Targetware: Scenario Development

Scenario Designer Tutorials

Scenario Creation in Three Clicks

The goal of this tutorial is to create a completely new scenario in only a few minutes, with a minimum of work. When we're done, we will have a fully playable Target Korea scenario with the following features:

• Multiple fields enabled for each side, along a front line area
• Aircraft selection limited to what was available for each side in June, 1950 (the first month of the war)
• Each airfield will have a full set of buildings, AAA, revetments, etc., associated with it, and correctly placed.
• Each aircraft unit will be correctly positioned for takeoff

This tutorial covers the use of the "Add Aircraft + Targets to 1 or More Fields" scenario-level wizard, found in the Wizards menu. The tutorial assumes that you have installed Scenario Designer v0.36 (or later), and the Target Korea mappack. See the Downloads section of the Targetware web site for download links if you need them.

Step 1: Start Up

Double-click on the Scenario Designer icon to start it. When the startup window appears, select "Target Korea" from the drop-down list of mods, then click "Create New Scenario":

Step 2: Enter Basic Information

Before we do anything else, let's first enter some basic scenario information. This step isn't really required, but it only takes a few moments, and will enhance your scenario.

1. In the "Title" field, enter a name for your scenario. Since our scenario takes place in the first part of the Korean War, we are simply going to call it "Day 1".
2. Set the time to 7:00 AM in the morning, and disable the time variance by setting it to 0 hours. This will ensure our scenario starts when the sky is just light enough to fight in.
3. Select a cloud set from the "Weather" drop-down menu. For our demonstration, we have chosen to have 1 to 3 layers of high cirrus clouds, with a maximum of 60% coverage.
4. Set the scenario length to 24 hours, by entering in 1440 minutes (60x24=1440) in the "Time Limit" field.
5. Enter a brief description of the scenario in the text box provided. This information will be shown when players select a mission for offline practice, or when they log into a server using this scenario.

Step 3: Start the Wizard

Select the menu item labeled "Add Aircraft + Targets to 1 or More Fields" from the Wizards menu:

Step 4: Choose Airfields and Options

The wizard window will now be in the foreground. You may want to move it so you can see the map and the ownership of fields. In our case, our campaign map is set up for a frontline in the southern part of the Korean peninsula. We want to identify the fields near the front lines, and active them, but no others. We could activate all the fields, but that would increase the scenario load time, and possibly be confusing to players, who might not know where to start from. We also want to set the date of the scenario to June, 1950, so no jets are available. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Hit the Select None button. The select checkboxes in the left hand most column will all be unchecked.
2. Check the boxes next to K-2, K-3, K-5, K-8, K-11, K-41, K-42, K-43, and K-48. If you want to switch the ownership of the fields, you can do so by checking the Neutral, Team 1, and Team 2 column for each field.
3. Check the box for Limit Aircraft by Date, and select June ("06") as the month, and 1950 as the year.
4. Check the box for Add field objects, if it is unchecked. The Scenario Designer will remember your preferences for this step and the previous ones, for future wizard sessions.
5. Click the Done button to finish up.

Step 5: Save your New Scenario

When you click the Done button in the previous step, the wizard will begin to populate your scenario with the aircraft, missions, and target data needed to create your scenario. Once it is finished, you will be returned to the Main Window. The scenario is now ready, all you have to do is save it. Select "Save" or "Save As" from the File menu, and enter a filename of your choosing (no spaces!).

Step 6: Test the New Scenario

As you can see in this snapshot, when we select a map for one of the fields we chose to populate, there is an aircraft already on the tarmac, and the airfield targets have been put out in exactly the right place, according to the Scenario Designer. However, you should always test load your scenario in the game itself before publishing it.

Looking good... Here is the same field from above, after we load the scenario into the Targetware sim environment using "Practice Offline." You can see the F4U-5 (this is a United Nations airfield) is positioned correctly on the runway, and the revetments and other structures are all lined up. If we checked the other missions (fields), we would see that they are also ok.

Your scenario is now ready to go. You can host it by starting up Targetware, and selecting "Host Game" from the Main Menu. Or, you can go back into the Scenario Designer for some more tweaking, which we will cover in future tutorials.