Author Topic: Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign  (Read 5489 times)

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Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign
"There are a lot of stories about battle-changing heroism, about single men and women changing the fate of an entire species. Stories about uprisings against great injustice and evil governments. History and fiction show us the tales of people in positions where they can change the way of humankind itself. This story is none of them. This is about those people that get cought in between when empires collide and great militarists fight their wars. This is about the survival of those you love and need the most. About those who sweat and bleed next to you when the going gets tough."

Hello everybody! I'm new to fredding and proudly present my first mission, which hopefully will lead to a small campaign in the near future. I'm looking for people to give me feedback and help me find bugs and errors, plot holes and anything else that doesn't work. So come and roast me  :D

The story of the upcoming campaign is based on Blue Planet. It takes place in Sol within the 18 months before the GTVA captures Jupiter, shortly after the GTVA arrived in Sol.
So first of all I wanted to thank the Blue Planet Team for their great mod and the permission to let my little attempt of fredding play within their universe  :)

What do you need for this mission?

Must have:

- I'm using FS2 OPen 3.7.4. I always used SSE2.exe so I have no idea if there is a problem if you use another, this is the one I recommend.
- Blue Planet complete. Download-Link and instructions: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=90802.0 I used the Bpcomplete mod to create this mission and also used their ship models, so this is definitely needed.
- As it is needed for Blue Planet: The MediaVPs 2014: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=86475.0

Since the mission uses the fiction viewer and different head anis:
- Put the First.fs2 into bpcomplete -> data -> missions (or freespace 2 -> data -> missions if you like, though I think it's easier to have all needed parts within one folder).
- Within the freespace 2 folder, there should be a "bpcomplete folder". Open it, go into "data" and create (if they aren't already there) two folders called "fiction" and "hud".
- Put the "First Mission.txt"-attachment into the fiction folder.
- For a better experience, download the "Starlancer Head Anis" here: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=73679.0 and
- Download Black Wolf's Anis here: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=67771.msg1499363#msg1499363

Extract them and put all .ani-files into the "hud" folder within the bpcomplete folder (as mentioned above).
I think it might work without the anis, but for more diversity I think it's better to have them.

That's it. I hope I didn't forget something important, so please tell me if it doesn't work so I can find out what's going on.

If you wish to give me feedback, I have some questions to you:
- Too hard/too easy? (I play with mouse, so I have no idea if playing with joystick is harder or easier).
- Too long, too much text? (I'm the type of person that tries to explain what's happening around you, but there might be other preferences).
- As you might have recognised, English is not my first language. So if there are big errors, wrong words etc... please tell me. I will work on it ;)
- Last but not least: Since your wingmen are important for the storyline I made them unkillable. To prevent the mission from being too easy because of that, I decided to kill their weapons if they take too much damage. Is this a good way to do this or can this be done "smarter"?


So thank you all for your interest and have fun  :)

PS:
An alternative way to make this work was proposed by tomimaki: Create a folder like for new campaign, put the mission, the anis and the fiction txt-file into their respective folders and create mod.ini which points to bp and mvps.

[attachment deleted by admin]
« Last Edit: December 04, 2016, 11:43:01 am by bomb3rman »

 
Re: Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign
Looks nice.  :yes:
I tried on second difficulty and had no problems to beat mission but it wasn't too easy.
Not too much text. Conversation keeps me occupied even if nothing happens.

1 odd thing - beams on leviathan. I think pirates probably have no access to this kind of weapon. At least pirates from Sol.

Anyway mission is interesting.
Good luck in freeding. :)

p.s.
For me it was cleaner to create folder like for new campaign, put mission, anis and fiction into their respective folders and create mod.ini which points to bp and mvps. But it is me so nvm :p

 
Re: Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign
Hello tomimaki,

thx for your answers! And I'm glad you liked it, too!

Quote
1 odd thing - beams on leviathan. I think pirates probably have no access to this kind of weapon. At least pirates from Sol.

Well I think it can be seen both ways. Since the ship was used till the end of the Second Shivan Incursion (when beam weapons were already discovered), this kind of weaponry was used long before Sol was cut of from the rest of the colonies. At least that's what the wiki says about the Leviathan (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/GTC_Leviathan). On the other hand: It takes a lot of ressources to maintain weapons of this kind... Yes, maybe I should change it. I will think about it  ;)

Quote
p.s.
For me it was cleaner to create folder like for new campaign, put mission, anis and fiction into their respective folders and create mod.ini which points to bp and mvps. But it is me so nvm :p

Well Yeah, since I'm new to fredding this indeed might be the easier way, I just didn't think about it and I'm at the moment not very familiar with mod.inis... I think I will add your instruction as a second possibility in the first posts.

Thanks and greetings!

 

Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign
I intend to give this a playthrough this week.

If you are wanting to build a whole campaign, I definitely suggest making a mod folder with a mod.ini. It's just, by far, the best way to dev a campaign and keep all your files organized and clean. Mod.inis are not complicated. Pop into the HLP IRC or Discord server and someone will definitely be able to help you out.
Cutscene Upgrade Project - Mainhall Remakes - Between the Ashes
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Between the Ashes is looking for committed testers, PM me for details.
Freespace Upgrade Project See what's happening.

