Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: karajorma on January 31, 2021, 11:27:02 pm
-
As part of my (long put off, but finally have time for) plan to improve things on HLP I'm planning to come up with some ideas on how to get people to learn about us and what we do here. But that's for another thread. I figured a walk down memory lane first might be fun. So, how did you find HLP? What made you register? Did you post immediately, or did you lurk for a while first?
For me, I found the VBB by googling around after buying and playing Freespace 2 (it was actually the first game I bought for my first ever PC). I quickly got into FREDding but I wasn't particularly interested in modding, so when I became aware of HLP it was as that place we sent the modders to for more information on that while we talked about FRED. Eventually, I wandered over to check out what was going on over here and basically never left.
-
Well, I was a big fan of Descent back in the day. Not Freespace... Descent. And Decent II. My first experiences with mapping and modding where in those games. Years passed... I played the Freespace series and liked it too... but it was Descent I and II that I kept going back to play into the '00s. Then I learned about the rebuilt Decent engines such as DXX-Rebirth. Upgraded textures and effects? Yes please! More time passed... I finally got around to wanting to play Freespace I and II again... and I thought to myself... maybe there's an updated engine for that too...
Turns out there was. I joined the forums in the late '00s. Didn't post much. Left... came back a few years later... discovered Blueplanet and loved it... made two posts and then left again. Only just now returned yet again... and this time actually being active.
::shrug:: And that's the story.
-
A friend of mine used to play FS on his computer... first FS1 then FS2. Later I got the 1st chapter demo of FS2 (called FS2: Colossus) with my Logitech flight stick, then bought FS1+ST, then copied my friend's FS2 CDs for a full copy (rather than a neutered copy I found on P2P). That same friend then told me about HLP once I'd played some more. I finally joined in the summer of 2003, which was in the days leading up to the first implementation of HTL.
-
Hmm, I don't entirely remember what it was originally. I know I was pretty young. I had a computer in my bedroom which was a pretty big deal. I remember my sister got me Freespace 1 for Christmas one year and when I launched it for the first time.. that FS1 Intro cutscene has a bad word in it and I vividly remember freaking out and powering off my speakers really fast so mom wouldn't hear lol. I loooooooooved Freespace 1. I played it a lot. But eventually I moved on as kids do. It wasn't until many years later that I happened to be browsing a Babbages game store that a PC game box caught the corner of my eye. It said "FreeSpace 2". My eyes went wide. WHAT?! There's a TWO? OMG OMG OMG. Instant purchase. This must have been around 2003/4 maybe. I played the **** out of it.
It was probably around that time or a little later I found HLP via some internet search. I was probably looking up if there was Freespace 3. I remember desperately trying to install various mods. This was really before the MediaVPs and things were released randomly in threads and you had to kind of piece together stuff that would work together. Dark modding days for sure. I also remember being really interested in making my own campaign and made this whole dumb "trailer video" that was like 5 minutes long. It was all Freespace 2 ANIs/cutscenes spliced together with text and music. Honestly, that might have been my first video creation ever. It was either that or Lego Movie Studios. I stuck around for a while, it was under a different username.
I eventually moved on and it wasn't until I was on a nostalgia trip after I got married (my wife worked nights at the time, so I had most evenings to myself to game or whatever) that I decided randomly to look up HLP and see how far things had come. I had gained some knowledge and skills by that point. I lost both the password and email to my old account and thus this new account was created and I decided to make an ambitious "first" post. (https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=68084.msg1344294#msg1344294) I think I've had a tab permanently open to HLP ever since.
-
Grandfather owned FS1 and 2 as well as all 3 Descents and Mercenary. I was playing the games at age 2 and 3. Eventually get back into Freespace and find out the MediaVPs exist. Eventually joined the forums here and have been on and off as time's gone by.
-
I came across HLP in a roundabout way similar to jadedragoon. In my case, I came from PlanetDescent, back when it was still hosted on GameSpy's Planet Network, in the mid-2000s. At the time, I had already known about FS2 (thanks to watching the FS2 trailer on Descent 3 CD 2 way too many times) and played the FS2 demo by then, but I owned Descent 3, and subsequently spent more time playing the latter.
While looking through PlanetDescent one day, I came across a series of Descent 3 music videos made by Rake originally for his "Fusillade" project, which was cancelled. These videos led me to his website, as well as the other videos he made, including Flail SCP and Flail Babylon:
Both videos showed links at the end - Flail SCP to scp.indiegames.us, and Flail Babylon to their microsite on HLP. The Ares and shockwaves in Flail SCP left quite a good impression on me, so I went to scp.indiegames.us, which also linked to HLP. That's how I found this place, way back in 2005-2006.
