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General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: General Battuta on April 25, 2012, 06:41:57 pm

Title: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on April 25, 2012, 06:41:57 pm
this is a work in progress and it should be pretty obvious where the work is needed. please contribute!

preamble and disclaimer

If you're on Hard Light Productions, odds are that you've missed a lot of really important, really groundbreaking mods - projects that really pushed the limits of the FSO engine and brought something new to the table. And you've missed a lot of fun, heartfelt campaigns, too, gems that polished classic gameplay to a shine, or simply offered more of what brought all of us here.

You haven't played everything. Maybe you haven't played anything at all. This post is intended to get you started - or, if you're a longtime veteran, to help you find what might interest you.

This thread doesn't contain every mod ever made, but it does contain most of what I think are the important ones. If there's a mod you want added, or one you want fleshed out, please, just post and let me know.

There will be no negativity in this thread. This is a place to highlight people's hard work.

Campaign Playlists

These are quick-and-dirty suggestions tailored to meet the needs of a particular kind of player.

Who are you?

FreeSpace

I've never played FreeSpace at all. I want to get into this amazing game.

I've played FreeSpace. I want to continue the FreeSpace story with some fan-made mods set in the same universe.

There is no chronology or continuity between most fan mods, so you can dive in with whatever interests you. Here's a good starting selection:

I'm interested in more mods set around FreeSpace 2. Tell me about projects with traditional, no-frills gameplay.

I'm interested in more mods set around FreeSpace 2. Give me adventure - new storytelling, new gameplay.

Damn that cliffhanger! I want to play something that feels like a conclusion to the FreeSpace story, even if it's not the one I imagined!

You can't! And, surprisingly, only a few mods have even attempted to move in this direction. They are:


I want to play something old school - a FreeSpace 1 era campaign. Where should I start?

I need to relax! Give me something funny.

Beyond FreeSpace

I'm ready to move beyond the FreeSpace setting. What's out there, and how will it expand my brain?

What about the mods based on Our Favorite Science Fiction Properties?


These lists aren't useful. Give me something different.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on April 25, 2012, 06:42:10 pm
Campaigns By Era - A History of HLP Creativity

The Foundationals

Foundation-era campaigns include Derelict, Inferno R1, and the Aeos Affair. These campaigns built on the storytelling and design grammar used by Volition - information conveyed through command briefings and briefings, silent protagonists, beam-armed warships deployed both as plot devices and bomber targets, and waved enemies. Flight dynamics remained untouched, weapons were mostly variants on retail archetypes, and AI behavior was not a major focus. Inferno R1 opened the era of the Big Modpack Mod, offering a huge swathe of new weapons and ships as a central component of its design and kicking off a modpack armsrace to build awesome exclusive ships that would, ironically, lead only to a lot of dead projects, very nearly including Inferno itself. Derelict pointed the way in a different direction - campaigns focused on storytelling and creative use of existing assets, exploring corners of the FreeSpace universe untouched by the main campaign, offering a little more texture and character to a universe intentionally designed to be sterile and vast.

While it's easy to poke fun at campaigns from this era - even the mighty Derelict has rough edges - there's an enormous amount of value here. Where later campaigns often sandwich gameplay between layers of cutscene or fiction-driven storytelling, campaigns from this era usually put the player right into the action, and the plot rarely stomps on the player's agency. By and large, FREDders of this era worked in the Zen constraints of hardware and software, often for the better.

Adventures in Deimos Applications

While anticipation swelled, ebbed, and swelled again for the legendary, oft-delayed megaprojects - Blackwater Operations, Inferno R2 (later Inferno SCP), Machina Terra, and the like - Blaise Russell and Ransom Arceihn picked up Derelict's baton and ran with it. During this era HLP's projects began their bifurcation into two distinct camps: small-team, story-focused projects that used FreeSpace 2 ships and freely available fan-made ships, and big-team ambitious projects that featured large sets of new, exclusive assets. These two schools of project design differed in one other important respect - the former got released, the latter stagnated and (with a few sterling exceptions) ultimately died.

The Russell/Arceihn campaigns - Homesick, Sol: A History, Shrouding the Light, Sync, Transcend - were characterized not by bombastic beam frenzy and 'kill this new, bigger ship' missions, but by thoughtful deployment of existing assets (Sol: A History made brilliant use of the Inferno R1 modpack), subversion of and experimentation with the normal grammar of FreeSpace storytelling, and distinct narrative voice. Blaise Russell's campaigns are instantly recognizable for their pilots' weary cynicism; Ransom Arceihn's psychological interests hardly need description. These campaigns opened the door for further departures from the impersonal 'command brief, brief, leave destroyer, play mission, return to base' grammar of traditional FreeSpace narrative design.

This isn't to say that the orthodox style was abandoned - that would have been a tragedy. It was during this era that the first real bickering over narrative design began, and while some of this discussion produced interesting (and broadly applicable) examination of the conflict between narrative and player agency in games, a lot of it was fundamentally pointless. Jason Scott, the writer of FreeSpace 2, made it clear very early on that he felt the most important virtue of the FreeSpace campaign community was heterodoxy, doing things in many different ways. The more diverse the campaigns the community produced, the stronger it became - if it could just stop bickering about them.

While Russell and Arceihn defined this era, there were a number of other important milestones. TopAce, stalwart contributor, produced a series of solid campaigns and took custody of others, including Into the Halls of Valhalla. In 2007 CP6570 rolled out The Procyon Insurgency, a devilishly hard remix of FreeSpace 2's gameplay - a new story set several years later with all-new missions, but following the same general beats and offering a rebalanced weapon set and more challenging warships.

Along the way, Silent Threat Reborn trundled along as an anomaly - a long-running megaproject that wasn't doomed to failure, perhaps because of its clear outline (remake the shoddy Silent Threat expansion) and ability to use retail assets in its mission design. And Blackwater Operations shipped a crisp, striking demo with a voiced protagonist and a sterling set of missions, offering a glimpse at what could've been (and still might be) for a project full of mission design skill but hampered by asset trouble.

