Author Topic: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot  (Read 162866 times)

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Offline CT27

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
Great Job. I used to play this campaign, when it needed the first BP mod to work back then.

One comment: The first mission where you need to dock with the police station to depart I couldn't, using 3.7.4. With 3.7.2 it worked under Ubuntu 14.04 64bit.

If it's the mission where the frigate Eternity escapes then I don't think you're supposed to land in the station's fighterbay.  You're supposed to land on that circular platform.

 

Offline TrashMan

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
Not far in, but here's some feedback:

Spoiler:
GOOD:
- attention to detail, custom GUI, music and ship selection


NEEDS WORK:
- PC's custom fighter.
- plans for a prototpye stolen, bought by a rich guy who built it and lost it on cards to you. That thing would be expensive as hell, it's not something you bet on cards. What did the PC bet in return?
- a merc has the ability to maintain a prototype, that is surprisingly bag-free for something that was never tested (never happens)
- you fly that hot piece of hardware and everyone is ignoring your VERY CONSPICUOUS, STOLEN FIGHTER. I'm sure if you stole the plans for a F-35, somehow could build and fly it around, the USA would totally ignore you.
- the other two mercs are design and engineering geniuses AND have access to facilities to build fighters, since they apparently DESIGNED and BUILT their special fighters themselves.

Yeah, all those are bad.
It would be better if the fighters were payment from a corporation, or simply stolen. Get rid of the "unique, one-of-a-kind" or "self-built"


Also, in the first mission you get an endless swarm of pirate fighters that jump you to die. Pirates are opportunists. They shouldn't throw themselves into danger recklesly or not care for their own lives, nor should they do things that don't benefit them.
 Loosing 30 fighters trying to capture one cargo craft and throwing 30 more? You lost more in pilots and material then the cargo is worth.

Nobody dies as a virgin - the life ****s us all!

You're a wrongularity from which no right can escape!

 

Offline CT27

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
A minor technical glitch in the Act 3 mission where you fly in a spacesuit:

You can target the Lucifer/Ravana that force the Titan to flee but there's no icon for them in the radar.  Neither does a radar icon for the transport that comes in to rescue you.

 

Offline herkie423

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
A minor technical glitch in the Act 3 mission where you fly in a spacesuit:

You can target the Lucifer/Ravana that force the Titan to flee but there's no icon for them in the radar.  Neither does a radar icon for the transport that comes in to rescue you.

Yeah... I tried to fix it. but it is beyond me. In fact some of the shivan and GTVA fighters don't appear on radar and that includes the transport ship. My guess is that it has something to do with the number of things in the mission (I reached the absolute limit in FRED). Let's just say that your space suit tracking sensors are kinda' busted. :)
« Last Edit: December 01, 2016, 04:01:16 am by herkie423 »

 
Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
I've been following this campaign for months and the first edition is now released! Will download when I got my fast-internet access. Hope is a great campaign!
I'm a great collector of mods, 73 and counting! Ask me for the list.

 

Offline deathspeed

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
This looks amazing!  Any chance of getting it added to the FSO Installer?
Maybe someday God will give you a little pink toaster of your own.

 

Offline CT27

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
This looks amazing!  Any chance of getting it added to the FSO Installer?


I would hope that could happen, but Herkie would have to talk to Goober about that.


Anyways Herkie, congrats on this release getting in the December 2016 newsletter.

 

Offline herkie423

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
I did talk to Goober and I even made an installer text file but the problem is my cloud source. MediaFire does not support or allow Bot download (the CAPTHA feature blocks that) and FSO installer is a Bot downloader. I may have to transfer to another file hosting site and I am still looking. Anyone have ideas?

 

Offline herkie423

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
NEW UPDATE AVAILABLE

Hello space pilots, I have made the first update. Just some minor changes and corrected a few overlooked, pesky typo errors. Please read the opening post. The updated file is the AF-Root.vp. Re-download it from the download list in the OP. :)

I just wish I have a grammar checker software... :banghead:

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
I may have to transfer to another file hosting site and I am still looking. Anyone have ideas?
http://sectorgame.com/fsfiles/
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 herkie423

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
Oh yes, of course! My old cloud source. Does it support site to site transfer? So that I wont have to upload the big files again.

