Author Topic: RELEASE: Demo The Expedition mini-campaign  (Read 5262 times)

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RELEASE: Demo The Expedition mini-campaign
Here's a demo with the first three missions of my new campaign

http://www.mediafire.com/?xi1zzo12ymm

Again, it's a multiplayer oriented campaign, set a few months after the events of the Emearon Incident.
I've been trying to go around the fact that multiplayer mode doesnt like ingame cut-scenes so the first two missions are mostly trying to set up the story, dont expect multiple goals there. Well, at least not many >.>
I'm also being a bit liberal with the models TBP has to offer so bear with me.

Download Contents:
The .vp with the demo and three text documents. A readme with installation instructions, the updated Alternate timeline notepad i had in the emearon incident and a third text with specific story info concerning the new campaign.

Requirements:
3.6.10INF build and Zathras mod enabled.

Campaign info:

Campaign modes: Multi and Single
Storyline mode: Linear, non dynamic mission carry elements.
Maximum Players for Multi: 8
Total missions:3
Playable missions:3
Player Race: Earth Alliance
Release Status: version 0.30

Installation:
Just put the .vp file in your main TBP directory

Please tell me if you like the way i'm treating the first couple of missions, i'm thinking of using that way
to substitude cut-scenes for multiplayer. ie: very easy to complete.

EDIT: To whoever is the first person that downloaded it, i forgot to add some maps, link updated.
« Last Edit: January 18, 2010, 02:11:10 pm by Ker.Soth »
AN S&M VERSION OF STAR TREK: BEAT ME UP SCOTTY!

 

Offline est1895

  • 28
Re: RELEASE: Demo The Expedition mini-campaign
Invalid or Deleted File says mediafire.. :wtf:

 

Offline Jeff Vader

  • The Back of the Hero!
  • 212
  • Bwahaha
Re: RELEASE: Demo The Expedition mini-campaign
Works on my end.
23:40 < achillion > EveningTea: ass
23:40 < achillion > wait no
23:40 < achillion > evilbagel: ass
23:40 < EveningTea > ?
23:40 < achillion > 2-letter tab complete failure

14:08 < achillion > there's too much talk of butts and dongs in here
14:08 < achillion > the level of discourse has really plummeted
14:08 < achillion > Let's talk about politics instead
14:08 <@The_E > butts and dongs are part of #hard-light's brand now
14:08 <@The_E > well
14:08 <@The_E > EvilBagel's brand, at least

01:06 < T-Rog > welp
01:07 < T-Rog > I've got to take some very strong antibiotics
01:07 < achillion > penis infection?
01:08 < T-Rog > Chlamydia
01:08 < achillion > O.o
01:09 < achillion > well
01:09 < achillion > I guess that happens
01:09 < T-Rog > at least it's curable
01:09 < achillion > yeah
01:10 < T-Rog > I take it you weren't actually expecting it to be a penis infection
01:10 < achillion > I was not

14:04 < achillion > Sometimes the way to simplify is to just have a habit and not think about it too much
14:05 < achillion > until stuff explodes
14:05 < achillion > then you start thinking about it

22:16 < T-Rog > I don't know how my gf would feel about Jewish conspiracy porn

15:41 <-INFO > EveningTea [[email protected]] has joined #hard-light
15:47 < EvilBagel> butt
15:51 < Achillion> yes
15:53 <-INFO > EveningTea [[email protected]] has quit [Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client]

18:53 < Achillion> Dicks are fun

21:41 < MatthTheGeek> you can't spell assassin without two asses

20:05 < sigtau> i'm mining titcoins from now on

00:31 < oldlaptop> Drunken antisocial educated freezing hicks with good Internet == Finland stereotype

11:46 <-INFO > Kobrar [[email protected]] has joined #hard-light
11:50 < achtung> Surely you've heard of DVDA
11:50 < achtung> Double Vaginal Double ANal
11:51 < Kobrar> ...
11:51 <-INFO > Kobrar [[email protected]] has left #hard-light []

 
Re: RELEASE: Demo The Expedition mini-campaign
yeah forgot to put some maps in the first vp i made, deleted it so not many ppl download and get trouble, cause they're maps for the third mission. Updated now. Oh btw guys

PLEASE I NEEDZ SOME FEEDBACK for this and for emearon. I mean cmon >.> 50 downloads not a single reply
AN S&M VERSION OF STAR TREK: BEAT ME UP SCOTTY!