This era was also notable for what it didn't achieve: while new ships and new weapons were easy to make, the core of the FreeSpace gameplay, including AI behavior, remained largely untouched. Vast numbers of missions were shipped without anyone kenning to peculiarities of FRED and the game engine; no one spotted that FRED couldn't reliably assign ship AI classes. It would take a few very specific men to tackle these problems - but first, something curious happened.

Hybrid Vigor

In Fall 2008 Darius released Blue Planet, a dimension-hopping thrillride packed with daddy issues, Hindu-Buddhist syncretism, loyal wingmen, shiny ships and a rocking soundtrack. It was a project of passion, inspired by love of everything - Inferno, Derelict, Transcend - and accomplished not through careful hoarding of exclusive ships and assets but by the use of freely available resources drawn from all over the community.

Blue Planet wasn't a revolution so much as an inevitable evolution; the collision of the two disparate schools of design, the Derelict and Inferno paths of development. Like Transcend or Homesick, it was a one-man project, concerned with character development and storytelling more than parroting the grammar of FreeSpace 2. Like Inferno or the megaprojects, it offered a splashy spread of new ships and weapons and a story that picked up the hooks left dangling by FreeSpace 2. And it didn't section the player off into a backwater station, or an unknown jump node; players took on a command role in an elite battle group at the center of everything.

Blue Planet's content wasn't for everyone, but its design methodology was inarguably critical. It showed that projects using existing assets could deliver the scope, wonder, and scale that had, so far, been left primarily to the still-distant megaprojects. Any one designer, armed with sufficient passion and spare time, could bust out a work of explosive popularity. And it eventually touched off an important trend: modelers began releasing their finished assets for public use instead of signing them off to languish in the files of perpetually delayed projects. Blue Planet could never have happened without the generosity of the Inferno team, and many later mods would never have happened without the generosity of others. The more this generosity could be encouraged, the stronger the community was.

That Christmas, Silent Threat Reborn finally hit the finish line. In the spirit of heterodoxy, it was remarkable for how thoroughly it matched the style and quality of Volition's campaigns - a polished love letter to the tried and true techniques of the canon narrative. And it, too, had a methodological lesson: that even in a project stretched out over years, the only ingredient absolutely needed for success is someone - or a pair of someones - willing to sit down with FRED and put the time in. (By contrast, witness the silent collapse of TVWP, which brought together an enormous, talented team but couldn't inspire enough passion even in its developers to keep up momentum.)

This was a pivotal moment for the FreeSpace community. A major project had reached completion, and an out-of-nowhere project had demonstrated that a newcomer could make a gigantic contribution. One of these avenues exploded; the other didn't.

The Summer 2010 Trinity

Summer 2010 changed everything. It was not that it represented some fundamentally new approach, nor that it destroyed the old and ushered in the new. Nor did some new generation of coders and designers supplant the old.

Rather, a whole host of developers, collaborating through networks both digital and social, enabled an eruption of creativity that has not since slowed, a radical expansion of the powers available to the modder. Previous campaigns had shown enormous creativity, but confined to specific domains - mission design, for instance, or the development of new ships. Vast chunks of the gameplay model, from physics to the AI to the nature of the game's difficulty settings, remained inaccessible to modification. Nor did the game's cinematic and visual tools permit a great deal of nuanced storytelling.

Thanks to the Source Code Project and a small band of brave collaborators - Sushi, Fury, and Wanderer prominent but not sole among them - that changed. It was not enough to make changes possible in the engine. They had to be rendered accessible to modders, then built into coherent systems which could integrate into mod design goals, then developed into full-fledged products and released.

That happened. It happened startlingly fast. FreeSpace Open went from a capable and beautiful enhancement of a classic game to a genuine development platform.

The enormous changes that occurred here are beyond the scope of the article. Most prominent among them include Sushi and Fury's work on coding and tabling new and more human AI, a powerful set of new FRED instruments from Karajorma, Goober, and others, and the integration of LUA scripting. What they meant, though, was that individual modders now had the ability to redefine nearly every dimension of the gameplay space.

Vassago's Dirge kicked off this string of releases with an assault on the visual and narrative conventions of FreeSpace mods. Why, it asked, do we rely on text and messages to set mood? Why do we need exposition to tell the story? We have camera angles and movements, precise control over music and sound. We can use postprocessing to desaturate or color the frame. We have the eye and the ear as well as the tongue. Why should a mission be confined to the time between subspace jumps? Let's jump during the mission! Why should a story be told in lumps of exposition bridged by gameplay? Blend the two, make them whole. Render the story not told but understood. The answers will never come because they are right there, in the music, in the shot. The truth isn't hidden; it's too plain to see.

Vassago's Dirge radically redefined the limits of presentation in FreeSpace mods. It was an art film. Blue Planet: War in Heaven was a war story. Where Vassago's Dirge made strides in the extratextual and subtextual, War in Heaven hammered its story home through exposition and dialogue, fitting more flavor and narrative into every nook and cranny - the new fiction viewer, debriefings, the tech room, the missions themselves. But the real meat of the campaign came in redefining the idea of the enemy. Thanks to Fury AI, mission designers no longer needed waves of expendable enemies. The AI opponent could use tactics - advance, retreat, dogfight at numerical parity. Warships jumped away when damaged instead of fighting to the pointless death. The tactical and strategic rules of the war came into focus. The enemy felt human, calculating, intelligent - and hard to kill. Not merely because they were tougher or faster, but because the story suggested that maybe they, too, were the good guys. War in Heaven asked players to consider the fundamental act of killing in FreeSpace, the cost of losing wingmen, the tragedy of a destroyed warship. It desanitized FreeSpace war: no longer beams and cold fire, but dead friends and aspirated vomit, frantic strings of brevity code on channels hashed by radiation.

