Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Spoon on January 26, 2017, 10:53:22 pm
-
Hello friends, modders, lurkers of these forums and players of Freespace content.
I'm here, standing on my soapbox, hoping my desperate plea will reach you.
We've got some absolutely amazing content released in these past months, made by extremely talented creators who, both poured their hearts and souls into crafting and polishing these amazing singleplayer, narratively driven campaigns. The kind of gameplay that just isn't created by big professional game development studios these days anymore.
But for reasons unknown to me, both of these campaigns are just not gathering any kind of attention, at all.
And that is just downright depressing to see. These guys put like 5 years of effort into making these amazing experiences and what do they get from the community? A handful of posts, a page of troubleshooting and nothing else.
Please. Download and play these amazing mods and leave some comments, feedback, reviews, anything. Some praise and attention is all we modders ask for, when we release hours of free entertainment in the greatest spacesim engine for you.
HLP may have been slowing down over the years, sure. But this will guarante it's untimely demise. All of our remaining experienced content creators are just going to be demotivated and give up, If the community is going to ignore their efforts! And then what's left?
I'm typing this post way way past bedtime, so I'll keep this brief:
Between the Ashes (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=92575.0) 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.
Experience it yourself.
Just another Day 2.21&2.22 (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=91783.0) made by Axem, is an amazing comedy campaign that twists and bends the poor Freespace 2 engine in ways that it was never designed for. In terms of gameplay it does away with the grim and the dark and the serious storytelling, and trades it in for lighthearted fun, with memorable, funny characters, boss battles, weapon upgrades and candy power ups that spawn from destroyed enemies.
Now you may go "but wait, didn't JAD 2.21 release some time ago already?" and you are not wrong. But it recently received a really big update, with new weapons and new art and other neat things. It's totally worth a replay too, if you've played it before. And JAD 2.22 is planned to be released next month! It has DISCO.
Do yourself a favor and enjoy these cool games! Then do the creators a favor and make a post!
-
But I already played both of those :P
I could totally go for a replay of BtA with slightly beefed up AI classes though. As soon as I'm done crawling through BPC looking for bugs(sneaky little ****ers are well hidden) I'll go for that BtA-harder replay and give mjn some love in the forums.
BtA getting like 1 conversation per month is a damn shame as it's probably the most polished mod out there, even better than the mighty Blue Planet.
-
Thanks Spoon!
I really hope more people will digest the multi-layer cake of Freespace awesomeness and narrative world-building that is BtA. We put a lot of effort into it, and the final product should be well worth folks' time.
Will give the latest JAD a look one of these days.
-
The stuff here on HLP is Unspeakably awesome, We need to find a way to get the message out better. :) :arrr:
-
As I've said elsewhere, I'm already playing BtA and I'm definitely enjoying it.
-
but neither of them are BP
-
So?
Both of them are undoubtedly excellent.
-
Something not being BP is a really bad reason not to play something. JAD and BTA are among the very best of what HLP has produced, and deserve to be cherished and played.
-
That's a joke, right? @Nerdo
Hey, I'm one of the lurkers Spoon was talking about. I've played quite a few of this community's mods. Yes, BP is a great mod, and was, for a time, the only thing I played. Then I took a break from FS due to Starcraft reasons, but then I saw Karajorma's post and thought: I'm gonna play this thing again (FS1 in progress). But BP being one of the best mods I've seen (and not just because I like lesbian protagonists) doesn't mean it should automatically doom everything around it.
WCS is great. I don't know if this is an unpopular opinion, but I enjoyed it. I like long campaigns, explosions, and I haven't played any WC games, but the models were nice. Sure, named ships would not have hurt (ships others than carriers, I'm talking about the Kilrathi side), and I think there were some portions with no dialogue even though your character had nothing else to do, but it was nice. Oh and, **** you, skipper missiles.
But nevermind, this was about other mods.
I did play both JAD and BtA. I enjoyed one more than the other (sorry, Axem). I'm not saying JAD is bad, all I'm saying is I prefer story-driven mods. (Loved VD.)
But who knows, JAD 2.22 comes right after my birthday, so I may just give it a shot. As for BtA, I haven't actually finished it yet, I think I was on whatever comes after the cinematic with Ozymandias (Hope I got it right) in prison, then I reset it, I think, then I just didn't open FSO anymore. Yes, that defense mission was brilliant, no, I do not enjoy spreading my forces defending different convoys, but I will finish it one of these days.
