[Axem]

What, July is already gone? Hopefully your summer hasn't been too hot (like a Capellean Supernova) or too cold (like Bosch's heart). Or maybe you're allergic to sunlight like me and just stay in an air-conditioned place all day.

Anyway, let us check out our cool works of art in July.




Lots of neat stuff this month in campaign stuff.

First off, two re-releases of older campaigns. Macfie and the FSCRP team gives us the old standby, the complete 4 part series of the Lightning Marshall, all voiced acted and good for the 2014 MediaVPs! Fly with the GTCv Actium and the Space Cowboys and fight the NTF.


And Cyborg17 has made The Aftermath playable again with the 2014 MediaVPs and the latest version of Blue Planet. This Post-Capella campaign boasts lots of big fleet battles. CT27 says: In my opinion if you liked "Inferno", "Warzone", and/or "Derelict", you'll probably like "The Aftermath."


Sarkoth has started making a new type of campaign list that gives you an idea of what campaigns work with what builds and any minimum requirements. This should be helpful to our newer players! Check out the thread and help him fill in the blanks if you have the chance.

In campaign preview news…
Lepanto gives us this beam filled teaser screenshot for Sophrosyne.

Pew…!

Rheyah shows off a little technical prose with how he's developing subspace warfare for his Shetland campaign.

Military theorists differentate between the first and second generation of subspace warfare based on tactical decision making and risk-reward strategic management.  Both Terran and Vasudan subspace warfare has evolved since the early days of subspace warfare.  With little real scientific information to go on, the focus of first generation warfare was node control - positioning of vital capital ships in such a way that supply lines remained open at all costs.

TheHound gives us another ship showcase post for his VeniceMirror campaign currently being worked on!

After the Second Shivan incursion, all Alliance engineers agreed that the Hecate failed as a heavy line combatant, and whenever it found itself in direct combat with Shivan forces, it was failing to perform.

That is why GTVA needed a new weapon to face any further Shivan threats, and their joint en-devour developed the Titan.

Diehard FREDder Orph3u5 is back with a new campaign called Of Shivans and Men. Gee, George, I wonder what it's going to be about? Not Vasudans, I guess.

Episode 1 is set in 2328 of the FreeSpace-universe timeline, the chronolical middle of the Terran-Vasudan War. Due to the fact that the Terran-Vasudan War is the longest military conflict in the cannon FreeSpace-universe I wanted to show that as the war drags on, dangerous political movements take hold on both sides; in this instance the rise of a terran supremancy movement (a proto-NTF if you like) which can openly and branzenly display its agenda and it's symbols

And I too, have been trying my best to get back into FREDding… or at the very least fixing up JAD2.21. Some of the upgrades are just nicer graphics, but there are some completely new features. One of those is this neat campaign map I designed. Check out the video in the link to see it in action!




by niffiwan
 
After an error filled coding section in June let's see if I can do better for July!    Last month I said that 3.7.2 RC4 was due "soon".  Well, that's still the case   Seriously though, it's much closer now as quite a few mantis tickets in code review have been closed and a few new mainhall features have also gone in. Also, RC4 is likely to be the final RC before final, so when it comes out it can use all the testing it can get to make sure there's no major bugs in 3.7.2 final.
 
New features!
 

• Add ba.getGameDifficulty() scripting function to get the current difficulty level - Axem (more Sexp functionality available in scripting!)
• Add more functionality to colors.tbl including modular colors table support - MageKing17 (there's a lot more features than this, see mantis 3064 for more details)
• Removed ship template feature which never worked without crashing - Goober5000 (this is a feature removal rather than an addition - but the feature is believed to have never worked correctly, see Mantis 2064 for more detail, and post in the SCP board if this change has suddenly nuked your lovingly crafted mod!)
• Turned the required SEXP variable arguments for add-background-bitmap and add-sun-bitmap into optional arguments - zookeeper (you don't have to specify the variable to store the anymore)
• Allow mainhalls to specify more doors (aka buttons or action areas) and customise what each door does - ngld (this is a big one for mainhall builders, e.g. Axems journal or systemviewer could get their own buttons/doors instead of hijacking the barracks)
• Add new animations to mainhalls that are drawn after the doors, and add cheat codes to let "misc" animations be swapped - ngld (I've seen Christmas lights over a door on the GTD Krios - just what is going on here pilot!)
• Upgrade libpng from 1.5.7 to 1.6.12 - Zacam (there's been a few security issues fixed in libpng, so we've updated the version shipped with the FSO code)
• Upgrade zlib from 1.2.5 to 1.2.8 - Zacam (similar to above except it's bugfixes + enhancements, not security fixes)

 
Here's the current bugs scoreboard. The bugs on mantis have gone down again along with a few more Coverity fixes being submitted.  Thats what we like to see in a RC phase (well, we like to see it anytime of course, but especially during an RC phase)

	fixed	new	delta	outstanding
Coverity (this month)	14	6	8	399
Mantis (last 30 days)	22	9	13	163