Wings of Dawn hit the modding scene out of nowhere. Let's get it out of the way: not everybody's into anime. Aesthetics aside, it was objectively a staggering achievement, maybe a formerly inconceivable one. A single-man team had built an essentially complete total conversion - not merely new ships but new gameplay, new flight dynamics, entire species with their own defined character and gameplay behaviors. The moment a helmetless protagonist smashed her head on the cockpit glass, leaving a (happily nonfatal) smear of blood, the textural ambition of the whole project leapt into focus. And unlike War in Heaven, it always put the player right at the center of the gameplay space, a capable agent with new tools and new missions to explore. Where Vassago's Dirge and War in Heaven used gameplay to advance narrative, Wings of Dawn used its narrative in the service of a sprawling, kinetic space opera adventure, a madcap escalation along dimensions that couldn't have been touched by modders a few years earlier.

Boundaries had been removed. The total deconstruction of FreeSpace gameplay was now accessible to the interested amateur, and that amateur would shine - the following years saw a string of brilliant, unconventional releases out of nowhere.

What might be most remarkable about these projects is that they did not compete. There were no exclusive assets, no hidden agendas. (Blue Planet donated most of its self-developed visual effects to the MediaVPs before release.) The developers worked together to solve bugs and share ideas. When War in Heaven presented a full mission devoted to Planescape Torment style conversation with another character, talking them into victory through a tree of emotion variables and response branches, it was inspired by Wings of Dawn. Collaboration was strength. Diversity and heterodoxy were virtues. A player who didn't like one campaign could find something to adore in another.

But the titans were not dead. The same technical progress that enabled this eruption of creativity also fueled two singularly devoted and capable team projects, beloved science fiction properties that would stand as perhaps the community's greatest achievements in the public eye.

FreeSpace Is Dead; Long Live FreeSpace (Chop Up And Rearrange The Corpse Though)

more to come lator

Orthogonals?

more to come lator
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on April 25, 2012, 06:42:18 pm
reserved
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on April 25, 2012, 06:42:26 pm
reserved
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Sushi on April 25, 2012, 07:09:39 pm
Very nice. Wing Commander Saga is conspicuously absent right now, though...
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on April 25, 2012, 07:16:39 pm
Whoops! Fixed it.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Klaustrophobia on April 25, 2012, 08:01:18 pm
i'd say Destiny of Peace is a must-add to the FS1 era campaigns section.

and there IS a reason to play the original silent threat: to fully appreciate the immense amount of awesome in Reborn.  certainly not required, but i definitely got more out of Reborn having played the original first (many times trying to make sense of it).
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: SypheDMar on April 25, 2012, 08:37:13 pm
and there IS a reason to play the original silent threat: to fully appreciate the immense amount of awesome in Reborn.  certainly not required, but i definitely got more out of Reborn having played the original first (many times trying to make sense of it).
I agree. Without Silent Threat, ST:R is just a good campaign. ST gave ST:R a direction and showed how much better ST:R really is compared to the original.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: NGTM-1R on April 25, 2012, 08:41:33 pm
I'd actually argue you should play Silent Threat to understand the real FS story as opposed to the additions we made up; the Shivan-related missions have important details to offer on that species. Even Hellfire, bad as it is, offers clues that put the lie to the hive mind theory.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Qent on April 25, 2012, 09:16:08 pm
+1 for playing the original Silent Threat first.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Mongoose on April 25, 2012, 09:28:43 pm
I'm not so sure I'd agree with that...I think playing it at some point is valuable, if for nothing else than to see what ST:R was born from, but it's such an aggravating experience in terms of raw gameplay and lack of narrative that I wouldn't really wish it on anyone as something mandatory, especially not if they're new to the series.  At least in my view, ST:R does a fantastic job of capturing the retail FS tone and narrative style, and it certainly does far more to tie the two games together than the original ST ever could.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on April 25, 2012, 09:29:23 pm
Yeah, after speaking with Goob, I may add a footnote about playing Silent Threat as a curiosity but I'm not going to recommend it to first time players.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Legate Damar on April 25, 2012, 09:52:53 pm
I haven't heard of that Antagonist thing before, but the description sounds similar to a feature I want to eventually implement in Legacy of Shiva... I will probably download it and play it, then check out how it was done, to get some ideas and tricks.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Cyborg17 on April 25, 2012, 10:14:28 pm
It's worth it.

And well done Battuta, this is awesome!
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Nuke on April 25, 2012, 10:54:02 pm
can you also give each mod a doneness rating?

i want to play some of those mods, but i dont really have the time to track each one's progress, and i really dont want to play incomplete mods or betas.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Goober5000 on April 25, 2012, 11:02:51 pm
Good thread. :yes:  I'm very interested in seeing what becomes of the "more to come later" sections.

Also, I would add Awakenings to the list of good FS1-era campaigns to play.  It has mods, it has a good story (albeit incompatible with ST, ST:R, or FS2), and it's fun.  It was the very first campaign I played after finishing retail FS1.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on April 25, 2012, 11:13:05 pm
can you also give each mod a doneness rating?

i want to play some of those mods, but i dont really have the time to track each one's progress, and i really dont want to play incomplete mods or betas.

These mods are all complete and released, except, I guess, Diaspora
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: MatthTheGeek on April 26, 2012, 04:58:06 am
I suggest you put a (WIP) after the non-released mods like Diaspora, and let people assume that the mods that don't have the (WIP) rating are released. Also, where is FotG ?

EDIT: also, I notice a significant lack of Ridiculous and FS3 Search for Bosh in the "I need to relax! Give me something funny." section. Maaaaaybe even SGWP2 :p

EDIT2: what about adding links to relevant release threads ?
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Killer Whale on April 26, 2012, 07:23:35 am
2 Genrole Batman. U = Awsum. Sawly kneaded alot thred. Afta fin, P.L.S. stick-y admods.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: karajorma on April 26, 2012, 07:50:59 am
I'd add Beyond the Red Line's Demo. It might be short but it's still playable. I'd also mention that both it and Diaspora are based on BSG.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on April 26, 2012, 12:07:03 pm
Updated the history. Very much neglects TCs and humor campaigns, which it shouldn't.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Beskargam on April 26, 2012, 12:28:20 pm
Very much enjoyed reading the history section, it gives a good picture of how the community progressed to those of us who weren't here for it
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: TrashMan on April 26, 2012, 03:16:33 pm
I'm curious as to how you plan to summarize Flames of War...it stars in FS2 era, but the second part jumps to post-Capella.
That and that many characters from part 1 retire and are not seen in part 2.
...
and only now do I see I could have made your grizzled and weary captain in the first mission to be Razor from the first part. Would have been a nice touch. Why didn't I think of this sooner?
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Cyborg17 on April 26, 2012, 05:12:25 pm
Quote
"*snip*

*no longer relevant correction*
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on April 26, 2012, 05:16:00 pm
Already fixed before you posted.  ;7
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Cyborg17 on April 26, 2012, 05:33:36 pm
Nice.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: EternalRuin on April 26, 2012, 05:36:14 pm
This is quite informative, especially for me, who first played freespace in 2005 and has only recently become obsessed with SCP. So good job =D.

