
I wonder if we could add custom images to our missions? Hmmm... No wait... no that's not doable... Any imagery in the game has to be generated from the game engine or included as pigg file images stored on each person's game client. In order to add custom images, even simple ones, to An AE mission arc would require... well, a complete re-write of the game engine and a public place to store files and such that the game client could access.
Still, being able to access specific loading screens that already exist in the game client and "pin" them to the front of missions would help greatly in ways I've mentioned above.
What do you think? I could clean up this post and post it in the official Mission Architect forums and see if it gets a good response.