Author Topic: [PREVIEW] The Lost Generation - Ashcroft  (Read 17886 times)

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Offline 0rph3u5

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Re: [PREVIEW] The Lost Generation - Ashcroft
Will this be on knossos when it comes out?

Yes, I hope to make it so
"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

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

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 
Re: [PREVIEW] The Lost Generation - Ashcroft
but cant you not release 9 mission demo first nine its done

 

Offline 0rph3u5

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Re: [PREVIEW] The Lost Generation - Ashcroft
but cant you not release 9 mission demo first nine its done

Considering what still needs to be done, an incomplete release is unnecessary.

What's currently holding me back is actually more personal preference than actual obstacles (it's a really hot and humid summer where I live... not helped by the fact that my apartment gets all the sunshine during the day and my PC can easily work as a space heater even when running FSO*)

*Thanks, Nvidia.
"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

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

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline 0rph3u5

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  • Oceans rise. Empires fall.
Re: [PREVIEW] The Lost Generation - Ashcroft
I have good news and I have bad news:

First, the bad news - I will delay The Lost Generation - Ashcroft for a little bit longer.

Now, the good news - I will release it alongside The Lost Generation - Jarin.


The first five missions of TLG -Ashcroft don't appear because for testing purposes they have their own campaign file.

The reason for this is, that I spend most of last week trimming the fat in the script for TLG - Jarin, cutting it down to the essentials, which is 6 missions proper and one mission for the Epilogue. This trimming down also meant, that I cut down on the assets required, bringing it back to a few larger asteroids and a Shivan stationary object that is not the CommNode. More on that in seperate threat when the time is ripe.

Creatively it will also mean that I can work on some low intensity stuff, while keeping TLG - Ashcroft in view. To be real here for a second, I mostly didn't work on Mission 10 and 11 because they are both require a lot of focus and attention, so much so that I just wanted to get away from them... And since I keep a ban on playing new Freespace-content in place (so I don't see something cool and try to emulate that for unproductive days on end), I didn't get away from them enought - all that caused a small vicious circle of unproductivity...
Now all that is going to end. Period.



"You will know the Destroyers of All Things by their shape, for it is the First Shape." - 37th Aphorism of the Light
« Last Edit: August 23, 2018, 11:38:10 pm 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

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

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline 0rph3u5

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  • Oceans rise. Empires fall.
Re: [PREVIEW] The Lost Generation - Ashcroft
I generally don’t provide a blow-by-blow of a mission’s development; mostly because it turns out that the stuff you want to talk about falls either in the spoilers or “look at me, am I not smart?” categories. (Especially, when I do the second one, I tend to deserve all the blowback I get :D )

But to make it perfectly clear that this campaign is alive and well, let’s talk about:

Mission 11, “This is the way the world ends” or The Sinking of the NTD Vasa



Let’s start off with the non-spoiler material, this mission has been a big problem since almost the inception of the campaign. After I started work on TLG – Ashcroft way back when, I quickly started working on the campaign from both ends – in no small part because it was prequel but also because the end went through so many iterations. And if you are working a story from both ends, the stuff in between get hard to work out.

Another issue was that because I was working on a parallel track to the main FS2 story I had to fit a number of events in there that strictly I did not need to show. Or I had to attach some significance to events that were just tossed up into the air during the relevant FS2 Command Briefings. That was the case with the destruction of the NTD Vasa, which is just there in Command Briefing for “King’s Gambit”.

In a version of the TLG – Ashcroft story that was now entirely on the (metaphorical) cutting room floor, I simply used the destruction of the Vasa as an event in which our protagonists loses all her material possessions. It was an earlier version of the script which had Sam holding on to a memento of “obvious plot significance“ and losing it was her “okay, all the bridges are burned now”-moment.

However as I picked the campaign back up, iterated on the story, and further developed the characters and relationships that give TLG – Ashcroft its soul, so to speak, I found that the entire memento-plot point was not fitting anymore. Not just was its existence a serious drag that weakened Sam’s character but also wound up a big point that was defeating the way the campaign ends.

So I wound up with scene without content, and any attempt to move another plot point into that empty space didn’t work … yet.

Spoilers coming up – so blinds on if you want to go in unspoiled.


Spoiler:
So I did what seemed best at the time and started up the Freespace 2 Main campaign again. And during that I noticed two things that were significant in giving the mission its current shape:

a)   Only once, in “Fog of War”, the rotation of the Aquitaine from and to the Nebula is made an issue. The rest of campaign just glosses over this point and trusts that the most recent emergency is grounds enough to suspend to disbelieve in that everyone of your fellow pilots is just okay with fighting NTF one day and Shivans the next.

b)   While there are a number of missions, “Argonautica” for example, which deal with the desperate rescue of GTVA capital ships from danger, there isn’t that much between fully functional and blows up in the most 1990s fashion imaginable.

