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Ladies and gentlemen, I present...
Deus Ex Machina: Interlude
A FreeSpace 2 Open Campaign
Story
Only eighteen short months into the Neo-Terran Rebellion, amongst fleet skirmishes and the struggle to defend the systems of Neo-Terra, mysterious things have been happening on the edge of NTF space. Unexplained appearances, strange plot holes...
You're not even sure if you should disclose your recollection of the last engagement, so completely foreign was it to anything in your experience. Things that were once beer now have no meaning, and the fourth wall is beginning to crack...
Features- A whole new Deus Ex Machina! Wow! Just one more until I catch up with Axem...
- Requires FreeSpace Open version 3.6.12, which wasn't even out at the time this campaign was written!
- Includes mod content from Galemp, Ransom Arceihn, pecenipicek, Angelus, Raa, and Dabrain!
- Meet mysterious and secretive characters!
- Save the universe!
- And much, much more!
This isn't a strict sequel to Deus Ex Machina, but it takes place in the same continuity, so I've called it DEM 1.5 instead of DEM 2. I still have an idea for DEM 2 (if I ever get around to it), but I had a bunch of fun ideas all come together in beautiful synergy, so I thought I'd add an in-between story.
Here is the current download site. New mirrors appreciated: http://www.sectorgame.com/goober/dem1_5.html
Mirrors
FreeSpaceMods.net (http://freespacemods.net/download.php?view.619)
The campaign REQUIRES RC2 due to several important bugfixes*. Download it from here. (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=68944.0)
* Unfortunately, one of those fixes is still not present in OSX builds. :( Mac users will not be able to view the cutscene until this bug is fixed. This fix is expected to be in 3.6.12 Final.
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oh awesome
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I really want to check this out...
...but i'm right next to a calendar... :(
I will try tommorow when the april fools goes away, and this campaign is no longer a prank.
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:yes:
Downloaded, gonna play it this evening.
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It's gonna fill my hard drive up with 1s, isn't it?
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It's gonna fill my hard drive up with 1s, isn't it?
Yes.
Actually, it seems to be the real deal and is quite funny. But I won't blame people if they choose to wait until tomorrow.
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What changes in the campaign tomorrow? That it's not April Fools' then doesn't mean the missions will change, and deleting the thread of ANY released campaign is, I think, cruel.
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It's gonna fill my hard drive up with 1s, isn't it?
Yes.
Actually, it seems to be the real deal and is quite funny. But I won't blame people if they choose to wait until tomorrow.
:yes: :D
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It's a perfectly playable five-mission campaign, just like the original Deus Ex Machina. It'll play exactly the same today as it will tomorrow.
And I pulled an all-nighter to ensure that it would be ready for today, so I shall feel insulted if you wait. :p
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Nice new avatar, Goober. :P
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:D
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... :nervous:
Is it real?
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... :nervous:
Is it real?
No. It's just your imagination.
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Yes, it is, and it's pretty awesome, IMHO.
Minor spoiler(The campaign's launcher 'tagline' suggests it, but you'd only know if you were familiar with the material, anyway):
Familiarity with the works of Ransom Arceihn strongly recommended, though. Probably won't be anywhere near as funny if you haven't played Transcend and Sync(or, at least, the former).
Slightly more serious spoiler/discussion:
It took me a little while to actually figure out what I was being asked to do to invoke the Deus Ex Machina. Then I realized that a certain model mentioned in the readme hadn't shown up yet...
Also, note that the MediaVPs are not "multimod"ed in the mod.ini, so you might want to edit that in beforehand.
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Downloading now,
Hope it's as funny as i remember DEM being the first time around.
Cheers G5K
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Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
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Ehh couple of problems ... the ogg movie is not playing correctly, and I get a crash a few seconds after it starts.
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That Build you linked is giving me horrific memory leaks from time to time, imagine FS2 taking up 2 GB's of RAM all by itself. :shaking:
It's impossible to play it with such a buggy build, is there some way around it?
