Support for GUI-based debrief

[Frost_Salamander]

I just stumbled across this comment from @stgatilov and was wondering if the GUI-based debrief was implemented.  Turns out is wasn't, so consider this an official feature request

My own requirements aren't terribly complicated - just the ability to either:

• display a page or pages similar to the briefing
• show just a custom image (e.g. a newspaper article or something)
• display a readable like in the game (again the newspaper example works here).

Not sure if it should display before the stats screen or after?

I've only put about 2 minutes of thought into this, so I imagine others will have more to add.

Also, I'm scared of working with GUI files, so making it as simple as possible would be great (especially if it's just to display an image).

 

Edited April 13, 2023 by Frost_Salamander

[Amadeus]

I would definitely love to see something like this. It would be a great way to write a cliffhanger or lead-in to a subsequent FM, and I would have used this for A Good Neighbor were it an option at the time. 

Ideally, it should also allow for custom music to be played; different from the music played during the briefing

And yeah, when it comes to GUIs, simplicity is always best. These suckers are complicated and I have spent way too much time lately diving into these.

[joebarnin]

Official support within DM would be great, but I suspect it could be done now using something like this:

• Create "go to location x" as the last objective in the mission. This is a "controlled by external script" objective.(assuming the last step in the mission is to go to a location)
• At location x, create a triggle_multiple that calls a script
• The script checks that all other objectives have been met. If so, display the GUI debrief page(s). Then, when the player finishes reading, set final objective to Complete. Mission will end.

This assumes it is possible to display an arbitrary GUI in the middle of a mission. For my WIP, I want a debrief, so I'll experiment with this.

[Frost_Salamander]

4 minutes ago, joebarnin said:

Official support within DM would be great, but I suspect it could be done now using something like this:

• Create "go to location x" as the last objective in the mission. This is a "controlled by external script" objective.(assuming the last step in the mission is to go to a location)
• At location x, create a triggle_multiple that calls a script
• The script checks that all other objectives have been met. If so, display the GUI debrief page(s). Then, when the player finishes reading, set final objective to Complete. Mission will end.

This assumes it is possible to display an arbitrary GUI in the middle of a mission. For my WIP, I want a debrief, so I'll experiment with this.

I did something like this for Hare in the Snare, although it plays a video instead of showing a GUI.

[freyk]

You dont have to be scared to create a gui, just put the gui-file in a folder, in the fm folder. And follow the guide on our wiki.

I only dont know how to show the gui after missions ending.

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=GUI_Scripting_Language

Edited April 13, 2023 by freyk

[datiswous]

Thanks @Frost_SalamanderI wanted to request this as well.

13 hours ago, joebarnin said:

This assumes it is possible to display an arbitrary GUI in the middle of a mission. For my WIP, I want a debrief, so I'll experiment with this.

Interesting idea. Should be possible.

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=A_Full-Screen_Slide_in_Mid-Game

I have been thinking of making a campaign and then moving the finished objectives and loot etc. Over to the new map (if possible) and immediately end it. Between the 2 map files you can have a briefing, which would become sort of the debriefing.

Edited April 14, 2023 by datiswous

[MirceaKitsune]

Yes please: I've wanted something like this for a long time! One thing that always makes me sad in TDM is when a mission just... abruptly ends: Obviously every FM has an ending, but I never liked just transitioning to a stats screen as if nothing you did in the world mattered. I'd absolutely love a debriefing GUI just like the briefing one, where you can either have text or an image slideshow with music and voice-over which would be even better! Maybe some old FM's can be updated to use this too, I'd totally replay them just for that.

One additional idea: Since FM's with multiple endings are something I always wished for and would love to do myself, support for multiple debriefing GUI's would be ideal, so the kinds of objectives you completed can execute a different one or skip / add certain passages. Absolutely hope the team can consider this, should be just a GUI execution hook to implement it so why not

[datiswous]

2 Ideas:

1. As a temporarly workaround would it be possibe to override the mainmenu_debriefing_video.gui file ? Since it's just a gui it might be possible to place a different kind of briefing gui there.

2. An idea is to place a debriefing button in the mission succes screen, so you can replay the debriefing.

[stgatilov]

https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6509

Which stages of debriefing (GUI and video) should happen first?

[Frost_Salamander]

4 hours ago, stgatilov said:

https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6509

Which stages of debriefing (GUI and video) should happen first?

Is it possible for the mapper to choose which comes first?

[MirceaKitsune]

22 hours ago, Frost_Salamander said:

Is it possible for the mapper to choose which comes first?

If that is made an option, it should be done for both the briefing and debriefing screens. Currently in every briefing I've seen, video comes before the text pages: It would be most consistent to do the same for the new GUI.

