[FelixJim]

Hullo everybody!
I've been a great fan of Freespace for many years now, and have been delighted to find this forum, and discover Freespace Open. Having played many of the mods available I've for a while now had the itch to try something for myself, and after a considerable length of time messing about just getting to grips with FRED, I've finally made the effort to produce as fully as possible a few missions. I've made the first five missions of a campaign, and together they represent my first true plunge into FREDing; and I'd be grateful for anyone who cares to have a look at it and see what they think.

Like any noob worth their salt, I've gone and done something far too complicated to start off with, and have probably made quite a lot of mistakes. Certainly there is some quite messy FREDing in there, and I'm not too happy with some of the things I've done either (i.e made impossible objectives in order to get the debriefing music I desired). Most of the missions are experiments with different types of gameplay too; and some of them haven't quite worked out as well as I'd have liked, but that's life.


I built most of the missions with FRED2 Open 3.6.10, with the exception of the last, which is an attempt at a cutscene of sorts, which I built with FRED2 Open 3.6.12 INF RC2. This is because I wanted to use the show-subtitle-text sexp rather than the (soon to be defunct I gather) show-subtitle one. The rest work just fine with 3.6.10 though, so even if that's all you have I'd still like feedback on the first four missions.

Oh, and in response to one piece of inevitable criticism:

Spoiler:

I fully realise that penalising the player in "Wandering Up The Wall" just for taking the time to make sure she/he is fully prepared and has the best equipment available is evil. I could say that that's the point, but the truth is that I'm actually evil and find the idea amusing.

Ah, and I also apologise for the half-hearted backgrounds (which need Lightspeed's pack, by the way). Really isn't my thing.

Anyway, here's a download link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?qzntzndtwmo

Lieutenant Faye Walker feels as if there is something amiss in the GTVA, but doesn't realise what until she is forcibly sucked into a world she had never before dreamed existed, and upon whether she can adapt to this newfound and confusing reality may just rest the fate of both worlds.

12MB (there's music in there for the cutscene)

And thank you in advance, anybody who is willing to give a noob a chance. *Puts arms up to shield himself from the impending welcome beam*.

[The E]

Welcome to the HLP Missions & Campaigns release hell. I sure hope this you'll enjoy your stay. May your feedback be positive.

Anyway, I hope you read this: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=68817.0
It's a compilation of common issues in releases, and suggestions on how to avoid them.

For everyone else, let's keep technical feedback confined to PMs (unless this release is so broken that it won't work).

[Colonol Dekker]

from myself and the rest of the board staff.




Now.... let's see what we have here

* Colonol Dekker downloads.

edit- DAMNIT E beat me to it.


edit2-  114 mb?

[FelixJim]

(unless this release is so broken that it won't work).

Do you have any idea how nervous that makes someone who wants to make a good first impression? Especially when I really wasn't sure what I was doing while building the VP, heh.

EDIT:

114 mb?

Oh, um, there's a couple of bits of music for the cutscene I felt like throwing in. None of the in game soundtracks seemed to fit (my bad for not mentioning or anything.)

[Droid803]

Well, assuming you tested it after you put the VPs together, what could go wrong?

[The E]

The VP looks solid, although I have to question the use of uncompressed wav audio...

[FelixJim]

I'm having some difficulty downloading this. When I click the link, the site informs me that "the file is temporarily unavailable."

If others are experiencing the same difficulty, it would be ideal to mirror this at freespacemods.

I was thinking about doing that, but didn't understand what the "Working demo" bit was all about for uploads.

Well, assuming you tested it after you put the VPs together, what could go wrong?

I have a feeling that those might come under "famous last words" if I dared say them. Though it seems to work fine for me.

[Colonol Dekker]

Do you have any idea how nervous that makes someone who wants to make a good first impression?

Don't worry about it. we had a bit of a charliefoxtrot a week or two ago on a completely unrelated but similar matter. The guys here will be a bit more behaved i hope this time.

So.......... do you have a breif synopsis of your campaign?

[FelixJim]

So.......... do you have a breif synopsis of your campaign?