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That Build you linked is giving me horrific memory leaks from time to time, imagine FS2 taking up 2 GB's of RAM all by itself.
Are you sure it isn't a "feature"? :D
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Everything went fine with me with that build.
And that idea of mixing campaigns was really funny :P
BTW. This is really stupid in a sense, because telling people which campaigns to play to understand this one would be like spoiling people who played them (since they would know what would happen in that one...)
And as always when i play JAD or DEM, i wonder how you can make such cool stuff
The spinning ship was cool o.o
Yeah btw
Idk about you, but it took me almost 5 seconds to recognize Beta 2 was the one from Sync. As soon as i read "Beta 2", i was like HEY, IT'S HIM !
..... And 20 minutes to understand the Sink is the Sync. ><
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That build erased my hard drive, closed my gmail account, disabled my steam account, burned down my house, and forced me to watch old Fawlty Towers episodes.
I haven't downloaded the build yet.
All of this resulted from clicking the link to download the build. I didn't want to scare anyone.
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Finished it. . . . Goober.
You ass. :p
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Yessss, most impressive. All done.
Warning! This spoiler below is actually plot related!
When time compression dropped to almost nil, I was expecting a Half-Life 2 reference.
"Well-done *wheeeeeze* Mr. Alpha 1. *wheeeeze* But you're not done *wheeze* yet, oh no. You're on a *wheeeeze* rollllll. *haack*"
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Ehh couple of problems ... the ogg movie is not playing correctly, and I get a crash a few seconds after it starts.
Are you sure you're playing with the linked build? This is a bug that was fixed a week or so after RC1. It should be okay in the build I provided.
That Build you linked is giving me horrific memory leaks from time to time, imagine FS2 taking up 2 GB's of RAM all by itself. :shaking:
It's impossible to play it with such a buggy build, is there some way around it?
Yes. Wait for RC2.
Idk about you, but it took me almost 5 seconds to recognize Beta 2 was the one from Sync. As soon as i read "Beta 2", i was like HEY, IT'S HIM !
Awesome. :D
When the unknown was destroyed and time compression dropped to almost nil, I was expecting a Half-Life 2 reference.
Haven't played Half Life 2, so I don't know what you could be referring to. What you're describing was a direct ripoff of the parodied campaign.
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Are the changes from that build in trunk (my build is 6047)? You see, Windows builds don't exactly work for me...
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Haven't played Half Life 2, so I don't know what you could be referring to. What you're describing was a direct ripoff of the parodied campaign.
Ah, I see. I haven't actually played the parodied campaign so I didn't know that.
I guess I just assumed that you had played HL2, since you obviously had Team Fortress 2, or had some familiarity with it. Unless the sandvich of doom was another multi-source reference.
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I guess I just assumed that you had played HL2, since you obviously had Team Fortress 2, or had some familiarity with it. Unless the sandvich of doom was another multi-source reference.
A reasonable, but incorrect, assumption. My familiarity with Team Fortress 2 is entirely due to the "Meet the Team" videos. And the Sandvich of Doom was provided by pecenipicek, as described in the readme. The prototypical example is here (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=66939.0).
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How did you see the sink in the last mission :s ?
I took me sometime to realize there was one.
The first time i played the mission, i didn't know what to do, so i ordered both freighters to dock with the Perseverance.
It resulted in a massive crash, a cargo and the sink just close to the Perseverance...
In fact i really though you had to make it crash.
Then i restarted and saw it just trigger from targeting it e_e
BTW, you should have included some cool evil fedder missions!
Like, a mission that's impossible at start, but gets easier as you restart it (with dialogues changing accordingly o.o)
Or just a mission where the easier the difficulty, the more the enemies or something like that
It would be damn so fun (yeah yeah, IMO <_<')
Cargo: JUST KIDDING
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How did you see the sink in the last mission :s ?