 
Re: RELEASE: Demo The Expedition mini-campaign
Even its a little late but in my opinion you deserve some feedback. First of all it is a nice storyline as far as i can see in the first missions it makes the player want to know how it goes on. Also you´ve spent much energy for the details (Loading screenshots f.e.) which belongs to a good campaign i guess. But i think it needs some balancing. Even in very easy it is quite hard to blast those dilgar thoruns it took me minutes even to take one out with the aurora. Not talking about the badger  :shaking:. And i just dont know how to pass the twilight-mission. If i order all fighters to destroy my target (fighter), then alpha and beta form a big cloud, which makes them look like a capship. delta and epsilon wing are useless for cover the badgers and if not the fighter took me out, the aaa from the groundstation did when making my bombing run. Oh and one thing that is at least just my impression: There may be a bit to many nebulas in the system?! When turning circles behind a dilgar fighter it became a bit strange. But except of this few things its very good work! When do you plan to release the complete campaign?
Best wishes!

 

Offline wesp5

  • 29
Re: RELEASE: Demo The Expedition mini-campaign
And i just dont know how to pass the twilight-mission.

I agree. Just to see the end I increased my hull starting points from the usual 100 to 1000 and still couldn't survive before I set them to 10000! This mission is much too hard on very easy...

 

Offline starlord

  • 210
Re: RELEASE: Demo The Expedition mini-campaign
any news regarding the prospect of a full campaign?

 
Re: RELEASE: Demo The Expedition mini-campaign
Hey guys, it's me Ker-soth thnx for still putting input into my demo. To make a long story short, my computer burned down a few months ago taking away all my files, i also lost my job a while back etc so no i'm guessing there i wont be adding anything any more campaigns any time soon. I even had to make a new account just to answer to your posts, forgot my original pass ages ago.

Yeah, the reason i was putting out the demo was just that, ballancing purposes. Creating the missions i knew all the soft spots and all the tricks i needed to actually go through a mission, but i had no idea whether or not other ppl would be able to find them or i had to nerf down the mission. More importantly, I wanted to create a series of mutliplayer mini-campaigns, so I had to find a way to make missions challenging even for 4-5 human pilots.
Mind you, i've already nerfed dilgar by taking out most of their missiles, i can't even begin to explain how painfull they were otherwise.

As far as nebulas are concerned XxHerrRonnyxX, I like them <,< that's the only reason i put them there. Never thought they might be annoying to somebody. Feel free to open up the editor and just nerf the backround.

FYI, atm i'm typing from a 10 year old computer i had in the attic so even though i got all the time in the world -out of work- i can't really make anything because A) it won't handle it and B) this was supposed to be the second of a series of campaigns set in an alternative Babylon universe. I had a heckload of scripts, half completed missions and storyboards i lost when my other computer desided to crock.

If anybody's interested I could try to remake and send them the basic storylines to finish this campaign. I'll be checking my new account every now and then.

For a full mini-campaing look for the Emearon Incident, it's an 8 mission campaign that preceeds the events of this one.

 

Offline Slasher

  • 29
Re: RELEASE: Demo The Expedition mini-campaign
Yeah, the reason i was putting out the demo was just that, ballancing purposes. Creating the missions i knew all the soft spots and all the tricks i needed to actually go through a mission, but i had no idea whether or not other ppl would be able to find them or i had to nerf down the mission. More importantly, I wanted to create a series of mutliplayer mini-campaigns, so I had to find a way to make missions challenging even for 4-5 human pilots.
Mind you, i've already nerfed dilgar by taking out most of their missiles, i can't even begin to explain how painfull they were otherwise.


Even campaigns that were reasonably balanced as late as 2009 could probably stand to be tested and edited for difficulty as necessary.  There have been changes made to firing rates of weapons and, I believe, wingmate AI that definitely improve the overall experience but may require some tweaking of existing missions.

 

Offline wesp5

  • 29
Re: RELEASE: Demo The Expedition mini-campaign
Even campaigns that were reasonably balanced as late as 2009 could probably stand to be tested and edited for difficulty as necessary.  There have been changes made to firing rates of weapons and, I believe, wingmate AI that definitely improve the overall experience but may require some tweaking of existing missions.

Speaking of which, I just started playing The Drums of War. When the second mission starts I get an error that a model is missing because the campaign is not compatible with Zathras. I didn't notice anything strange in the mission itself though. Any ideas what has to be fixed there? Also regarding balance, I couldn't win the third mission on easy because my Narn cruiser is stopping too close to the station and then sits there doing nothing while being pummeled to death. Even if I would manage to kill all the station lasers, which I couldn't, this looks stupid. The same happens to the other Narn cruisers only they are invincible which looks stupid as well, when they get stuck on 1 health. So either the Narn cruisers need to stop farther away from the station or they need to fire their lasers and energy mines more often!

