Author Topic: How did you find HLP?  (Read 3811 times)

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Offline Rhymes

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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.
If you don't have Knossos, you need it.

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Offline MP-Ryan

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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.
"In the beginning, the Universe was created.  This made a lot of people very angry and has widely been regarded as a bad move."  [Douglas Adams]

 
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
"Wouldn't it be so wonderful if everything were meaningless?
But everything is so meaningful, and most everything turns to ****.
Rejoice."
-David Bazan

 
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.

 

Offline poppyj

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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

 

Offline übermetroid

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I was looking for a Freespace community, and I found HLP.
"This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time."

 
I got FS2 many moons ago for free (harr) form gog. Then decided to look up mods for it. :)

 

Offline Det. Bullock

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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.
"I pity the poor shades confined to the euclidean prison that is sanity." - Grant Morrison
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Offline Mobius

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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.
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Inferno: Nostos - Alliance
Series Resurrecta: {{FS Wiki Portal}} -  Gehenna's Gate - The Spirit of Ptah - Serendipity (WIP) - <REDACTED> (WIP)
FreeSpace Campaign Restoration Project
A tribute to FreeSpace in my book: Riflessioni dall'Infinito
My interviews: [ 1 ] - [ 2 ] - [ 3 ]

 

Offline SypheDMar

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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
« Last Edit: February 19, 2021, 09:27:43 am by manwiththemachinegun »

 

Offline Nohiki

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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.
:::ALSO PROUD VASUDAN RIGHTS SUPPORTER:::

 

Offline ShadowsOfLight

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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...

 

Offline DefCynodont119

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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.
My gift from Freespace to Cities Skylines:  http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=639891299

 

Offline Trivial Psychic

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One does not find HLP.

HLP finds you.
The Trivial Psychic Strikes Again!

 

Offline castor

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Followed a link in a thread over at VBB discussing some mod. I think.. been a while.

 
Re: How did you find HLP?
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:

 

Offline Falcon

  • 29
Re: How did you find HLP?
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.

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

  • HLP is my mistress
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Re: How did you find HLP?
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*
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

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That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
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