I took me sometime to realize there was one.
You target it.
The first time i played the mission, i didn't know what to do, so i ordered both freighters to dock with the Perseverance.
What Perseverance?
I shall remove the player orders. Thanks.
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OK campaign.
the only things that made me laugh was actually the contraband mission and the ? fighters.
Good idea on having the (supernova) TIMER as a ship in the ships communications window. I didn't even notice it the first time, but the second time I ordered it to depart :P
and the Rick Roll video..really...REALLY?
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HEY I HAD THE ? FIGHTERS LONG BEFORE YOU DID
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HEY I HAD THE ? FIGHTERS
LONG BEFORE YOU DID
USE SPOILERTAGS, FRENCH DELICATESSE!
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Mh, i just replayed the mission and got something funny :lol:
I ordered both freighters to capture the Triumphance (hmh yeah i think i messed up with the name), and all others to destroy it.
But this time, instead of resulting in a crash, Lambda 4 actually docked with Triumphance while staying docked with the sink, and started spinning. It resulted in a rotating deimos and many ships turning around it o.o
Here's a screenshot : http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/2291/rotatingcorvette.jpg
At first when i saw the unlocked orders, i though you could order all the ships to attack the Triumphance, therefore destroying it o.o (it would have been funny, since the other ships are kindda like unanimated or something like that..... like uh, the crew following your orders like zombies.)
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For me, a lot of the appeal was the sort of refuge in audacity in actually parodying that. It also kind of helped that I was musing over fighter-intersystem-jump-drive continuity during the first mission run,
and when I got to the node... :P
Along with the sudden realization that the campaign was indeed a parody of that, just set the tone for the whole experience for me. The sprinkled showcasing of the new features also kept things interesting, though maybe there were a few too many cargo containers.
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Bear in mind that the dialogue in mission 3 takes note of the continuity errors. And then you have yet another continuity change at the end of mission 3...
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I know; it was just so serendipitously awesome at the time. :yes:
I was actually a little surprised at first that my ammo counts didn't reset on the second mission, but as said, it was presented and lampshaded later.
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What did everyone think of the music in mission 4?
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It was pretty epic, it definitely rivaled BP music :)
P.S. wonder if Ransom has played this yet
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Third mission. I am such a ****ing nerd, I got every single joke so far, including the Tuesday one.
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:D
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Short, but I presume that's the point. The silliness didn't really kick in until mission 3, but wow...
The first "null MoI" ship, the Qeb, just shattered the quiet scanning mission and any semblance of sanity. It's like... "serious, serious, BAM! Craziness!" Then the madness never lets up (at least until the last mission, but you're just landing there, so eh).
Took me a bit to figure out how to beat the question mark. The Deus ex Machina you pull there is probably the most absurd thing I've ever seen. Granted, I knew about the sandwich, but I never would have guessed that somebody would have used it.
I could tell you were parodying Transcend and Sync pretty much from the start. Actually, in the first mission, I was half-expecting something to jump out of the node at me or summat, and I was surprised to find that the campaign took a few missions to warm up, actually....
Brilliant work, overall. I shall keep my eyes open for DEM2.
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Awesome, thanks. :)
The first mission, by the way, is a lampshading of many missions in Sync, Transcend, and similar campaigns that are literally nothing more than jump in, hear some dialogue, maybe fight a wing of fighters, and jump out. So that's what I was going for there. And in the second mission, you need Beta 2 to set the tone, and the Transcendant to (literally) play the tone, while still keeping things a bit mysterious.
Glad you liked the sandwich. :D I am in pecenipicek's (and Sandwich's) debt for that.
Also, the madness continues in the final mission. Aside from the cutscene, stick around for a little while during the debriefing.
Oh, and FYI to everyone: RC2 is now out! Go download it and play DEM with it. :D
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RC2 is out? EXCELLENT! I was just waiting for that cause I was afraid of a shady exe :P
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RC2 is out? EXCELLENT! I was just waiting for that cause I was afraid of a shady exe :P
That was exactly my thoughts.
