WifBriefingData

Module: wifbriefingdata.lua

Overview

wifbriefingdata.lua is 16,445 lines long and almost none of it is logic — confirmed by grep, the entire file contains exactly two functions (GetIntroIdByIndex, GetIntroIndexById) and no import()/inherit() at all. Everything else is a flat table of authored pre-mission cinematic direction: one entry per flagship story contract (camera keyframes, face-anim sets, VO cue names, Scaleform overlay files), plus a shared set of faction/PMC-recruit intro cutscenes. It has no behavior of its own — mrxbriefing reads it to actually drive the briefing screen.

Schema

Top-level keys

16 in total: Intros, plus 15 per-contract entries, each keyed by the exact mission-ID string mrxbriefing looks it up with.

Key(s)	Covers
Intros	5 faction/PMC-recruit intro cutscenes: Gur, Pir, AllChi, Mec, Jet
AllCon001, AllCon002, AllCon003	Allied Nation flagship contracts
ChiCon001, ChiCon002, ChiCon003	China flagship contracts
GurCon001, GurCon002	Guerrilla flagship contracts
OilCon001, OilCon002, OilCon021	Oil Company flagship contracts (OilCon021 is the minimal stub, see below)
PmcCon002, PmcCon003	PMC flagship contracts
JetCon001	Jet (the pilot) PMC-recruit contract
MecCon001	Mec (the mechanic) PMC-recruit contract

Every other contract/job in src/vz/ (roughly 100 of the ~114 total) has no entry here at all.

Three more bare globals sit above Intros in the file, not inside any table: knContact = 1, knSimple = 2, knRecruit = 3. Only knSimple is ever actually used as a value in this file — 5 of the 15 contract entries (ChiCon001, GurCon001, PmcCon002, PmcCon003, OilCon021) set nType = knSimple; the other 10 leave nType unset entirely. knContact/knRecruit are exported (WifBriefingData.knContact/ .knRecruit) but never assigned to anything within this file’s own data.

Intros

Each of the 5 entries holds tHq (one or more HQ blip names), sTitle (a localization key), and tSequence — an ordered array mixing VO lines, one Scaleform overlay step, and bare-number pauses. Gur, trimmed:

Gur = {
  tHq = { "GurOutpost1" },
  sTitle = "[Briefing.Intro.Gur]",
  tSequence = {
    { sSpeaker = "Starter", sCue = "Fiona.Guerrilla.Intro01" },
    { sFlashFile = "POI_GR_Introduction", nTime = 35 },
    0.1,  -- bare number: a pause between steps, not confirmed further than that
    { sSpeaker = "Starter", sCue = "Fiona.Guerrilla.Intro02" },
    -- ...two more Starter lines...
    { sSpeaker = "Player1", sCue = { Mattias = "Mattias.Guerrilla01", Jennifer = "Jen.Guerrilla01", Chris = "Chris.Guerrilla01" } }
  }
}

sCue is either a plain string (a fixed line, usually spoken by "Starter") or a table keyed Chris/Jennifer/Mattias (a hero-dependent line, spoken by "Player1"). Mec and Jet are much shorter — one tSequence entry each, a single Starter line (Mec: “Ewan.PMC.RecruitEva01”; Jet: “Eva.PMC.RecruitMisha01”) with no flash step and no player response — these are the PMC-boss recruitment intros, not full faction-outpost intros like Gur/Pir/AllChi.

Per-contract entries

A full entry can carry these fields (all confirmed present somewhere in the 15):

• nType — optional, see above.
• tAssetPreload — { soundbank = {...}, wavebank = {...} }. The only field every one of the 15 entries has.
• tActors — optional, only on AllCon001 and AllCon003. One extra named actor beyond the two speaking positions, e.g. AllCon001’s HeroChair = { sTemplate = "_aloutpost_interior_herochair", sPosition = "hp_al01_player" }.
• tPositions — always exactly two keys, Player1 and Starter (hardpoint name strings), across all 14 non-stub entries — confirmed by grep, no entry has more or fewer named speaking positions.
• tFaceAnimSets — Player1 sub-keyed Chris/Jennifer/Mattias; Starter a single anim-set string.
• tCinematic — keyed Chris/Jennifer/Mattias, each an ordered array of keyframe steps, plus a sibling tCameraEffects sub-table (same three hero keys) of depth-of-field/field-of-view samples over time.
• tConfirmCinematic / tDeclineCinematic — same shape as tCinematic (including their own tCameraEffects), played instead of it when the player accepts/declines at the briefing screen — anim names confirm this ("..._Yes_..." / "..._No_..." variants of the same base animation).

A typical tCinematic step sequence for one hero (trimmed from AllCon001.tCinematic.Chris):

Chris = {
  { tAnims = { Player1 = "ALL01_Contract_Briefing_Chris", Starter = "ALL01_Contract_Briefing_Starter-Chris" },
    OnTime = 32.1333, OnComplete = "Player1" },
  { tFlash = { sFile = "AllCon001_briefing.gfx", nTime = 29.1 }, OnTime = 39.566696 },
  { tCamera = { bHold = true }, Stall = true }
}

— an anim/VO step, a Scaleform overlay step, then a hold-and-wait step. That 3-step shape (and the matching { nTime, tDepthOfField = {...}, tFieldOfView = {...} } shape of each tCameraEffects sample) recurs across all 14 non-stub entries; tDepthOfField = {bHold = true}-style camera holds and Stall = true markers alone appear 84 times in the file.

