Modding Guide - Levels

This is unfinished, but a damn sight less unfinished than it was before.

So you want to code a level?

And now, I suppose, you'd like to know how, wouldn't you? Alright, I'll tell you.

In the beginning…

To start off with, there's an easy way to make them and there's a hard way: the easy way is to copy and paste the code from another level and edit that, and the hard way is to make it all from scratch. Either works.

Things you need to know

There are some tags, mainly the LEVEL CONVOY SHIPS: one and others, that require you to write it out like this:

{
1
Freighter
5
Interceptor
}

Or it won't work properly. What this does is tell the game that there will be 1 Freighter, and 5 Interceptors. Use the exact name of the ship in the .sfo file.

Level definition tags

What these do is tell the game what the basics for the level are. I'll go through them all, one by one.

Tag	Description
LEVEL NAME:	What this does is tell the game what the level is called, and what name should show up in the "New Mission" menu.
LEVEL DESC:	The description of the level that comes up when you first start playing it, in the text box at the beginning. This can say pretty much anything you want it to say.
LEVEL WIN DESC:	The text that comes up when you win the level. It's a little odd to have this at the beginning, I know, but that's where it is. This is similar to the LEVEL DESC tag.
LEVEL BACKGROUND:	Leave this alone. One day, maybe, this will change what the background image is (provided there's another one to choose from) but right now it's not working.
LEVEL GROUND CLOUD COVER:	How much cloud there is below the ships.
LEVEL AIR CLOUD COVER:	How much cloud there is above the ships. Can affect visibility.
LEVEL SUCCESS MINUTES AND SECONDS:	How long the level lasts before you win. The top line is minutes, the lower one is seconds.
CONVOY HEADING DEGREES:	Out of 360, which direction the convoy heads in. What zero is is unknown as of yet.
PLAYER SHIP:	The ship the player flies around in. That's you. Why not make your own?
CONVOY ESCORT SHIPS:	How many ships are in the escort that protects the convoy. This uses the syntax described above.
LEVEL CONVOYS SHIPS:	Describes how many ships are in the convoy in total. Again, see above.
CONVOY SHIPS MUST SURVIVE:	An obvious one, tells the game how many convoy ships must stay alive. If at any time the number of convoy ships drops below this number, you lose. You must also specify which kind of ships need to survive.
LEVEL START SHIPS:	The number of ships with you at the beginning. All ships mentioned here leave you at the start, they're just there for effect.
LEVEL END SHIPS:	Similar to above, this is how many ships will join you at the end of the level. This is more useful, because they can help you fight your last wave of enemies (if you have one that late.) Some concerns have been expressed about this, though, that it might not actually do anything.

Events

Now, old Escort Wing versions, and the current level files, use event tags that look like this:

EVENT MINUTES AND SECONDS:

Ever since Intermediate 2, though, you need to use this tag:

EVENT:
MINUTES AND SECONDS:

The basic syntax for an event is pretty simple. You write in that there is an event, then you tell the game when it happens, then you describe the event, like so:

EVENT:
MINUTES AND SECONDS:
1
23
{
[event goes here]
}

Then you can move on to your next event. They do not need to be in chronological order, but it certainly makes editing the files easier if you do. Also, you MUST have the brackets before and after the event. Currently it's unknown whether the difference of space between lines is important, but those { and } are important.

Event tags

Radio messages

RADIO SENDER:
[person's name, try to keep it short]

RADIO MESSAGE:
[radio message, can be anything]

These are, quite obviously, used for displaying radio messages. There's no speech (unless you're really, really good at timing things) and it's all displayed as text.

Enemy spawns

SPAWN ENEMY SHIPS:
{
[number]
[ship name]
}
SPAWN ANGLE:
[number, <360]

Fairly vital, really, this produces enemy ships on the radar at a designated point. This is one of the hardest things to accurately time with speech.

Other tags

RETIRE SHIPS:
{
1
Bramble's Interceptor
}

This is used to make people run away, effectively.
THIS MAY WELL BE INACCURATE. EDIT THIS IF YOU KNOW HOW TO USE IT.