-
Huh, I've played JAD a few months ago, so I might just wait til that new update gets pushed. BtA is something I've completely missed though. I'll give it a shot when I get some time this week!
-
I feel extremely guilty for not having played BtA already, especially. But I have downloaded it. I haven't had much time to play any games whatsoever. For instance, I have this nice DooM box given to me last year and I've only played 20 minutes of it.
It's no excuse! I will play BtA, I promise!
-
The new Jad update got pushed 4 days ago. Wait no more, play it now.
-
I think the problem is that there are so many campaigns and mods out there. There was a list of "what is your next campaign" but there are quite a lot of stuff in it.
These mods/campaigns would have more chance to be played if they were displayed somewhere, in a place that would not be a forum but an actual web page listing all the released campaigns, along with user comments and recommendations (I'm not talking of the Wiki page - way too much stuff in there to decide what to play. It just looks like a list of random names).
Maybe you could even have a kind of contest where you select the mods/campaigns that you find "worthy enough" to play. I don't want to downgrade those who would not be "worthy", but at some point i think it can help if someone tells the HLP lurkers that "This campaign is really a masterpiece. You should play it".
I really think it's a problem of advertisement, and encouragement to play the said campaign/mod.
Or, given that BP is really popular, maybe there could be a "Blue Planet's team recommends you ...". Just suggesting
-
All the campaigns are free and the big modpack ones are 2-4 gigs. Even if you have no recommendation that a campaign is "worthy" it requires no monetary and minimal time investment to check it out and see for yourself. I really wouldn't want to make BP even more unofficially official(Blue Planet is currently "THE MOD", the one called first when you want to get someone into FSO), and doing things like "The BP team tells you what's good" wouldn't really help with that.
-
The new Jad update got pushed 4 days ago. Wait no more, play it now.
It's not JAD 2.22, which is what I'm actually waiting for, and I think axem is shooting his own hype in the foot by wasting it on incremental releases like this.
-
I've snipped out the derail. Please continue praising BtA and JAD!
-
The new Jad update got pushed 4 days ago. Wait no more, play it now.
It's not JAD 2.22, which is what I'm actually waiting for, and I think axem is shooting his own hype in the foot by wasting it on incremental releases like this.
Yeah I don't play JAD releases often because I can't figure out which one is 'the' release and which one's just an incremental upgrade. (sry axem)
-
Make a BtA standalone. Push it everywhere. **** the lawyers. It's the only way to grow the base. The FSO installer is too Byzantine.
And get a two-sentence elevator pitch that doesn't need any FS knowledge as a hook.
There's a Let's Player who's done some good FreeSpace coverage, imma try to push him at BtA.
-
The new Jad update got pushed 4 days ago. Wait no more, play it now.
It's not JAD 2.22, which is what I'm actually waiting for, and I think axem is shooting his own hype in the foot by wasting it on incremental releases like this.
Wait, 2.22 isn't out yet? Which - what - the one with the beta testers, that was, what, 2.21?
-
This bit needs to survive the split then if we're praising BtA and JAD.
My role in the creation of BtA was a small one. But because I can see the internal forums and the SVN and saw it all taking shape, I know what went into it. Mjn put his heart and soul into that project and an immeasurable number of hours into it, I'm betting it's a four digit number easily, and I wouldn't be surprised if that number doesn't start with a 1. Day after day, week after week, month after month, that SVN got updated. It was incredible to see. Awe-inspiring. The man's a machine. His standards were exacting.
It's not going to be to everyone's tastes of course, but it is well worth checking out for yourself. The top strengths of BtA imo are the presentation, the story, the World building, the atmosphere, the new and original ways FRED has been bent and twisted to do never before seen things.
-
There's a Let's Player who's done some good FreeSpace coverage, imma try to push him at BtA.
This guy?
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheOneTrueRenairen
He's my favourite FS let's player.
-
I really like his stuff.
-
Too bad QuantumDelta doesn't play Freespace anymore. He used to get a lot of views for his playthroughs, maybe he could push BtA if he played it.
-
Wait, 2.22 isn't out yet? Which - what - the one with the beta testers, that was, what, 2.21?