 
Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
Some constructive criticism:

The secondary bays on your custom super-duper fighter are far too large. What in freespace will I ever do with 720 tempests? If you still want to make it a quasi-bomber, I would keep one secondary bay fairly large, so the player can equip their most-used secondary in that slot and not worry about running out of missiles - and give the other two secondary slots a more conservative payload.

On the note of the custom interceptor of ultimate ownage, almost nothing it goes up against is a challenge. The only battle that comes close is the 1-vs-many dogfight around a jump node, after escorting the stargazer to safety. Even then, the enemy doesn't stand much of a chance.

In the mission "The Nebula Revisited", after blowing up the Ravana, the three corvettes you are escorting just hang around the knossos portal doing nothing. Each of the 3 corvettes has the 'no orders' directive when targeted. The mission just goes on forever. (I'm actually stuck on this mission)

A few instances where the loadouts are locked make no sense. In act 1, there are times where the player is clearly not in a hurry, but cannot customize the loadout. Stranger still, the loadout has been replaced from the prior mission - indicating that the player most certainly did dock between missions and swap weapons.

There are minor grammatical errors in the missions, tech room, briefings, and fiction viewer. They sound a little strange, but are still readable.

There is a lot of fleet diversity and new tech, considering this happens only 3 years after Capella during tough economic times. It took decades to build the colossus in Freespace 2 retail. How did the GTVA poop out battlegroups of this size?

The enforcer police ship sucks, especially when it's armed with the prometheus and subach. It is painful to fly. Why would the player-character give up the apex predator of interceptors to go fly a ship that underperforms vs. some great war era ships? Does he have brain damage?



Now for the things I like:

Oh man, I love the weapons! I loved BP's balor cannon, and I love your ripper cannon! I love my firepoint-cycling primaries with clean visuals. The skyrail, your awesome antimatter cannon, is an even cooler version of this.

The beams are pretty - way prettier than retail. Your blue beams are prettier than BP's, and your red shivan beams are sexy too. The beams are so pretty that I am going to use a few of those effects in my own mod.

The mission where you get to give orders to the chimera & bellerophon fire team is amazing. I'm not sure if they will automatically shoot stuff on their own if you leave them alone, but gravity beam artillery strikes are sweet! I almost managed to blow up the smaller, non-refitted orion before it jumped.

The missions are a nice balance of self-playing & challenging. After blowing some stuff up and taking the upper hand in combat, it's nice to sit back, grab some popcorn, C-3-9 (all fighters engage enemy) and watch the fireworks unfold in the larger fleet battles.

Raiding the pirate depot is a fascinating mission. I flew a perseus, and put my wingman in an erinyes with maxims and rippers. Using the erinyes' quad maxims as my personal wrecking ball was fun!
« Last Edit: December 08, 2016, 03:43:46 pm by Erebus Alpha »
"Obviously the meson bomb is a form of cat-toast-device, with the buttered toast inverted, so that the cat and toast both fly in the direction of gravity much faster than expected. By introducing artificial gravity, a pair of cat-toast perpetual motion accelerator units can be made to collide with one another, and they produce an unimaginably devastating explosion. Both cats are named 'Meson'."

 - Wikileaks 2383

 

Offline Urbana

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
I really enjoyed this mod so far one of the best i have ever played. Bug wise i actually didn't find any it was one of the few mods that played without issues. The new capital ships and fighters were amazing, for me a fighter that can mount 720 tempest missiles is a dream come true for me cause i make do with those, not to mention the widow makers were the most amazing of all. I would sit a 5 kms  out of enemy range and snipe them with the missiles.... too epic. The corvette missions were my fav by far i had the mad maniacal laugh when i was taking out destroyers and juggernauts with this corvette and commanding the cruisers. If this ever gets a voice over option then it would be perfect. I give this mod a solid 9/10 well done herkie423 cant wait to see what comes next, like at the end of credits with the SD Bhaal and Vishnu keeper at the end of the game that had voices was the best thing ever, I actually recorded the last mission with the GTVA Archangel killing the monster Juggernaut i have it playing at work to get others into playing this great game
I have been away too long. The challenge has waned. They must learn anew the meaning of ph34r

 

Offline CT27

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
In the opening post under the campaign name there are five symbols.  Obviously one can tell what the middle three represent since they have text, but one do the ones on the far left and right mean?