And just like that I had my plot point

The Vasa would not explode like so many other capital ships in the FS-universe but “slowly sink” while you are charged with the usual escort mission objectives, such as intercepting bombers and taking on cruisers. And the assistance you would receive to get her crew off the sinking ship would be provided by ships from the GTVA 3rd Fleet, while the opposition are other GTVA units – with experience of combat with the Shivans drawing the battle lines.

Now there were a number of technical issues to work out with that.

One, I wanted to simulate a real “rules of engagement”-situation that took its cues from the real-life rules for medical combat personnel, i.e. the protected status of clearly marked medics in the field and the limitations they have on their participation in combat, especially the idea that medical personnel in combat zone is often held to standard of using their weapons in self-defence only. Thanks to xenocartographer I quickly had a script that was supposed to sort this out by limiting the ability of ships with a special “Medical” IFF to fire their turrets to a special “Warhead” IFF. But due to an error that kept popping up at my end (perhaps an assets related issue), it didn’t work out. Even Axem’s help was not enough to fix it.

Two, there was a big issue with how the wreckage of the Vasa would perform in gameplay terms. She could not have that many hit points but I wanted to avoid a repeat of an older mission involving the wreckage of a capital ship, where the derelict would blow up once a single shivan bomb hit. Worse still, was when beam cannons came into the mix. The problem here was that there was no functional way to direct the combat between the GTVA cruisers involved, so that they would still be a credible threat to the Vasa AND each other. Just swapping out the weapons didn’t help and micromanaging every beam shot in that situation just makes the work disproportionate to the pay-off.

Eventually I just took the easiest way I could think of to remedy both problems:

For the first one, I just scrapped the idea and changed the orientation of the ships involved so that the medical ships would have no opportunity to fire at any bombs – with the option to change it all back in a future patch.

For the second one, I did what worked in Blue Planet 2’s “Delenda Est” and made a relevant armor.tbl that makes sure the Vasa gets a significant damage reduction once she is a wreck for all gameplay purposes. I was really reluctant to make that change, despite armor.tbl being such a convenient tool in theory, simply because of the potential for unintended side effects.

Now all that is left to do is finalize the new balancing, re-write some of the dialogue (some of the lines really did not survive last year without picking up bad associations), and implement a checkpoint system – because as it stands this mission is going to be 17+ minutes long (Ups…).

And after that, there is only Mission 10 ... currently in the running for "the most unnecessarily complicated mission I ever made" - why that is, I hope to show in video format soon'ish.
"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

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

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline HLD_Prophecy

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Re: [PREVIEW] The Lost Generation - Ashcroft
Nice! I definitely appreciate the connection with the retail FS2 plot. Despite the fact that it requires added missions, you seem to be finding ways to make it fit reasonably smoothly. Always interesting to see someone's design process!

 

Offline Nyctaeus

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Re: [PREVIEW] The Lost Generation - Ashcroft
Apparently lots of things changed since I tested it. Looks even more interesting :yes:
Exile | Shadow Genesis | Inferno | Series Resurrecta  | DA Profile | P3D Profile

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All of my assets including models, textures, skyboxes, effects may be used under standard CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

 

Offline 0rph3u5

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Re: [PREVIEW] The Lost Generation - Ashcroft
Nice! I definitely appreciate the connection with the retail FS2 plot. Despite the fact that it requires added missions, you seem to be finding ways to make it fit reasonably smoothly.

It is a fun challange, esspecially since it make you appricate all the subtle detail in FS2 more. Adding things never was a problem, there a few moments in the campaign that are really ... dense.

Apparently lots of things changed since I tested it. Looks even more interesting :yes:

The gameplay hasn't changed that much, I am just updating a lot of the writing and replacing the juvenile handwaving with substance (also tossing out a lot of backstory notes that were just in bad taste). There are still ways to go with making sure everything is were it supposed to be ... esspecially since I want to head off some unintentional readings of the material.
"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

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

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline 0rph3u5

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  • Oceans rise. Empires fall.
Re: [PREVIEW] The Lost Generation - Ashcroft
Alright, the year comes to an end and it feel appropriate that I close it with a little overall progress report:

1. Walking on Ashes aka "old the TLG-Jaarin Finale made pretty"

So, I "damaged" my right shoulder two weeks ago and it overall cost me the all work I was going to do - painful and reduced movement and all that. So Walking on Ashes is not out of testing yet; but it is all done and all that is to do is proofread the new dialogue, which features characterisations that are closer to what is going to be in The Lost Generation - Jaarin when it is out. Note that they are not 1-to-1 translations, esspecially since one of the characters will be dead when the new story comes around to similar place in the plot and, of course, Viluu is 100 percent more annoyed with Kvasi just for hell of it :P

2. Memories of Great War Update

Similar to Walking on Ashes my shoulder injury hampered that too, so not yet released. But I am catching up rapidly and there basically nothing left but rebuilding the Rain on Ribos IV campaign file.

