Author Topic: What I've Been Missing  (Read 2176 times)

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Offline Trivial Psychic

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What I've Been Missing
Back when I was an active member of TBP, 'Raider Wars' was the only REAL campaign out there, and anything else I tried seemed underwhelming.  Granted, a few other campaigns did pop up later on, but I had lost interest by that point.  I'd heard of 'Fortune Hunters', but as I said, I had lost interest in TBP and much of FS by that point.  I returned to FS later on, but never back to TBP.  Now with me finally having accepted Knossos into my life, I've returned to TBP and try things out again.

I've been playing though the 'Fortune Hunters' campaigns, and I just have to give my acknowledgments and compliments to Vidmaster and his team.  I'm hooked!  I have noticed more than a few typos, unnecessarily-long silences between messages and events (that made me wonder if a critical event wasn't firing), or asynchronous message and event timings (due in some instances for the time it takes sim-speech to read the messages out) that show that a bit of polish could be applied, but the story itself is wonderful and compelling.

I'm still stuck on the 2261 mission with the Poseidon, in which some critical event doesn't seem be firing, so I'll have to boot it up in FRED and see what's wrong.  Once I've completed this campaign and a few stragglers, I've decided to return to a project I began even before joining the TBP team... porting Den5's campaign 'In The Beginning'.  I've still got it kicking around.

Speaking of which, does anyone know a good piece of software (preferably shareware) that I can use to strip the audio from a DVD?  Den5's ITB was originally written in Russian and then weakly translated into English (which is one part of the project), but he also has some audio extracted from the movie, but that is ALSO in Russian.  I'd like to have the English audio to use.  Some of it I could theoretically steal from the 'Heat 'em Up' solo missions included in the game, pertaining to the Black Star and Battle of the Line missions, but I'd like to do my own if possible.

Again, GREAT job Vidmaster!
The Trivial Psychic Strikes Again!

 

Offline Vidmaster

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Re: What I've Been Missing
I've been playing though the 'Fortune Hunters' campaigns, and I just have to give my acknowledgments and compliments to Vidmaster and his team.  I'm hooked!  I have noticed more than a few typos, unnecessarily-long silences between messages and events (that made me wonder if a critical event wasn't firing), or asynchronous message and event timings (due in some instances for the time it takes sim-speech to read the messages out) that show that a bit of polish could be applied, but the story itself is wonderful and compelling.

Thanks a lot but nowadays, I am mostly ashamed by this work of mine. I wrote this while I was 16 with my rather limited middle school English (I am not a native speaker) and absolutely zero tool support (like a spell checker).
In my humble modern opinion, I managed to get some good ideas in there (both plot- and game-design-wise) and thus these campaigns certainly shows that my younger self had lots of potential, but half-a-life later I can only see the flaws and bugs. Like the Poseidon-mission, which is honestly just broken.

Anyway, it was a valuable learning experience  ;7 and it also was my very first public release of anything with a sizable audience that played it.

Every two years or something, I wonder if I should return to Freespace and do something in that engine again. Like the project Freespace Saga which has been in my head for about 8 years now...      but I lack the time, given my other projects.

due in some instances for the time it takes sim-speech to read the messages out
It was never playtested with sim-speech since voice-acting was on the table. I actually got about 65% of it voice-acted by really good and nice actors but eventually gave up when I went to university. A real shame, actually, but that is life.
« Last Edit: December 05, 2021, 05:34:15 am by Vidmaster »
Devoted member of the Official Karajorma Fan Club (Founded and Led by Mobius).

Does crazy Software Engineering for a living, until he finally musters the courage to start building games for real. Might never happen.

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: What I've Been Missing
I've lost track,  did I do any VA for that one?
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

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Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
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Offline Vidmaster

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Re: What I've Been Missing
Not as far as I know, but it has been over a decade.
Devoted member of the Official Karajorma Fan Club (Founded and Led by Mobius).

Does crazy Software Engineering for a living, until he finally musters the courage to start building games for real. Might never happen.

 

Offline wesp5

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Re: What I've Been Missing
Vidmaster, if you ever decide to update or fix the Fortune Hunter campaign, it should be possible to include it in the current Knossos release of TBP. If you don't mind, I could go looking for typos and such myself, althouth I am not a native speaker either. But I doubt that I could fix real problems like broken missions...

 

Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: What I've Been Missing
I did manage to finish the campaign, after overcoming a miss-firing event in 2261-06.  I also made a few directive and escort list customizations to my copy.  I'm playing through EBW right now, then on to Janus and EMW-Demo before getting back to ITB.

