Applying and playing
Apply to game (top right) turns your mission into one the game can load and puts it into the game.
The check list
Apply first saves the mission, then shows a check list. Game, Check mission... shows the same list at any time.
It has three groups:
- Must fix before applying: things that would break the mission in the game, such as a patrol stop a guard cannot reach, a guard with no walkways where he stands, a walkway point with no neighbour, a model no level has, an objective with no target, or more new ground than the game holds. Apply stays off until they are fixed.
- Worth a look: things that would work but may not be what you meant: buildings overlapping, standing on steep ground or off the mapped ground, things hovering over bare ground or placed twice, a weapon too high to pick up, a building with a cellar turned off the game's ground grid, an objective with no way there on foot.
- Good to know: which models Apply will bring in from other levels, and how much that adds.
The list runs the build itself, without installing anything, and shows what it would refuse, word for word: a mission the check calls clean is one Apply takes.
Every row has Show, which selects the thing and flies to it. Where there is an obvious fix, the row has it too: remove the stop, set it on the ground, remove the copy, remove a thing no level has a model for (a switch kept from a level before this version gets its look back instead). The list refreshes after each fix.
Fix with the AI designer, at the foot of the list, hands every problem on it to the AI designer's Edit agent, which works through them while you watch: it lays walkways where a guard has none, moves what is in the wrong place, and keeps your guards, cameras and buildings. Everything it does can be undone.
Below the list is what goes into the game: what is placed, changed and removed, the walkways it touches, and the objectives the map computer will list.
Building
Press Apply. The build runs in the background, with a bar showing each stage:
- Copying the base level into a new slot (the first time only).
- Building the level's script.
- Compiling it, and bringing in models from other levels, with their own textures.
- The ground: its height maps and, where it was shaped further, the terrain and its light built again. The mission's own textures, and its texts.
- Installing the mission, the guards' scripts and the walkways.
- Checking the result.
Details shows the full log, and opens by itself when the build is over. Closing the sheet does not stop the build. It takes about a minute, longer the first time. Copy details copies the whole log, with the studio's version on top, ready for a bug report.
Every Apply starts from scratch
The studio never builds on top of an earlier Apply. It builds the whole mission from the untouched level and your plan, every time, so applying twice gives the same game, and a change you take out of the plan is really gone from the game.
Where it goes
The first Apply gives your mission the next free slot in the game: mission 15, then 16, and so on. The slot is a copy of the level's folder, so it takes 250 to 300 MB. It is named in the game's mission list with your mission's name and description.
The mission's name, description, objective texts and messages go into the game's language files, under keys of the mission's own, which no other mission uses. The first time, the studio backs those files up.
The game only offers the missions a player has reached: on a fresh install that is mission 1 alone, so mission 15 would never be in the list. Apply sets the game's own settings (its config.qvm) so that the list goes as far as the last mission in the game, backing the file up first. It never takes anything away: missions you reached playing stay reached.
The game lists its missions by following each one's next mission from mission 1, so the last of the game's own, mission 14, has to lead on to your first one. Apply changes that one link in mission 14 and nothing else in it, and puts it back as the game shipped it when no mission of yours is left.
A mission with a picture of its own has it in the game's mission list, in the file that holds the list's pictures, under the mission's number. The other pictures stay as they are.
Those four (the language files, the settings, mission 14's link and the list's pictures) are the only places the studio writes outside a slot of its own. Each is backed up the first time.
After an Apply, the library says In game · mission 15 · up to date, and the change log starts again: it lists only what is not in the game yet. When you change the mission, the header says how many changes there are to apply.
When nothing has changed since the last Apply, the check list says so. Apply again anyway rebuilds it as it is, if something went wrong in the game.
The game's mission list
The library's In the game shelf lists every mission after the game's own fourteen, in the order the game plays them, yours and any other: its number, its name, the mission it is built on and whether it is up to date. A new mission goes in after the last one.
- ↑ and ↓ move one of your missions earlier or later. The game's chain from one mission to the next stays whole.
- A mission of the studio's that the game holds but your library does not (after reinstalling the studio, say) has Add to your missions: the game holds all of it.
- Missions not made by the studio stay as they are.
- Under the list, the studio says how far the game's list goes: All of them are unlocked: the game offers missions 1 to 16. The game unlocks by that one number, so the original missions before yours are offered too.
While the game is running, missions can't be moved: close it first.
Playing it
Start the game and pick your mission by its name in the mission list.
A new mission shows after a restart
A running game lists the missions it found when it started, so a mission applied while it runs shows in the list the next time you start it. The game also writes its settings back when it closes, which can shorten how far its mission list goes; the studio sets it again every time the game closes, when the studio starts, and before Test from here starts the game.
The game's debug launcher
If the game came with IGI-Debug.bat, starting it that way shows the game's console and a position overlay (F11), handy while you test a mission.
Test from here
Right-click the map and choose Test from here... (or, walking in the 3D close-up, Test from here in its bar). The mission is built with the player starting at that spot, on the floor of a building there or on the ground, and the game is started. Pick the mission in the game's list.
- Build only installs it without starting the game. If the game is already running, leave the mission and pick it again.
- Your mission keeps its own start. The game has the test start until the next Apply; the header says a test build, starting elsewhere meanwhile.
Live view
The LIVE button (top right of the map) shows where you are in the running game, as a bright YOU triangle with a trail.
- Start the mission in the game, and don't move from the start.
- In the studio, click LIVE, then Connect at the start, and walk a few steps in the game.
Follow keeps you in the middle of the map. Place ... where I stand drops whatever you picked in the inventory at your feet. While it follows you, your way through the mission is recorded; the live panel can play a run back, red where guards or cameras would see you.
The live view is new, and may not find you in every build of the game.
Deleting a mission
Delete (the ⋯ menu of its card in the library, or Mission, Delete mission) deletes a mission for good: it goes from your library and from the game, with its texts in the game's language files. It can't be undone, so to keep a copy, Export mission file first. Close the game before you delete a mission that is in it.
A mission on the In the game shelf that is not in your library (made on another computer, or in another copy of the studio) has Delete on its row too, beside Add to your missions. The game's chain from one mission to the next stays whole, and the fourteen original missions are never touched. The built-in missions can't be deleted.
Next: your data.