3. The Lost Generation - Ashcroft

... status unchanged from the last report.

4. The Lost Generation - Jaarin

I finally got the Nebula effects looking similarly to what I want and I've all models I need in-game and error-free. Next up is some effects work and then the FREDing will commence in full. Look foward to Screenshots very soon.

5. The Lost Generation - Serqet (working title)

I have started working on the model(s) for the [REDACTED] Complex, so it is only a matter of how the models will turn out. There are still some re-writes in the character department that have not worked out yet, it's mostly backstory stuff that will turn into a few lines of dialogue but I want to avoid a cultural misstep there.



"praised in Keh'Est and Nb'Thun" - figure of speech; Vasudan, Imperial Main; Meaning: [for an object] to be of exceptional quality or product of excellent craftmanship; [for a person] to have an exceptional skill or extraordinary quality as a person; Does not denote uniqueness or an example.





« Last Edit: December 30, 2018, 12:21:36 pm 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

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

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline 0rph3u5

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Re: [PREVIEW] The Lost Generation - Ashcroft
I posted a brief statement to ModDB earler: (Link)

Quote
Alright… I am actually not a good public speaker but anyone who still follows this mod and frankly the people who run ModDB deserve this statement.


What is going on with The Lost Generation – Ashcroft?


I’ve been modding for a long enough time that I know that a mod not regularly updating while the creatives are busy with the facts of life, is not an unusually occurrence. However I have been deliberately silent for far too long.


It is actually nothing grave at work here – just that with all things concerning the campaign, I might just have had bad timing.


The Lost Generation – Ashcroft was conceived years ago* as companion piece/prequel to another story of mine (which has disappeared into the dustbin for good). As such it had certain elements to it, especially to modify the perception of the titular character as the she appeared in that project - adding a layer to her actions and motives.


* (The first mission has a metadata-entry of “$Created: 11/13/08 at 20:28:16”)


When I picked it back up, it was partly out of convenience (more than half was already done) but also because it offered an opportunity to test an idea about video game narratives - and I am still eager to know what will happen once the campaign releases in that regard.


I always knew that due to the different development phases, I would have to do quite a bit of editing to make the story a cohesive whole – especially as I kept adding little things because of my growing ability and understanding.

Part of it would be to refine the portrait of the NTF, most all to have all divergent story threads contribute to a whole – if I were to release the campaign now, you would with good reason doubt that I have a consistent thought process.

However at no point, I was going to endorse the things the NTF stood for in-universe – that’s why I took steps to make the protagonist stand apart.


In the last three years then, the real world happened. And not in a “the sun rises every day in the east”-way.


Certain events gave cause to take more and more looks at my writing and I had to recognize that some of it just was wholly inadequate for the goals I set myself.

I always knew that I would have to take certain steps to “secure” any interpretation of my writing from going in unpredicted directions. And some of that I think already works out beautifully, if I am allowed to say so.


But I also reached the limit of what I can do on my own in that regard. As such I have put the campaign on hiatus and will be devoting some time to discuss the campaign, its writing and the techniques involved with an array of people, who could give some expert advice.


(I have briefly considered to just cancel The Lost Generation – Ashcroft but all considerations in that direction only reaffirmed my commitment to make a better version of it.)


The duration of the hiatus is “to be determined”.


However that doesn’t mean I will refrain from working or releasing anything else:


1)    I have a project called Vega Must Burn in the works which will do a bit foundational work to improve the mission design of The Lost Generation – Ashcroft. VMB turns to the events of the first Freespace-game for its setting. It will feature 5 mission across a single play through, with 3 different endings that flow your actions and performance.


2)    I will un-couple the release of The Lost Generation – Jaarin from The Lost Generation – Ashcroft. Expect to see a number of work-in-progress shots to arrive before the end of year. I am currently integrating tech for the excellent The Scroll of Atankharzim-mod (Scroll.hard-light.net) into Jaarin’s mission designs, along with a few tweaks to the narrative as such please don’t eagerly expect a release.



The release dates on both of these are “to be determined” but depending how the dice roll, there is distinct possibly of one or both arriving Q1 or Q2 2020.
« Last Edit: August 13, 2019, 06:33:58 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

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

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline starlord

  • 210
Re: [PREVIEW] The Lost Generation - Ashcroft
Any news on this one?

 

Offline 0rph3u5

  • 211
  • Oceans rise. Empires fall.
Re: [PREVIEW] The Lost Generation - Ashcroft
Any news on this one?

Yes. But I didn't think it particullarly newsworthy, as it is mostly in-depth writing stuff, which would require me to spoil a whole lot about the final act of the campaign.
"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

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

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."