It took a while before I became a forum member here because I saw no immediate need to do so. FSO 3.6.9 crashing while running JAD due to graphics driver issues (https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=50767.0) was what compelled me to join, and even though I've since become more engaged in other online communities, I still consider HLP to be my "home base" of sorts on the internet. :P
-
Oh wow...it's probably been the better part of 18 years, and a lot of the details are definitely fuzzy. I was really into Descent in the late 90s, and PlanetDescent was the very first forum I joined around 2001. The neighbor who introduced me to Descent had a copy of FS1 lying around, and I remember being very confused by the title ("Is this another Descent sequel I don't know about?"). Much like Androgeos, I also distinctly remember watching the FS2 trailer on my Descent 3 CDs, probably because I couldn't even run D3 on the family computer at the time, so all I could do was watch the videos. I don't know if I bought FS1 before or after seeing the trailer, though. In any case I played the hell out of FS1, and then the FS2 demo, since it was just about impossible to buy FS2 back then until Interplay put out the 20th anniversary release. I'm fairly certain that it had to have been someone in the Descent community who linked here, or else I found my way here via one of the overlapping community sites like Descent Network. I know I lurked for a good long while before finally registering, probably a year or more, since that's how I did things back as a painfully-shy teenager. I remember getting super-excited reading all about Inferno ("OMG someone made FS3!!!"), but setting up FSO was almost impenetrable to newcomers back then so I think I just stuck with whatever I could grab from the VW Archives for a while. My very first posts here were asking for help with getting Renegade Resurgence to work, and a few other campaigns of a similar vintage.
(Protip: Don't look back at the beginning of your own tracker. I hit some incredible cringe before too long. :lol: )
-
HLP was very late actually in terms of other freespace communities i visited.
As i was very active in Multiplayer back in the day i found myself in a mutliplayer squadron which had its own site and forum board. So i got some freespace news through that (and later other games like EVE and Starlancer that were actively played)
Have to admit, back in the day my source for new missions and campaigns was only VolitionWatch (RIP). After that went down or was set to archive mode, i had to look for other sources for new campaigns.
Even my focus was actually more into multiplayer coop campaigns back then, as we played through (nearly?) all of them from VW.
But what i have to say? I am not even sure if ever a new coop campaign was released on HLP, but i found some complete new single player experiences instead. Back then some in the squadron (myself included) converted some of them into Coop versions. But as the campaigns got more complex due to SCP together it got more difficult to even organize a four players coop run it died slowly.
This is actually my second account here. I was registered ~15 years ago already. But well... things did not worked out very well already then as a young girl on the brink to be a game developer.
Well, 15 years later nothing really changes, as visionaries are always stubborn heads, regardless of their age. So still hard times for me here :lol:
But now through working life I have significantly more experience to assert myself in this treadmill dominated by men.
-
I come across HLP back in 05(?) when searching for Babylon 5 mods for the games I owned - tl;dr B5 DVDs were hitting the market and I re-discoved my love for the show's designs, narrative and characters. After downloading TBP and discovering FS_Open through it, I got into FREDing.
And being 16/17 at the time, living in a rural area that was feeling increasingly claustrophobic in many ways, I was super enthusastic to show off what I back than considered "skill" and exercise a "creative side" I, back then, felt like I couldn't show elsewhere (in part also because I was not willing to admit that most of my ideas were bad) ... and eventually looking for advice when I felt I was stuck on matters of FREDing. So I got into posting almost as soon as I arrived, and enthusastically joined the TBP team after only being around and posting for nearly a year I think.
And now its 15+ years of failing laterally and foward later :D
-
20th Anniversary giveaway, I was looking for cockpit HUDs.
-
Played the demo that came with my joystick. Discovered that FS2 does not in fact end at Feint Parry Riposte, found SCP, tried out mods I somehow didn't actually find on HLP, then found WoD, crawled onto this site, lurked for several years, learnd2mod and now here I am.
-
Old polish community - The freespace.pl. I was lurking around HLP years before closure of fs.pl, but language barrier was too strong for me get in. When fs.pl finally died after hacker attack, I migrated and eventually settled down... And somehow after 12 years, I'm still around.
