[PatrickW]

In this topic, the concepts of Design Your Own Mission and the menu strcuture to access these concepts are explained. The current description is rather small, but this will be extended and elaborated in the coming period.

Each part is described in a seperate post in this topic for making navigation easier.

• Concepts in DYOM
• Mission Menu
• Settings
• Player
• Objectives
• Actors
• Cars
• Pickups
• Objects
• Tools

This post has been edited by PatrickW on Sunday, Mar 8 2009, 19:56

[PatrickW]

Concepts in DYOM
This will be a very brief introduction into the concepts of DYOM. With this basic knowlegde, the rest of this document and the inline helptexts should provide you enough information to make full use of the possibilities of DYOM.
The most important things in the missions you create with DYOM are the objectives. If you have achieved all the objectives of a mission, the mission is passed. For your missions, you can set a number of objectives, which the player of the mission must achieve in sequence. For each objective you can choose one of the four available kinds: A checkpoint that must be reached, a actor that must be killed, a car that must be entered or a pickup that must be picked up.
Besides the objectives you can also add other items: actors (either enemy, friend or neutral), cars, pickups and objects. Items don't have to be available during the whole mission. You can design them to appear after a certain objective has been achieved and hide them after a certain objective has been achieved.
In designmode one of the objectives is "selected" which is indicated by a yellow marker, instead of the normal white marker over an objective. By default, the last added objective is selected, but you can select another one from the objective menu.
When you add an objective, they will be inserted behind the currently selected objective. When you add items to the game, they will appear during the mission after the currently selected objective has been achieved. Afterwards, you can use the "SPAWN" and "HIDE" menu-options to determine when the item spawns and disappears. These options change them to the time when the currently selected objective is achieved.

[PatrickW]

Mission Menu
In the mission menu you can load a mission, save a mission, clear the current mission and play the current mission. When you save a mission, you can choose from 8 slots, which is similar to GTA savegames. Missions are stored in “San Andreas User Files”. The files are named "DYOMx.dat", where x represents the slotnumber. These files can be distributed to other people, so that they can play your missions too. When loading a mission you have to choose from the same 8 slots, and the mission is opened. If you want it you can still edit it, or select "Play Mission" to play it. Finally there is "New Missions" which clears the current mission, and allows you to start designing a new one.
You can upload missions that you create to our website: http://dyom.gtagames.nl, which will also contain lots of missions by other people that you can download and play.

[PatrickW]

Settings
The settings menu allows you to modify some generic aspect of your mission: The name of the mission, The ingame introduction texts of your mission, Time of day that the missions starts, the weather, the minimum and maximum wanted level during the mission and possibly a time-limit for the mission. You can also configure the options to have riot-mode active during the mission, and the option to display a mission-clock and your final time (Timed mission).

[PatrickW]

Player
This lets you determine the start position of the player in your mission, also the looks and the weapon of your player can be specified. Note: Leave some room behind the player start positions, as CJ will spawn behind the dummy player that marks the startposition.

[PatrickW]

Objectives
Probably the most important aspect of your missions are the objectives. These are the tasks that the player must perform to pass the mission. If there are no objectives defined, the mission is passed as soon as it is started. Objectives can be Cars (which must be entered to complete), Actors (which must be killed to complete), Checkpoints (which must be reached to complete), Pickups (which must be picked up to complete, Cutscenes (no action from player involved, just a widescreen for some time) or Teleport (Player will spawn at this location immidiatly after the previous objective). Various properties can be modified for each of the objective types.

[PatrickW]

Actors
To make a mission more exiting you can add actors. These actors don't have to be killed to complete the mission, but they can be configured as enemies or friends. Various properties can be edited for these actors. Actors can appear in game from the start of the mission or after a certain objective has been reached. Actors that should appear from the start of the mission, should be defined while the "Player-dummy" is the selected objective. If another objective is selected, the actor will appear ingame, after that objective is achieved. You can change this "spawn-trigger" by selecting the "spawn actor" menu item, while standing close to the actor you want to change. It wil then spawn after the objective that is selected at that time. Similary you can determine the point in time when the actor must be hidden (which by default is the end of the mission) with the "hide actor" menu-option. It causes the actor to disapear after the currently selected objective has been achieved.

[PatrickW]

Cars
Similar to the actors above, these cars don't have to be used for the mission the be completed, but they can be used by the player. The moment they appear/disappear in game works the same as for actors.

[PatrickW]

Pickups
These are pickups that the player can use to complete the mission, but he doesn't need to. The moment they appear/disappear in game, works the same as for actors.

[PatrickW]

Objects
There is a large selection of objects available which you can use for all kind of purposes. Just be creative.
Positioning the objects is done with the cursor keys. If you hold the JUMP key (default LSHFT), you can use the cursor keys to adapt the height of the objects and is orientation. Holding FIRE ( default LCTRL), you can adapt the XY tilt of the object. The moment they appear/disappear in game, works the same as for actors.

[PatrickW]

Tools
These options will make designing a mission easier.

This post has been edited by PatrickW on Tuesday, Mar 10 2009, 20:24