[stgatilov]

In the latest dev17026-10712, GUI debriefing is supported.
It works exactly the same way as GUI briefing.

It would be great if someone tries it

For the nearest future, I'd like to support passing information from game script to GUI debriefing.
So that you could show different things in debriefing depending on what player did in the mission.

[MirceaKitsune]

Thank you for the lovely change! I wonder if anyone can let FM authors know about it: I think this is a great opportunity to update old FM's if their authors are still around and willing to... if anyone does maybe drop a mention here, I'll be happy to replay them for this addition alone.

[datiswous]

21 hours ago, stgatilov said:

For the nearest future, I'd like to support passing information from game script to GUI debriefing.
So that you could show different things in debriefing depending on what player did in the mission.

Is it already possible to pass information from the briefing to the mission? I don't think I ever saw this implemented apart from the starter-location selection.

 

18 hours ago, MirceaKitsune said:

Thank you for the lovely change! I wonder if anyone can let FM authors know about it: I think this is a great opportunity to update old FM's if their authors are still around and willing to... if anyone does maybe drop a mention here, I'll be happy to replay them for this addition alone.

TDM is currelently in early dev, maybe a bit soon to start implementing in missions? I think it's better to wait for beta, so no changes will be done to the system.

Edited April 15, 2024 by datiswous

[datiswous]

On 3/28/2024 at 10:43 PM, Frost_Salamander said:

Is it possible for the mapper to choose which comes first?

I could be wrong, but I think you could build a button-controled (de)briefing which shows a video on the last slide.

Edited April 15, 2024 by datiswous

[MirceaKitsune]

5 hours ago, datiswous said:

TDM is currelently in early dev, maybe a bit soon to start implementing in missions? I think it's better to wait for beta, so no changes will be done to the system.

Obviously the change will only work in last night's dev snapshot and onward. But missions can already start implementing this: It's just that older TDM versions won't see the debrief screen and only future players or dev users will enjoy them.

[stgatilov]

7 hours ago, datiswous said:

Is it already possible to pass information from the briefing to the mission? I don't think I ever saw this implemented apart from the starter-location selection.

That is interesting question.
I think no?

In principle, I guess I can cover it as well.
If I want to expose persistent info from mission as gui vars, I can as well copy some gui vars into persistent info before mission.

[datiswous]

Another thing, not sure if it's entirally related:

If you have a campaign, you might want to have different maps loaded depending what you do in the mission. Currently there's one specific order, but it would be cool if another map could be loaded. So you could get different debriefings, but also different followup missions based on that.

I don't want to derail the topic, so if needed this could be split into a new feature request.

[stgatilov]

30 minutes ago, datiswous said:

If you have a campaign, you might want to have different maps loaded depending what you do in the mission. Currently there's one specific order, but it would be cool if another map could be loaded. So you could get different debriefings, but also different followup missions based on that.

Are you going to build two separate missions knowing that player will only see one of them?
I think this is "cool in theory", but in reality using such a feature requires tremendous amount of work from mapper, so nobody will use it.

[datiswous]

Ok, but you could also load all maps in your campaign, but in a different order.

Or you could make a copy of the map and change some things. So it doesn't have to be an entirally different mission (which indeed might be too much work).

So for example the first mission has an objective to place the plans to build a bridge over the river in a specific place. Then the next mission has that bridge (map1), or does not have that bridge (map2). Mapper only has to make a copy of the map and remove the bridge (and maybe a small amount of other things).

I just think that having only one specific order is pretty restrictive. But if it's a lot of work to implement it might not be worth it.

Edited April 16, 2024 by datiswous

[boissiere]

Another plausible scenario is where the player has a number of tasks/missions to complete but they can choose to do them in any order - giving the player a bit more agency,

Tied with this, you might want to be able to re-enter a mission - e,g, it's some sort of hub (memories of the 'Pocket Plane' in Baldur's Gate 2 come to mind).

[stgatilov]

As a matter of fact, I implemented passing info from briefing to game and from game to debriefing:

• https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6509#c16671

At some moment I think I should put this info to wiki...

This will be available in the future dev build.

P.S. By the way, you can also override which .map file to start, although I'm very skeptical that this feature is worth the trouble you'll get in maintainability. Small variations of the same map should be better implemented by writing the "main" game script.

[datiswous]

On 4/28/2024 at 2:55 PM, stgatilov said:

At some moment I think I should put this info to wiki...

I'm really interested what is possible and how that works.

Edited June 14, 2024 by datiswous

[stgatilov]

5 hours ago, datiswous said:

I'm really interested what is possible and how that works.

Read the linked comment in bugtracker.
And ask me any questions.

[datiswous]

Ok.

Btw. Where can I find the "tdm_campaign_sample" file(s)?