The floor and ceiling of entry size:

• OilCon021 is the smallest, and the only entry with no cinematic at all — 10 lines, shown in full:

  OilCon021 = {
    nType = knSimple,
    tAssetPreload = {
      soundbank = { "vo_oilCon021" },
      wavebank = { "vo_oilCon021" }
    }
  }
  

  No tPositions, tFaceAnimSets, or tCinematic — just audio preload. Notably this one does set nType = knSimple, but so do four other entries that have full cinematics (see above) — nType doesn’t by itself predict whether an entry has a cinematic.

• The largest is actually JetCon001 (~2,308 lines), not AllCon002 — though AllCon002 (~1,786 lines) is a good second example. Neither adds any new field type over the shape above; the extra length is overwhelmingly more tCameraEffects samples tracking a longer VO track. Concretely: AllCon001’s entry (961 lines, ~32s Chris VO) has 46 nTime = camera-effect keyframes total; AllCon002 (1,786 lines, ~92s Chris VO) has 86 — roughly double the keyframes for roughly double (or more) the spoken runtime, not a richer schema.

Functions

GetIntroIdByIndex(nIntroIndex) / GetIntroIndexById(sId)

Both are plain linear scans over Intros with pairs() — GetIntroIdByIndex walks until the Nth entry and returns its key; GetIntroIndexById walks until it finds a matching key and returns its position. Neither sorts or orders Intros itself; they just agree with each other and with whatever order pairs() happens to produce in a given run.

Their real purpose, confirmed from mrxbriefing: _StartIntro calls WifBriefingData.GetIntroIndexById(sName) to turn an intro’s string key into an integer before calling Net.SetBriefingCheapCinematic(CHEAP_INTRO, ...), and NetSafePlayCheapCinematic calls WifBriefingData.GetIntroIdByIndex(nIntroIndex) on the receiving end to turn that integer back into the string key for _PlayIntro. In other words, these two functions exist so “which intro is currently playing” can be replicated over the network as a small integer instead of a string.

Notes for modders

• Pure data — nothing runs on load. Confirmed no import(), no inherit(), and no function besides the two lookups above anywhere in the file. Safe to read from; there’s no initialization order or side effect to worry about.
• Only these 15 contracts get an authored cinematic briefing. Every other mission’s briefing config falls back to an empty table — confirmed in mrxbriefing’s Start(): tMissionData.tConfig = WifBriefingData[sMissionName] or {}. Every downstream if tConfig.tXxx then check in that file is written to be a safe no-op against that fallback, so a modded contract with no entry here just behaves like an ordinary job briefing — it doesn’t error.
• Confirmed real call sites, all found by grep across the decompiled corpus:
  • mrxbriefing is the main consumer — reads tActors, tPositions, tFaceAnimSets, tCinematic, tConfirmCinematic, tDeclineCinematic for the selected mission, and checks tConfig.nType == WifBriefingData.knSimple (alongside _oStarter:IsBoss()) in _AcceptOrDeclineMission to decide whether to play this module’s authored confirm/decline cinematic or fall back to a generic “cheap cinematic” instead. It also owns all Intros playback (_PlayIntro/ _StartIntro) and the two lookup functions above.
  • MrxStarter’s Load pulls tActors from a boss starter’s first offered briefing to spawn the extra HQ-interior prop before the briefing UI opens.
  • WifPmcInterior (src/vz/wifpmcinterior.lua — no wiki page yet) reads Intros[sIntro].tHq in _ExitComplete to animate the matching HQ portal blip once a viewed intro finishes.
• Adding a custom flagship-style cinematic briefing just means adding a new top-level key matching your contract’s exact mission-ID string — nothing here pattern-matches or registers keys elsewhere; mrxbriefing picks it up automatically through the plain WifBriefingData[sMissionName] lookup.
• Two harmless on-disk naming mismatches, confirmed by grep, worth knowing if you’re hunting for assets by filename rather than by Lua key: AllCon003’s tAssetPreload/hardpoints reference ...004-numbered assets (vo_allCon004, hp_al04_player/hp_al04_starter), and ChiCon003 does the same (vo_chinCon004, hp_ch04_player/hp_ch04_starter) — both consistent with a cut or renumbered 4th entry in each series that never got its internal asset names updated. The Lua table key (AllCon003/ChiCon003) is what the game actually looks up by, so this doesn’t affect anything at runtime.
• The tCameraEffects.tDepthOfField/tFieldOfView arrays mix bare identifier tokens with real numbers. Entries like { nDuration, nAngle, nStartNear, 0.096, 2.9907, nEndFar, nBlur } have real authored values only at some positions; nDuration, nAngle, nStartNear, nEndNear, nStartFar, nEndFar, and nBlur are never assigned anywhere in this file (confirmed by grep for each name) — as bare global reads they evaluate to nil at runtime. This reads like a decompiler/authoring-tool artifact rather than intentional data; if you need to hand-edit a camera-effect value, treat each array as “the numeric literal at this position,” not as named fields.