 

Offline Hunter

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
Hi Herkie - I added this to FreeSpace Files for you - Direct links will work fine with FSO Installer. See: http://sectorgame.com/fsfiles/?dir=uploads/Projects%20-%20Campaigns%20-%20TCs/Campaigns/SCP%20Campaigns/The%20Aftermath%20Reboot
FreeSpace Files | Overload | Sectorgame Forums - For those times when HLP is down (or because you want to keep me company)

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Offline herkie423

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
Hi Herkie - I added this to FreeSpace Files for you - Direct links will work fine with FSO Installer. See: http://sectorgame.com/fsfiles/?dir=uploads/Projects%20-%20Campaigns%20-%20TCs/Campaigns/SCP%20Campaigns/The%20Aftermath%20Reboot

Thank you, Hunter. That saved me a lot. I will update the OP to include this link. Meanwhile, I will prepare my installer text file.

 

Offline herkie423

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
The XJR Phantom is a dream bonus ship for player to have good fun blasting enemies, an uber ship, not really essential to the story. That is why this fighter is not available in most of the campaign; only in the first Act (to help new players acclimate with the space combat genre) and in the later missions close to the end. If players want some realism, then don't use it--- use the 7th BG released issues instead.

The huge loadouts were deliberate as to relieve players the hassle of calling a support ship to reload especially in chaotic missions with no time to breath. I sacrificed a degree of realism here in favor of fun just like in Call of Duty games or any game where you can actually recover from being spayed by bullets (except grenades for added challenge). If it were too realistic the game will not be playable. My testers tried it and it was frustrating. you can use the standard issues like the Perseus, Hercules MkII, Erinyes, etc. There actually available in your loadouts except for some missions for plausibility.

In the "Nebula Revisted." If you reach the point to the Ravana blowing up then it is over. You have the authority to jump out and return to base. If you can not jump then one shivan managed to slip through and still survive. I will look into that and make the changes. Those three corvettes will not leave that area. They are assigned to guard that Knossos.

Some missions with locked loadouts. well, like in the first mission, loadouts are loacked because you are broke. No money. In "Jail breakers," you are in space and no briefing for that matter, Just a command briefing which is Richter's personal log. In "corvette" missions, strictly no loadouts to avoid the technical issue in game custom scripts; example, I tried to have the Boreas and Avenger available so that player can choose but the script's targeting algorithms did not function as it was suppose to. When it comes to loadouts, I have considered that matter many times in each mission. There are missions were weapons or ships are not available because of war allocation. It is the same in real life. do you know that during my military service, my platoon assignment is to have an M16 rifle but in a number of recon runs, I was given a Carbine sniper rifle and I have to lend my M16 to someone with a critical role. I am not designated as a sniper still I have to make do. In combat here in Mindanao with the MNLF insurgents, supply is always ridiculous. I want the player to have that kind of feel. If you notice the loadout predicament, then my plan worked. If you feel that the GTVA is awful, arrogant and over-confident in their war campaign that is exactly the story and guess who saved the day in the end.

The same predicament I want players to experience when working the GTVA Police. A law enforcer with a crappy ship issue. And why would Richter give up that apex-predator of an interceptor? He did not. It was confiscated nicely. Remember the briefing? "...It will be in our caring custody." Obviously, Cartwright means it will be studied. The military had a degree of interest in this craft and tries to acquire it legally --- read the tech description (updated AFRoot.vp). I you feel that helpless feeling piloting the police issue, then that is exactly the point. That is also one of the reason for John Richter's dark tone in his diary. He lived a rotten life with the blood of thousands in his hands (read the fiction section---I hope players will read it; they are just short and few. If they skip it, then they will not get the exact meaning of the campaign). I designed the missions (exaggerated at times) to let players feel Richter's desperation, exhilaration and even boredom (like escort missions---you will know in his diary why he hated these). 