-
Early 2000's some time with an internet search if I remember correctly, lurked for several years I think before ever actually creating an account and posting something. Still lurk several times a month at least all these years later.
-
Since my first post was on the same day I registered, on a topic Official: What would you like to see in FS3? (https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=19737.msg420438#msg420438) way back in 2004, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that I was searching Yahoo for info about FreeSpace 3 and came across the thread. I then lurked, and eventually sort of forgot about HLP.
But I vividly remember re-discovering HLP almost nine years later, reading about Diaspora on Kokatu. I still don’t FRED or mod, but I have remained more active in the forums, and “show unread posts since your last visit” is one of my browser homepage tabs.
-
Hunting for mods after being pretty adept at squadwar flying for the LOA, (f**k you roughnecks).. Came here when it was 3dap 👍. Lurked for a bit before making loa--jk47 profile.
-
I saw there was an active community, realised I wanted to do my part and chip in, and here we are.
-
I'm not really sure how I discovered HLP & FSO to be honest. I'm pretty sure I discovered the wiki first, likely looking for new campaigns to play, or info regarding some specific aspect of the game. That's also probably where I first heard of FSO, since there were a lot of mods requiring it. And after playing a few mods and hanging on the wiki, I decided to click on the "forum" link for some reason, and never really left.
-
I played FS1 and 2 a ton, and pretty much left it at that. Until one time back in 2007 I had a thought, "I bet somebody could make a pretty cool Star Wars mod for this game. Hang on, I bet somebody already HAS!" So I googled FS2 Star Wars mod and found Fate of the Galaxy. And I've just been hanging around ever since.
-
I came from the VBB as well when that forum shut down. Back then the mission designers and squadwar crowd were on the VBB, while the modelers and render artists were on here. There was also VWBB and many squad-specific forums, I used to post a lot on the SSC one. I had played FS1 and 2 a lot at that point, and was a big Descent fan ever since I played the shareware Descent. Actually, I probably would have never bought FS1 (or FS2) if it wasn't for the Descent in the title.
I think this type of community could never form around any game that came out today. FS2 happened to come out around the time internet forums and persistent multiplayer (clans, tournaments, etc.) were a new thing and becoming popular. It was easy to mod and had its source released, and was basically the last game of its type for a long time, so people stuck with it.
-
Around mid-November of 2015 I was watching some youtube LPs one night. At some point I saw a suggestion for a Derelict LP. I watched a few clips and decided to buy FS2 on steam that Christmas. Downloaded wklauncher, MVP's, mods such as SGWII and Derelict, and started to lurk on HLP (I think the YT LP had a link to the website) until finally creating an account at the start of 2019.
-
Not sure how I found it. I think it was 2006 or so. If memory serves I found the wiki first.
I'd discovered Freespace when I was very young, maybe 6 or 7--I'd gotten a Wingman Force 3d which came with the Freespace 2 Colossus demo disc, and the game blew me away, but by that point the full game wasn't easily available. My folks eventually picked up a copy of FS1 for me, and at some point I started trawling the internet for Freespace stuff and found the wiki, and from there, the SCP the forums, and all the upgrades and mods--this was also back in the days before GOG when the old installer would install FS2 itself as well. Took a couple years of lurking before I finally made an account.
-
In university I found myself with an aging PC, not a lot of cash, and time to play games, so I hunted for open-source and abandonware titles. A friend pointed me to FSOpen, and the rest is history.
-
I found it last year while googling for a Babylon 5 game.
I have been playing nonstop for months and loving it.
-
I don't remember exactly when I found HLP. I remember I lurked for quite awhile before actually registering and posting. My first post had to do with the Renegade Resurgence campaign. So I think I'd played quite a few campaigns by then. That was in September of 2005. I'm going to guess I probably found HLP in 2003 or 2004. I honestly can't remember.
I didn't play FS or FS2 when they came out. I was aware of them, but I was more into Descent and that type of thing. I liked space simulators, but TIE Fighter and XvT was pretty much my goto for that. 99-'02 I was finishing my undergrad and getting married and getting into grad school, and pretty much any notion of free time went out the window. So, 03 and 04 I started getting back into games again, and from what I recall that largely consisted of breaking out X-Wing and Tie Fighter. Found X-Wing Alliance, loved it, realized the Alliance Upgrade Project existed, but there wasn't a whole lot of user playable campaigns I could find. Or what I could find was all focused on big multiplayer missions, which I frankly wasn't skilled enough to enjoy. What I really wanted was more story driven single player campaigns. So I started looking for other space combat simulators to see what else was out there. HLP popped up on my radar very shortly thereafter.