 
Re: Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign
Hi mjn.mixael,

this would be nice :)

Yeah when it comes to a campaign I will give it a try with the mod folder, I promise. Good to know, thx!

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign
Code: [Select]
$BBowman $BStation
I strongly recommend putting spaces between color tags and the words they're meant to colorize, like so:
Code: [Select]
$B Bowman $B Station
You can also use color spans if you want to be more explicit about when colorization begins and ends:
Code: [Select]
$B{ Bownman Station $}
The reason for this has to do with how wordwrapping works in FSO. I notice you have inserted what appear to be manual linebreaks into your paragraphs; I'm assuming it's because the wordwrapping didn't work right otherwise. This is because the engine was getting confused because of the way you were using color tags.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

When you gaze long into BMPMAN, BMPMAN also gazes into you.

"I am one of the best FREDders on Earth" -General Battuta

<Aesaar> literary criticism is vladimir putin

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!
* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

 

Offline Jackho

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Re: Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign
Hello,

I was looking for something else when I came across this thread, so I gave it a try this night. I really like the story and the way you introduce pilots that aren't only warriors or soldiers. They're humans too, and with all these mods around, we tend to forget that civilians are also involved when war happens.

I had no problem running this mission with latest nightly and my joystick, also I fixed First mission.txt and I can tell it displays OK on a 1360x768 screen (why those linebreaks?). Being a  new FREDder myself I take every opportunity to improve my skills. I can attach it here but I suppose you already took care of it.

Briefing was clear enough so I didn't read it twice, but I was disappointed not to be able to chose my weapons, I love Vulcans  :p

I found there was a good balance between speech parts and action parts,
Spoiler:
although I ended up increasing time compression to get to waypoint and back to convoy

I'm used to play at medium level because of the gap between easy and medium, I find wingmen and enemies are to lazy at easy level, so I challenged this mission at medium and that's where the fun part ends.

Spoiler:
I was not able to protect both my wingmen and the transports, so I sticked to the transports and ended fighting 5 against 1 near the jumpnode, which is impossible to me with this BP AI. I think I'll have to find a way to keep at least both of us alive until the end of the mission. You were right in making the wingmen invulnerable because they die very quickly, not a single one resists more than 5 minutes, but it may not be useful if they eventually stay at 5000+ units away from the convoy dodging. I guess you didn't plan on giving the player reinforcements (giving how the situation is described). Not any Deus ex Machina but, well, something to help?

After the 12th or 13th try I gave up, I need to sleep anyway. Maybe I'll try it on easier difficulty, someday.

Finally be assured that one can't play a mission so many times if it's not a good mission. Keep it up!
A+
Jack H. : "Well... There's much more to check than six..."

  
Re: Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign
Hello AdmiralRalwood!

Thanks for the help with the color-tags. I indeed had problems with word wrapping and linebreaks, it wasn't working correctly so I did it manually. Now, with your help, word wrapping works fine on automatic, so the lines are now displayed correctly and should do for others on other resolutions as well. The color tags without space seemed to be the problem. It's much better now.

Hello Jackho!

First of all: Thank you for your numerous attemts to beat the mission, I'm sorry if I stressed you out  :D

Quote
I had no problem running this mission with latest nightly and my joystick, also I fixed First mission.txt and I can tell it displays OK on a 1360x768 screen (why those linebreaks?).

Well look above, the manual linebreaks are out now, it should look better.

Quote
Briefing was clear enough so I didn't read it twice, but I was disappointed not to be able to chose my weapons, I love Vulcans  :p
Well, it's just the beginning. As you will make progress with the missions, there will be more weapons and ships to fly. It's just, well, you are playing a bunch of civilians without access to much military gear. You have to earn it through missions ;)

Quote
I found there was a good balance between speech parts and action parts,

That's good to know, since it's my first mission and don't know what others think of the number of lines I put in a mission to read. The Waypoint... I know, but I wanted to give Alpha a goal while reading the first Information about the background of the story :)

Quote
I'm used to play at medium level because of the gap between easy and medium, I find wingmen and enemies are to lazy at easy level, so I challenged this mission at medium and that's where the fun part ends.

Well, I made one big mistake: Not testing the mission above "second run"... Thanks for showing me that :P Your're right, it WAS frustrating though I am very thankful and impressed that you tried it this often. Many others might have stopped, deleted the mission and thats it. Thanks for the review. I agree with you, and changed the following now:

- Aquila Wing only has three members now
- I forgot to give your wingmen the BP-AI. They had the normal one, while the enemy already had the improved one. I fixed it :)

Since I'm not an Ace in this game, I think my flying and fighting abilities are pretty average. After making these changes I tested the mission several times on the second highest and highest difficulty. While still being slaughtered on the highest, I can now beat it on second highest without having to reload a dozen times. I even managed to keep all of the transports at 100 %, so I think it's now much better balanced. And your wingmen are now even able to kill some enemies before losing their weapon power  :lol:

Quote
Finally be assured that one can't play a mission so many times if it's not a good mission. Keep it up!