So now that I played it, my review:
I got rickrolled :p
okay, now for a serious one
I admit that I only very recently played DEM1 and that made me laugh quite a bit. While I certainly got what you were aiming for with the parody, it wasn't really outright funny. But you did capture the boring part of it right :P, DEM1 had a better ' overal funniness ratio'
Same for those damned cargo containers, I lost count on how many times I yawned. But then I laughed like some crazy dude on drugs when Promise started playing. I should have seen it coming, considering the ship is named Kohmi :lol: And then it happened again! I almost got killed because I couldn't keep my hands on the control because of the laughter :P (For those that don't get the joke: Here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP5c_MEs9mo) and here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7thB-4Sa-M) and here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3quTc2-GyM) crazy japanese meme)
The subspace madness was kinda long. I actually just shot down the Kelpie because it was talk too much. Then I got killed by the supernova. Read the spoilers here and gave it an other try, now armed with the info that the communication menu was the key to victory. Had to time compress like 8 minutes though. Not sure if I think its clever or just a bastard move of a mission :P
(http://i39.tinypic.com/2v2fwqo.jpg)
Love the nameplate :p
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That photo saved for posterity.
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when i'm mounting the the campaign on the 3.6.12 rc2 build the model of the ships are just like retaild freespac2.
why it happens?
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the model of the ships are just like retaild freespac2.
why it happens?
The mod.ini doesn't set the MediaVPs as a secondary mod.
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Another thing I can fix in the patched version. The campaign is supposed to be playable without the MVPs, but there's no reason you can't use them.
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how do i mount the mediavps with the campaign on the 3.6.12?
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when i'm mounting the the campaign on the 3.6.12 rc2 build
how do i mount the mediavps with the campaign on the 3.6.12?
Uh, I wouldn't call either of those "mounting". But anyways. You use the MediaVPs with DEM like this:
- There is a file called mod.ini in your \dem1_5\ folder. Open it with a text editor.
- Edit it so that it looks like this:
[launcher]
modname = Deus Ex Machina: Interlude;
image255x112 = 47th.bmp;
infotext = You're out of a limit...;
website = http://www.sectorgame.com/goober/dem1_5.html;
forum = http://www.sectorgame.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=32;
[multimod]
primarylist = ;
secondarylist = mediavps;- Save the changes.
Note that the word "mediavps" must be the same as the name of the folder where you have your MediaVPs.
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i have an eror message on the 2nd mission and there are strrange happenings like there is a the nebula of the supernova if capella and the colossus enetering subspace , a wing of perseus and then there is an odd narrantion and the supernove image flickering the screen.
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What error message?
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Well whatever it is, Goob most make update to fix it
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I'm half-wondering if he thinks the EBS messages were errors. :) Strange happenings are part-and-parcel of this campaign.
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Here's a mirror:
http://freespacemods.net/download.php?view.619
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Thanks!
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I will say this, the mission 4 battle music was in fact, A-1 SUPAR.
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Yay. :) Glad you liked it.
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The downloads (both SG and FSMods) have been updated to fix a minor bug as well as add the missing mediavps line to mod.ini.
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Before I forget, I wanted to pop in and say that this was fantastic stuff. :) You had me chuckling as soon as I realized what that long flight to the node was poking fun at, and it just got better from there. I'm very grateful I'd seen that meme beforehand, because as soon as it popped up in the third mission, I just about laughed my head off. :lol: I died at least twice during the fourth mission, once because I suck as a pilot and once because I had no freaking clue what to do at the end, but a little bit of forum-cheating solved that, and the payoff was spectacular. Part of me feels like I should have picked up on far more of those ship references than I did, but oh well. You've done it again, and I hope we will get to see DEM2 somewhere down the line.
