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Objectives: Overview

Starting Point

The main pipeline for creating objectives is the same for both Expeditions and SnowRunner.

All objectives are added using the zone settings plugin (ZoneSettingsEditor.exe) that you have used when specifying properties (props) of zones.

This plugin is available in the Editor, it can be opened by clicking the Zone Settings button () on its toolbar.

In the window of this plugin, objectives are configured within the objectiveSettings section:

However, some subcategories within this section have a slightly different meaning for Expeditions and SnowRunner, see below.

Objectives in Expeditions

In Expeditions, the usage of the subcategories within objectiveSettings is the following:

  • employer – allows to configure a custom employer for created objectives.
  • tasksSettings – allows to create Tasks.

  • contractsSettings – allows to create Expeditions and Contracts.

    NOTE: In Expeditions, there is no contestSettings subcategory, since Constests are not used in this game.

However, most fields of all types of objectives (Expeditions/Contracts and Tasks) are the same.

WARNING: At least one Expedition objective is required for the map to be playable, see below.

Objectives in SnowRunner

In SnowRunner, the usage of the subcategories within objectiveSettings is the following:

  • employer – allows to configure a custom employer for created objectives.
  • tasksSettings – allows to create Tasks.
  • contractsSettings – allows to create Contracts.
  • contestSettings – allows to create Contests.

However, most fields of all types of objectives (Contracts, Tasks and Contests) are the same.

NOTE: SnowRunner maps are playable even without any objectives.

Requirements in Expeditions

Required Expedition

In Expeditions, at least one Expedition is required for the player to be able to load a map.

I.e., for the player to be able to load the map, this map should have at least one correctly configured Expedition and at least one correctly configured Deploy zone.

General Info

Stages and Substages

All objectives in Expeditions and SnowRunner consist of Stages.

Every Stage corresponds to a group of assignments of particular types that the player needs to accomplish as a paticular stage of this objective.

Stages of the objective need to be accomplished successively. The order of these assignments corresponds to the order of stages ([0], [1], [2], etc.) added to the Stages list within the objective.

The particular assignments within a Stage are called Substages. They can be accomplished in any order. Substages within the Stage are created by filling in the corresponding sections of settings within the numbered Stage record.

A Stage frequently contains a single Substage of the particular type only. That's why, Substages are frequently mixed up with Stages.

Properties that define a substage depend on its type, which corresponds to a particular section of settings within the numbered Stage record.

For example, we can create a task that will have two Stages in the Stages list:

  • Stage [0] will have the visitAllZones section filled in, which will tell the player to visit the particular zone(s).
  • Stage [1] will have the truckDelivery section filled in, which will tell the player to deliver the particular truck to some zone.

As you can see, in our example, both Stage [0] and Stage [1] have only one substage: visitAllZones for Stage [0] and truckDelivery for Stage [1]. We have done it intentionally, since we would like the player to perform these operations one after another.

If the order of these operations was unimportant, we could create a single Stage [0] and fill in visitAllZones and truckDelivery sections of settings within this Stage. In this case, the player would be able to accomplish the corresponding substages in any order.

IMPORTANT: The list of possible substage types is different for Expeditions and SnowRunner. See Stages in Expeditions and Stages in Snowrunner for details.

NOTE: You need to add at least one stage to your objective to make it playable.

Zones Used in Objectives

To configure fields of objectives that link to zones, you will need to create zones for them first. After that, you will be able to click the browse () button in the zone field and select the zone from the list.

Trucks Used in Objectives

In various Truck Uid fields, you are able to specify the ID of the Truck that will be used in the objective. This ID should be the same as the ID of the particular Truck added to the map that also has an ID in its properties (in the Id field).

Model Building Settings

Objectives allow you to "build" some visial models on the map when the player accomplishes their stages or delivers some object. See Model Building Settings for details.

Activation of Tasks and Contests

Tasks and, in SnowRunner, Contests do require a special zone where the player can activate them. You need to create this zone and add a link to it in the taskGiverZone field of the Task or Contest.

If necessary, you can create additional zones for such activation and add them to the additionalTaskGivers list.

Names and Descriptions

The name of the objective is specified when adding it to the corresponding list of objectives. After that, it can be modified by double-clicking.

Ui Desc fields allow you to specify descriptions of objectives and particular assignments of the objectives throughout the UI.

Names of objectives must be unique, even objectives with different types must have different names. E.g., if a task and a contract have the same name, this can result in unpredicted behavior.

TIP: If localization is necessary, you can use UI_IDENTIFIERS for localization strings within the text fields of objectives. See Localization for details.

Where Are These Settings Saved?

The values of the specified properties of objectives are saved in the folder of the map within the \Media\levels\ folder, in the objective_settings.json file there.

So, if you want to reuse the settings for both zones and objectives, you will need 3 files from that folder:

  • user_name_of_map.txt
  • zone_settings.json
  • objective_settings.json

However, you will need to change the name of the map in these files.

Validation of Objective Settings and Error Log

The system automatically validates some aspects of the configuration of objectives during packing.

The log of occurring errors can be found in:

  • For Expeditions: \Documents\My Games\Expeditions\base\logs\ModMapError.txt (TBD)
  • For SnowRunner: \Documents\My Games\SnowRunner\base\logs\ModMapError.txt

For example: C:\Users\<username>\Documents\My Games\Expeditions\base\logs\ModMapError.txt