Chapter 4: Testing

The part of mission design that most people tend to despise most is the testing period. They’ve got a good point; it will usually take longer to get all the bugs out of a mission then it did to make it in the first place. There are a couple of schools of thought on how you should test a mission; some people say you should make some FGs, test, make more FGs, test, and so on. Piecemeal testing. I am more of a “do-everything-and-then-test-it-and-then-end-up-rebuilding-as-need-be”. The choice is really up to you, although regardless of your style, you’re going to do a lot of reshaping as the process wears down.

First of all, you must make sure it works. That means you must fly it and complete it’s goals. If you’re not the greatest pilot and you want your mission to be very challenging… then you either need to 1) have someone else test it to see if they can finish it or 2) accept the fact that your mission will not be the hardest mission and the world and downgrade it until you can finish it. A *huge* problem in the custom mission community outside of the EH is often times people making mission they themselves cannot finish, but believes others may be able to. A lot of times these missions have bugs the designer never saw because they never got that far in the mission, and even more often these missions simply aren’t any fun.

Once you know your mission works, now it’s time to ask an important question: Is it challenging at all? Certainly, after ready my rant above, you might have thought I’m encouraging easy missions, but really I’m doing quite the opposite. You want the mission to be a challenge, at the very least to you, and hopefully to others. ISD Tauntum being stationary with 2 rookie TIE Fighter pilots to protect it is not a mission you want to submit. Make it challenging, and try to make sure it has more to it then face value challenge. A surprise flight, a kink in the plan. Something out of the ordinary.

Finally, is it fun? One of the biggest complaints about missions in the compendium is that most of them are KILLKILLKILL missions. In X-Wing, you have a lot of missions that are about dogfighting because X-Wing is limited to how much it can do. There’s nothing wrong with missions where the only goal is destruction if there’s something unique about it that makes it fun and enjoyable. More times then not though you’re going to have to have other goals, other things that gives it an extra layer of challenge, that makes it different, and that ultimately, should make it fun.

Done with all these things? Got the mission finished? Then we’re ready to submit

.: Chapter 5: Submitting and Finale :.