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Yay! Thanks much. :)
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I'm going to play Transcend and Sync before I play this (So many awesome fan campaigns to play D:), but it looks great, and congratulations on releasing it :D
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Yes, definately play those if you haven't yet.
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I forget, is this like JAD 1-3?
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No, it's like Deus Ex Machina (http://www.sectorgame.com/goober/dem.html).
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Goob, i didnt play it yet, but from a screenie, i've seen you didnt use the "check-hull" flag on the sandwiches turret?
it really craps it out :p
[edit] after playing, it seems that the olive isnt doing sheet. it should turn and track the target which it shoots. At least thats how it was set up in my table.
Unless i released the unfinished one and not the finished one :P
[edit] in any case, i've updated the original release (http://tap.hard-light.net/downloads/Sandwich.7z). Use the damn tbm thats included :p
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It's an olive! :P
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Goob, i didnt play it yet, but from a screenie, i've seen you didnt use the "check-hull" flag on the sandwiches turret?
it really craps it out :p
How so?
after playing, it seems that the olive isnt doing sheet. it should turn and track the target which it shoots. At least thats how it was set up in my table.
The olive turns and tracks perfectly fine. But I hard-coded it to fire directly at the center of the question mark, simply because the question mark contains so much empty space. Half the time, the sandwich was missing altogether, which screwed up the sequence timing.
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it didnt turn at my end during the mission. it stayed turned to the center of the body.
check hull is more useful if its used as a conventional capship, without needed precision. but imho, fire down normals and fire on target should have fixed the tracking issue up.
perhaps its just a bug on my end, not that it matters much :p (btw, its the build that you posted to use with DEM2, 3.6.12-R2, inferno version.)
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Yes, it didn't turn because as I said above, I hard-coded it (using fire-beam) to fire at the center. Since the two ships are lined up there's no need for the turret to turn. :p
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it looks bad :p
but yeah, a nitpick :p
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I wonder if you guys noticed the Delta guys have shields ?
I though this was because it's DEM, just to add to the LOLWTF feeling at first, but i'm a bit sceptic in the end oO'
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Pbhh. I thought I removed shields from everyone in that mission. :doubt:
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Someone should explain me the "A-1 SUPAR" joke.
Why was the supernova timer smaller than usual and moving across my screen ?
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Because it was. :P
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Thanks for the useful answer. Next time I don't need anything, I'll ask you.
Seriously, that's not funny. If it's a bug, I'd like to know if I have to Mantis it or not.
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It's not a bug, it does it to me as well, actually the version prior to this one it could be ordered like every other ship.
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Alright, good to hear that. It's just that it didn't move during my two first playthrough and start going across my screen on my third, after being hit a bit too much by morning stars, which didn't look like anything I've experienced before.
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heaven knows why it was intentionally made to be like that, though.
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What do you mean "smaller than usual"?
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heaven knows why it was intentionally made to be like that, though.
Depends on what you mean, if you're talking about why it moves around I'd assume it's for the sake of the silliness of the mission, not to mention campaign as a whole.
If you mean why it could be commanded before, maybe that was unintended.
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What do you mean "smaller than usual"?
Simply what that means : the size of the font was smaller than the standard supernova timer.
especially noticeable given that it reverts back to standard supernova timer after the last "Transcent" appearance.
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Can you grab a screenshot? Because when I checked, it was the same size.
Also, A-1 SUPAR is a traditional HLP expression meaning "awesome". Sometimes used ironically. (It's also an echo of the previous A-1 SUPAR usage in DEM 1.)
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It remained the same size for me as well.
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Here you go.
Hum, forgot to run it in a debug build. Tell me if you need a log.
/off topic/ Why is the forum so laggy today ?
[attachment deleted by admin]
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That's the size it starts off as in the start.
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You're playing at a nonstandard resolution. Can you try it at 1024x768?
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Just played it :lol:
LOOK AS THE PUNY HUMANS RUN FROM SANDWICH!!!!!!!!!!!
