[Mobius]

This thread is meant to discuss Gehenna's Gate, part of the Series Resurrecta - Shadows of the Great War collection. If you want to discuss The Spirit of Ptah, there's a dedicated thread for it. Both campaigns share the same modpack; however, due to their plots and nature, they're probably better off discussed in their respective threads.

Series Resurrecta Official Profile | ModDB

Gehenna's Gate [GehG]
The Great War is formally over, but battles are still taking place. The Lucifer's been destroyed and contact with Sol has been severed. However, remnants of the Shivan armada are still present in Terran and Vasudan systems, and even though both species faced tough challenges as their respective homeworlds have been either annihilated or cut off, they must regroup and finally secure all systems from the Shivan threat. At first, the Shivans seem disoriented and lacking the coordination they had when the Lucifer was around, leading their advance, but can we be certain that no alternate source of command for the Shivans exists?

A "Resurrected Series"
Series Resurrecta is a form of Latin to say "Resurrected Series". No other title would be as appropriate, considering that SerRes campaigns have been in a limbo state for way more than a decade, passing from computer to computer, from pendrive to pendrive, and ultimately making it to a point where progress could be resumed. What you're about to play are missions whose earliest development phase dates back to March 13th, 2007; today's October 16th, 2020, so nearly 5,000 days have passed between the first FREDding attempts and release. At first, these minicampaigns were meant to be unofficial expansions to Inferno: Alliance Standalone, but have since become their own, independent package, using the FreeSpace Port as a root. Very special thanks go to Woomeister who strongly supported these unofficial INF campaigns back in the day, even though none of them were meant to be INF canon.

The Resurrection process
It's no secret that I've been away for a long while from this community. I used to spend less and less time in front of my computer, which gradually became obsolete and prevented me from running any of the graphics consuming FreeSpace mods. At some point in May, mostly due to changes to working habits (some may say that SR may be a consequence of Covid-19), I had to upgrade my equipment and bought a new laptop, which made my jobs easier. I also got the chance to play FreeSpace again, and stumbled upon plenty of missions from defunct projects.

I decided that these campaigns deserved to be "resurrected", so I asked for help on the FSCRP private board, considering how similar the process of getting these campaigns done is to the standard procedure of campaign revamping and upgrading. Admiral Nelson, Nyctaeus and Nightmare helped me cleaning the modpack and extracting it from its INFA dependency, thus turning it into a full FSPort mod. At the sime time, I worked on the mission, and quite fast I may add, considering that most of the FREDding job was pretty much done in about three weeks. Feedback during this revamping process was positive, and the results were quite encouraging too - June's screencap contest winner was, in fact, a screenshot taken from a SerRes campaign. We have spent the last couple of months squashing several bugs and making needed changes to the modpack and campaigns, including proofreading (special thanks to go Iain 'Nomad' Baker and lordhood117 for this).

Is this a new continuity?
Yes and no, with the proper answer leaning no. The campaigns were meant to be independent even with respect to each other, so there's no FS1 Era continuity emerging from Series Resurrecta. As you play through these stories, consider them as something on their own, even though they don't necessarily contradict each other and come under a unified brand. Just treat SerRes as it's meant to be treated - a series of campaigns set in the FS1 Era, which with its own plot and settings.

Will this be expanded?
As you may have guessed, GehG and TSoP aren't the only campaigns which I managed to recover from the void of oblivion. There's... more stuff, and we are evaluating future releases including more campaigns and expansions to this modpack, some of which are considerable. I can't promise anything right now but we do have advanced plans to release at least one campaign in the near future.

Missions and Balance
Due to time constraints, the missions currently lack checkpoints which would be extremely beneficial at least in some 2-3 missions over the package. They will definitely be implemented in future releases, as we expect the modpack to be revised and improved over time (more info on that will follow). We do recommend to set up Very Easy or Easy as difficulty levels during your playthroughs. Easy is still quite challenging and will let you enjoy both the plot and some intense action. Testers have reported a spike in difficulty from Medium upwards, so if I were you I would not play at that difficulty level before the full implementation of checkpoints. Even though these are minicampaigns, some of the missions are long.

Gallery

[Antares]

Where is the table with the HUD settings saved in this campaign? I want to play, but I'm running into problems similar to what was going on over here: gauges are huge and dialogue boxes overflow with text. Even at 1920 x 1080 (the highest resolution my monitor will support), wingman chatter is still being cut off.