Both of them are "the one with the beta testers" at least I'd assume so. 2.21 is a very obvious riff on Neon Genesis Evangelion, showing tester 3 in the opening and detailing testers 4-8 in the main campaign. So it would be reasonable to assume that 2.22 would deal with testers 8-12. Following the Evangelion theme tester 13 would probably be Epsilon 1 and 14 would be the whole Freespace playerbase(as we see it), I guess?
2.21 was recently re-released with sexy character animations and VN sequences that play from the journal instead of boring old text. It's just so full of spunk and I wouldn't say it "killed" 2.22 hype because it still showcases a lot of really cool small things that will be used in 2.22.
Though JAD being JAD 2.22 could be something entirely different and completely unrelated.
-
I don't play JAD to marvel at impressive hacks to FSO's interface art, I play JAD for experimental, hilarious riffs on Freespace gameplay.
-
But most of JAD 2.21 is still basically "Kill fighters and treb beams" while hilarity happens and all of it is lampshaded. Though the bossfights do pull some creative and fun stuff.
It still plays really well, new interface art might not make a huge difference for you but it's a nice excuse to replay the campaign before 2.22 releases.
-
Make a BtA standalone. Push it everywhere. **** the lawyers. It's the only way to grow the base. The FSO installer is too Byzantine.
And get a two-sentence elevator pitch that doesn't need any FS knowledge as a hook.
WoD did literally this same exact thing though :confused:
-
i'm not sure it was marketed very heavily outside hlp and i'm quite sure that the anime bull**** cuts its potential audience down enormously
-
If WoD really didn't do that well, I really REALLY doubt Anime is the reason.
I liked the latest WoD, It had a cool story, but it didn't have that many big battles/Confrontations- WoD is fine without that, but it never felt like there was a real war going on.
Don't get me wrong, WoD is great. :yes: I think BP, BtA, and Freespace may have me to used to the "Desperate War" aesthetic. hahaha.
-
If WoD really didn't do that well, I really REALLY doubt Anime is the reason.
I don't disagree, I think without a wider marketing strategy it was inevitably not going to get much attention.
-
I'm already discussing with Spoon how to get WoD a bigger audience elsewhere. I sure neither of us mind suggestions but given the reasons why Spoon started this thread, I'm sure that we'd both prefer to keep the subject of this thread on BtA and JAD.
-
It applies to BtA as well, like Battuta said it would be a lot easier to get people playing this stuff as "a self-contained single-player space sim with excellent mission design" rather than "a good Freespace 2 mod".
-
I agree, but you are facing a problem there of releasing a game that is using a significant amount of Freespace IP. You might get away with it, but it's a much greyer area than if you have a mod.
-
If Diaspora and TBP can get away with it then BtA probably can too. As long as you don't put Freespace in the name. Using retail assets would probably also fly under the radar since FS2 is 17 years old now and pretty much nobody should care about some nerd making a free game with that IP.
-
Actually i do not think, that that would change anything here.
The Babylon Project is pretty much dead for several years now what is new mission related.
Even Wing Commander Saga is not so alive as you can expect. User Made campaigns for WCS are... where?
Also there are even only a few or even none playthroughs of these games.
I wrote news about BtA, BP, WCS, WOD releases and several other projects on a german gaming website during the last couple of years.
Also there is no problem in getting Freespace 2 for free. Actually i am sure, that i am not the only one here that have tons of GOG and Steam Keys for both Freespace Games left.
-
Getting Freespace 2 isn't the only problem. The other problem is installing the mods. The installer generally makes it pretty easy but the default configuration wants to dump 60 gigs worth of old mods on you and you have pretty much no idea what's good and what isn't without further research.
If you just had a separate full download for BtA anyone who discovered it could just download 1 package and play it. Pack it up with all the files you need and a FSO executable, install with with a simple .msi that can create a desktop shortcut to a wxlauncher set up for whatever you just downloaded. As simple as it can possibly be.
It's possible that a lot of people are getting turned away because installing mods and getting the right executable takes a bit of effort and research.
And seriously Cool spacesim name here[download and play now] is a lot more attractive than Cool spacesim name here[you have to buy and download this 18 year old game from somewhere else then mod it using an installer you've never heard of]. Having to go through even a few extra steps takes more dedication than just lazily clicking 1 download button.