(Mantis includes 30 feature requests, so outstanding bugs is really 133)

p.s. This table format has been vaguely bugging me for a while, if anyone knows how to add html features like cell padding and borders, please let me know
 

First up is a bit of a public service annoucment; there's been a recent change to the way that FSO table parses text and quotation marks.  It's now more correct (i.e. matching quote pairs correctly) but unfortunately it means that some tables in mods (including retail!) are now failing to parse correctly (yes, retail data has three non-English lines with 3x double-quotes each ). So if mod stops working with a recent nightly, it may need a quote fixed up somewhere. (Strictly speaking, this isn't news from this month but its importance wasn't realised last month...)

m!m has updated his Chromium builds again, the process to build your own execs has been streamlined on Windows, and is now possible on Linux.

jg18 is interested in improving the FSO sound code. Pop over to the thread and post about any bugs you think it currently has, or any features that you think it should have.

Axem has updated his Journal + System Viewer combo release. There's a few bugfixes and a ShortTitle's feature, go check it out.

Parias has been diving into FSO LUA scripting with a very interesting goal in mind, multi-player command briefings! He's posted a cool video of this in action.  There's just a few code side things that need to be resolved to have this working smoothly, but it's a very impressive job to work around this limitation with the tools available!

Admiral MS has released a new update to his ship save/load script (also known at the checkpoint script). It should now save/load SEXP controlled variables, so if that sounds like it'll be useful for your mod, go grab it and give it a spin.




The Dagger and the Inferno team give away a super nice Vasudan cruiser, the GVC Selket,  for the community to use in their campaigns. Very nice looking indeed.


Scooby continues his work to super hi-res-ify more Wing Commander ships, and this time he has some demo downloads in addition to some nice new pictures too!


Fightermedic's has shown off some spectacular skyboxes he's made. Words just fail me here, check out his previews and don't drown in drool.


Speaking of drowning in drool, UndyingNephalim has some more new Star Fox goodness with amazing pictures of atmospheric missions and videos of giant robots.


Chinaman brings the Raptor to FreeSpace. Originally modelled by Cool Hands (the same guy that made that crazy MiG fighter that Steve O converted), it has a lot of room for weapons on its wings, making it a fierce looking ship. And who said wings were useless in space!


In the forum far far below, Fate of the Galaxy has some nice updated shots of the greeblings of the Assault Gunboat. Looks great!


Col Hornet also has some incremental updates for his Hera Carrier. I think it looks about ready for some textures now, what do you think?


Bryan See's ever changing Sariel has another revision to it. I guess that what happens when you stick Shivan ships in a blender! Neat concept anyway.




This month's article is about bitwise operations in FRED. They are great for storing a lot of simple information together in a single variable. It just takes a little knowledge of how binary works to be able to understand it.

And karajorma also did a post about how to use the event log to help debug your missions. Is an event firing too early or seemingly never? Use this to help you get a handle on what your events are actually doing.


by mjn.mixael

Last month's theme was Panic.
 
You know it, I know it... The winner was clear the moment it was posted.

 
Screencap Scoreboard:
Ckid - 2
Mpez - 2
AndrewofDoom - 1
tnathan475 - 1
The Hound - 1
 
As a reminder, we're going to do things slightly differently this year. Our many campaigns are filled with emotional ups, downs, and/or lackthereof. So we'll highlight that with a whole year's worth of emotional themes. I don't care what's in the image as long as it portrays the particular feeling for the month.
 
The new theme for August is Dread.
 
Watch those HUD gauges (especially that sneaky FPS gauge) and check out the Screencam Script to help you win a badge and bragging rights. You can see the rules and the previous winners here on the Wiki.

[CT27]

Great newsletter as usual Axem.


One minor detail:

Macfie's release of Lightning Marshal doesn't just include the main LM 1-4, it also includes a re-release of the LM prequel "Regulus Campaign".

[Lorric]

Yes, it's great to see the campaign section with some substantial content in it this month, and as usual, the newsletter tipped me off to a couple of things I hadn't seen. Always a pleasure to read.

[Nyctaeus]

Good one, as always . Too bad you don't check Celebration of Freespace thread. There are many updates here without their own threads.

[Axem]

Well, I don't use any updates from Celebration of FreeSpace since they can sometimes be without much context or good meaty info. I see it as a more casual show-off thread than anything. If people want their stuff in Celebration to be shown off, I highly encourage they start a dedicated thread! That way people can see everything instead of having to go through multiple pages if they're interested in a single project.

[Lorric]

You know it, I know it... The winner was clear the moment it was posted.