Been a useless leech ever since! :p
-
I don't know, but I think it must have been several years after I learned of, and played, both the mainline games.
See, back when I was a child, I didn't have any steady internet access. My first taste of Freespace came from a newspaper review about it, touting the Macross-like micromissiles. Cue the unexpected death of my father, and my sisters coming down to pay respects, and I somehow finagled a (pirate) copy of the game. Same with FS2 (boxed games were the purview of Rich Snooty Upper-class Folk and at the time I wasn't aware I was also in that segment, but enough of that...).
This was during the nascent age of the Cybercafe, so a lot of my time was spent there. In between CS bouts and yelling at my friends I browsed as much as I could for mods, hints, tips. Somewhere along the way I must have heard about this place.
Can't say I've made an impact but here I am, nevertheless. An outlier.
-
I've had FS2 in my Steam library for ages (no idea where I got it, maybe I picked it up on sale and forgot, maybe it was divine intervention), I decided to give it a try a few months ago and discovered the Steam version doesn't actually work so I googled "how to make freespace work" and found HLP
-
I was looking for a Freespace community, and I found HLP.
-
I got FS2 many moons ago for free (harr) form gog. Then decided to look up mods for it. :)
-
I sincerely don't remember beyond that before finally registering I had been lurking for quite a while, possibly years.
Chances are I probably either stumbled upon HLP while googling or I had read about the source code project in a magazine, probably back when Giochi per il Mio Computer (an Italian PC gaming magazine) was still around.
-
It's a long story for sure.
I remember buying, for my birthday, the Wingman Force that came out with a demo of FreeSpace 2 (called FreeSpace 2 Colossus). I can't tell exactly when it happened but my most reasonable guess is November 2004. It could have been November 2003, but it's less likely.
I used that handy Wingman Force for my Combat Flight Simulator 2&3 sprees, and almost completely disregarded the FS2 Demo. At some point however, I gave it a try but stumbled upon several issues - the training missions required me to press buttons that didn't actually match those on my keyboard (in poor words, FS2 was not European keyboard friendly) so I gave up after a short while.
In the second quarter of 2005 however, I decided to give FS2 one more chance. I managed to complete the training missions and slowly made it to the end of the Demo (Feint! Parry! Reposte!). FS2 became some sort of obsession for me, and I played the demo I don't know how many times. My pilot profile had something like 20+ Ravana and Orion (NTD Repulse) kills.
In late 2005 I found out about HLP via Google search but didn't join the community. I finally created my profile in May 2006, about one month after getting my Retail copy of FreeSpace 2 via eBay.
-
Game Warden was dying. I found GW when I was looking for Shadows of Lylat. I jumped ship when I realized that HLP was the better community.
-
As part of my (long put off, but finally have time for) plan to improve things on HLP I'm planning to come up with some ideas on how to get people to learn about us and what we do here. But that's for another thread. I figured a walk down memory lane first might be fun. So, how did you find HLP? What made you register? Did you post immediately, or did you lurk for a while first?
For me, I found the VBB by googling around after buying and playing Freespace 2 (it was actually the first game I bought for my first ever PC). I quickly got into FREDding but I wasn't particularly interested in modding, so when I became aware of HLP it was as that place we sent the modders to for more information on that while we talked about FRED. Eventually, I wandered over to check out what was going on over here and basically never left.
I had a retail CD copy of FS2. After "the internet" happened, I found HL and these boards through the wiki I believe. This was back when Awakenings and Derelict were THE "unofficial" expansions to FS2. After that the graphics and mod just kept getting better, so I never left.
Here's what I would advise. People actually love Arcade Flight sims, and the genre is having a resurgence, even if its not GOTY status. Now is a GREAT opportunity for HLD to push its content for people hungry for it. Ace Combat 7, Project Wingman, and Star Wars: Squadrons are all huge, popular, and loved by their fans. That's the market to go after, the people looking for more arcade sims, or are just hungry for another game between the next game.
Do some smartly edited clips of new mods, make trailers for them. Put them up on an official HL Youtube channel showing off the amazing things this board and community does. Right now, everything is decentralized. No one knows, because who wants to read an obscure forum when Youtube is RIGHT THERE? I firmly believe this community could grow, and continue to grow if a more concerted effort was made, even casually, to show off what the FSOpen mod does, and can do. Put up some FRED tutorials. Put out mod trailers. Show off new special effects, models, cutscene updates. I don't believe it would take THAT much extra effort in this day and age of casual streaming. Just SHOW PEOPLE what you all do! :D
-
Some Slovakian freespace forum I don't recall the name of, back when I was not as fluent in English.