-
I had never the feeling, that the standalone release of the games helped them very much in terms of activity.
Promotion is much more important in my opinion.
If you have a well-documented installation guide like we have here or in foreign-language commuties or even people around, that would help in any questions, it does not really matter if a release is a mod or a standalone.
The bigger problem in running freespace was not the installation of mods, that is quite easy in comparsion to many other and more successful games. For me it was always the unlimited number of options, you have in the launcher. Without any guide any new player does not have an idea what to select. It does not matter if you have a standalone or a mod. The problem is the same.
But i think that promotion in general is much more important, because i am not sure if most of you here here knows, that there is a complete Starlancer Standalone Total Conversion based upon Freespace's engine out there, even for dreamcast, for nearly two years, for example. But without any promotion, you will not get any new players here.
So, spread the word :). Create and updates forum threads in your gaming communites and in the GOG and Steam forums, where you can buy this games, regulary. Try to write Press releases. like every other publisher and developer do, even the team for Nehrim and a few others community teams did that, and send it to gaming websites to appear on them or write the news yourself, if your favorite magazine support that.
That is the thing that will really help.
-
But i think that promotion in general is much more important, because i am not sure if most of you here here knows, that there is a complete Starlancer Standalone Total Conversion based upon Freespace's engine out there, even for dreamcast, for nearly two years, for example.
Link? I'm not having any luck with Google!
-
I had never the feeling, that the standalone release of the games helped them very much in terms of activity.
Promotion is much more important in my opinion.
I don't see this as an either-or, Freespace mods need both better promotion and a quick, self-contained installation package to succeed. Because we probably can't get away with repackaging FS2, the way to go with the latter is definitely more standalones.
One of the biggest obstacles that kept me from getting into Freespace was the fact that I had to buy an ancient game that didn't even run on my OS just so I could totally replace it with an open-source engine and fan mods. The only reason I'm here today is that I figured out how to use torrents.
-
My original plan for the launcher was that it would control the downloading and installation of mods. So all you'd have to install once you had FS2 was the launcher. Then once you ran it, it would (Steam-like) control everything from one single point. It would also check for updates and help keep your FS2_Open install up to date by downloading newer releases of mods and executables.
For some reason I've never fully understood the launcher team went off and did their own thing and Goober decided to write the installer in Java.
-
And then another attempt (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=86364.320) at a unified launcher (https://dev.tproxy.de/knossos/)/installer (https://fsnebula.org/workshop) was made (https://github.com/ngld/knossos), but the people behind it just... stopped showing up.
-
Well the problem is that whatever we decide on now, we've got a massive duplication of efforts for such a small number of coders. The idea of the discussion about the launcher was to avoid that. To this day I still don't understand why we ended up here.
-
But i think that promotion in general is much more important, because i am not sure if most of you here here knows, that there is a complete Starlancer Standalone Total Conversion based upon Freespace's engine out there, even for dreamcast, for nearly two years, for example.
Is that true? I've never found such a total conversion and that's why I started doing my own for personal use... Could you give us a link to this conversion?
-
Mh, for the Standalone vs. Mod thing.
Actually i do not understand this discussion at all.
Where is the difference in that? Only that the standalone is a "install and play"-thing.
Maybe i am dumb... but why is that not possible with a mod?
Where is the problem to create next to the well-known "do-it-yourself"-package, where you can install everything individually a "All-in-One" File with a mod that contains all VPs, a recommend build aswell the launcher with predefined settings and that you can install in the Freespace 2 folder? Sounds like an easy install for me, like the Silent Thread addon in 1998.
But for the topic. I am do not like JAD very much, because i am for the serious view on the Freespace universe :)
But BtA... i played Mefistofele a few weeks back for my YouTube channel, was very interesting. Even it seems that i will not create let's plays anymore, i think i will play Slaves of Chaos, when the german translation is finished :).
But actually i have a very long backlog freespace related.. i am not even played any of the Blue Planet campaigns or things like Shadow Genesis.
-
Standalone doesn't require FS2.
-
I for one am currently playing through BtA and enjoying it immensely.
-
I would definitely recommend both the campaigns Spoon mentions; have played through both and they're both quality creations, as well as good examples for newcomers of what FRED and SCP-enabled scripting can achieve. Both have also been through extensive testing and bug-fixing by this point so you shouldn't run into issues, and they're both also on the installer so installing them just takes a couple of clicks and a bit of download time.
