Hard Light Productions Forums

Community Projects => The FreeSpace Campaign Restoration Project => Topic started by: Mustang19 on November 28, 2010, 11:31:07 am

Title: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Mustang19 on November 28, 2010, 11:31:07 am: (http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a333/Athiesism/icontext.jpg)

Something I have been working on, mostly for my own edification. But hey, it's a restored campaign now.

A restoration of this (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=42732.0).

Required:

Main files (http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.665) (66 mb)

If you have the old version of the campaign, download the patch (http://www.mediafire.com/?59tx49yrt1o5q19) and place it in the mod root folder.

Optional:

Lightspeed's Nebula Pack and FSPort techroom anis

Instructions:

Copy everything to the appropriate folders. Create a new pilot and enjoy.

Almost forgot the credits:

Ships from:

GTF Maverick by billy4kd
GTF Losna, Bektah Support and Bektah bomber by Taristin
A09 and A17 cargo, RLF Tigris and RLFr Margay by Kieve
GTFr Demeter, GTF Selkie, GVF Imset, GVF Anouke, GTB Chnubis and GTT Svalin by Aldo
GVT Sesmu by Vasudan Admiral
GTC Garm by ShadowGorrath, Esarai and Droid803
GTtca Canberra by Black Wolf
GTCa Hestia by Peter V
GTD Daegon by Esarai
GTGs Enforcer by MAW
GTB Azaes and GTF Autolycus by Flipside
Mining station and GTB Surt by TrashMan
Over The Top model dump

Music from:

Desert Thunder
Superpower 2
CnC Red Alert 1 & 2 and Tiberian Sun
War Times

My apologies for any errors or omissions.
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Mobius on November 28, 2010, 11:34:43 am: Wow, that's the Merkar Campaign! I completely forgot about this one. Nice work you did there, Mustang! :)
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Axem on November 28, 2010, 05:41:31 pm: Quote from: Mustang19 on November 28, 2010, 11:31:07 am
GVT Sesmu by Axem

I uh... :nervous: never made that.

Looking on the wiki, it says that VA made it.
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Mustang19 on November 28, 2010, 06:36:38 pm: Oops. Well, I apologized in advance. :p
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Macfie on November 28, 2010, 07:02:00 pm: What happened to the first 2 missions?
There is no Raptor R in the last mission.
There are parsing errors associated with the MV_music table.
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Mustang19 on November 28, 2010, 07:53:46 pm: Move MV_music.vp to another folder so it doesn't conflict with the custom music.tbl.

The rest, still working on it. The first two missions were just training; they were scrapped. Did the campaign at least start?

edit: The MV_music problem is fixed and I uploaded a new version of the core files.
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Mustang19 on November 30, 2010, 07:03:12 am: Another update to the main files was uploaded. Everything should work now. Thanks for the input, Macfie.
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Mustang19 on December 08, 2010, 07:15:26 pm: So, anyone finished it yet? Feedback? Bug reports?
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Mustang19 on December 11, 2010, 12:45:46 pm: Ok, 17+ people who downloaded the mod, whatever you do, DO NOT post feedback. DO NOT report how the campaign went or complain about how godawful large the download is or how it's impossible to get past Mission 1. Again, whatever you do, DO NOT post feedback. Thank you.
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Shade on December 11, 2010, 12:58:38 pm: Highlighted this. Maybe that'll get you some feedback :) Dunno why it wasn't done earlier, guess none of us who bother with highlights check the campaign restoration board often enough.
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Mustang19 on December 11, 2010, 01:33:53 pm: Holy... :eek2:

Didn't expect that. Thank you, Shade. I feel like a celebrity now.
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: swamper123 on December 11, 2010, 02:14:57 pm: Downloading I cant wait for playing :D :p
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Aurora Paradox on December 11, 2010, 03:27:24 pm: Downloading now. Always good to see another campaign restored.
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Solatar on December 11, 2010, 03:43:49 pm: I'll be playing this and reporting back once exams are over. :yes:
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: achtung on December 12, 2010, 01:30:01 pm: http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.661

I went ahead and mirrored it in one pack.
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Mustang19 on December 12, 2010, 02:22:14 pm: I appreciate it, Swantz. Just one thing; this isn't an FSPort campaign, it is a regular SCP mod.
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: -Sara- on December 12, 2010, 07:08:26 pm: Just played it. Overall, it was fun but a bit short. Some missions are difficult to complete as certain objectives cannot be reached in time. Some ships are also slightly unballanced: the rapid 'Panther' the most. Still, I enjoyed the campaign, but were left a bit in the dark about the plot elements as there was little of an introduction to the coming events.
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Mustang19 on December 13, 2010, 09:08:06 am: Thanks for playing the campaign, Sara. And I am happy you enjoyed it. The Panther is meant to be ridiculously hard to hit, although after some practice I found it to be fun to kill if you know how to time your shots. There is indeed little introduction to the coming events and this is a drawback. However, this was originally intended as just a demo and in the full campaign (if it ever gets out) there will be more missions and hopefully be a more fleshed out story.

