Hard Light Productions Forums
Archived Boards => The Archive => Halo for FreeSpace => Topic started by: Causality on June 22, 2009, 06:44:01 pm
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"For Halo fans of the past, present, and future. For everyone that ever yearned in their hearts to fly through the cosmos. This is for you..."
Welcome, one and all, to the now revived Freespace 2: Halo thread here at HLP!
For anyone not familiar with the story of this mod, here's the quick and dirty:
Devrous, as a college student, had a lot of free time on his hands. He loved video games as most young people do, and found a strong affinity for Descent, Freespace 1 & 2, Counter-Strike, and Halo. He had spent a little time playing around with simple changes to Freespace 2 before getting addicted to the world-wide fanaticism of Halo. After reading the novels and logging more playtime than credit hours, he started wondering what the space battles would be like between Human and Covenant forces. From there, he came up with the idea of making a game to tell the story of Humanity's struggle from the perspective of it's space navy. For over four years he taught himself everything he could about modding Freespace 2, and delved deeply into the Halo Story. Eventually he felt confident enough to start promoting it on the web. After a long period of hype he was nearly finished with the mod and was ready to release the first stage. Then, tragedy struck.
His last remaining grandparent, an uncle and a cousin, all passed away within a few months. A faulty hard drive and the Vendo virus nearly ruined his computer. Data recovery efforts were only partially successful, yet he still pressed on, determined to finish it. But life continued to hammer at him, bringing more hardship. At some point, he made the decision to cut most everything so he could take care of his family. Sadly, computers was one of those things, and with it fell FS2H. Unable to recover enough data from his now second failed hard drive, he put it aside and swore he'd come back to it someday.
A year later, I ran into him. I had known him pretty well during my first years of college, and I had always wanted to play the mod he was working on. After he told me his story, I felt what I imagine most everyone on the forums felt; sad and disappointed. Before he left, he gave me a phone number of one of his friends that was staying near where I lived. Shortly thereafter, as I was visiting his friend, I saw a clear CD case on his CD rack. I asked if I could look through his games, and one of them was marked "FS2H Backup - Devrous, June 2007."
Long story short, I "borrowed" the disc, learned what I could from it, tinkered with it, and eventually called him to ask about some texturing problems. He informed me that he had gone to several websites promoting the mod, and that there still may be some people interested. Before I could get around to looking, I checked Devrous' old backup email account he had let me look through for Freespace stuff. There were several messages from someone named "Starlord." And the rest is history...
Now that you're up to speed, here's what I intend. With the help of modders here at HLP, we're going to finish this mod so that everyone can enjoy it. Instead of going it alone and risking data loss, incompleteness, and a long release date, I'll be asking for people to join our team. With any luck, we should have this thing up and running in no time.
Devrous' HLP Wiki: http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/FS2H#Plot (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/FS2H#Plot)
Feel free to ask any and all questions. I'll do my best to answer, and as soon as possible I'll get the game information packed and sent off to the team members as they get added as such. So far:
Current FS2H Team (June 7, 2009)
FREDer: Wistler
Voice Acting: Spartan-367
Misc/Fanboy: Starlord
At the moment, we are in biggest need of someone who's good with texture mapping and/or painting models either in TrueSpace or something similar. I'd hate for these ships to look hokey because I'm a total n00b at texturing and I can only paint so many faces with the same look :nervous:
At any rate, thanks to the Admins for generously (re)hosting FS2H, and special thanks to Starlord for 'keeping the faith.' I'll do my best to get more info out ASAP, but if you troll through the exisiting threads you'll find A LOT of information on what Devrous had planned. Tons of info, pictures, and a few movies. Check it out!
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Do you need someone to do some storyline for the campaigns? I am very familiar with Halo 1-3, Halo Novels.
Storyline: Mission Logic, Campaign Story... bla bla bla... Sum up: Story? I can do it.
Voice Acting: I could do that too.
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My advice would be not to get too hung up on the way things look. The most important thing is to get the ships you have working in-game so that you can start mission design work. That way you can have all of your team working at the same time rather than leaving the FREDders sitting on their hands waiting for models. You've got a pretty ambitious campaign planned so getting a start on it now rather than once all the models are done would be a huge bonus.
If you look at FS Upgrade as an example you can see that even if you have ugly models now you can easily upgrade them to high poly beauties as the campaign takes shape.
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Aye, but judging from the stuff Iv seen from Dev, they can start putting models in-game and make sure that they work as well as the story meant for it to be.
A Destroyer doing some evasive manuvering like the Keyes loop executed by Commander Keyes (later Captain Keyes) did would look very ugly if the model cannot do what it should be like.
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One of the biggest reasons we are sad and disappointed would be regarding devrous' misfortune family wise. :sigh:
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Casualty? You gotta be more active yourself if you really wana bring the project back alive... How about giving us an update on how thing are going and if you have gotten some new team members?
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As far as an update in progress, I have managed to finally get all the files completed an not corrupted. There were a few animations and images that were toast, so I have reproduced them as best I can. I have it just about ready to get out to team members. Right now the biggest problem is distribution. I could just physically mail the files on CD to everyone, but I think an online presence would be preferred. However, several of the VP files are pretty big, and I think the entire game is several hundred megabytes. If an admin or someone in-the-know could give me an idea on where to host the files (here at HLP, Rapidshare, etc) that would be great.