Question, though: what the heck is a deimos application supposed to be? o.O
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Mongoose on April 26, 2012, 07:44:58 pm
Not to put words in Battman's mouth, but I'm guessing that title refers to Homesick, which featured a single wing of fighters journeying with a Deimos-class corvette for pretty much the entire campaign.  As he noted, several subsequent campaigns, including Transcend and Sync, drew inspiration from this and used a similar archetype.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Nuke on April 26, 2012, 08:08:05 pm
one of the reasons i had for not playing other peoples mods is i kinda didnt didnt want it to interfere with influence my own work. but since ive been surpassed and am not actively modding with the intent to produce anything fancy, i figure now would be a good time to start. it actually might drum up the will necessary to finalize the nukemod ship pack.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: karajorma on April 27, 2012, 01:17:09 am
Updated the history. Very much neglects TCs and humor campaigns, which it shouldn't.

Given that TBP would definitely have to be classified as one of the mega projects and it DID deliver, there is a lot missing without mention of them.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Snail on April 27, 2012, 01:33:53 am
This was a really good read. I feel as though I've got a much better appreciation for the numerous campaigns I've played and how they've set milestones. Seeing how far we've come in such a short time also makes me more optimistic about the future of FS. :yes:
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: CommanderDJ on April 27, 2012, 02:04:05 am
also, I notice a significant lack of Ridiculous and FS3 Search for Bosh in the "I need to relax! Give me something funny." section.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Darius on April 27, 2012, 02:56:33 am
Good post, would read several times over  :yes:
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Aesaar on April 27, 2012, 06:17:31 am
This is a great summary.  I haven't been here long, so it's nice to read on how FS2's campaign scene evolved.  Look forward to seeing what else you have to say.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: LordPomposity on April 27, 2012, 08:40:46 am
also, I notice a significant lack of Ridiculous and FS3 Search for Bosh in the "I need to relax! Give me something funny." section.
(http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i211/dj4am/bears_repeating.gif)
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: crizza on April 27, 2012, 10:33:05 am
Just gave Windmills a try, liked it...is there a way to actually use...normal models?
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Kolgena on May 01, 2012, 02:54:37 pm
But the tactical holo concept is so cooool.

Are there any "good" BoE missions out there? (Yeah, I know most BoE's suck in terms of gameplay etc etc) I'm looking for things with more than a couple dozen fighters duking it out, and/or a sizeable number of warships participating. Doesn't have to have good gameplay per se, just lots of explosions and flashiness. I'd say that the last mission in AoA sort of matches what I'm looking for, and I don't want stress test missions with no events like bpmassivebattle.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on May 01, 2012, 02:58:28 pm
Nemesis from Inferno R1, Delenda Est from War in Heaven, large swathes of Wings of Dawn.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Mongoose on May 01, 2012, 03:41:33 pm
"The Number of the Beast" from Derelict is a classic example; it used to utterly obliterate my framerate in the dark days of 3.6.8.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: redsniper on May 02, 2012, 09:32:30 am
Is that the one where you're defending that Iceni knockoff and the three destroyers are absolutely ra- er, devastating some fools off in the distance?
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: LordPomposity on May 02, 2012, 11:52:39 am
Is that the one where you're defending that Iceni knockoff and the three destroyers are absolutely ra- er, devastating some fools off in the distance?
Yes, they were absolutely ravaging some fools off in the distance. Not sure what's wrong with saying that.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Mongoose on May 02, 2012, 08:51:03 pm
Is that the one where you're defending that Iceni knockoff and the three destroyers are absolutely ra- er, devastating some fools off in the distance?
No, but I suppose one could almost consider that a BoE too.  "Number of the Beast" is the mission where you bring the Nyarlathotep through the node to Tau Sigma Station, and run headlong into the fleet of striking workers, whereupon all hell breaks loose.  The mission's notable in that your wing is tasked with defending just one or two ships, so even though beams are flying all over the place, it's completely dependent on the player as to whether or not it's completed successfully.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: redsniper on May 03, 2012, 09:14:25 am
Ah the riot mission. That was a cool one.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Aesaar on May 03, 2012, 11:33:21 am
Artemis bombers out of goddamn nowhere is what I remember most from it.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: X3N0-Life-Form on May 04, 2012, 06:09:48 am
Artemis bombers out of goddamn nowhere is what I remember most from it.
Quoted for truth.
That and warping in a ganymede. And the Nyalathotep suddenly firing.

Who was piloting these bombers anyway? Morgan Tech mercenaries?
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Mongoose on May 31, 2012, 10:13:09 pm
Purged of this mess (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=80998.0).  For the record, I hate you all. :p
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: NGTM-1R on May 31, 2012, 10:21:00 pm
For the record, I hate you all. :p

I'm not sure that's allowed, you're not Goob. So anyways, where were we?
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Mongoose on May 31, 2012, 10:50:42 pm
Talking about Derelict, apparently.  One thing this thread has made clear is how much crap I haven't been playing as it was released.  I was on a good FS2 kick several months ago, but then it just...stopped.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: yuezhi on June 02, 2012, 05:42:55 pm
Landmark of an essay :yes:
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: CT27 on June 04, 2012, 01:50:08 am
The first non-official FS campaign I paid was "Destiny Of Peace".  That was absolutely awesome for only a seven mission campaign (IIRC).

