[Goober5000]

This hardly counts as a release since it's not my campaign, but I thought you might be interested anyway.

A few weeks ago I was playing through the FS2 demo, just because it had two cool missions, and I wondered if it would be possible to convert it to retail FS2 so I wouldn't have to keep the demo installation on my computer.  It turns out that simply extracting the mission and voice files from the demo VPs and packing them into a separate VP did the trick.  So rather than install the entire demo whenever you want to play the demo campaign, all you have to do is keep a nice convenient little (well, 7 MB) VP file on hand.

Now these aren't the exact files from the demo installation.  I realized that they could use a few tweaks, so I spent a few hours adding personas and talking heads to all the messages and adjusting certain sexps.  It should play exactly the same as the demo campaign, just with a bit of extra cosmetic polish that you probably wouldn't notice unless you played the actual demo right before it.  Oh, and I removed the training mission.

So without further ado, here's the link (thanks to FreeSpace Files for the hosting):
http://sectorgame.com/fsfiles/?dir=uploads/Projects%20-%20Campaigns%20-%20TCs/Demos/ [search for fs2demo.zip]

The VP contains the two single-player campaign missions (with the campaign file) plus the two multiplayer standalone missions, complete with voice acting.  It's compatible with retail, and you can run it right alongside any retail-compatible campaign.  The only caveat is that I changed messages.tbl to use the CM1 head and voice for Terran Command, since the demo had a white guy voice.  This will affect built-in messages for every campaign installed in parallel that doesn't override messages.tbl.  (To fix this, either move the VP or copy the retail messages.tbl to the tables folder.)

So, let me know if those six or so hours were worth it.

[karajorma]

Sounds good. I'll give this a try

[Nuclear1]

This should jog some good ol' memories. Downloading now.

[Depth_Charge]

looks good....so is this going to be a remake of the main campaign, if so, then this should be fun.......

[Nuclear1]

I just played it through. It felt good having the voiceacting back, as I sorely missed it in the SOTY edition.

Thanks for putting this together, Goob.

[Goober5000]

You're welcome.

[Fenrir]

looks good....so is this going to be a remake of the main campaign, if so, then this should be fun.......

Nah, it's a port of the old Freespace 2 Demo to Freespace 2 itself.
I've never played the demo, so I'll be downloading this.

[StratComm]

I loved the FS2 demo.  Had nothing to do with the actual campaign, but it was still pretty awesome nonetheless.

EDIT: Minor, but a couple of bugs.  Most notably, you fail the second mission (but get the success debrif) if the Moloch isn't destroyed.  I think I did this the first time through by telling all ships to ignore the corvette, which means the cruiser just cruised on by it and continued escorting the convoy.  The cruiser made it all the way to the node and jumped out, but the Psamtik never arrived to finish of the Moloch.  I'm actually not 100% sure what caused that to happen, as I got the RTB directive once before the corvette was destroyed but while the Aeolus was still engaging it, so there's a bit of an oddity there.  Also:

Spoiler:

Easter Egg: The disabled Pegasus sucks any support ships in mission straight to it.  And since it's a million miles from anything, it you effectively have no support ship through that mission unless you tell the existing one to bug out and call in a new one.

[Mongoose]

I must have played through this at least ten times before I finally managed to buy FS2.  I think someone else also released a VP-ified version of it recently.  I'll have to make time to run through it again.

[CP5670]

I still have the original demo missions and their voices with me. Pretty cool. The "choice" in the first mission was a nice touch.

You know, since these are official missions, I suppose the ships in them should go into my ship database.

[pyro-manic]

Ooh, I never played the demo. Cheers goob

[Setekh]

Heh. Highlighted.

[Terminator]

a few things i noticed:

1. both missions in the demo had exodus as the music, since that was the only track the demo came with
2. in the demo ships.tbl, the max speed for the herc II was 130 m/s and the perseus max speed was 150 m/s.
3. the demo's flak and explosion sound effects were a bit different as i recall.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Never seen this before, and though some of the voice acting was...iffy, 'twas overall pretty fun; - thanks muchly for converting.

[Col. Fishguts]

Ooh nice. I never realised that the FS2 demo had non-main-campaign missions, downloading now.

[SnakeEyes]

Thanks Gobber, will obviously give it a try.
Can it be run as a MOD in SCP?

[pyro-manic]

Yep. Just use the mod directory thingy as usual.

One thing I did notice is that they used the FS1-style voices, with the more "radio-ified" (yes, I made that word up, and I'm sticking by it ) sounding recordings. And when the Adamant dies, the recording is cut off with a little bit of static, which I'm sure doesn't happen in the full game (it just cuts out completely).

The Psamtik does it's spin-round-the-waypoint-forever thing, which is very annoying, but apart from that there weren't any bugs that I could see.

[Goober5000]

Heh. Highlighted.

Yay!

a few things i noticed:

1. both missions in the demo had exodus as the music, since that was the only track the demo came with
2. in the demo ships.tbl, the max speed for the herc II was 130 m/s and the perseus max speed was 150 m/s.
3. the demo's flak and explosion sound effects were a bit different as i recall.

1) Actually, the first mission in the demo didn't have any in-game music, and the second mission had the same briefing music as the first.  I took the liberty of changing both.
2) Yeah, and in the demo, the Perseus could carry the Maxim too. You'd need to edit the tbl files for this, something I didn't want to do as it would break compatibility with the retail campaign.
3) I actually thought the demo's sound effects were much more subdued.

[Charismatic]

Ooh nice. I never realised that the FS2 demo had non-main-campaign missions, downloading now.

Same same..

[Rake]

Could this be revamped with the various SCP/hi-poly models/nebula's/etc. updates? This would be a nice way to introduce those to gamers that haven't seen them yet.

It'd be even better if you could update the standalone demo this way as well.