Hard Light Productions Forums

FreeSpace Releases => Mission & Campaign Releases => Topic started by: DiabloRojo on September 17, 2007, 09:18:21 pm

Title: My first ever FRED mission! (for BtRL)
Post by: DiabloRojo on September 17, 2007, 09:18:21 pm
After all the joking I did in making that poster (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,48881.0.html) for 'The [BtRL] campaign that will never exist,' I started trying to FRED for BtRL anyway.

"Unacceptable Losses (http://files.filefront.com/UnLosses.vp/;8581677;/fileinfo.html)" (links to FileFront)

This is only a single mission that I made to learn at least some of FRED's functionality and is in no way meant to be canon (to BtRL or BSG).  It's also fully voice acted (all by me... be afraid!) in order to practice with Audition.  Granted, I'd never expect to come close to the BtRL team's authenticity, but I don't think it came out too bad.  I stoleused the demo's story to form the premise of this mission because there's only so much you can do with 4 kinds of fighters, a mining vessel and some big rocks.  Now that I'm writing this, I'm not sure if anyone has posted something really similar on GW...  :nervous:

If anyone looks at the SEXPs, get ready to scratch your head.  Any tips on better ways to pull things off certainly welcome... assuming the full BtRL comes out relatively soon, I might attempt that campaign after all.

*Edit - Forgot to mention, it's the BSG universe after all, so there is some mild language.
*Edit 2 - Updated link for new version.  Found a messaging logic 'oops'
Title: Re: My first ever FRED mission! (for BtRL)
Post by: karajorma on September 18, 2007, 04:21:58 am
Might as well take a look at this. :)
Title: Re: My first ever FRED mission! (for BtRL)
Post by: DiabloRojo on September 18, 2007, 02:41:00 pm
Hopefully Blue 2's wandering accent will at least give you a chuckle.

That is, if glaring FREDing deficiencies and blatant rips of the BtRL story aren't slapping you in the face the whole time. ;)
Title: Re: My first ever FRED mission! (for BtRL)
Post by: karajorma on September 23, 2007, 12:15:02 pm
Okay, gave it a try and I did enjoy it. No real surprises but for a first effort it was pretty decent.

The only real complaint I'd make is that I'd suggest starting the player a little closer to the action. Time how long it takes for the banter at the start but don't make it take the player more than 10-15 seconds more than that to start getting into range.
Title: Re: My first ever FRED mission! (for BtRL)
Post by: DiabloRojo on September 23, 2007, 08:17:56 pm
Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the feedback!

The original intent of being so far out was to build suspense, but I definitely felt the annoyance factor of just having to fly... and fly... and fly... and oh, FINALLY shoot at something.  It made testing 'fun', for sure.  I guess I could have thrown in a couple raiders to accost Blue on the way or hidden red until they're closer, but that may require something a bit too much like Gauntlet's monologue in the first BtRL mission.  'Been there, done that.'

Definitely helps for future ideas though.  :)
Title: Re: My first ever FRED mission! (for BtRL)
Post by: Turey on September 27, 2007, 09:42:46 pm
I got Scar down to 1% on hard. It doesn't look like he's killable.

Anyway, nice mission.
Title: Re: My first ever FRED mission! (for BtRL)
Post by: DiabloRojo on September 28, 2007, 11:36:54 am
Thanks!

He's not supposed to be killable since he was taken out in the show (ok, so it is SOMEWHAT canonical) and I'm a sadist that doesn't want to give anyone the satisfaction of taking him out.  :P

This would be more for the FRED forum, but for the 1% dilemma, setting guardian threshold on him didn't work for me.  It suffered the same 'damage overload' problem as the if-hits left < x, set invulnerable SEXP I started with, so I had to settle with the 'normal' guardian.  Is this a known limitation of it or should the guardian-threshold have worked?


Edit:
I just made a test with three raiders, all with the different methods and couldn't reproduce it either... I even set the HD-70s damage to 850 *just* in case the amount of damage had anything to do with it.  So, assuming it wasn't just a noob sexp error that I didn't catch before changing something, the cause must be much more obscure.. like... processor cycle timings intersecting with a full moon during a somesuch equinox.
Title: Re: My first ever FRED mission! (for BtRL)
Post by: karajorma on September 28, 2007, 02:52:37 pm
Ship-guaridan-threshold should have worked. However I've heard reports from people who played Birth of a Legend that on occasion it doesn't. Unfortunately I haven't once managed to replicate the problem and since every single way of damaging a ship goes through the same function I couldn't see why it's failing.

However if ship-guardian works and ship-guardan-threshold doesn't that gives me another place to look.

EDIT : Nope. If ship-guardian-threshold isn't working ship-guardian shouldn't either since all it does is set the threshold to 1% which should be making it more likely that whatever is screwing over ship-guardian-threshold will also happen to ship-guardian.