The massive fleet of the GTVA in just 3 years. Well, I have to admit that is way out of bound. I actually considered to reduce the number of ships in the mod but I did not. I even wanted to add more weapons but that will be adding to the ridiculousness so I figured, just the ships....what the heck. Hey, in world War II, the USA was able to produce thousands of tanks and aircraft, a dozen huge aircraft carriers and dozens of destroyers and cruisers in three years and that was 1945. Imagine what man can do in 2370! It is explained in the techroom intel database under the topic "The Mass Production" which will be available later in the campaign as you progress. Actually, questions like jump drives deactivation, "Fleet" and "Battlegroup" designations and others are answered in the intels and in command briefings.

With grammar errors. call it a language barrier. English is not my native tongue. At least, I manage. with this issue, I ask my apologies. Oh hey...maybe this is how they talk in 2370...Nah...That's ridiculous!...but possible.

PS: If you have grammar errors in the game, please download the update in the Openning Post (re-download the AFRoot.vp). I have made quite a number of corrections (which are actually typographic errors...I am bad in typing). Still there might be more and I will devote the following days to hunt them down and I will have a second update.

 

Offline herkie423

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
In the opening post under the campaign name there are five symbols.  Obviously one can tell what the middle three represent since they have text, but one do the ones on the far left and right mean?

The one in the far left is the squadron logo for the 77th Dark Angels Squadron. The one in the far right is the 76th Ice Queens logo. In some mission when they are present, you can fly in close to their fighter and see their logo in their wings.

 

Offline CT27

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
Right now I am at the point where I just completed the Avenging Adhara mission.

About the fleet issue, it may be slightly implausible that new ships could be designed and built in three years, but maybe designs had been created earlier.  Don't worry about it, having new ships is cool.  Also, it's not like there's 50 new Erebus destroyers or something.

Finally, it's nice to see this may make the Installer someday.

 
Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
I fixed the issue of getting stuck in "The Nebula Revisited". Apparently if you wait until the Ravana gets in beam range, and it blows up one of three friendly corvettes, the mission works. I managed to get the mission to finish & receive the warp-out directive like that.

The loadouts later on in the game seem to make sense, even when locked. Although sometimes I wish Richter would land, get out of the cockpit, and when the weapon techs go to uninstall the guns, he should say: "Hey, leave that Skyrail alone! You know how often we get scrambled at the last minute!" Although, I am not sure FRED can save a loadout from one mission and bring it to the next.

Once I got further into the campaign, I read the mass production tech room entry. That sort of manufacturing revolution should have spawned an unprecedented economic boom.

I was actually somewhat disappointed with the mission "The Royal Fleet", where you have the option of stealth or a 1 vs. 100 dragon dogfight. You gave the player 100 Widowmaker missiles. If you divert extra power to engines, and stay 1000-2000 meters away from the swarm, you can one-shot every single one of them with Widowmakers, even on insane difficulty. With that technique, I did not take a single point of damage from the Dragons. I feel like this would have been much more challenging if the player had fewer Widowmakers, and had to rely on other weapons too.

The idea of language evolution by 2370 is kind of cool! It's completely plausible that grammar could change in that span of time. Just look at how much English has changed over the last 300 years. (Don't worry, the grammar errors are minor, everything is very easily readable.)

I did especially like the part with Richter's blue guardian, but I wish that the concept of the GTVA turning into monsters was explored a little more. After piloting the Avenger, Richter worries that the GTVA is going to be unstoppable. There is a lot of unused plot fuel - but I suppose that's what the sequel is for!

Overall, I loved it. I can't wait to play the next phase of the Aftermath IP!
"Obviously the meson bomb is a form of cat-toast-device, with the buttered toast inverted, so that the cat and toast both fly in the direction of gravity much faster than expected. By introducing artificial gravity, a pair of cat-toast perpetual motion accelerator units can be made to collide with one another, and they produce an unimaginably devastating explosion. Both cats are named 'Meson'."

 - Wikileaks 2383