I have to tell you about something though.  I was trying to overcome that event problem in 2261-06, loading the mission in FRED and trying to make some changes and then testing the mission.  I was puzzled to see that despite the fact that the mission changes were being saved, FSO seemed to be ignoring them.  I was racking my brain to find out if the problem is with FSO or FRED, when it suddenly hit me that I've got 2 full directories for TBP... 3.7.7 and 3.7.8, and FRED was probably accessing the one in 3.7.7.  Sure enough, that was the culprit.  I just copied the mission from one to the other and my changes became manifest.  It took a few more changes to get past the block, but I succeeded.
The Trivial Psychic Strikes Again!

 

Offline wesp5

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Re: What I've Been Missing
I did manage to finish the campaign, after overcoming a miss-firing event in 2261-06.  I also made a few directive and escort list customizations to my copy.  I'm playing through EBW right now, then on to Janus and EMW-Demo before getting back to ITB.

If you provide me with any fixed files you create while playing these campaigns I could integrate them in the next Knossos update!

 

Offline starlord

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Re: What I've Been Missing
Wesp5, trivial, thank you for your efforts in updating tales of Janus.
I don’t quite remember, but I got the design docs from Miburo for tales of Janus part 2 in the form of a text file.
Did I already send it to you?

 

Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: What I've Been Missing
Wesp5, trivial, thank you for your efforts in updating tales of Janus.
I don’t quite remember, but I got the design docs from Miburo for tales of Janus part 2 in the form of a text file.
Did I already send it to you?
Just to be clear, I'm not planning up updating Janus, I just intend on playing through it.  The only reason I stopped to make changes to the Fortune Hunters mission was due to the missed event cue problem that was preventing me from finishing them mission.  The only campaign I have plans to make any fixes for is ITB.
The Trivial Psychic Strikes Again!

 

Offline wesp5

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Re: What I've Been Missing
Wesp5, trivial, thank you for your efforts in updating tales of Janus.
I don’t quite remember, but I got the design docs from Miburo for tales of Janus part 2 in the form of a text file.
Did I already send it to you?

No, and I don't think I did anything with "Battle of the line Janus" either. There is no comment from me so it must have been OverDhill or somebody else! I only remember fixing Mag's Star Fury Missions and some other small details...
« Last Edit: December 09, 2021, 03:02:07 am by wesp5 »

 

Offline Vidmaster

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Vidmaster, if you ever decide to update or fix the Fortune Hunter campaign, it should be possible to include it in the current Knossos release of TBP. If you don't mind, I could go looking for typos and such myself, althouth I am not a native speaker either. But I doubt that I could fix real problems like broken missions...

Unless FUBAR finds the files in his old SVN somehow, I do not think that is happening. About 5 years ago, I decided that that project was over for good and deleted all my backups of it.

Consider this campaign to be in the hands of the community, I hereby give anyone who is interested permission to update or re-release any of my old TBP projects as that person sees fit, under the minor condition that the credits of the new version must still contain the names of every user who worked on the original versions (which is mostly myself and FUBAR-BHDR).

I actually did ask an HLP admin to remove my TBP moderator privileges too back then but nothing ever came of it  :lol:, which is why I am still a moderator here for some reason. With TBP, as-is, I am out of touch.
Devoted member of the Official Karajorma Fan Club (Founded and Led by Mobius).

Does crazy Software Engineering for a living, until he finally musters the courage to start building games for real. Might never happen.

  

Offline Trivial Psychic

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So I've been doing some work updating the ITB mission files... again.  This must be the 3rd or 4th time I've attempted this in the past 15 years, and while looking through what commheads the original mission files were looking for, I've realized that the current install is lacking a few that we used to have.  After searching through my archives, I've found 4 that aren't in the current version.  Initially it was a commhead for Captain Jankowski that I was missing, but once I finally found it, I also found heads for another EA starfury pilot, one for Mitchell (from the Battle of the Line), and a command head (as in, not a pilot) of Ulkesh.  Once I've got the mission files fixed up, and once I know how to upload things via Knossos, I will include these.  I've already renamed them to match the current convention.  I would however put it out there, that I could use a couple more that to my knowledge, don't exist yet.  One is for Captain Sterns (C.O. of EAS Lexington) and one for Lt. Sheridan, also from ITB.  All of the current heads are him when he's older and don't line up.  Of course, there have to be about a dozen other good candidates for commheads throughout the series and films, but I ain't gonna pressure anyone. :nervous:

[Update]
So the Mitchell head and other starfury heads appear to be color-inverted somehow.  I'm hoping the Jankowski one is at least intact.  Otherwise I might have to ask for some help in fixing them.

[Update2]
So the Jankowski head is also screwed.  I remember it working back in the old days, so something must have changed in FSO.  If anyone is willing to take a look at it, it would be appreciated.  Just let me know.
« Last Edit: December 20, 2021, 11:49:25 pm by Trivial Psychic »
The Trivial Psychic Strikes Again!