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How to create singleplayer missions
Updated Wed, 30 Oct 2019 02:33:19 +0000 by Wuzzy

Missions

Introduction

Missions can be played in singleplayer mode and are selected from the single player menu in the mission menu (the hedgehog at the blackboard).

Mission files

Only the Lua script is needed, the other files/data are optional. But it is still recommended to create them.

The mission's Lua script

This is the heart of your mission. Here you will set up the mission and define the entire game logic of the mission.

See LuaGuide, LuaAPI and LuaLibraries for more information about scripting.

This file needs to be saved in Data/Missions/<MISSION TYPE> , with <MISSION TYPE> being one of Training , Challenge or Scenario . The file name must end with “ .lua ”. Remember the file name, you will need it for the other files.

These are the mission types:

  • Training: Tutorial-like mission that teaches the player a skill or is for practice. You can't lose
  • Challenge: Player must master a particular skill in order to reach a high score
  • Scenario: Player has to complete a predefined goal

Hints

In mission scripting, some patterns appear often, so here are some hints for your convenience (Refer to LuaAPI for a full documentation):

  • Start with onGameInit to set up the most basic environment parameters, teams, hedgehogs, etc.
  • Important set up functions: AddTeam , AddHog , AddGear , SetGearPosition .
  • You probably almost always want to call ShowMission at the beginning of the game ( onGameStart ) to show the objectives of your mission.
  • Enable the game flag gfOneClanMode if you need only one clan for your mission.
  • Normally, the game ends when all hedgehogs are dead or one clan is remaining (unless gfOneClanMode is set). You can call EndGame to end the game manually.
  • Call SendStat to customize the statistics screen.
  • Use the Locale library to make your mission translatable.
  • When making your mission translatable, use Lua's string.format to insert numbers and other strings instead of just concatenating everything together.
  • If you want to create complex animations and/or cinematics, include and use the Animate library.

Preview image

The preview image is displayed in the mission menu when you have selected the mission. It must be a PNG image of size 314px×260px.

The file must be saved in Data/Graphics/Missions/<MISSION TYPE> . The file name must follow this pattern:

<mission name>@2x.png

Where <mission name> is name of the mission script without the file name suffix.

For example, the preview image for the mission script User_Mission_-_Teamwork.lua must have the name User_Mission_-_Teamwork@2x.png .

Mission title and description

The mission title and its description as shown in the mission menu must be edited in the missions files in Data/Locale . The file name is missions_<language code>.txt . There is one file per language. I.e. missions_en.txt for English, missions_de.txt for German, etc. Note that these files are supposed to contain the titles and descriptions of all missions on your computer. This makes these files unsuitable for sharing or inclusion into HWP files, for example.

To add the title an description for your mission, just add these 2 lines into the file according to this syntax:

<mission name>.name=<mission title> <mission name>.desc=<mission description>

  • <mission name> is the file name of the mission script without the file suffix.
  • <mission title> is the mission title as shown in the mission menu.
  • <mission description> is a short description of the mission, also only shown in the mission menu.

You can optionally enclose <mission title> and <mission description> in quotation marks (they will be removed by the game).

If the mission title and description are missing, the mission menu will derive the title from the file name of the Lua script instead and shows no description.

For more information about translating Hedgewars, see Translations.

Example

Here are the English title and description of the mission “Bamboo Thicket” (file name of script: “ User_Mission_-_Bamboo_Thicket.lua ”):

User_Mission_-_Bamboo_Thicket.name=Mission: Bamboo Thicket User_Mission_-_Bamboo_Thicket.desc="Death comes from above."

Mission variables

Mission variables are used to store arbitrary values about the mission in the team file. Most commonly, victory and highscores are saved here. Mission variables are set and read with SaveMissionVariable and GetMissionVariable .

To mark a mission as won, call `SaveMissionVariable("Won", "true"). For challenge missions, you can also use mission variables to store highscores.

For a complete list, see ConfigurationFiles.