You mentioned that certain objectives cannot be reached in time. I would be interested in hearing which objectives exactly you are referring to- the transports at the end? The secondary objectives are meant to be difficult if not impossible but the primary objectives should be winnable and reasonably easy.
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: swamper123 on December 13, 2010, 01:57:40 pm: A interesting campaign but too difficult in the last missions though especially in the last one , those torpedoes don´t evade the shots and I have enemies coming for every direction but I liked it very much overall thanks for the campaign ;)
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Mustang19 on December 14, 2010, 12:12:18 am: Thanks for the feedback, swamper123. The campaign could have done with more external playtesting and the last mission especially was rather hard. Glad to hear you finished it, though.
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Spoon on December 14, 2010, 03:42:54 pm: I'm going to be brutally honest here, this campaign needs a truck ton more playtesting.

First off, installation. I got the Everything in one pack (356 mb) file. But had to manually alter the mod.ini to point to mediavps_3612, because it was set to just mediavp, which is .10 stuff but it won't even run under .10. Also, the music folder was not in the data folder. So I had to throw that in manually

The first mission is okay, a bit confused at first where I was suppose to be going and why the spectators are stuffed in cargo boxes but whatever.
Had to destroy a mirror after that (http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/7530/mirror.png).
But even though I apparantly had failed to protect the spectators, I could just continue on with the mission. Aright, im cool with that.

Start of mission 2. And this is where my mind is just blown. Cause test playing your mission once should have gotten at least half of these problems :/
First off, the destroyer has an initial velocity of 50. Your ship has an initial velocity of 0. And you are inside the destroyer's hanger bay. *crash*
I was then told to link up with the mercs. Then I was told half way that I needed to protect a convoy ship that was like 10000 range away. Then after linking up with the mercs I was told to return to the destroyer. Then the convoy ship died because a suicide freighter crashed into it. Which prompted alpha 2 to start praising how well that convoy ship that just got blown up was shooting. or something.
The directives to destroy the unidentified ship remained incomplete the whole mission unwards.
Then the federation started attacking us (http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/8247/defiant.png)
And all the cargo got destroyed because I was just hiding behind the destroyer. (no shields, hull down to 9% ) aaaaand I got told to return to the destroyer again!
(http://img809.imageshack.us/img809/8150/directiveslol.png)
despite ****ing everything up. I was allowed to continue the campaign. Okay.

Mission 3, O****HEREWEGOAGA-*CRASH*
Yeah, same deal as the start of mission 2.
Have to defend some ship. Get told that Solomon wing is dangerous to this ship. But Solomon wing has a flight path straight next to the destroyer. which picks them off one by one. So not much to defend there. Ship jumps out. Solomon wing is now at #29 (yay for nearly endlessly respawning wings!) and more ships start jumping in. I died 10 minutes in.
meh.

What little I got from the plot, it seems pretty interesting and I want to see whats up next but... the mishmash of ships thrown together combined with poor mission design is just killing this for me. You got zero choice in weapon and ship loadout. Just the Talon, just boring subach pew pew lasers (why does it have 2 banks? there is nothing to equip!) and three banks of dumbfire missiles :sigh:

Well, there you have it. My unsalted opinion
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Firartix on December 14, 2010, 05:02:46 pm: I wouldn't say it's that bad but... i played only the few first missions so far... and it's real strangy.

Here's what i findz iz kool:
1/ Including music! Boo!
2/ Removing standard wingmen voices. They get incredibely annoying when there's no VAing and stuff happen in a different universe or something.
3/ Gliiiiidiing is just thaaaat coooool !
4/ The debriefing advice on M2 about emptying missile racks.
5/ The Rosalind Franklin freighter thingy based off a Fenris... i find this ship serious coolz

Less cool stuff:
1/ I dun liek the musik ! ... okay, that's just personal opinion :nervous:
2/ Still, no music on briefings ? :confused:
3/ I was amazed by the fact that you have to protect the Spectators in the 3rd mission, but you don't have to bother about the VIPs around.
4/ During several missions you take off the destroyer while it's still moving. First time i played it, on insane, it went "Commit - uh wtf? - bang! - weapons failure - .... aaiiight, restart" in just 3 seconds.
5/ During the mission with the cargo ship & the mercs, the "long range cannons" wing thing is total weird. It got waves of 3 ships, coming as soon as you killed previous ones... and there's 25. So you can sit back at 300m of their warp-in point and fire away. I'd say 3 waves of 6 ships with different warp-in and some delay would be much better.
6/ This might just be the AI but... the Panters either fly plain straight, or go doing rolls at insane speed...
7/ I dunno wether that's AI settings, the fact i'm trying to play on Insane, or something, but allied capships turrets and AAA looks freaking way too much precise. Seriously.
8/ Either i'm a morron or i skipped campaign start briefings (which is basically same) but i didn't really understand in what context the story takes place.
9/ Lack of weaponry variety? I just hope there's more later...