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Non-standard ? It's the native resolution of my freaking laptop !
Anyway, ran in a debug build this time, in 1024, and crashed at the first "Transcent" appearance. Sounds like an error that the standard build bypasses and not the debug build. The size of the font was normal in 1024 though.
Oh, and nice new avatar :)
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Non-standard ?
Non-standard in terms of FS2, which was released in '99. That is, not 4:3 and certainly not 1024x768.
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I also thought it was intentional, for emphasis or something.
And I don't know why the whole text dancing thing was so funny, but it was. :D :yes:
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OMG! I must've died a gazillion times before realizing I had to simply call in for reinforcements...EPIC! :yes: And it was totally by accident too. I just started banging the keyboard and there it was: "Reinforcements -> Deus Ex Machina".
And I love those colortest screens! Never knew you could use stuff like that in the middle of missions. Thanks for making this campaign! :)
PS: I dunno if others have this issue, but when I played this campaign, I experienced some jerkiness during gameplay. I tried a couple of FS2 missions in the simulator and none of those had the issue. So what is causing this?
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"Jerkiness" ? Please specify.
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Now that I think about it, perhaps it's simply my framerate dropping. But it's so quick, like 1-2 second drops and then goes right back to full. Not enough to affect gameplay but still annoying. Maybe your campaign is more resource intensive than the other ones I've played? Perhaps some of those non-standard ships have more polys and that causes the slowdowns???
Eh, I'm already done with this campaign. If no one else is having this issue, then let's just write it off as an "unknown phenomenon of space" :D
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Hey, how come I keep getting this message on the second mission saying Windows - No: Exception processing message 0xc0000013 parameters 0x761A92A0 0x00000004 0x, ugh not saying all of it. whatever it is, it is preventing me from continueing on to the second mission, can somebody help me out here?
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/me points at the Support Board, and this thread (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=69279.0) in particular
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Anyway, ran in a debug build this time, in 1024, and crashed at the first "Transcent" appearance. Sounds like an error that the standard build bypasses and not the debug build. The size of the font was normal in 1024 though.
What about the emergency broadcast image (the rainbow of colors)? Did that cover the entire screen, or just part of it? And can you provide a screenshot?
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No problem with the emergency broadcast, covered the entire screen. Lemmie grab a screen...
Here we go.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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I finished the campaign this morning. Really, really well done (A1-SUPAR). I enjoyed it, and it was interesting how it started off serious and then devolved into hilarity shortly after. :)
I found that emergency screen thing to be pretty amusing, especially as I had to take of my headphones the first time it happened because it was LOUD :lol:! Also liked your parody of Sync and Transcend (I still need to play Transcend :p), it didn't take me long to notice that, although I didn't think about it right away when I saw Beta 2, I was thinking 'didn't all of the bombers self-destruct in the last DEM?'.
I recognised the Japanese music thing immediately, although I only knew it from the Goldeneye 007 video I watched once on YouTube. I didn't find scanning the cargo too bad because of all of the sarcastic scans :).
The last mission, that was really good, including the music. It was hilarious to suddenly come up nose-to-nose with Beta 2, who then proceded to say 'You die now!' I'll confess though, I was confused as to how to finish it so I digged in to the mission file (and I was like 'ohhh, it seems so obvious now!'), but it didn't really ruin the end :D. Being rickrolled was funny too, seeing as I haven't been before IIRC :P.
All in all, a very well made and funny campaign. :yes:
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Thanks! :D
And I got the idea from the Goldeneye video as well. I didn't know it was a full-fledged meme until I started doing further research on it. :)
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:bump:
Sorry for the bump, but I found this while looking at beams-wep.tbm (for no real reason):
$Name: Beamblu
...
$Damage: 9001i c wut u did thar :lol:
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:D
And bumping is fine... it gets more people to play the campaign. :)
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Can't believe I played this before I played Transcend. >.>
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Haha!