Objective Mode (Killing Floor)
What is 'Objective Mode' ?
'Objective Mode' is the second official game mode released for Killing Floor. In contrast to 'Wave Mode' , 'Objective Mode' is a sandbox style game mode where the rules of gameplay are dictated by the level designer. As such, there are no fixed rules of play. For example : all of Tripwire's Objective Mode maps to date end with a Patriarch fight, but this is just a convention. There is nothing in the Objective Mode gametype that dictates there *has* to be a patriarch fight at the end of the map.
How do I create an Objective Mode map?
The Basics
Creating Objectives
Enemy Spawning
Adding Dialogue
Adding NPCs
Objective mode supports non player characters via the 'KF_StoryNPC' pawn. These pawns can be placed by the level designer and hooked up to Scripted Sequences to do things like walk around, or attack stuff. See this link for a comprehensive tutorial on creating Scripted Sequences and associating them with pawns.
Note that there are two flavors of the StoryNPC : KF_StoryNPC is a 'NoDelete' actor, which means that it cannot be spawned or destroyed at runtime. It is placed in the editor by a level designer and any properties the level designer sets will appear the same to clients in network games. If you want to have an NPC that can be killed / destroyed or spawned at runtime you need to use a KF_StoryNPC_Spawnable. The reason for having these two different flavors of pawn is mainly because of how unreal handles replicating actor properties. Pawns which are spawned at runtime appear on clients with whatever values were assigned in their class default properties. This is perfectly acceptable if you are creating a character who's behavior and appearance is defined in code, but less useful if you want to have a level designer placing large groups of NPCs in his map and changing things like their size or mesh, adding different textures to them, etc etc. If you were creating an RPG style city hub area which had a ton of generic NPCs loitering around, you would probably want to use the KF_StoryNPC NoDelete actor since you could easily tweak their properties in the level editor without having to touch any code.
Saving & Exporting
Saving An Objective Mode map is the same as saving a Killing Floor map (it needs to go in the KillingFloor\Maps\ folder), There is one key difference, however. You must save your map with the 'KFO' prefix.' If you don't do this, It won't show in the list of Objective mode maps in the game. ie. "KFO-MyAwesomeMap" vs. "KF-MyAwesomeMap" Prefixes are very important in Killing Floor because they dictate which game mode is associated with a given map. If you use the wrong prefix you're essentially telling the game to attempt to load the wrong set of gameplay rules, and at best your map will probably not work. At worst, it may even crash on load.
If you plan to release your map in different languages you should also use the 'export int' option found under the file tab in the editor. This will create a .int file in your KillingFloor\System\ folder which defaults to the name of your map. Int files contain all of the localized text for your map and can be easily changed to update text or translate it for other languages. If you do this, you should note that the text in the int file takes priority over whatever text you type in your map. So if you make a change to any localized text in your map , always remember to 'export .int' afterwards, or you'll have a mismatch between the map and .int
== Objective Mode Maps ==
Official Maps — List of all maps made by Tripwire which make use of Objective mode
Community Maps — List of all known community maps which make use of Objective mode
== Objective Mode Tech Documentation ==
Script Classes — List of all script classes which ship with Objective mode