So far all i can tell is that it's somewhat strangy and seems like lacking some testing but it got good stuff too.
Still looking for time to finish it, i stopped at M3 .. :nervous:

Finally, a question. First mission is called "Merkar3"..... Are we missing two D: ?
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: MatthTheGeek on December 14, 2010, 05:30:16 pm: 7 and 8 are definitely your fault :p
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Mustang19 on December 14, 2010, 05:57:05 pm: I am glad to finally have some honest and critical feedback. I appreciate the details and screenshots, MatthTheGeek.

The initial velocity issues definetly could have been caught if I did some external play testing. Myself, I always afterburned out of the fighter bay at mission start.

The design in Mission 2 regarding the unknown ship is awkward. I was trying to follow the original mission and should have gone for something simpler.

There is certainly a lack of variety in load out; I didn't expect this to be as evident in just a four mission campaign. But it certainly was.

The first mission is called Merkar 3 because the first two were cut out; they weren't particularly interesting but they were in the original release.

Again, I appreciate the feedback. I am toying around with ideas for the final campaign and play testing would definitely be a priority next time around.
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Spoon on December 14, 2010, 07:26:44 pm: That's a funny way to spell Spoon :p
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Mustang19 on December 14, 2010, 07:53:34 pm: Oh, I meant the other Spoon. Sorry about that.
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Mustang19 on December 20, 2010, 02:53:37 pm: A patch to the campaign has been made using the suggestions made in this thread. Thanks, guys.
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Mobius on December 24, 2010, 12:28:13 pm: That's encouraging. Keep it up! :yes:
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: ktistai228 on January 08, 2011, 02:30:51 pm: Okay, been through it.
I can say it has certainly been interesting. Let us start:
1) Congratulations on using little known FS ships! Although I already knew them, the fact that I never met them in game before just gave the game a good feel, really setting it apart.
2) The story is interesting, I'd like to see more about it.
3) Some ships have minor problems with their descriptions, mentioning shields (what, when, where? ME WANT!)
4) First off, no head ani's. there are a ton of them available from starlancer, give 'em a try!
5) some ships have 0 mass, they just get spun around like mad when hit... weird....
6) that daegon/invincible robbed me of all the pleasure in M2. it picked up other ships like flies. I did nothing but sit back and watch. However spoon, why the hell did you go to the mercs first time? reading the briefing gave a pretty clear idea you had to hook up with the mercs ALONG with the convoy
7) the last mission was really interesting, first time I see something like this!
8) why do you stuff people into containers dude? at least change their alt name....
9) most of the missions do require additional polishing... a lot of it, they seem very rough and unpredictable
10) I felt very ignored in some missions by the enemy... however when I got noticed I didn't feel a lot... except very, very fast death..... Strong weapons+weak hulls=quite some fun, but big difficulties! DO NOT, under any circumstances, make missions longer than 5 minute in these conditions....
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Mustang19 on January 08, 2011, 02:57:52 pm: Thanks for the feedback. Removing shields from everything certainly changes gameplay and creates an eggshells armed with hammers dynamic in most missions. Making shorter missions and weakening the friendly capital ship might help things.

Quote
4) First off, no head ani's. there are a ton of them available from starlancer, give 'em a try!

Noted. Personally I find head ani's annoying. But if other people like to see them perhaps I will add them to future campaigns.

Quote
9) most of the missions do require additional polishing... a lot of it, they seem very rough and unpredictable

Yeah, as Spoon said, playtesting is needed. Which is kind of what this thread is for. If you have any additional specific changes you'd like to point out that I could implement I'd be pleased to hear them.
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: ktistai228 on January 09, 2011, 02:25:43 am: yeah, i have. If you're serious about this, get a team and a board! and get some internal beta-testers:D

LE: And here is what I can do for you. The rest IS up to you!

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Merkar (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Merkar)
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Mustang19 on January 09, 2011, 01:01:09 pm: Whoah there. I have enough on my hands already. :p Thanks for the Wiki article though. I don't think I'm ready for a team and a board yet.
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: ktistai228 on January 09, 2011, 01:41:47 pm: at least pitch a description in there!!!
Title: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT and RELEASE: Merkar Restored
Post by: Mustang19 on January 09, 2011, 03:01:28 pm: Sure, I can do that at least.