Cutscenes and moving vehicles

The Cutscenes tab (left edge) is where you make cutscenes of your own for your missions, and where you see the vehicles that move in the level. The original missions, which you only look at, have no Cutscenes tab.

Your own cutscenes

You don't have to know how to film one. Press Make an intro and the studio makes one from your mission:

1. a fly-over of the area, with your mission's description as the first subtitle;
2. a shot of each objective that has a place - a push in on a building, an orbit round a guard, a pan across an area - with the objective's text as its subtitle;
3. a last look over the player's shoulder, the way he faces, before he takes over.

Make an outro does the same for the end: an orbit of the last objective's place ("Mission complete."), then the camera rising away. New cutscene starts an empty one.

The cutscene editor

Each of them opens in the cutscene editor, which takes the whole window: the preview on the left, the shot you are working on to the right, and the timeline along the bottom, as in a video editor.

The cutscene editor: the preview, the third shot (a push in on the generator building) on the right, the timeline below

The preview plays the cutscene exactly as the game will: the letterbox, the subtitles, the whole level with no fog. The mission is as it starts: the guards walk their patrols, your vehicles drive their routes, and a helicopter's rotors turn. Every change you make plays again from where you are.

To	Do
Play, or pause	Space, the green button, or click the picture
Go a shot back, or on	←, →
Go to the start	Home
Go anywhere	drag along the timeline's ruler
Undo	Ctrl+Z
Go back to the map	Map, or Esc

The shot, on the right:

What the camera does	Fly-over, Orbit, Push in, Pan across, Still, Crane up, Follow (rides behind a vehicle) or Over the shoulder
What it shows	choose from the list - the player's start, your objectives, your things, the level's buildings and vehicles - or Pick on the map and click a thing or any spot
Seconds	how long it lasts: type it, or − and +
Where the camera stands	drag round the dial for the side it looks from (Auto: the side the player comes from); Distance and Height move it further or closer, higher or lower
Subtitle	a line shown under the picture while it plays

Earlier and Later move it, Duplicate copies it, Delete takes it away. The studio places every camera for you: clear of the ground, with nothing solid between it and what it shows - if a building is in the way, it looks from another side, and if nothing is clear it says so.

The timeline shows every shot as a clip, as long as it lasts, with its subtitle underneath. Click a clip to go to it, drag it to move it, drag its right edge to make it longer or shorter. Add a shot puts a new one after the one you are on.

Along the top: the cutscene's name, when it plays, Letterbox, and for an intro whether the skip key skips it. Back in the Cutscenes tab, its card lists the shots - click one to open the editor there - and ▶ plays it in the 3D view.

Back on the map: the intro's card in the Cutscenes tab, its cameras numbered on the map

A cutscene plays:

• as the mission starts: your intro takes the place of the level's own. The player can skip it, unless you untick The skip key skips it.
• once the mission is won: your outro takes the place of the level's, and the mission ends when it does.
• when an event happens: anything from the Events tab - a guard killed, an area reached, a switch. The player keeps his place, his controls held while it plays.

The black bars above and below (Letterbox) can be turned off.

From one mission to the next

Once a mission is won, the game goes on to the next one: in the order of the In the game list in the library, which you change with ↑ ↓. With an outro and an intro of your own, they run into each other:

• the outro plays once the mission is won, and the mission ends when it does;
• the game moves on to the next mission;
• its intro plays as it starts.

Make an intro opens on the mission's number and name ("Mission 16: Break The Cage."), and Make an outro ends on the one that comes next ("Next: ..."), once your missions are in the game. The library's cards say which missions have an intro and an outro.

Vehicles that move

The same tab lists the vehicles that move in the level, and how:

• Driven by the game's AI along a route, like a guard on patrol: level 6's APC drives out of its garage once the alarm goes off. Its route is drawn on the map in amber.
• On rails: the trains, their tracks drawn in blue.
• On a recorded drive: the helicopters, planes and trucks of the cutscenes, and the helicopters circling some levels.
• Parked: a stand-in that waits where the real one will come from.

Click one to find it on the map. Select a vehicle and the panel says how it moves and when it is there.

Vehicles of your own

The APC, the T80 tank, the trucks and the limousine (Inventory, Vehicles & helipads) stand where you put them. To make one drive:

1. Select it and choose Drives a route.
2. Click the map for each stop. Backspace takes the last one away; Esc or Enter ends. Draw the route carries on later.
3. Choose round and round or stopping at the last, the speed, whether the APC or tank fires at the player it sees, and when it starts: from the start, when the alarm goes off, or when an event happens (it stands parked until then).

The game's own AI drives it, as it drives the original missions' APCs and trucks. Its route is drawn on the map, the stops numbered.

An APC that drives out when the alarm goes off, round four stops

A vehicle of the original missions that drives a route, kept in Your items with the area round it, comes along driving its route.

Flights from the levels

Unfold Flights from the levels in the Cutscenes tab: every helicopter and plane the original missions fly, by mission, length, and whether it takes off or flies in. Pick one and click the map where it starts; turn it with R like anything else. It flies exactly as it did in its mission, from where you put it, and starts when you say. The recording does not see the ground here: keep hills and buildings out of its way.

In your copy of a mission

A mission copied from one of the originals plays that mission's own intro and outro in the game, unless you make your own: yours take their place. The outro plays once the mission is won, and the mission ends when it does.

✕ beside a vehicle leaves it out of the mission; ↶ puts it back. A vehicle on the map can also be selected and deleted like anything else. What you leave out shows in the change log under Removed, where you can put it back.

An empty map keeps none of the level's cutscenes or moving vehicles.