Hello friends, modders, lurkers of these forums and players of Freespace content.
I'm here, standing on my soapbox, hoping my desperate plea will reach you.
We've got some absolutely amazing content released in these past months, made by extremely talented creators who, both poured their hearts and souls into crafting and polishing these amazing singleplayer, narratively driven campaigns. The kind of gameplay that just isn't created by big professional game development studios these days anymore.
But for reasons unknown to me, both of these campaigns are just not gathering any kind of attention, at all.
And that is just downright depressing to see. These guys put like 5 years of effort into making these amazing experiences and what do they get from the community? A handful of posts, a page of troubleshooting and
nothing else.Please. Download and play these amazing mods and leave some comments, feedback, reviews,
anything. Some praise and attention is all we modders ask for, when we release hours of free entertainment in the greatest spacesim engine for you.
HLP may have been slowing down over the years, sure. But this will guarante it's untimely demise. All of our remaining experienced content creators are just going to be demotivated and give up, If the community is going to ignore their efforts! And then what's left?
I'm typing this post way way past bedtime, so I'll keep this brief:
Between the Ashes made by mjn.mixael, is basically what an official Freespace 2 expansion pack could look like. Its a fully voice acted campaign with some incredible mission design and a compelling story, which all takes place in a single star system (with a starmap that you can look at from the main menu, which updates as the campaign progresses). It does an great job of showing you the civilian life side of things, as your GTA battlegroup gets entangled in a fight with a incredibly cunning, Hammer of light admiral. The mission variation in this campaign is just amazing. None of the old boring escort missions that involve fighting off 20 waves of pirate fighters here! Instead you get to hijack some poor sod's fighter by remote hacking and use it to attack the convoy he was hired to protect, to ruin his reputation. In another mission you get to prepare your defenses for an incoming attack by manually placing sentry guns and shields and such. There's just too much in this campaign to just easily sum up.
Experience it yourself.
Just another Day 2.21&2.22 made by Axem, is an amazing comedy campaign that twists and bends the poor Freespace 2 engine in ways that it was never designed for. In terms of gameplay it does away with the grim and the dark and the serious storytelling, and trades it in for lighthearted fun, with memorable, funny characters, boss battles, weapon upgrades and candy power ups that spawn from destroyed enemies.
Now you may go "but wait, didn't JAD 2.21 release some time ago already?" and you are not wrong. But it recently received a really big update, with new weapons and new art and other neat things. It's totally worth a replay too, if you've played it before. And JAD 2.22 is planned to be released next month! It has
DISCO.
Do yourself a favor and enjoy these cool games! Then do the creators a favor and make a post!