As far as new team members, I'm putting together a roster of people that have interest and what they can do. In the end I'll probably use most everyone that asked to join in some fashion of another. Just be patient and I'll address each of you. :)
And a little bit about my personal life at the moment, I graduated college back in December and got a job in April. I just bought a car and I'll be getting a house soon. Until then I'm stuck on some slow internet at a grungy apartment. I also work 12 hours a day, so my mid-week free time is almost nil. This is yet another reason why I'd like to get the mod as it is out to people soon so that others with more free time can be cranking out missions and content when I can't. Rest assured that I'll be able to devote much more time come September when I close on a house and get hooked up with a good Business-class ISP ;7
I'll be checking the forums here just about every night, even if I don't have time for a lengthy post. I'll get to everyone's questions as time permits. Until then, keep the discussion coming :)
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Hosting it might be a problem... for the file size, anything up to 2 Gigs is okay for me atm, Im getting a new comp which should arrive within 2 days.
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I'm having some weird s*** going on atm at my joint, however I am happy to help in anyway I can. I can Fred, betatest and a lil texturing
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[email protected]
If any voice acting needs to be done. I'm starting university in September and I'm in my last year in Engineering I have my big project so I won't be in HLP Forums that often but just give me a shout with the email if anything needs to be done in voice acting.
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If you still need hosting I can offer space.
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Do you have a story?
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i too can do voice acting. just give me skits and i can send you recordings with the promise of good quality in sound and acting
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Where is Causality anyway? He's been gone for more then a month. It's almost like this project is dead for the second time
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I've been sending mail after mail, but nothing at this time!
However, it's been only a month: perhaps computer failure is the problem.
the important thing in that case would be to get hold of the originals files in his possession: then things could proceed...
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I want to voice act please thank you.
I'm quite good at fred and its newer features too.
No scripting though. . .
EDIT- is this dead whoops. .
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I certainly hope not: halo is too promising a universe to evade FS forever... :nod:
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So, how many times has this mod died? 2?
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:(
Let this please not die! I'd love to see it come to fruition! :D
I'd help whatever way I can...I tend to be a good voice actor (for what little work I've done in halo and guild wars machinima), but I'm pretty much way too young for that.
I can offer a lot of help story-wise, though, as I have a rather deep knowledge in the entire halo universe (all the books released I have read) and everything involved (as indicated by my username, which I want changed :P). I'm also a good story writer; I've done a bit of fanfiction work and I have a lot of writing done about a lot of subjects which I have been told are pretty well done.
Devrous also appointed me to beta-test way back yonder as soon as he had his first alpha done, but obviously I never got a chance to follow him up on that before he disappeared. I can also do some quick FREDding, as throughout the past 2 years I've been fiddling around with the program enough that I know more than an average beginner does.
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However, it's been only a month: perhaps computer failure is the problem.
Maybe the mod is so awesome it causes computer failure to the user.
nah bad joke :nervous:
Anyway on a serious note, and I direct this at everyone, we really need a lot of people working on this, so that should someone go missing for some random and unexpected reason we can continue till they come back
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I'm more concerned about the possibility of recovering the already existing files...
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Who had the previous files?
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Devrous and causality after him! If he intends to drop the MOD, I would at least appreciate him giving the files... :p
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I would at least appreciate him giving the files... :p
Yes, I'm sure everyone would.
Does anyone know where I could get my hands on a good Halo storyline that isn't to confusing (without having to play the games of course?)
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Well, there's the halo books, but if you want a summary, I guess your best bet would be to skim through the Halopedia. (http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page) (Bloody hell, there's a wikipedia for everything now.)
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Anyway on a serious note, and I direct this at everyone, we really need a lot of people working on this, so that should someone go missing for some random and unexpected reason we can continue till they come back
You should have done what FSU did... backing up stuff remotely (i.e. on the internet) and setting up an SVN system.
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Well, there's the halo books, but if you want a summary, I guess your best bet would be to skim through the Halopedia. (http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page)
Thanks.
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You should have done what FSU did... backing up stuff remotely (i.e. on the internet) and setting up an SVN system.
And I'm to do that when the mod was never launched online? And from what I know I have yet to obtain the ability to make stuff appear out of thin air, thus obtaining and keeping a backup is impossible, and was always impossible. IDK about you but if it were possible, I would have done it already and rehosted it so all us guys can take it and mod the rest ourselves thus eliminating the need to wait for our almighty leader we all bow down to to return after vanishing without saying why or when.
So until your request for me is possible, I'm just gonna wait, like I have been for IDK how long now, it's been too long
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You should have done what FSU did... backing up stuff remotely (i.e. on the internet) and setting up an SVN system.
And I'm to do that when the mod was never launched online? And from what I know I have yet to obtain the ability to make stuff appear out of thin air, thus obtaining and keeping a backup is impossible, and was always impossible. IDK about you but if it were possible, I would have done it already and rehosted it so all us guys can take it and mod the rest ourselves thus eliminating the need to wait for our almighty leader we all bow down to to return after vanishing without saying why or when.
So until your request for me is possible, I'm just gonna wait, like I have been for IDK how long now, it's been too long
*sigh*
You PLURAL. Also, "should have" is past participle.
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How come you didn't say you all then? Saying 'you' after my quote is a little oddly placed.
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Y'all hush now, y'here?
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No comment
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Let's keep this on topic and not arguing semantics, please...It'd be a shame to get a thread in here locked, seeing as how it's the only activity in this sub-form at all.
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Halo for FreeSpace will probably go into the trash again, seeing that there are no updates, 1 barely active topics and the person incharge isnt even active.
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D:
NOOooOOOOoo.....
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At least, let's wait it out before these kind of conclusions...
projects like EOTP also lack regular updates, that's not a reason to say they are dead...
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Let's just keep emailing Casualty till he decides to get back to us, and then we all can work on the project, and not just 1 person who can't come here with a status report once and a while. Least then if we loose someone the project doesn't die for a plesant change