I can probably override by saving a blank HUD table to the campaign folder and forcing the game to default to retail settings, but I need to know how the MVPs directory is laid out, first. Saving new tables with the same folders and filenames as those used in the FSPort and FS2Upgrade MVPs doesn't change anything, so I assume that Series Resurrecta handles things a little differently.

[Nyctaeus]

Fix is on the way. We forgot to implement it.

[Admiral Nelson]

A screenshot would be helpful - I don't see overflowing text at 1080p in my testing. There is the issue another user reported with Axem's HUD at resolutions below 1080 which I will need to implement as this uses that hud as its base.

[Antares]

1280 x 720:



1920 x 1080:



Things are decidedly less cramped at 1080, but as you can see, dialogue is still being cut off. (1080 also makes my integrated graphics chug and is essentially unplayable on my end.)

[Colt]

1920x1080 user here. I can back up Antares.

[Admiral Nelson]

I've pushed a 1.0.1 patch to revert the hud to retail at low resolutions.  I hope this fix will also take care of those 1080p users who are getting a tiny message box.

[Colt]

Hit a bit of a problem with the new update. Knossos refuses to download some of the files. Tried uninstalling and reinstalling it but no dice.

[Admiral Nelson]

Seems 1.0.1 got corrupted on upload. I uploaded a fresh copy 1.0.2 and some discord users have successfully installed it.

[spart_n]

[Colt]

Download worked. Message box is still bugged, though the targeting data text looks good.

Not sure if this is of any use, but here's a debug log.
https://fsnebula.org/log/5f8bd433a802a827dc5a562d

[Admiral Nelson]

So it turns out that the cause of the HUD glitches was a stray older version of Axem's message box lurking the in /interface folder.  The load order for _folders_ is different in vp files than loose files, and so I was scaling a different message box image than the one you as a player were seeing.  The offending file has been removed and I have rescaled the config file, so the HUD should be all set in 1.0.3.

[Antares]

You broke Knossos again, Admiral. 

[Thisisaverylongusername]

Version 1.0.4 didn't fix the packaging issues for me.

[Madeye]

Version 1.0.4 didn't fix the packaging issues for me.

Same here :/

[praseodym]

Error from terminal while DLing:

Code: [Select]

WARNING:Thread-6:tasks.work2: Missing file "data/models/SerRes_Abel.pof" from archive "models.7z" for package "models" (Series Resurrecta)!
ERROR:Thread-6:tasks.work2: Failed to unpack archive "models.7z" for package "models" (Series Resurrecta)!Repeats with the other files. Ideas?

[praseodym]

Same/similar with 1.0.4:

Code: [Select]

WARNING:Thread-1:tasks.work2: Missing file "data/cbanims/2_cb_arachnas.ani" from archive "core.7z" for package "core" (Series Resurrecta)!
ERROR:Thread-1:tasks.work2: Failed to unpack archive "core.7z" for package "core" (Series Resurrecta)!

[Colt]

Review!

Spoiler:

Finished Gehenna's Gate a couple of nights ago. Between it and Ptah, I had the most fun with this one. I enjoyed reading the Reporter's tech entries, which added more to an already good story detailing the last battles of the Great War. The fiction entries were great as well, with the one by the Ancients particularly unsettling about how the Shivans have sleeper fleets. I liked how the first mission went from being a fairly simple mission to a full-on boss battle with the Seraphim bombers. Some of the missions had a very creepy vibe to them, such as the stealth mission and the one with the Cain. New ships like the Iksura and the upgraded Arachnas are a welcome addition. Music choice was great all-round, especially the last mission.

Speaking of, the final mission was nuts. I could feel the pressure building as the second Lucifer and its invasion fleet were approaching the node while desperately trying to destroy the panels. In the end we got swarmed, but managed to take out 3/4 of the panels. One of the pilots mentioned that the jump node had started to collapse, so our deaths weren't in vain (assuming the Shivans don't just repair the station and return in a couple of years). I replayed this mission a second time and got the better ending. Honestly, I kinda prefer the first ending, as the second ending didn't feel as fulfilling. Did we make it back to Ross 128? Are we stuck in subspace? I need answers damn it!

Overall an excellent campaign. I look forward to the next release.

[Mobius]

I'm glad you liked it! Your feedback is appreciated.

Spoiler:

The story about Tales of a Reporter is a particular one. Those were the fictions meant to show up on screen before each GehG mission. All of them have been written a decade ago, so they're very genuine.

At first, I was not able to recover them, so I decided to write new fictions down. Then, surprisingly, these texts emerged back from oblivion so we decided to implement them as Intel entries in the Tech Room.

[caine440]

Start this campaign last night. No issues so far. Looks like a fun campaign.
Thanks