Has there ever been an attempt to update the graphics of it to FS2 standards (i.e., it plays on the FS engine)?
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: MatthTheGeek on June 04, 2012, 02:35:24 am
Destiny of Peace is available on FSPort IIRC (might even be directly included with FSport instead of having to DL it separately).
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: DireWolf on June 04, 2012, 07:17:51 am
Yeah, DoP is included in FSPort.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Goober5000 on June 05, 2012, 10:51:48 am
It's not included in the same download, but it's available from the FSPort site.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on June 07, 2012, 07:19:29 am
It'd be awesome to have some contributions on some of the missing material.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on September 18, 2012, 08:03:05 am
for ex

Crossing the Styx - I need a good description and hook for this one!
Uncharted Territory - I need a good description and hook for this one!
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Spoon on September 18, 2012, 10:23:14 am
Yay, is the General back to finish the guide?
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: FreeSpaceFreak on September 18, 2012, 12:04:02 pm
Crossing the Styx - I need a good description and hook for this one!

Guess I'll plug my own *ahem* mediocre first campaign...

Ever wondered about the story of the NTC Trinity? You know, that cruiser that opened up the Knossos, unleashed the Shivans and stranded derelict in the nebula? In Crossing the Styx, you get to experience the full story first-hand.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on January 07, 2013, 04:20:41 pm
History updated!
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: niffiwan on January 07, 2013, 04:30:17 pm
nice, I enjoyed re-reading that  :yes:
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: 0rph3u5 on March 23, 2013, 04:47:54 pm
Just read the history (never paid this topic any mind 'cause I'm no beginner)... and I'd like to request for Light of Antares (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Light_of_Antares) and Hellgate Ikeya (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Hellgate_Ikeya) to be added to the list of FS1-era-ish campaigns

both aren't as broken as Rain on Ribos 4 (just replayed; oh boy, is the balance off in many of those missions) and LoA's "GTA vs HoL vs Shivans in a mission"-type scenarios has never been been made before and again as far as I know
(I was going to but welll ... that's over now)
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on March 23, 2013, 05:06:52 pm
I'd be happy to add any campaign that someone can do a short blurb for.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Apollo on March 23, 2013, 10:53:56 pm
I'd be happy to add any campaign that someone can do a short blurb for.

In that case:

Quote
The Second Great War Part II - This campaign is considered the greatest of the many mod projects undertaken for FreeSpace 2, despite its lack of major mods and its predating the source code release. It manages, through slick FREDding, an incredibly engaging storyline and clever dialogue, to completely immerse the player in the FreeSpace universe, and it provides an unmatched playing experience. Technically essentially flawless, and artistically sublime, The Second Great War Part II has been called "The fan's FreeSpace 3".

What? It's from the wiki!
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: An4ximandros on March 23, 2013, 11:19:21 pm
I know what I'm playing this April 1st:

(http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/images/thumb/SGWP2_026.png/800px-SGWP2_026.png)

Thanks Apollo :P
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Apollo on March 23, 2013, 11:29:50 pm
You're welcome.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: 0rph3u5 on March 24, 2013, 03:02:59 am
I'd be happy to add any campaign that someone can do a short blurb for.

I will write something ...

EDIT: Just noticed that the missions for LoA I've are updated ones I never released (e.g. they use the kamikaze-ship-change stuff I used in TLG as well) ... I better wrap them up into a new download then before I write something (expect them somewhat mid April)
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Catecholamine on April 11, 2013, 07:59:29 pm
Quote
Freespace 3 the search For bosch - The campaign is set two years after the Capella incident. The player character and her wingmen - each with distinctive and developed personalities - are highly regarded pilots stationed aboard the GVD Cleopatera [sic], a Hatshepsut-class destroyer modified with Shivan technology. The story opens with the announcement that a new Knossos subspace portal has been discovered in a remote corner of the GTVA, and that the Cleopatera [sic] and her battlegroup have been dispatched to investigate. Their mission is to find and apprehend Aken Bosch so that he can be interrogated and brought to justice. Along the way, the player character is subjected to the greatest tests of her career and her life, and makes shocking discoveries about the nature of Bosch, the Shivans, and the universe itself....

Straight from the wiki.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Mebber on May 01, 2013, 11:04:39 am
Besides LoA and Hellgate Ikeya, i'd suggest to add Rain on Ribos 4 too.  It's been awhile since i've played it, but i remember it as one of my absolute favorite Great-War era campaigns. It blends in very well with the main campaign, and delivers a similar atmosphere and feeling of futility when fighting the all-mighty shivans. Imho it's a good choice if you've just finished the FS1 main campaign and just want to see 'more' of the war.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: InsaneBaron on June 02, 2013, 08:06:27 pm
As a new community member, I found this guide very useful, both for giving me some insight into HLP's history and for getting me started on you guys's campaigns (I tried to play Derelict, Silent Threat: Reborn, and Blue Planet: Age of Aquarius at the same time, if that tells you anything  :p just couldn't make up my mind!)

Anyway, Having played ST before I joined HLP, I definitely wouldn't consider it mandatory playing now that we have ST:R- which I beat yesterday  :cool:  However, I would highly recommend to any other newcomers that you complete FS1 (and probably ST:R) before FS2, simply because other wise FS1 gets ruined and FS2 has less impact. The appearance of Shivans is alot scarier if you've witnessed firsthand what they're capable of.  :shaking:

EDIT: Ok, about the "a lot" emoticon... cruel. Just cruel.  :beamz:
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on June 08, 2013, 10:57:49 am
Added Hellgate: Ikeya and Light of Antares - thanks so much to Orpheus for helping out with the blurb. Keep them coming!
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: NGTM-1R on June 08, 2013, 05:06:29 pm
The Bablyon Project

So maybe JMS hated it when he was asked to put an ace pilot on his cast and killed them off, but you think Starfuries are pretty cool. This is for you.

TBP plays differently from FS in a number of ways. Foremost is that it rewards marksmanship far more, because targets are smaller and the number of guns you'll be carrying fewer. There are no shields, so you'll get very sensitive to how far away you are from an opponent when you finish them off to avoid getting caught in the blast. And the missiles, such as they are, are minimalist nearly-straight-running weapons. There will be dogfighting. A lot of it. It was also one of the first efforts to feature beam weapons as main guns for fighters, with the Minbari Nial.

