Applying and playing

Apply to game (top right) turns your mission into one the game can load and puts it into the game.

Saved, Help, Settings, and Apply to game

The check list

Apply first saves the mission, then shows a check list. Mission, Check mission... shows the same list at any time.

The check list before Apply

It has three groups:

• Must fix: things that would break the mission in the game, such as a patrol stop a guard cannot reach, a walkway point with no neighbour, a model no level has, or an objective with no target. 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, ground shaped further than the game allows, 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.

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. The list refreshes after each fix.

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:

1. Copying the base level into a new slot (the first time only).
2. Building the level's script.
3. Compiling it, and bringing in models from other levels.
4. The ground's height maps and the mission's texts.
5. Installing the mission, the guards' scripts and the walkways.
6. 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.

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 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 your mission, backing the file up first. It never takes anything away: missions you reached playing stay reached.

Those two are the only places the studio writes outside a slot of its own.

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.

Playing it

Start the game and pick your mission by its name in the mission list.

Close the game before you apply

The game keeps its settings in memory while it runs, and writes them back when it closes, which can put the mission list back as it was. Every Apply sets it again, and so does Test from here just before it starts the game. If you start the game yourself and your mission is not in the list, close the game, apply again, then start it.

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.

1. Start the mission in the game, and don't move from the start.
2. 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.

Removing a mission from the game

Remove from the game (in the Mission menu, or the ⋯ menu of its card in the library) takes the mission's slot out of the game and its texts out of the language files. The mission stays in your library, so you can apply it again later.

The removed slot is moved, not deleted, to %LOCALAPPDATA%\ProjectIGIStudio\backups\slots\removed. Delete it from there when you no longer need it.

Delete in the library moves a mission to the Trash, and can take it out of the game at the same time.

Next: your data.