"There are a lot of stories about battle-changing heroism, about single men and women changing the fate of an entire species. Stories about uprisings against great injustice and evil governments. History and fiction show us the tales of people in positions where they can change the way of humankind itself. This story is none of them. This is about those people that get cought in between when empires collide and great militarists fight their wars. This is about the survival of those you love and need the most. About those who sweat and bleed next to you when the going gets tough."
Hello everybody! I'm new to fredding and proudly present my first mission, which hopefully will lead to a small campaign in the near future. I'm looking for people to give me feedback and help me find bugs and errors, plot holes and anything else that doesn't work. So come and roast me :D
The story of the upcoming campaign is based on Blue Planet. It takes place in Sol within the 18 months before the GTVA captures Jupiter, shortly after the GTVA arrived in Sol.
So first of all I wanted to thank the Blue Planet Team for their great mod and the permission to let my little attempt of fredding play within their universe :)
What do you need for this mission?
Must have:
- I'm using FS2 OPen 3.7.4. I always used SSE2.exe so I have no idea if there is a problem if you use another, this is the one I recommend.
- Blue Planet complete. Download-Link and instructions: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=90802.0 (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=90802.0) I used the Bpcomplete mod to create this mission and also used their ship models, so this is definitely needed.
- As it is needed for Blue Planet: The MediaVPs 2014: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=86475.0 (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=86475.0)
Since the mission uses the fiction viewer and different head anis:
- Put the First.fs2 into bpcomplete -> data -> missions (or freespace 2 -> data -> missions if you like, though I think it's easier to have all needed parts within one folder).
- Within the freespace 2 folder, there should be a "bpcomplete folder". Open it, go into "data" and create (if they aren't already there) two folders called "fiction" and "hud".
- Put the "First Mission.txt"-attachment into the fiction folder.
- For a better experience, download the "Starlancer Head Anis" here: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=73679.0 (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=73679.0) and
- Download Black Wolf's Anis here: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=67771.msg1499363#msg1499363 (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=67771.msg1499363#msg1499363)
Extract them and put all .ani-files into the "hud" folder within the bpcomplete folder (as mentioned above).
I think it might work without the anis, but for more diversity I think it's better to have them.
That's it. I hope I didn't forget something important, so please tell me if it doesn't work so I can find out what's going on.
If you wish to give me feedback, I have some questions to you:
- Too hard/too easy? (I play with mouse, so I have no idea if playing with joystick is harder or easier).
- Too long, too much text? (I'm the type of person that tries to explain what's happening around you, but there might be other preferences).
- As you might have recognised, English is not my first language. So if there are big errors, wrong words etc... please tell me. I will work on it ;)
- Last but not least: Since your wingmen are important for the storyline I made them unkillable. To prevent the mission from being too easy because of that, I decided to kill their weapons if they take too much damage. Is this a good way to do this or can this be done "smarter"?
So thank you all for your interest and have fun :)
PS:
An alternative way to make this work was proposed by tomimaki: Create a folder like for new campaign, put the mission, the anis and the fiction txt-file into their respective folders and create mod.ini which points to bp and mvps.
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Hello,
I was looking for something else when I came across this thread, so I gave it a try this night. I really like the story and the way you introduce pilots that aren't only warriors or soldiers. They're humans too, and with all these mods around, we tend to forget that civilians are also involved when war happens.
I had no problem running this mission with latest nightly and my joystick, also I fixed First mission.txt and I can tell it displays OK on a 1360x768 screen (why those linebreaks?). Being a new FREDder myself I take every opportunity to improve my skills. I can attach it here but I suppose you already took care of it.
Briefing was clear enough so I didn't read it twice, but I was disappointed not to be able to chose my weapons, I love Vulcans :p
I found there was a good balance between speech parts and action parts,
although I ended up increasing time compression to get to waypoint and back to convoy
I'm used to play at medium level because of the gap between easy and medium, I find wingmen and enemies are to lazy at easy level, so I challenged this mission at medium and that's where the fun part ends.
I was not able to protect both my wingmen and the transports, so I sticked to the transports and ended fighting 5 against 1 near the jumpnode, which is impossible to me with this BP AI. I think I'll have to find a way to keep at least both of us alive until the end of the mission. You were right in making the wingmen invulnerable because they die very quickly, not a single one resists more than 5 minutes, but it may not be useful if they eventually stay at 5000+ units away from the convoy dodging. I guess you didn't plan on giving the player reinforcements (giving how the situation is described). Not any Deus ex Machina but, well, something to help?
After the 12th or 13th try I gave up, I need to sleep anyway. Maybe I'll try it on easier difficulty, someday.
Finally be assured that one can't play a mission so many times if it's not a good mission. Keep it up!