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Briefing Editor
 
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Overview WYSIWYG Instruction List Strings Accessories Adding Instructions

 
"Instruction List" Page
On the left side of this page is the Instruction list showing the details of each instruction in the Briefing, on the right is the interface for editing the parameters of the instructions.
 
The Instruction list shows the value of each parameter in each instruction.
Instruction List

As you click on this list, the selected Instruction will be shown in the edit boxes on the right. Different boxes become visible for different instruction types.

Time & Instruction

These 2 boxes are always available, as all instructions require a Time parameter, (show in "raw" format with the conversion to seconds above,) and an Instruction type. There are several options in the Instruction list which are unused and so are represented only by numbers.

Beneath these boxes is the Time Adjustment Increment:

Time Increment
From here you can select the increment that the Time value will change by in the Time spin box. The options are shown in seconds, i.e. 1/20 sec = 1 "raw" unit.

 

Adjust time for all following instructions
Selecting this option will mean that increasing or decreasing the Time of an instruction will adjust the Time for all of the following instructions by the same increment, allowing you to 'slide' the rest of the briefing back and forth to adjust the length of time between events.
 

Briefing Size
Gives an indication of how many numbers make up your Briefing Instructions, out of a maximum 400.
 

Unknowns
The effects of these three parameters is unknown, but you can get away with leaving them all as zero.
 

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"Strings" Page
This is where you define all of the text strings that will be used as part of your Briefing. There are 2 types of strings:

Map Tags
Map Tags are short descriptions, usually FG names, that will be placed on the Briefing Map itself, among the icons.

Briefing Text
These are the longer sections which will describe the mission in detail, and appear underneath the Map. XvtED uses the first string in this list as the caption in the main window, so it's a good idea to make the first string your mission title.

You can also highlight a section of a string by enclosing it in [ ] brackets, e.g: 

"This is [highlighted] text" will appear as:
 
This is highlighted text
 
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"Accessories" Page
Auto-Brief
This is a function to create a simple Briefing that will show all non-empty Briefing Texts (excluding the first 'title' one) in sequence, for the specified number of seconds each. Each Briefing text will also be separated with a Stop instruction.Using Auto-Brief should create a reasonable skeleton onto which so you can add more instructions. 

Addition options are:
 

Box FGs... This will automatically add instructions to Box a FG if it is mentioned in the currently displayed Briefing Text and its name is highlighted within that text using [ ] brackets.

If there is more than 1 FG with the same name they will all be boxed, 1/4 second apart. 
 
Begin Centred on Here you can choose the Briefing to begin centred on one of the FGs in the mission.
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Begin at Zoom Set the Zoom level that the Briefing will begin at.
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If either of these last two options are chosen, the instruction will be repeated near the end of the Briefing so the map will return to its starting state rather than "jump" back to the start. 
 

Copy Briefing
You can use this to copy the details of the current Briefing to one of the other 7 Briefings. You can copy the Briefing strings and instructions, or the icon layout on the Map, separately.
 

Set Icons to Start 1
This will set the placement of the icons in the Briefing to the same as the FG's start 1 positions in the mission. It will do this for all FGs, for the currently selected Briefing only.  This option is also available from the right-click pop up menu of the Briefing map.

 
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