BtA is a great canon-connected storyline that will surprise you as it goes on and give you some memorable moments (I shall spoil nothing, but they are memorable), and you'll only pause JAD because your laughing to hard to play (seriously, I had to several times, especially a particular mission with perfect music and the best intro :yes:).
There's a lot of other gems on the installer too actually; check out a little gem tucked away at the bottom by the name of Twilight. One of my favourites to this day.
-
Alright! It took me a few days, but I've finished BtA. Here's my short, spoiler-free (minus some minor details that shouldn't really spoil anything) review of the campaign. I played it on medium difficulty.
Pros
-Interesting variety of missions (the FREDing was top notch on several missions)
-Some missions were very fun and creative.
-I liked the central idea behind the plot; it certainly gives credence to the antagonist's plans.
-There's a lot of eye candy, from ship models to custom HUDs!
-Fairly solid progression in the Freespace timeline.
-Voice acting was good for the most part, particularly when it came to pilot dialogue during the "down time" in some of the missions
-Music choice was excellent!
Cons
-Some of the writing feels a bit off. There's some redundancy in the writing, and I have some trouble believing people would talk in such a manner. I also totally forgot I was flying for the GTI a few missions in due to the nature of the first few missions.
-Some missions were really frustrating, from a "it feels unfair" kind of perspective. I actually gave up on a couple of them and skipped them.
-Pacing felt all over the place. For instance, the pilot is given 3 days leave during a major offensive?
-Command felt really stupid in a lot of ways, from doing things like assigning hulking slow Hercules for escort missions to deploying a whole squadron for minor missions but deploying only a wing for big, mission critical ones. Assigning Disrupters for the 4 gun mounts on a Herc? Among other things, this really messed with my suspension of disbelief. Despite being a galactic state, the GTA felt really weak while the antagonists felt ridiculously well equipped for what's supposed to be police action.
Overall, BtA is a solid campaign and ranks up there with several of the classics. Some of the missions felt really frustrating and could use some adjustment, but the ones that were fun were legit fun to play and replay. Minor things like unnecessary down time in missions gets frustrating when you're redoing the mission for the 4th time. Some adjustments can be made for the default deployment setups to let them make more sense. Several missions out right restrict my options for no apparent reason. I think the writing could use some refinement, to help make it sound more natural and help build suspension of disbelief.
-
But i think that promotion in general is much more important, because i am not sure if most of you here here knows, that there is a complete Starlancer Standalone Total Conversion based upon Freespace's engine out there, even for dreamcast, for nearly two years, for example.
Link? I'm not having any luck with Google!
Novachen has claimed to have developed a version of the engine with various enhancements for private use, but has so far declined to share any patches.
-
But i think that promotion in general is much more important, because i am not sure if most of you here here knows, that there is a complete Starlancer Standalone Total Conversion based upon Freespace's engine out there, even for dreamcast, for nearly two years, for example.
Link? I'm not having any luck with Google!
Novachen has claimed to have developed a version of the engine with various enhancements for private use, but has so far declined to share any patches.
Only the PC builds are exclusive to private use or to standalones, because my branch is incompatible to FSO one and i never intended to force a "split" with totally different builds that would only flood the forums with messages that have their reasons only in compatiblity issues. But the playstation 2, x-box classic, openpandora, dreamcast and gamecube/wii ports of my branch are freely available on the several homebrew pages, because there are no other builds for this systems :). Even nearly noone plays Freespace 2 on this old consoles.
But Starlancer is still freely available, at least the console versions on such pages. But because you need a softmodded or a chipped console to run inofficial software and also you have likely games, you have to buy regulary, i actually do not send any links, because these pages contain also illegal content.
-
I've been neglecting FS for quite a while. Need to get back into BtA and then start JAD :D
-
Only the PC builds are exclusive to private use or to standalones, because my branch is incompatible to FSO one and i never intended to force a "split" with totally different builds that would only flood the forums with messages that have their reasons only in compatiblity issues.
I can honestly say that I don't really understand this. The features you have claimed to have developed are interesting enough to warrant a closer look by us, no matter whether or not they're incompatible with what we're currently doing. I'd rather have a codebase to pick apart and integrate into ours than be forced to develop everything "in-house", as it were.