Speak for yourself... *grumble, grumble*

Still, there was a genuine, if fleeting, feeling of annoyance / disappointment at this, and that's bad. For me. I have been entering the screencap contest for a lot of months now, often with shots I don't think have a hope in hell of winning, not to win, but simply for fun. And that is how it has been. But I definitely wanted to win this one, and if this is happening I should stop entering it, unless I can get that just for fun spirit back.

Anyway, the winner was indeed my favourite of the other shots, along with the story behind it. If I enter the next or future ones, it will be for the right reasons. I wasn't sure whether to post this or not, but it might be useful if anyone else has let the screencap contest creep up on them in an unwanted way like this.

[Khenmu]

The new theme for July is Dread.

You mean September, surely?

Great job on the newsletter, and congrats to everyone making progress on their projects.
 
 
Edit: I am not a smart man.

[mjn.mixael]

When I judge the screencap contest, I open each image in a new tab so that it doesn't have a name attached to it. Even then, though, a trend has emerged. There are several individuals that are really setting up the shot. I suspect they are doing some minor FREDing, creating/altering backgrounds and props, checking lighting, and really thinking about how to frame the scene.

If you want to know why yours didn't win this time, send me a PM. I'd be glad to walk you through what point in the process yours got ruled out and how to make even better screenshots next time.

[Lorric]

When I judge the screencap contest, I open each image in a new tab so that it doesn't have a name attached to it.

Well... ha ha ha. I bet that really screwed me over on my second shot. Since the first one was to give the second one context. It's not the first time I've done that either. If you only saw the second one without context, how are you going to know that's Alpha 1 and two of Xinny / Zero / Snipes narrowly avoiding the Sathanas?

Yes, some standout individuals have emerged that are winning the majority of the contests these days.

[Mpez]

Great newsletter, as always. It's one of the reasons I look forward to the beginning of the month (well, that and getting my paycheck).

When I judge the screencap contest, I open each image in a new tab so that it doesn't have a name attached to it.

Well... ha ha ha. I bet that really screwed me over on my second shot. Since the first one was to give the second one context. It's not the first time I've done that either. If you only saw the second one without context, how are you going to know that's Alpha 1 and two of Xinny / Zero / Snipes narrowly avoiding the Sathanas?

Yes, some standout individuals have emerged that are winning the majority of the contests these days.

You know, one of the challenges is to give each pic its clear context.

I suppose there aren't many people taking part because it's quite tedious work that can take a couple of hours of your time to set up the shot correctly, not knowing whether it will be any good in the end. Still, for me it's fun as hell to be engaged in something artistic like that, while not having any artistic skills at all.

[headdie]

All good stuff as always.  Posted to FB and Reddit, as always

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Hardlightproductions/
http://www.reddit.com/r/freespace/

[niffiwan]

... while not having any artistic skills at all.

I beg to differ!! 

[Parias]

Wow! Thanks for taking notice of my little multiplayer "co-op enhancement" project - I hope to have it done soon and will be making a big post once it's ready for use.

[Colonol Dekker]

Dat raptor.....like a space A 10.

[Lorric]

You know, one of the challenges is to give each pic its clear context.

I suppose there aren't many people taking part because it's quite tedious work that can take a couple of hours of your time to set up the shot correctly, not knowing whether it will be any good in the end. Still, for me it's fun as hell to be engaged in something artistic like that, while not having any artistic skills at all.

I'm glad you posted, I am curious about what others think of the screencap contest who enter it. Especially someone like you who is among the best at producing screenshots, at least imo anyway.

[0rph3u5]

A good one, glad that there are no diminishing returns on the Newsletter...

Diehard FREDder

I'm beyond words, its right there with "Wizzard" 

[Axem]

Hey, I saw that original part you quoted! No need to be that modest, someone who has released as many missions as you over the years deserves the diehard distinction.

I have horribly abused my power to reinstate it.

[0rph3u5]

I just wanted to pass on some of the love I recieved from the community after the announcement of OSaM, Ep 1 - bad spelling was definitifly discouraged there; and as a witty comeback on the subject I thought a reference to Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels would be well recieved.

And thought it is true that I value modesty and humility, it's not much of a choice here on HLP, there is just no gain to be had in competing with a certain someone's ego for praise from the community

[CT27]

I hope Axem doesn't mind my posting this here, but here's another picture from "The Aftermath" (note:  I'm not putting this in here to enter it in a contest right now, just to show off the campaign a bit):

[AdmiralRalwood]

p.s. This table format has been vaguely bugging me for a while, if anyone knows how to add html features like cell padding and borders, please let me know

I know it's not quite what you meant, but how about this "lovely" text art?

	| fixed	| new	| delta	| outstanding
----------------------------	|----------	|----------	|----------	|--------------------
Coverity (this month)	| 14	| 6	| 8	| 399
----------------------------	|----------	|----------	|----------	|--------------------
Mantis (last 30 days)	| 22	| 9	| 13	| 163

(But seriously, someone would have to update the [table] tag to add that stuff. Unless somebody already did, but I didn't find any mention of it.)