Ah, yeah. The description on file is this (trust me when I say it sounded a lot better at one in the morning last night when I wrote it):

Lieutenant Faye Walker feels as if there is something amiss in the GTVA, but doesn't realise what until she is forcibly sucked into a world she had never before dreamed existed, and upon whether she can adapt to this newfound and confusing reality may just rest the fate of both worlds.

[The E]

Here's the campaign again, mirrored on mediafire and with the two pieces of music converted to ogg, which cuts down on the HDD usage considerably (as in, now uses only 12 MB as opposed to 130....). Enjoy.

http://www.mediafire.com/?qzntzndtwmo

[FelixJim]

Here's the campaign again, mirrored on mediafire and with the two pieces of music converted to ogg, which cuts down on the HDD usage considerably (as in, now uses only 12 MB as opposed to 130....). Enjoy.

http://www.mediafire.com/?qzntzndtwmo

Thanks.

[Colonol Dekker]

I'm capped at the moment due to an over-abundancew of downloading music. so it would've taken me 3 hours as opposed to four minutes

[General Battuta]

Here's the campaign again, mirrored on mediafire and with the two pieces of music converted to ogg, which cuts down on the HDD usage considerably (as in, now uses only 12 MB as opposed to 130....). Enjoy.

http://www.mediafire.com/?qzntzndtwmo

Thanks.

Downloaded.

You should update the first post to use this mirror if you haven't already, just because of the huge space savings.

[Colonol Dekker]

WEll.....

I genuinely enjoed this, the end cutscene had one bit that i wasn't too sure about

Spoiler:

when it says APOCALYPSE, it's right up in a warships grill and looks a bit "off".

[Vrets]

Another successful tour of duty for Vrets (actually, all of my tours of duty end drooling in a straight jacket). No technical issues. Interesting concept. Critique follows:

Gameplay: Mission 2, it is possible to start with 1% health. In mission 1, possibly have a guardian-threshhold SEXP on the fighter that will be assigned to the player in mission 2.

Writing Nitpicks: The ending cutscene was an interesting idea, but it was unneccessary. The greatest mistake sci-fi writers make is to cave in and issue a direct explanation of their entire mythos.

Spoiler:

In mission three I became bored and decided to fly around the Fenris as quickly as possible. Eventually, I came 'round the hull and was greeted by a lucifer. Vrets: "tra la la...GAH!!"

I liked it.

[FelixJim]

WEll.....

I genuinely enjoed this, the end cutscene had one bit that i wasn't too sure about

Spoiler:

when it says APOCALYPSE, it's right up in a warships grill and looks a bit "off".

I spent a while screwing around trying to get a black screen....and ended up throwing in the towel  and shoved the camera in the darkest part of a crate instead. Obviously I'd like to correct that at some point if anyone'd like to tell me how I might achieve that (I guessed the image subtitle sexp would be the way to go, but I've never been very hot on images, and .dds had me completely confused). Thanks for the positive statement though.

Writing Nitpicks: The ending cutscene was an interesting idea, but it was unneccessary. The greatest mistake sci-fi writers make is to cave in and issue a direct explanation of their entire mythos.

Yeah, to be honest I just wanted to try out all the cutscene features. Although, in my defence, it's more fantasy than sci-fi, although that doesn't really change your point. There is a little bit of scope left in the plot, as far as revealing goes (not that I know what it is myself, yet).

[Spoon]

Still have to play but getting a black screen is easily achieved by using the Fade-out sexp (Cutscene section.)

[FelixJim]

Still have to play but getting a black screen is easily achieved by using the Fade-out sexp (Cutscene section.)

True, but I need a black screen which can still display subtitles (I don't think they appear over fade-out).

[Spoon]

Still have to play but getting a black screen is easily achieved by using the Fade-out sexp (Cutscene section.)

True, but I need a black screen which can still display subtitles (I don't think they appear over fade-out).

ah yeah, that's a bit more tricky.

[Colonol Dekker]

Make a single flat plane.pof with a black texture with no bump or glow.......