Author Topic: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread  (Read 46376 times)

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Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Oh yeah.. last minute ship additions.. Ooops. I should fix those tech entries someday. :)

Mephistphele is a gem of a little story. Slasher did an excellent job creating that from a small paragraph summary we handed him.
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Dog is that Admiral Darkblade talking? I love Darkblade's voice!

I really like the idea of picking up with characters who've 'survived' the post-ST purge of GTI. There's intrinsic conflict and distrust there.

I (of course) went straight for the newsroom, and the writing's - solidly okay. I don't say that as a putdown like 'mediocre': it gets all the ideas across clearly, including pretty tough nuanced material like the internal politics of Antares and ambiguous attitudes towards the GTA. The line-by-line style is rough, ranging from ok to clearly in need of fix (a dehydrated child slicking back his hair with the contents of an oasis? and a few simple typos) but none of it's voice acted so it's super easy to tweak. Writing is, as you'd figure, the area I'm hardest on - much like a modeler would nitpick at smoothing or whatever - but I do think it's worth polishing, because writing is one of the checkpoints that makes a work seem really polished and professional. The opening cutscene, for example, is gorgeous, but a quick rescript and re-act of the monologue would do wonders to support those gorgeous visuals with solid dialog: it's a little mushy and word-salad as is. WHATEVER though, I still enjoyed it all and it had the necessary narrative effect.

God the system map is dope. What a good touch, it's inspirational and awesome.

Is that Dorothy Conway as squadron leader?

The in-mission writing is quite good so far - but there are a couple plain ol' grammatical errors (what kind of issues is the local government facing?) that jar me out of a good conversation: I know that re-acting is hell, but this campaign's production values are so high it's a minor not-a-big-deal bummer to have script jank. Really cool job making the Arcadia feel like a huge floating city with that cutscene. The Antares flight control officer VA is dope.

I really like the chill music and day-to-day objectives in the opening of this mission. Almost makes me wish nothing would happen! Oh but it did and IT'S FUN NEVER MIND. It'd be cool to have a little rotation on the player ship when disabled - tumbling round and round. I can't stress how much the excellent flight control woman VA boosts this already cool engagement.

Is that Admiral Bei from BP talking smooth about cargo containers!?

The second mission was great, fun mix of dogfightin and regular stuff, I had a blast. Man, FreeSpace is cool. So is the military intercept leading into mission 3 - really scales up the menace.

Loving the campaign so far. Over the past week or two there was (another) kerfuffle over how nobody's playing FreeSpace, and as usual the lay theory that good campaigns intimidate people was thrown out. Playing BtA really reinforces how utterly hogwash that must be. I can't imagine starting off on FSO with this campaign and not wanting to play more, do more, explore how FRED works. It's good and makes me want to work on FSO more.

 

Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Dog is that Admiral Darkblade talking? I love Darkblade's voice!

I really like the idea of picking up with characters who've 'survived' the post-ST purge of GTI. There's intrinsic conflict and distrust there.

I (of course) went straight for the newsroom, and the writing's - solidly okay. I don't say that as a putdown like 'mediocre': it gets all the ideas across clearly, including pretty tough nuanced material like the internal politics of Antares and ambiguous attitudes towards the GTA. The line-by-line style is rough, ranging from ok to clearly in need of fix (a dehydrated child slicking back his hair with the contents of an oasis? and a few simple typos) but none of it's voice acted so it's super easy to tweak. Writing is, as you'd figure, the area I'm hardest on - much like a modeler would nitpick at smoothing or whatever - but I do think it's worth polishing, because writing is one of the checkpoints that makes a work seem really polished and professional. The opening cutscene, for example, is gorgeous, but a quick rescript and re-act of the monologue would do wonders to support those gorgeous visuals with solid dialog: it's a little mushy and word-salad as is. WHATEVER though, I still enjoyed it all and it had the necessary narrative effect.

God the system map is dope. What a good touch, it's inspirational and awesome.

Is that Dorothy Conway as squadron leader?

The in-mission writing is quite good so far - but there are a couple plain ol' grammatical errors (what kind of issues is the local government facing?) that jar me out of a good conversation: I know that re-acting is hell, but this campaign's production values are so high it's a minor not-a-big-deal bummer to have script jank. Really cool job making the Arcadia feel like a huge floating city with that cutscene. The Antares flight control officer VA is dope.