 

Offline 0rph3u5

  • 211
  • Oceans rise. Empires fall.
Re: RELEASE: Demo The Expedition mini-campaign
Even campaigns that were reasonably balanced as late as 2009 could probably stand to be tested and edited for difficulty as necessary.  There have been changes made to firing rates of weapons and, I believe, wingmate AI that definitely improve the overall experience but may require some tweaking of existing missions.

Speaking of which, I just started playing The Drums of War. When the second mission starts I get an error that a model is missing because the campaign is not compatible with Zathras. I didn't notice anything strange in the mission itself though. Any ideas what has to be fixed there? Also regarding balance, I couldn't win the third mission on easy because my Narn cruiser is stopping too close to the station and then sits there doing nothing while being pummeled to death. Even if I would manage to kill all the station lasers, which I couldn't, this looks stupid. The same happens to the other Narn cruisers only they are invincible which looks stupid as well, when they get stuck on 1 health. So either the Narn cruisers need to stop farther away from the station or they need to fire their lasers and energy mines more often!

1st - different topic (REQUESTING SPLIT)

2nd - on the missing model thing:
I included a thiny bit that would make the mission fix itself in chase that custom model (an EA Freighter with green textures) was not/no longer avalible (that's why you didn't notice a thing about the missing model)

3rd - on the broken balance of DoW1 mission 3:
What Zathras version do you use?
What difficulty are you playing on?
Do you use any other table hacks?

I tested the mission many times before release and after it...
the combined firepower of three narn cruisers should suffice to bring down that station before they run into the end of their waypoints (which is what you described)... they have their beam turrets guardianed and recieve a damage buff along the way (after the centauri cruiser is destroyed)
« Last Edit: May 11, 2011, 08:52:21 am by 0rph3u5 »
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

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Offline wesp5

  • 29
Re: RELEASE: Demo The Expedition mini-campaign
3rd - on the broken balance of DoW1 mission 3:
What Zathras version do you use?
What difficulty are you playing on?
Do you use any other table hacks?

I don't know what table hacks are, but I play on easy with the 3_6_12r_INF build and Zathras 2.0. At least I think it's the latter, Zathras needs to add a version number to it's launcher window in the next release!

Quote
I tested the mission many times before release and after it...

Please do it again in the above configuration. I tried this mission about half a dozend times and the Narn cruiser always died. When I set it's hull to 1000 in the mission file it was at about 800 when the station finally exploded. Something is wrong there. Speaking of which, as a late comer to TBP I played all the big campaigns out there and ran into similar situations a few times, always thinking it was my fault because I'm not a good enough pilot. I don't remember all occassions but I'm sure there was a bit in the Guardian of Light demo against the Dilgar that was unsolvable as well, because their capital ships were too many and too strong...

Update:
I tried the mission without Zathras and still the station does not explode before the cruisers reach their end-waypoint. They don't use their powerbeams often enough and not much at all aftwerwards. This time though only one of them died before the station was destroyed, so this may be a problem with 3_6_12r_INF itself and not caused by Zathras...
« Last Edit: May 11, 2011, 04:14:22 pm by wesp5 »

 

Offline Slasher

  • 29
Re: RELEASE: Demo The Expedition mini-campaign
Things that seemed to work fine at release might work a little differently nowadays.  For example, two years ago the turrets on fighters only seemed to shoot at what that particular fighter was targeting.  This had been a rather glaring problem ever since retail.  Now they can fire at anything, making ships like Badgers considerably more dangerous than they were before since their rear gun can hit you even while the Badger is attacking something else.  In an unshielded ship, the 30mm pulse cannon hits add up fast.  It's amazing what little tweaks like that can do to the mission dynamic. :D

 
Re: RELEASE: Demo The Expedition mini-campaign
well i'll be damned, badger's turret works at last? Woohoo. I'd be happy to rebalance the demo and emearon but my relic pc needs about 5mins to clean up it's RAM after i exit TBP so switching between fred and the game to figure out glitches is totally out of the question for me atm.

If anybody's interested in reballancing the expedition or emearon, mostly emearon cause it's a full multiplayer campaign,  i'd be more than happy to oblidge. Please?