Fiction Viewer

The Fiction Viewer, FS2 style (click to enlarge)

The Fiction Viewer (Wing Commander Saga style) with Goober5000's sample story (click to enlarge)

Fiction Viewer is a feature of FreeSpace Open 3.6.10 implemented by Goober5000. It is sort of an advanced Command Briefing that mission designers could use to deepen the story that they want to tell without using the actual Command Briefing.

The Fiction Viewer is the first window that will come up in a mission, followed by the Command Briefing—if the mission has both.

Using the Fiction Viewer (3.6.12. RC1 and newer)

• Create a text file (.txt) that you want to show off with the Fiction Viewer, then put it into FreeSpace 2/data/fiction or FreeSpace 2/<your mod's directory name>/fiction.
• Open the mission in FRED. Select Editors --> Fiction Viewer and type in the file's name that you want to display, with its extension (for example: intro.txt).
• It is necessary to include self-made bits of interface art in your mod, since there is no official Volition art package for this screen. A sample one can be found here: http://blueplanet.fsmods.net/E/FictionViewer.7z The files in that archive must be extracted into the mods' data/interface folder. Without these, the game will not be able to display the fiction texts.
• There are two modes for the fiction viewer. The default one is the "FS2" style, which retains the standard layout used by the FS2 interface art. The other is the "Wing Commander Saga" style, which moves the "Accept" button to the lower left side of the screen, and is optimized for the interface art style of WCS. If you have interface art for the "WCS" style, you need to use "fictionviewerb" as the filename for the main interface background, and a fitting interface mask file named "fictionviewer-mb.pcx". For the 1024x768 resolution art, the filenames must be prefixed with "2_" (2_fictionviewerb, for example).

Using the Fiction Viewer (pre-3.6.12. RC1)

To use the Fiction Viewer, take the following steps:

• Go to this thread and download the interface art. Extract the VP file from the ZIP file and put it into FreeSpace 2/data or FreeSpace 2/<the name of your mod's directory>
• Download the most stable official 3.6.10 here or get an experimental build from this board.
• Create a text file (.txt) that you want to show off with the Fiction Viewer, then put it into FreeSpace 2/data/fiction or FreeSpace 2/<your mod's directory name>/fiction.
• Create a mission which you want to use the Fiction Viewer, then open it in a text editor, adding the following line before "#Command Briefing":

#Fiction Viewer

$File: YourFileName.txt

Pre-3.6.12.-specific notes

• Perhaps most importantly: Every time you save the mission in FRED, this piece of code will disappear! Add the Fiction Viewer code last before publishing the mission.
• The Fiction Viewer code must precede the Command Briefing code, otherwise the mission file will be broken.
• There is a colon (:) after "File", but there isn't anything after "Fiction Viewer".
• The only art style available on these builds is the "WCS" style.

General notes

• You must provide the file's extension (.txt), otherwise the game engine will assume the file has no extension, and look for that.
• Since the text file is not in the mission file, semicolons (;) and double quotation marks (" ") will not break the mission code.
• Color tags such as $r and $h will work.
• Characters that are not in the English alphabet (such as á, é) will not be displayed.
• The interface art can be modified by extracting the files from the VP.
• In 3.6.12 RC2 and later, the filename for the main interface screen has changed from "fvw" to "fictionviewer", to better follow the precedent set by the rest of the interface. Old interfaces must be adjusted for this, else it will cause a "No interface graphics found for the fiction viewer" error.

External links

• Fiction Viewer release thread
• Official FreeSpace Open 3.6.10 release thread (There are newer builds, but this one the most stable one)
• FreeSpace Open 3.6.12. Release Candidate 1 (The first build to allow Fiction Viewer management in FRED)