Thanks a lot!

EDIT: I switched the attachments, these are now the updated ones with correct color tags and the improved AI.

« Last Edit: November 06, 2016, 07:32:07 am by bomb3rman »

 

Offline HLD_Prophecy

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Re: Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign
I want to give this mission a try, but I'm confused. The bpcomplete folder only has .vp files in it, there's no "data" folder. How do I add "First.fs2" in?

 
Re: Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign
Hello and thank you for your wish to give me some feedback :)

Well I'm not a modding expert with freespace 2, but my bpcomplete folder has .vps, the bplogo.bmp, a mod.ini and a "data" folder. Inside the data folder is a folder called "missions" and a folder called "config"... Maybe you need to start the bpcomplete mod first with a launcher so that the folders get created? Alternatively you can put the first.fs2 inside data-> missions from freespace2. Should work as well. (THX AdmiralRalwood!)

Or does anyone else have a better idea?
« Last Edit: November 09, 2016, 07:21:40 am by bomb3rman »

 
Re: Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign
If there are no folders, then just create them :)

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign
Alternatively you can put the first.fs2 inside data-> missions from freespace2. Should work as well.
No no no, that's a terrible idea; if the mission depends on BP assets, then putting it in your base mission folder will just result in problems if/when you accidentally select it from an incompatible mod.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

When you gaze long into BMPMAN, BMPMAN also gazes into you.

"I am one of the best FREDders on Earth" -General Battuta

<Aesaar> literary criticism is vladimir putin

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!
* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

 

Offline Jackho

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Re: Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign
Time has passed but I still want to see the end of it. I'll download and try again by this week end.

Quote from: PVD_Hope
....How do I add "First.fs2" in?

I'm pretty certain this will work, as I did it that way:

- Create a new folder inside your freespace root folder, let's say "First"
- make a directory tree inside it :
  First/data
  First/data/hud
  First/data/fiction
  First/data/missions

- place First.fs2 in "missions" folder
- place "First mission.txt" in "fiction" folder
- place anis files in "hud" folder
- create a mod.ini file which contains
Code: [Select]
[launcher]
modname = First mission;
infotext = [whatever helps you locate in the mods list];

[multimod]
secondarylist = bpcomplete,MediaVPs_2014;

- place it in "First" folder
- use any launcher you prefer (wxlauncher is my favorite, 3.7.5 builds will prefer this one)
- select the "First mission" mod
- enjoy :yes:
« Last Edit: November 09, 2016, 04:38:56 pm by Jackho »
A+
Jack H. : "Well... There's much more to check than six..."

 

Offline HLD_Prophecy

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Re: Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign
The data folder got created once I actually started BP. I will give the mission a try! Thanks for FREDing. :)

 
Re: Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign
You're welcome and have fun :)

 

Offline HLD_Prophecy

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Re: Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign
Actually, I can't get it to work just yet.

I added a "missions" folder into the "data" folder, and added First.fs2 to it, but I can't find it in the mission simulator.

 
Re: Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign
Well I think the best way is to do it like Jackho said a few posts ago. I quote it here:

Quote
Time has passed but I still want to see the end of it. I'll download and try again by this week end.

Quote from: PVD_Hope

    ....How do I add "First.fs2" in?


I'm pretty certain this will work, as I did it that way:

- Create a new folder inside your freespace root folder, let's say "First"
- make a directory tree inside it :
  First/data
  First/data/hud
  First/data/fiction
  First/data/missions

- place First.fs2 in "missions" folder
- place "First mission.txt" in "fiction" folder
- place anis files in "hud" folder
- create a mod.ini file which contains
Code: [Select]

[launcher]
modname   = First mission;
infotext = [whatever helps you locate in the mods list];

[multimod]
secondarylist = bpcomplete,MediaVPs_2014;


- place it in "First" folder
- use any launcher you prefer (wxlauncher is my favorite, 3.7.5 builds will prefer this one)
- select the "First mission" mod
- enjoy :yes:

Either you try this or you wait a bit longer (a week or two I guess) until the third mission of the campaign is ready. Then I will open a new thread with the whole 3 missions in a campaign file with all additional stuff needed. This could be easier :)

Or, alternatively: Might be a stupid question, but did you activate the BP Mod with your launcher?
« Last Edit: November 15, 2016, 10:30:14 am by bomb3rman »

 

Offline HLD_Prophecy

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Re: Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign
hey bomberman, just letting you know that I can see the mission in the mission simulator now. Not sure what was up.

I will try it and let you know what I think! Thanks!

 
Re: Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign
Ok, great that it finally works :)

Have fun!

 

Offline Goober5000

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Re: Testers wanted: First Mission of campaign
hey bomberman, just letting you know that I can see the mission in the mission simulator now. Not sure what was up.

If you had FSO running while you created the new folders, you would have had to exit and re-run it to recognize them.