Down the years a good number of TBP campaigns have come out, and a good number of single missions. Orpheus alone made campaigns were made from the point of view of members of the PsiCorps, as a Shadow fighter (which included one of the first uses of in-mission jumps), and as a raider/mercenary.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on June 08, 2013, 10:39:35 pm
It's in! Thanks so much.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: InsaneBaron on June 12, 2013, 06:39:40 am
I think Operation Templar would be worth an entry. After all, in it's original form it's one of the only four canonical campaigns :v-old: made. Gameplay-wise the FSPort remake is quite good for a mini-campaign.


"Operation Templar was originally a set of four popular multiplayer co-op missions created by Volition to tell an important part of FreeSpace history: the fall of the Hammer of Light. The same team that created Silent Threat: Reborn also remade Operation Templar as a single-player campaign. The FSPort Operation Templar remake follows the original missions much more closely than Silent Threat: Reborn, preserving the mission structure, plot, briefings, and even voice acting, all while rebalancing the missions for single-player mode and making them FSO-compatiable. Operation Templar tells an essential (and canonical) bit of the FreeSpace story in the form of four challenging missions, featuring a unique blend of Volition and Hard Light talent."


Minor note, I think Derelict has 43 missions, not 60, unless there's a hidden set of missions I'm unaware of (I still have a couple missions left before I finish it.)
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Goober5000 on June 12, 2013, 11:00:33 am
Great summary. :yes:  One cool thing that Galemp did with Operation Templar was to change the HoL installation to a Cheops instead of that silly Arcadia.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: 0rph3u5 on June 12, 2013, 02:04:37 pm
Orpheus alone made campaigns were made from the point of view of members of the PsiCorps, as a Shadow fighter (which included one of the first uses of in-mission jumps), and as a raider/mercenary.

Someone nugged me about this ... 2 out of 3 are actually the work Vidmaster; only the PsiCorps one is my work (and the worst of it)
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: NGTM-1R on June 13, 2013, 07:58:02 am
Someone nugged me about this ... 2 out of 3 are actually the work Vidmaster; only the PsiCorps one is my work (and the worst of it)

Well I'm a derp, somebody fix this stat. (I actually thought it was some of your best.)
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: InsaneBaron on June 14, 2013, 06:52:28 pm
Great summary. :yes:  One cool thing that Galemp did with Operation Templar was to change the HoL installation to a Cheops instead of that silly Arcadia.

Thanks. I agree it makes more sense for the HoL to build their own base in a hollow asteroid, as opposed to making the GTA build an Arcadia in an asteroid field :rolleyes: then abandon it :confused:

To be fair, the original designers had a pretty limited ship sandbox to work with- no Vasudan installations, civilian ships, et cetera. These days, "Hey guys, for the next mission we need Shivan Luxury Liner with enough firepower to take out the Gargant from the last mission" "I'll make it!"
  :P

Am I correct in assuming that making Nagada a Cheops was the only major plot change?

Also, Battuta, any opinion on adding OT? Maybe in "Give me something oldschool"?
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Goober5000 on June 15, 2013, 02:46:01 pm
Am I correct in assuming that making Nagada a Cheops was the only major plot change?
No, we changed a few other things, but all of them were fairly minor.  The most noticeable change other than the installation is probably the command briefing in the first mission.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: MatthTheGeek on June 15, 2013, 03:15:20 pm
Ya, coop missions (multi missions in general) can't have CBriefs.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: AndrewofDoom on June 15, 2013, 03:30:40 pm
Speaking of which, how hard would it be to implement Command Brief support to multiplayer?
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: InsaneBaron on June 15, 2013, 07:39:55 pm
Am I correct in assuming that making Nagada a Cheops was the only major plot change?
No, we changed a few other things, but all of them were fairly minor.  The most noticeable change other than the installation is probably the command briefing in the first mission.

THAT's right. I remember thinking that that CB must have been altered, since it mentioned the situation with the cross-era weaponry.
Which was interesting by the way. It made loadouts a bit challenging, since the only dogfight primaries available were Prom Rs and a few Banshees. (I spent the first three missions in a Herc simply for the quad Banshees). I imagine the original would have been even trickier, since it wouldn't even have had Banshees!
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: karajorma on June 15, 2013, 08:25:50 pm
Speaking of which, how hard would it be to implement Command Brief support to multiplayer?

It is doable. It's just a lot of work for a rather minor reward. The issue is making sure everyone has moved on to the briefing stage before setting up the briefing stuff. Right now the game simply assumes you're there if the game has loaded. To make them work you'd have to make the game decide if it should still do that (for missions with no CB) or play the CB, then send a message to the server saying that the CB has been played and it's safe to move on to the briefing.

Then you'd need to do the same thing for pre-rendered cutscenes and the fiction viewer or you'd get that request a few months later. :p

Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Torchwood on June 20, 2013, 08:24:54 am
Thanks for listing up the campaigns, General Battuta.
Since the description for Dimensional Eclipse is empty, thought I could share my impression.

Dimensional Eclipse is a total conversion that greatly changes the look and feel of ships. It's a story about an average space sim player being transported into an entire new universe. The atmosphere is mostly light-hearted, similar to Wings of Dawn.
The most striking aspects of the new ship behaviour are that gliding, reverse thrust and lateral movement are available for all player ships, and the greatly increased velocities compared to retail. Overall, a good choice for players looking for novelty.
(Note: Don't ace the test unless you want things to get wacky.)
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on June 22, 2013, 01:03:15 pm
A good blurb, but I suspect Dimensional Eclipse deserves an even more thorough bit of editorial. Unfortunately after Andrew of Doom's release debacle I still haven't played it, so I'm not in a position to write that.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: InsaneBaron on June 23, 2013, 06:34:50 am
I think Operation Templar would be worth an entry. After all, in it's original form it's one of the only four canonical campaigns :v-old: made. Gameplay-wise the FSPort remake is quite good for a mini-campaign.