I really like the chill music and day-to-day objectives in the opening of this mission. Almost makes me wish nothing would happen! Oh but it did and IT'S FUN NEVER MIND. It'd be cool to have a little rotation on the player ship when disabled - tumbling round and round. I can't stress how much the excellent flight control woman VA boosts this already cool engagement.

Is that Admiral Bei from BP talking smooth about cargo containers!?

The second mission was great, fun mix of dogfightin and regular stuff, I had a blast. Man, FreeSpace is cool. So is the military intercept leading into mission 3 - really scales up the menace.

Loving the campaign so far. Over the past week or two there was (another) kerfuffle over how nobody's playing FreeSpace, and as usual the lay theory that good campaigns intimidate people was thrown out. Playing BtA really reinforces how utterly hogwash that must be. I can't imagine starting off on FSO with this campaign and not wanting to play more, do more, explore how FRED works. It's good and makes me want to work on FSO more.

That IS Darkblade! I also love his voice. He's had a rough couple of years and never actually got back to me the last time I tried to get a retake. Hope he's ok. :(   Was it James Collymore that did Admiral Bei, because if so, then yes. That's him. Great actor!

I fully expected you to grill the writing. Doesn't bother me... helps us do it better next time! I really should do a quick patch fixing up the tech room errors and some of these issues. I probably won't bother fixing anything that's VA'd, though. I'm lazy and there actually might be momentum to move forward.

:O Rotation on the player's ship when disabled is brilliant! Why didn't I think of that? I might have to see about adding that in...

BP (a good campaign) did intimidate me when I first started... a lot. Man, the first mission I made for BtA was sooooo terrible even. This was originally meant to be a small project for me to learn how to FRED and do some of the other modding things for FSO I hadn't learned yet. But then I gave up focusing on how great BP is and zero'd in on the story I wanted to tell and how I wanted to tell it. The quality came from refining and refining and refining. One step at a time.. modpack, FRED, effects, FRED, more modpack, features, FRED, FRED, FRED. It's not like we sat down and shat out a high level mod over the course of a few weeks. I should also mention the team aspect and the immense amount of help I got over IRC. This is a very approachable community (most of the time).

I'm glad you're enjoying it and hopefully you find the rest of it just as entertaining! :yes:
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Offline JSRNerdo

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
I technically cut my power to shields and weapons, set my throttle to zero, and unloaded my missiles (into the enemy fighters and turrets) and I wasn't shot in that one mission you get ambushed.

Also you left your debug message in
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Offline CP5670

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
This is a fantastic campaign. It has a level of polish and detail beyond almost anything I've seen in FS campaigns. The briefings give a lot of context to the events leading to the missions and tie into various canonical events. For me, the best thing is how well the whole story holds together and how believable various events and people's reactions to them are (most campaigns invariably have something jarring that doesn't fit in or make sense, but that was never the case here). The system map and news room add a lot to the world and give a great sense of the situation in Antares from the perspective of ordinary people, as opposed to the briefings from the GTA's point of view. I like all the custom interface artwork and the voice acting and music is very good too. The music in the last mission is especially perfect and fitting for the situation. The mission difficulty is fairly easy and the FS1-era weapons make the game more slow-paced in general, except for the very last part with guiding the torpedos, which took me several tries to get right without being killed. Like others, my favorite mission is the Arris Gavel one. His reactions are hilarious and he has outstanding voice acting as well. The optional SOC-type mission also gives a lot of insight into Ozymandias and his motivations. I did wish that a few other missions had done a bit more with the gameplay innovations they introduced, like the one where you can place walls and sentries.

I got the bug with the lua error in the final cutscene (reported in the bug thread) and another issue in the part where you have to knock away civilian ships with the flail, where most ships were invisible (as if they had no textures) but still had collision behavior. They were not showstoppers though.

Overall, an amazing piece of work. :yes: I still have yet to play the Mephistofele part as well.
« Last Edit: February 11, 2017, 11:13:58 am by CP5670 »

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Ayyy spanish mission names! And a fantastic set-piece destroyer engagement. I got a leeetle task saturated with trying to figure out what was actually important for me to do, but even on insane the mission wasn't too challenging and I got to enjoy the pewpew. I really like the ship-to-ship torpedoes.