Maybe partnering up with som other communities could acieve your goal.
-
Short answer: I think that I found out about HLP by searching for mods, FREDding tips and/or investigating lore. I definitely lurked for a while before making my first post.
Long answer:
I had received FS1 as a gift from someone, never having heard of it (or Descent) before. I had always been a big fan of Star Wars, and played X-Wing / TIE Fighter / X-Wing Vs. TIE Fighter / X-Wing Alliance. I really enjoyed those games and felt like XWA was such an awesome experience... If only I could easily try building my own missions...
It actually took me a couple of years to actually try Freespace out! Even though some of the missions stressed me out (almost quit because of Playing Judas), I really liked how story-driven it was, and then I discovered this thing called FRED that made it really easy to build a mission. Like, I didn't have to hack any system files or download some unstable third-party software. The developers actually just included their mission designer for anyone to use!
Eventually I discovered that a sequel was made, but it was too late to find a retail copy. It was nowhere to be found for me, until I managed to grab a copy on a website called "Home of the Underdogs" (though have since purchased a copy via GOG). Once again, had a blast playing it, loved the story, loved the music, loved the fact that it was more transparent for modding than the X-Wing series. It's probably around this point that I seriously started to lurk on HLP, trying to find some good user-made campaigns and eagerly hoping for FS3.
My first post on HLP was in 2004 (after probably at least a year or two of lurking) asking for help on creating my own campaign. I had some fun ideas! Alas, wasn't disciplined enough to finish a small set of missions, nevermind brave enough to let people play-test them. Maybe I'll give it another go...
-
I found HLP after my dad saw me playing Strike Suit Zero back in 2011-ish and he showed me the FS1 intro on YouTube, one trip to GoG later and I got FS2. Sometime after that, seeing HLP in the results for various FS related searches led me to click, a few years of lurking later, I made that "Bosch Beer" truck skin for Cities Skylines and met tnathan475 on steam, he convinced me to finally join HLP and about that time I had just started work on Legion's Demise, and the rest is history.
-
One does not find HLP.
HLP finds you.
-
Followed a link in a thread over at VBB discussing some mod. I think.. been a while.
-
My parents got my brother and I playing Descent on PC while my friends were getting their game consoles (Mid 2000's)...
Then a few years later my parents stumbled across freespace 1 and got the discs, maybe 08? Probably got them on ebay, I don't recall exactly.
Played the crap out of that, then discovered FS2 was a thing in middle school.
Played that. loved it.
Found the scp indiegames site while looking for wallpapers one day, I think right before I entered high school. Clicked there, then linked to HLP. Lurked for a bit, then made my account after I played BP and had to post something about how ****** great it was.
Rest is history :lol:
-
Was looking for more content for Freespace 2, lurked through a few websites whose names are lost to me, which then directed me here. Nowadays I mostly just lurk as unregistered... sometimes.
-
Was looking for more content for Freespace 2, lurked through a few websites whose names are lost to me, which then directed me here. Nowadays I mostly just lurk as unregistered... sometimes.
Did you squadwar *squinty fry.meme*
-
Did you squadwar *squinty fry.meme*
No, never played the multiplayer component of Freespace 2.
-
No worries. I remember a falcon from one of the big squads, obviously someone different.
:yes:
-
Googling for FS2 websites lead me to the VBB in 2001, where people were posting links to various mods. I remember finding Inferno and TBP that way (which I think were hosted on 3dap/HLP back then?)
At that time I was active in the XW:Alliance Upgrade community... but after playing TBP R1 I was blown away by the possibilities and flexibility that the FS2 engine offered over XWA, and started to poke around in POF files.
I registered here in 2003 (probably to ask something in the TBP forums).
-
Googling for FreeSpace mods. Found the Hades Combine site first, then this one.
Then I got bullied here for a while because nobody likes hyperactive 14-year-olds and... I'm still not a productive member of the community. :D
-
I was on the VBB and doing SquadWar. I finally came over here because it was another place to talk about things that wasn't run by THQ at the time? I don't remember if THQ had taken over by that time.
I also have the honor of being the last poster on the VBB before it was shut down. Also my 20 year anniversary is coming up in a few months.