"Operation Templar was originally a set of four popular multiplayer co-op missions created by Volition to tell an important part of FreeSpace history: the fall of the Hammer of Light. The same team that created Silent Threat: Reborn also remade Operation Templar as a single-player campaign. The FSPort Operation Templar remake follows the original missions much more closely than Silent Threat: Reborn, preserving the mission structure, plot, briefings, and even voice acting, all while rebalancing the missions for single-player mode and making them FSO-compatiable. Operation Templar tells an essential (and canonical) bit of the FreeSpace story in the form of four challenging missions, featuring a unique blend of Volition and Hard Light talent."


Minor note, I think Derelict has 43 missions, not 60, unless there's a hidden set of missions I'm unaware of (I still have a couple missions left before I finish it.)

@Battuta,
I think this got a little buried in the general discussion about adding CBs to multiplayer. Any opinion?

BTW, I'm almost done making you and the BP team a nice big AoA review.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Black Wolf on June 23, 2013, 07:03:13 am
Battuta has (at his own request) been given a three month ban, so he probably won't be responding in the near future. Keep posting these summaries though - they can be integrated in his absence (if nobody else does, I can do it when next I'm at a keyboard rather than a phone).
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: CT27 on August 11, 2013, 01:59:55 am
Concerning the first post and the 'ready to move beyond the FS setting' section, one point:

1-Isn't "Burning Heaven" set in the FS setting (it deals with the founding of the GTA)?




One more thing:  if GB comes back and updates this, I'd add "Ridiculous" to the "just for fun" campaign section.  It doesn't take itself too seriously (and it's kind of aware of its humorous nature) and I found myself laughing a number of times.  The wingmen have pretty good personalities too I thought.  There's a danger to be faced, but it's fun saving the GTVA.  Honestly, it's one of my favorites.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on December 29, 2013, 11:44:19 pm
Someone do a really snappy summary of Ridiculous!
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: mjn.mixael on January 07, 2014, 12:36:42 pm
Hey Battuta, finish the other sections of this article set, K?
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on January 07, 2014, 12:39:08 pm
Hmmmmmmmmmm they are going to be tricky!
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Luis Dias on January 07, 2014, 01:03:40 pm
Someone do a really snappy summary of Ridiculous!

In one word?
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: InsaneBaron on January 23, 2014, 11:27:43 am
Sol: A History would fit very well in here. Just beat it, it's technically solid, has great mission design (a bit on the hard side), and a very interesting plotline.  I personally liked it more than INFA, which was ok but maybe not good enough for the Guide.

"Sol: A History: An alternate prequel to the original Inferno, Blaise Russel's Sol: A History details the history of Sol during the isolation. Watch as new powers declare independence, the old GTA crumbles, powerful new weapons enter the fray, and the totalitarian Earth Alliance rises to power. Fly the enemy ships that tormented you in Inferno, visit every planet in the Solar System, and take part in the unification of Sol. A masterpiece by one of HLP's most successful FREDers, it's a lengthy and challenging adventure."

*Review idea falls out of the sky and hits InsaneBaron on the head*
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on January 30, 2014, 01:52:08 pm
Boop boop done beep bip
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: InsaneBaron on January 31, 2014, 08:20:40 am
Cool!
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: bigchunk1 on February 15, 2014, 01:54:37 pm
Uncharted Territory- A minicampaign with multiple endings built in. Venture deep into shivan space as a small, self sufficient science fleet headed by a mini carrier your squadron calls home. Your team’s mission is to run tests on subspace phenomena… what could go wrong?

Dimensional Eclipse – Get lost in this anime inspired modding experiment packed full of new gameplay features, and new takes on weapons and ships. Great attention has been given to this large mod right down to the tech room entries and custom menus. If you are looking for a different way to play the FSO engine, here is a good place to look!


Burning Heaven – A colony world has been illegally devastated by a rogue element in the earth military. Bent on revealing the truth, you form Phoenix Squadron and do whatever you can to bring attention to a forgotten crime, even if that means violence. Who is the terrorist and who is the freedom fighter? Find out in this thoughtfully written and voice acted campaign.


Rediculous – A solid freespace campaign with a sense of humor made by HLP member IronBeer. Numerous comical references to the original freespace campaigns and outside popular culture make this campaign a hit for those veteran players who claim to have seen it all. This is satire in a distilled form. Oh, and did I mention it’s voice acted?
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on February 15, 2014, 02:07:04 pm
Awesome, thank you so much.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: CT27 on February 16, 2014, 11:05:34 pm
Could I also make a possible suggestion for a "Ridiculous" summary?

(bigchunk1's is pretty cool)
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Ace on February 17, 2014, 12:26:40 am
I guess I should summarize Cardinal Spear:

"Released by Ace in 1998 Cardinal Spear is set during the Terran-Vasudan war, the GTA reels from a surprise attack on Earth and prepares for an offensive against the Vasudans. Taking place during the Vega Engagement, you are part of a taskforce intended to put an end to the war with a daring strike. This eight mission campaign included new weapons, 3d modeled planets, and a new installation, the PVI Karnak, at a time when FreeSpace modding was still in its infancy."
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on February 17, 2014, 09:26:21 am
Perfect, thank you. Added, plus my own flavor.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: CT27 on February 22, 2014, 12:46:07 am
Ridiculous-

"Join the GTD Arbitrary and crew as they seek to save the universe from the evil IronBeer's Plothole...all while having a good laugh.  Nine missions of great combat and humor (along with voice acting).  User IronBeer's first campaign...it makes saving the universe fun.  Oh by the way, there's a rock band with a Sathanas tour bus."
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: DarkMathis on July 19, 2015, 07:00:32 pm
I would also suggest to add Shadow Genesis to the list. Definitely worth playing that. Cutting through endless waves of warships while also having i quite nice story.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Galemp on November 30, 2015, 07:01:23 pm
:bump:

I'm a grognard here--I've been working on one of those megaprojects, Scroll of Atankharzim, since 2003--but it was still fascinating to read the history of HLP and the evolution of the community. Would the General be so kind as to finish the essay? I'd love to read it!