Ozymandias is cool but I think his dialogue is writing a lot of checks he can't cash - his first impression is that he talks himself up but can't back it up with a win. I look forward to seeing more of him!

This blackbag mission looks cool BUT I GOT DISABLED BY REMOTE AND SHOT FOR HIGH TREASON I assume because I used Avengers as well as SDG on the engines? Or something? Wait it happened again. Maybe I'm on the wrong build? Oh lol, I was shooting the biggest ships in sight, those aren't transports.

Hey do I hear some Belisarius music?

That was fun! I was afraid the designer had tied Omega's departure to actually disabling all of Beta, but you earned my player-trust by also/instead putting it on a clock.

Oh **** a giant green space vasudan! F10 doesn't target Aries wing and that's really annoying since if you fly the wrong way at start you're ****ed.

This Khayu intro reminds me of Homeworld, in a good way. The deception choices bemuse me: am I just meant to **** it up? Flying in too fast to get near the fighterbay runs you into Cancer. I did several runthroughs and didn't get a good path: Khayu says 'you're cleared to land' then instantly sics Cancer on me. I'm gonna take a break here.

 
Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
I don't remember exactly what I did but you can definitely pass that segment without getting detected. Well, you'll still be found out once you start blowing **** up.
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Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
I fly up and over cancer wing instead of straight to the fighterbay. There are also a few moments where I have to poke around to keep my distance before continuing my task, but it kinda depends on what you choose to do with the extra mines.
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Huh, I got a pretty rapid chain of 'cleared to land', 'cancer check em out', 'they're terrans!' and an RTB order. Guess I better dodge faster.

  

Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Or possibly choose different dialogue options; I don't remember exactly how my playthrough went, but I definitely don't remember being asked to land.
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Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Oh yeah, good point. If they ask you to land they're gonna find you out eventually when you don't land or cancer gets too close. Try to convince them they need to keep you on station.
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
I though that it would be perfect cover to fly into the fighterbay!

 
Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
I though that it would be perfect cover to fly into the fighterbay!

Somehow I get this visual:

"Oh hey guys, I know I look like a human and sound like a human, but I'm a true Vasudan, I swear!  Just look at the HOL emblem I had tattooed on my arm!"

 
Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Okay I just started playing this and...

Thank you!

There's some really impressive stuff ya'll have put in.  I LOVE the system maps.  Amazing!

 

Offline CP5670

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
In that mission with the dialogue, you can fool the HOL ships. I forget what choices I picked but they bought into it and ignored me as long as I didn't get too close.

I also played the Mephistofele campaign, which is short but sweet. It really captures the feel of being a pirate with limited resources and trying to make off with bounty. It wasn't clear to me why the Vasudans help you out in the second mission though.

 

Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Are you taking about at the very end? Have you played the main campaign yet?
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Offline Snarks

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Regarding the mission: How the West Was Lost

1) It took me a while to figure out that scanning the cargo containers before dealing the drones lead to the construction workers was what was leading them to bother the crap out of me. Dealing with the drones while getting harassed was ridiculously annoying and let's say some military police brutality happened after a while. Maybe cargo containers shouldn't be scannable until after the drone sequence? I find myself in the scanning mentality from the first objective.

2) Am I supposed to immediately be shot at when jumping to the next area? I am repeatedly told to power down and so on, but it's kinda hard to do that when they're shooting the crap out of me (I also seem to have an invulnerability flag that prevents me from dying until they declare they're going to kill me).

 

Offline CP5670

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Are you taking about at the very end? Have you played the main campaign yet?

I meant the part in the debris field, where the Thoths destroyed some of the enemy ships for me. I guess it does make some sense, but they don't talk to or engage with you directly.

 

Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Oh, yeah those guys are just shooting down the troublesome vultures.
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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Man I feel terrible giving this as my first feedback because the campaign has been generally great so far, but good lord that first stealth mission is ****ing terrible. It's literally just a series of instant-fail gotchas:

Didn't close to 500m before killing Aries? Do it again, stupid!

Guessed one of the answers wrong when you're being questioned? Do it again, stupid!

Got within 500m of Cancer (it is very possible to do this before the mission even tells you to avoid them, by the way)? Do it again, stupid!

Slightly out of position when placing the charges? Do it again, stupid!
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