A sidebar or another essay on the history of the MediaVPs would be very welcome as well, from the very first experiments with glowmaps to the modern era. I've missed quite a lot in terms of mission innovation, I'm sure there's some model techniques that I've missed too.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Nyctaeus on December 15, 2015, 06:59:58 pm
:bump:
I think it's time for some update and the reason is simple: this thread is cool :D
I lack so many mods here, for example Cerberus: Emergency by Starwolf1991, many FSCRP campaigns including awesome Technological Superiority and Titan Rebellion, Luyten Civil War and many more cool projects. Bunch of campaigns were released in Missions and Campaigns board, but many were forgotten as the new threads are going...

And of course: I lack the one of a few mods that put so much input on tactical gameplay:
I would also suggest to add Shadow Genesis to the list. Definitely worth playing that. Cutting through endless waves of warships while also having i quite nice story.
...and one of the best visuals ever :D
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on December 15, 2015, 07:18:33 pm
Anyone can write them up.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: JSRNerdo on February 18, 2017, 02:50:55 am
Damn that cliffhanger! I want to play something that feels like a conclusion to the FreeSpace story, even if it's not the one I imagined!

You can't!

*ahem*

The Aftermath (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?board=259.0), a 55+ mission epic that is, as far as I know, the one and only fully released campaign that provides a full conclusion to the mystery of the Shivans! At 55+ missions, it also may as well be the single largest released mod ever, as well! Absolutely worth a try, if not a full play! Experience the brutality of war as Command casually orders gas tankers to crash into Lucifers, executes Alpha 1 for straying more than 200 meters away from his wing leader, and ends a mission with a debriefing that is, quite literally, and I quote: "THOSE BASTARDS..."
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: JSRNerdo on February 20, 2017, 05:41:42 am
Also it is absolutely criminal to not mention BTA here, I'd write something but Spoon already said it 90 times better than me:

Between the Ashes made by mjn.mixael, is basically what an official Freespace 2 expansion pack could look like. Its a fully voice acted campaign with some incredible mission design and a compelling story, which all takes place in a single star system (with a starmap that you can look at from the main menu, which updates as the campaign progresses). It does an great job of showing you the civilian life side of things, as your GTA battlegroup gets entangled in a fight with a incredibly cunning, Hammer of light admiral. The mission variation in this campaign is just amazing. None of the old boring escort missions that involve fighting off 20 waves of pirate fighters here! Instead you get to hijack some poor sod's fighter by remote hacking and use it to attack the convoy he was hired to protect, to ruin his reputation. In another mission you get to prepare your defenses for an incoming attack by manually placing sentry guns and shields and such. There's just too much in this campaign to just easily sum up.

(note: this endorsement is in no way shape or form related to the badge i appear to have suddenly gained out of thin air  :nervous: )
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Admiral-Sabree on July 13, 2017, 02:55:40 pm
Damn that cliffhanger! I want to play something that feels like a conclusion to the FreeSpace story, even if it's not the one I imagined!

You can't!

*ahem*

The Aftermath (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?board=259.0), a 55+ mission epic that is, as far as I know, the one and only fully released campaign that provides a full conclusion to the mystery of the Shivans! At 55+ missions, it also may as well be the single largest released mod ever, as well! Absolutely worth a try, if not a full play! Experience the brutality of war as Command casually orders gas tankers to crash into Lucifers, executes Alpha 1 for straying more than 200 meters away from his wing leader, and ends a mission with a debriefing that is, quite literally, and I quote: "THOSE BASTARDS..."

I'm not sure how long the campaign is but Revenge: Final conflict also had a solid conclusion to it. It's old 80+ missions, buggy, I think it was a German mod I'm not sure. It was a good example of creativity with working only FS2 assets.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: CT27 on July 15, 2017, 01:42:47 pm
Also, the campaign "Incursion" (of the FSCRP project "Incursion+Return To Sol") offers a conclusion to the Shivan issue.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Vidmaster on September 19, 2017, 01:05:15 pm
I want to note that the The Babylon Project is described incorrectly :-)

"Orpheus alone made campaigns from the point of view of members of the PsiCorps, as a Shadow fighter (which included one of the first uses of in-mission jumps), and as a raider/mercenary."

The later two campaigs were made by me :-) Sins of my youth. In-mission jumps and player-triggered slow motion combat. Along with imature writing, bad pacing, massive gameplay and spelling problems and what else. Came a long way.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: blacky7 on January 09, 2018, 11:36:10 am
Hello, where can i find mod Sol: A History to download it?
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: PIe on January 09, 2018, 12:40:59 pm
The easiest way is to install Knossos(here's the download thread (https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=94068.0)) and download from there.  When I was trying to upload it there, I found a bunch of different copies lying around on various sites, none of which really worked properly.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Mito [PL] on August 28, 2019, 03:10:06 am
Shouldn't someone edit the first post so it informs of Solaris as a total conversion and Walls Closing as one of the short, comfy retail-ish campaigns?

Blurb on Walls Closing:
A 4-mission minicampaign set around the search-and-rescue operation of the GTD Phoenicia after its narrow escape from the claws of Sathanas. Features a rather "core FS2" gameplay, simple missions and some pretty atmospheric setting and writing.

(Anyone feel free to make corrections or something)
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on July 14, 2020, 04:41:26 pm
I should update the OP to use white space and links, fantastic new discoveries in web design.
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Nightmare on July 14, 2020, 05:07:30 pm
Any chance you could put this on the wiki too if you find the time for that?
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: General Battuta on July 15, 2020, 01:33:52 pm
No
Title: Re: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign
Post by: Vidmaster on June 11, 2022, 12:59:47 pm
I want to note that the The Babylon Project is described incorrectly :-)

"Orpheus alone made campaigns from the point of view of members of the PsiCorps, as a Shadow fighter (which included one of the first uses of in-mission jumps), and as a raider/mercenary."

The later two campaigs were made by me :-) Sins of my youth. In-mission jumps and player-triggered slow motion combat. Along with imature writing, bad pacing, massive gameplay and spelling problems and what else. Came a long way.


Re-discovered this thread 5 years later. Feeling a little disappointed my comment here was ignored  ;)

Oh, and by the way - congrats on your new underwater adventure. Looking forward to your work there  :yes: