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All you wanted was a new life somewhere in the wild and unregulated areas outside of UEF control. As a member of the Flying Pumpkins, you hoped to leave your inglorious past behind. But how long can you stay neutral when civil war knocks at your front door?
This story is about those people that get caught in between when empires collide and great armies fight their wars. This is about the survival of those you love and need the most. About those who sweat and bleed next to you when the going gets tough.
Follow the path of Andrew "Vega" Polly, trying to survive in a system that is slowly fading into chaos. With only a few people at his side, he's trying to persevere in the war zone when the GTVA enters Sol and starts its attack on the UEF. Meet new friends, make peace with your past, fight the rising threat of a new and powerful militant organization and grasp the opportunity to get things right, finally.
After 7 months of work and many many stupid questions in the forum, I'm finally able to give something back to the community.
Bomb3rman productions proudly presents:
(https://picload.org/image/riapilga/header.jpg) (https://picload.org/image/riapilga/header.jpg)
Welcome to my first finished campaign :)
The story of this campaign is loosely based on Blue Planet, though I tried to be as correct as I could be with the dates and background stories. It takes place within the 18 months before the GTVA captures Jupiter, shortly after the GTVA arrived in Sol.
What do you need for this campaign to work?
Must have:
- I'm using FS2 Open 3.7.4. I always used SSE2.exe so I have no idea if there is a problem if you use another, this is the one I recommend.
- Blue Planet complete, older version. Download-Link: http://www.mediafire.com/folder/6lmw0ioq6ynvl/bpcomplete (http://www.mediafire.com/folder/6lmw0ioq6ynvl/bpcomplete)
I used the Bpcomplete mod to create this mission and also used their ship models, so this is definitely needed.
- As it is needed for Blue Planet: The MediaVPs 2014: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=86475.0 (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=86475.0)
Campaign download link:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/yx5ep9qj0mrggwq/Friends_and_Foes.rar (http://www.mediafire.com/file/yx5ep9qj0mrggwq/Friends_and_Foes.rar) -> UPDATED version released!
It's 340 mb when it's packed as a RAR-file, ~ 803 mb unpacked.
Installation instructions:
Extract the RAR-file and put the "Friends and Foes"-Folder within your Freespace 2 folder. Then use your launcher (I recommend the wxlauncher, http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=67950.0 (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=67950.0)) and activate the "Friends and Foes"-Mod. The bpmod and the MediaVPs 2014 should automatically be activated with it.
Then start the game, go to the campaign room and activate "Friends and Foes".
I hope this works for you. Since I'm relatively new to all of this, creating the vp.file was a pain in the a**, but I finally managed to get it done. I tried to download and install the files, didn't have a problem with it.
The campaign consists of 13 missions, I recommend playing on medium for a challenge (I usually play at medium and think it's quiet challenging, though I just might suck in a cockpit :P). Estimated playing time is about 4 to 5 hours.
So have fun and thanks for reading, give me a feedback if you like, I'm thinking about a sequel right now ;)
And now some screenshots:
(https://picload.org/image/riapilgl/1.jpg) (https://picload.org/image/riapilgl/1.jpg)
(https://picload.org/image/riapilgi/2.jpg) (https://picload.org/image/riapilgi/2.jpg)
(https://picload.org/image/riapilgw/3.jpg) (https://picload.org/image/riapilgw/3.jpg)
(https://picload.org/image/riapilrr/4.jpg) (https://picload.org/image/riapilrr/4.jpg)
(https://picload.org/image/riapilra/5.jpg) (https://picload.org/image/riapilra/5.jpg)
(https://picload.org/image/riapilrl/6.jpg) (https://picload.org/image/riapilrl/6.jpg)
(https://picload.org/image/riapilri/7.jpg) (https://picload.org/image/riapilri/7.jpg)
(https://picload.org/image/riapilrw/8.jpg) (https://picload.org/image/riapilrw/8.jpg)
(https://picload.org/image/riapildr/9.jpg) (https://picload.org/image/riapildr/9.jpg)
Credits:
The Blue Planet Team
Black Wolf
IronBeer
c914
SolCommand
Betrayal
Starman
ktistai228
Mant
Aldo_14
Galemp
Turambar
Shivan Hunter
Fightermedic
Thanks to all of you great modders out there, without you, this would not have been possible. (A more detailed list can be found inside the "Friends and Foes" folder.)
(I can't believe it, I almost managed to stick to my schedule ;))
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Nicely done! :yes:
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Gratz. :nod:
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Wow! That was great! A campaign in the true spirit of War in Heaven. A real treat, and a must-play if you need something for your War in Heaven fix while you wait for act 4. It took a few missions for me to warm up to it, but once it got going it really sucked me in.
There were a few things I noticed, of course, but overall was wonderful.
In the second mission, there are quite a few distant friendly transports and so forth which jump in and play arrival music, but the regular music doesn't stop, making them play on top of each other awkwardly. none of them appeared to actually be relevant to the mission so I think they should simply have their arrival music turned off?
Overall, could benefit from checkpoints. There were several difficult parts which came at the end of long missions. I know they're a pain to implement, but it's frustrating to repeatedly play back through the early parts.
In two thirty-eight, make it less obvious that the transport is guardianed! I got it to 15% at least 30 seconds before it hit the Florida! In general I prefer to give large special hits in lieu of guardian whenever possible, and it might work here? There are several possible ways to fix it, but it's rather immersion-breaking if you get to that point.
I don't think this one is your fault, but two missions, both with command briefings, but no regular briefings (when you have to defend the sanctus from gefs the first time, and defending it while being repaired the second), the music playing during the command briefing would continue into the mission and play at the same time as the regular music! In fact, I could only get the music to stop by quitting the game completely.
I was unfamiliar with many of the strikecraft used, so I couldn't identify them visually, and many of them only have "OC Wing" as their class, making it difficult for me to determine bombers from fighters.
Second-to-last mission, make it less obvious the Invictus' beams are guardianed! It might be sort of my "fault" for being abnormally prepared, but I brought a pair of scalpels, and as soon as it showed up, I made a beeline for it (thinking of the first time it shows up and I had to do something similar) and easily brought both of them to 54% well before the Akebono arrives. Maybe bring the cruisers more towards its front, so they can discourage a frontal attack?
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Hey, congrats! I wish you many more successful FRED projects, good sir. :nod:
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Definitly going to play this :P. Congratulations!
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Ok! About halfway through the campaign and it's really starting to hit its stride.
A few random thoughts whilst playing so far:
It's such a simple thing but having the same fiction and briefing music. I didn't know that having the same music meant it would keep going when exiting the fiction viewer! Makes the progression seem much more natural and flows so much better.
The characters and ships are really starting to grow on me after a few missions.
Treasure Hunt II is fiendishly difficult. Those Scimitar-X fighters with the missile pods are a handful, and I can never take down enough of them quickly enough to save Sid from the Gef cruiser. I had to cheat my way through that mission. Also noticed the music bug in that mission.
I really, really enjoyed the set piece in Sunrise.
Those small gef fighters (ShivanHunter's Electron) were fun little things to dogfight. Coincidentally, I was planning to use the Electron as a converted mining scouter/now space superiority fighter in the next release of the modpack. It seems we both had similar ideas!
I noticed the comms anim for ?Nails having a GTVA cap. Not too big a deal, I put it down to him acquiring it from someone.
Final thoughts after I finish the campaign. :yes:
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Hello and thank you all for your kind replies :) I'm very happy that you like it.
I'm using the anti-spoiler method to give you the answers as well, don't want anyone to read more than he should ;)
I'm very busy right now due to exams, but one day I'll find time to bring up an updated version of the campaign because of your thoughts, I promise.
@ Asteroth:
Thanks, I forgot to set the "no arrival music" flag on some ships.
Yes, checkpoints might be useful. But since I'm quiet new to all of this, I didn't want to mess around with these scripts. I might look into this one day, some missions could really benefit from checkpoints.
The problem in Two-thirty-eight is that the transport has to hit the Florida. When I just use more hitpoints, there a chance that it might blow up before that. I used guardian as a compromise. I don't know any other way, maybe more hitpoints and a lower guardian percentage...
I'm not happy with the music bug, too. Maybe I take out the music for the two command briefings completely.
In some missions, I might change some of the "OC Wing" to "OC Fighter" and "OC Bomber", I think this will help.
To put the Ancamnas more in front is a way in the second last mission, maybe I give the player another directive to distract him from the beam turrets. But you have a point here.
Anyway, thanks for the thoughts!
@ Darius:
The main weapons of the Ancamnas is the fusion mortar at the bottom. It can deliver a huge amount of damage. If you take it out soon, the Vespira/Sid should be able to survive longer. Strange that you found it so hard, I never experienced this. What difficulty are you playing at? You can also give orders to your comrades, order one to disarm the Ancamna. But keep an eye on the Salamanca as well, a few fighters have orders to attack her directly.
Thanks for the flowers about the set piece :lol: :yes:
Yeah the Electorns are hard to hit in a dog fight, I gave them a little bit of higher verlocity to make it harder. They take some time to be destroyed. I hope I didn't use them too often because at a certain point they were going on my nerves :P
LOL I didn't recognize the GTVA cap :) But let's just say he aquired it somewhere, he's a strange guy, you know ;)
So thanks for playing and I hope you had fun!
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Hi,
congrats to this campaign :yes:
Unfortunately, I cannot go further when asked to destroy "that" transport. It is stuck at 15%. Using Ubuntu 14.04 64bit ans wxlauncher. Doesn't work with both 3.7.4 and 3.7.5.
Ideas?
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Am I the only one with troubles here? I'm getting error msgs from mission 2 on that it can't find ship classes. I checked this and in mission 3 there is a UEFg Purusha. In bpcomplete, however, there is ony a Purusha (without the UEFg prefix).
:confused:
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Hallo.
@praeseodym:
I use the spoiler so that no one has to read it if he doesn't want to:
Since this mission is just a dream and this happened several years before you play it, you can't destroy the transport because you didn't destroy it completely in the past.
It is guardianed at 15 % and the destruction is not necessary to complete the mission. Shoot it down to this 15 %, then wait what happens ;)
Or did you try this and the mission didn't end itself after the next "events"? I'm trying to figure out if there's a problem in the mission, because no one else reported this until now.
And if you go on with the campaign: Don't wonder, sometimes subsytems or ships are guardianed as well, so try to go on playing, sometimes the problem solves itself :)
@ SF-Junky:
Hallo. Strange, I didn't change anything within the bp ships... if I open FRED and look at the ship list provided by BPcomplete, I have the UEFg Purusha there. Didn't change their name or something. Do you maybe have an older version of BP where the ships was called different? I'm really surprised about this problem...
EDIT: In case anyone else also experiences the problem: I talked with SF-Junky via PM. He had an older version of BP. By replacing the core.vp within the bpcomplete folder with a recent version from the BP-thread linked to above, the problem seems solved. They seem to have renamed the ships in one of the versions, this could have caused the problem. Use a new one, then it should work.
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Alright, so just made an attempt at your campaign, and oh boy I got wrecked. barely scraped through the first mission, second did ok, but the third one totally messed me up with the pulse and AAF beams on the Hyperions. How about beam protecting the player for the disable op? I was completely sent flying, and with the older fighter models, getting out of the dead-zone area is almost impossible, with low boost speed, and these pulses and beams :eek2:
Nitpick. In mission one, GTVA ships do not hail you, do not pursue you. As we know from fall of Artemis station, GTVA exclusively targetted convoys fleeing the area. It does not make any sense to GTVA just ignore a poorly armed convoy now (which makes it a valid military target as per Beta-Aquilae convention.) Suggestion. Maybe make the GTVA arrive a little later, when the Transports are closer to the gate. Or even a little further away. This way pursuing GTVA ships/fighters wouldn't be able to catch up and would simply not bother. But a mention of this would be nice, either from GTVA (comms either coded or decoded about pursuing the freighters), or from the freighters themselves.
Music is a complete chaos (mission 2). You used ambiance music that isn't supposed to be lopped, and the cutoff at the end sounds rather bad in my tastes. Arrival music flags all over the place. Man can't focus on the conversations.
Like others, I've also noticed GTVA helmets on some civies. Was little weird. To stay lore friendly, you could implement some dialog about getting it with some boasting crap bull**** story, or anything to justify him having it, even if not real.
Also. Escort List is a little mess on its own. You shouldn't put non-essential mission ships in there. They might be important story wise, but completely unimportant mission wise, docked away clicks away. Also, putting the wing leader on mission 2 on the escort list would be nice to orient around this target rich environment.
I might be a lill picky, but I've observed the battle in mission 3 between UEF and GTVA.
Ship deployment and formations seem to be left alone to the AI, which does little justice to UEF frigates that specialize on long range engagements. I would certainly not leave any capital ship action to AI. In my humble opinion, AI only manages the FS1 era battles between cruisers that mostly rely on laser batteries. Any other engagement just looks weird IMHO. Ships turn around themselves at weird angles and rarely play to their strengths.
Also. I've noticed that all of GTVA and UEF ships are named unknown. While it might make sense for GTVA ships, that civilian ships can't read through their EM/IFF, that drops little weird on UEF ships. Fleet vessels should have strong IFF identifications, and while civilians wouldn't know much about them in general, Earth produced computers shouldn't have much issues to pick up and read that signal.
Ill surely leave more opinions if I manage to get deeper into your campaign.
EDIT: P.S. Im running the mod fine on a first bpcomplete release that aired. Never got myself to redownload it with all the new patches etc so I guess that isn't a problem. Maybe its some weird FSbuild? Im playing using FS2 Open 3.7.4 (RC2) SSE2.
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So I just went through this. The story was good and following a more 'neutral' side in the conflict struggling with the effects of the war rather than fighting it directly was pretty interesting. The fiction entries and Cbriefs were a good read despite the frequent grammar and spelling errors, which didn't really take me out of the experience too much.
I liked your use of FuryAI with dynamic goals, it's more engaging to fight enemies who fight back and use the same tactics you might instead of just rolling over and letting you shoot them.
That said, I think this campaign had some pretty big flaws on the mission design side. sooo..
WARNING: HARSH CRITICISM BELOW
Your use of guardianing is extremely obvious. Many great campaigns use guardianing to prevent the player from blowing certain ships up but most of them try to hide it much better. 'That transport' goes down to the 15% threshold extremely quickly after you're ordered to shoot it, often leaving you with 30 seconds of nothing to do but watch the scripted sequence. It might've been better if the distance it had to travel was shorter or if the transport started going much faster after being shot at.
You could've also ordered the player to disable it, which would cause the engine failure and the player would be given a hold fire order. Only when it was too late would the player be ordered to destroy it. The scripting would still be obvious if you were trying to make it obvious but for anyone 'playing along' it wouldn't be too jarring.
In Mission 7 the suicide transports warp in too far away and can easily be brought down to the 1% guardian before they collide with the Karuna. You could've made them tougher, faster, or just let them explode and given them a big visual shockwave. That way when you sabotage the Karuna's systems you can claim they got taken out by the shockwave, you don't need to physically ram a ship to deal damage if your transport is filled with explosives.
In that same mission the player is completely invulnerable. I get it, you're sent into a massive furball with tons of enemy fighters and flak everywhere, trying to survive that would be extremely challenging. But maybe if you've designed a mission the player can't survive it would be better to tweak it and give the player more room to do things rather than straight up make them invulnerable.
I've also got some issues with your use of waved attacks and needlessly long missions. Mission 9 for example could be half as long and it would be much better for it. There are long parts where ships just fly to waypoints as you defend them against multiple waves of strikecraft. And at any moment a single mistake can get you killed or get a fragile transport/freighter killed and end the mission. Without checkpoints these long missions just become about very conservative flying and learning where the enemies come from. If you're going to give enemies a weapon like the Dart which has no lockon time, deals really high damage, and can be snapped off at point-blank range for a near instant kill then maybe you don't need quite so many of them. I like the feel of every enemy being potentially lethal just by themselves but that starts to fade when you're just going through multiple waves. You kinda just have to accept that sometimes you'll get instakilled by darts from 100m or less and either never go for close-range dogfights or 'roll the dice'.
And finally, the music. You're using a really good set of tracks from the BP modpack. But you're really heavily overusing the 'big epic battle' tracks. You don't need epic music blazing away as you just fly waypoints. It cheapens the effect of these tracks when they're being constantly used for everything from flying waypoints to just small skirmishes. I think more use of ambient tracks and low-key battle tracks would make moments where that epic music starts up much more effective.
I'm sorry if this comes off as bashing. I understand this is your first campaign and it's pretty good for a first effort. I just wanted to give you some areas where you could improve.
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So, after playing the campaign I can say some things. One of them is that this campaign is really fine, I liked the plot and all of the fiction that you wrote. The missions are also pretty good, especially when you consider that they are the FIRST ones that you made (released).
But to point out some things in the missions themselves:
Mission 1:
Is the music from Freespace 1 deliberately there?
And you've got a pretty strange depart path for the transports... I thought they were going to use the gate.
Mission 2:
The medical vessel screams "we can't take much more" when its hull is at 97%... I suppose it's just a bad choice of words.
And I can hear a message "they're powering up their jump drives" when I'm just finishing the second spyboat...
Mission 3:
For some reason, the boarding transport speeds up to 300+ on its way to dock, not sure what's the problem. I can give a screenshot if necessary.
If you manage to destroy the second cruiser first, the messages get messed up.
Mission 4:
Except the obvious problem with guardianing the transport, I recall there being a funny little side effect before in the mission: When you pounded the transport it got really spinning around. I mean, not a glitch, I think a sort of explosion effect did this, but damn, this looked pretty realistic.
As for the guardianing problem, I have a few options:
a) Make the transport jump in closer to the station, with damaged engines, and when the player is close enough, send the message that they repaired them and are going to dock the station. If properly timed, player shouldn't even have the time to bring it down to around 50%,
b) When the transport's crew starts screaming, you can just lock player's weapons with a message "****... I can't do this. I can't!". And then the transport loses flight control.
And mix it anyhow you like with other options.
Mission 7:
A minor tiny little problem, but the entire drive assembly of the frigate just magically reappears. Is there a way to "extinguish" engine flames? Because it could be of use here.
Mission 10:
Are you anticipating that the Deimos gets disabled? Because I could have tried it...
Now, some other things I noticed:
You could have used the new Apollo model, released recently.
The music problems seem prevalent only if you set a track for fiction viewer, but none for command briefing.
I have a LARGE FPS problem everytime the mission plays out near Enigma... Yea, my PC is pretty bad for such hardcore shadow rendering... but that's 20 FPS with 30% GPU and CPU usage. Anyone could explain? Because I'm kind of puzzled. Maybe MSI Afterburner shows something wrong?
In the third mission, I had a pleasure to watch a refitted Sanctus beat the crap out of two Tev corvettes (Chimera and Bellerophon) on its own. It only needed to not be in their forward cone :P And it was left with 50% HP after the battle...
The player's invulnerability seems to be there in quite a few missions, what for? You've tested how things go and forgot to remove it?
And it also gets a bit annoying at some point - the default loadout is nearly always something useless. Like Scimitars when you have Uriels/Kents. Or an Uhlan with two Vulcans... Come on.
...You also tend to throw really ridiculous amounts of enemies at the player. IIRC, I finished half of the missions with my kill counter nearing 30.
And some tips for the harder missions:
Mission 3: You can actually kill both cruisers. You just need to have a bank of six Paveways and a support ship. The rule is simple: when the first one arrives, be about 3 klicks away from it and have a fine look at its engines. Then just full burn towards it while spamming Paveways at the engine. If the missiles are launched in a way they hit the target roughly at the same moment, it's PD can't really shoot down all of them and usually about two reach the target.
Get the support ship, rearm, repeat with the second cruiser. After that, you've got a lot of time to disarm the beams.
Mission 7:
I suppose the best way to protect all of the transports is to just order everyone to attack any target, and pilot a Kentauroi with some serious close range firepower. My suggestion is Maul + Hellfire. You just need to break down formations of Scimitars (as other fighters aren't that big threat to the transports).
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As an aside, the Sanctus#Mk2 is supremely powerful in its current state and will get a balance pass in the next update.
Cutting down the point defense guns to roughly half, for one.
Likely decreasing the hitpoints, for another.
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Also the next update will probably completely break this mod due to numerous ship renames, subsystem renames and changes, and different assets. So it's going to need another pass to be playable with the next BP patch.
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Wow, a lot of answers in a short time, I'm trying to go through all of this :) But thanks to all of you for your reviews, and first of all: I'm not taking any of this personally, so don't worry, I wanted to have feedback and I don't think that your critics are "bashing". Really, I don't.
@ TheHound:
1. Look at the help provided by MitoPL a few posts below yours. The key in this mission are the Paveways. With them you can stay out of the range of the pulse weapons/flak and take your shots at the beam weapons (recommended to just finish the mission) or as MitoPL said at the engines (for the bonus goal). If you managed to get the Canberra out of the first mission at 100 % hull, you can fly an Uhlan, being able to carry the paveways as well but it might get a little easier this way. So concentrate on the beams, use the paveways. This should help. You can also give additional anti subsystem weapons to your wingmen, what I really recommend! You should change their loadout in the coming missions very often, the standard loadout won't make things easier.
2. The fall of Artemis Station takes place much later. It's 2385, only a few weeks after the GTVA arrived. I don't think that it's logical in a military way to chase every little convoy while you're still trying to gain a foothold in the system. These ships are right now very unimportant for the GTVA, so why bother with them? Your critic might be good if it were later, but not right now. That's why they're leaving you alone, at least until you fly towards them, which you shouldn't ;) I just think everything else would be a waste of military ressources given the current state of the war.
3. The point with the music has been noticed, I know what you mean. I will look into it. The same is with the arrival music.
4. Yeah the cap Nails is wearing... I'll look into it ;)
5. Escort list: You're right, I'll change a few things.
6. M3 battle: Yes, I used the battle just as some background engagement. But since it seems to be so important for some people, I might look into the names of the UEF ships and the behaviour of the capital ships during the battle a bit more. Maybe I can get a better choreography out of it.
EDIT: P.S. Im running the mod fine on a first bpcomplete release that aired. Never got myself to redownload it with all the new patches etc so I guess that isn't a problem. Maybe its some weird FSbuild? Im playing using FS2 Open 3.7.4 (RC2) SSE2.
Well, SF-Junky told me that he got it to work by replacing the core.vp, so I thought it might help others, too.
So, thanks for your feedback and I hope you can enjoy the rest of the campaign. Since you had problems at mission 1, which difficulty are you playing on? I thought 1 was one of the easiest missions, so probably you'll run into trouble if you keep playing on this difficulty level through the whole campaign. From my point of view, playing on medium is challenging. So maybe try 2nd run?
@FrikgFeek:
The fiction entries and Cbriefs were a good read despite the frequent grammar and spelling errors, which didn't really take me out of the experience too much.
Since I'm not a native speaker, I might get a beta tester for future missions to help me out with this.
The guardian problem has been mentioned before, so I will look into this and try to find a "smarter" solution.
The idea with the explosion of the suicide transports in M 7 is quiet good, so maybe I'll use this to make their attack a little bit more "realistic".
As mentioned by MitoPL as well: DAMN! I really forgot to take out the invulnerable flags in M 7 and M 12. This really shouldn't have happened. I will look into this soon and see if I have to rebalance the mission.
Maybe I change the loadout of several enemies because of the dart problem, you're right here. But especially in M 9 there is no real need to defend the Salamanca and the Vespire. Or did you mean M 7 (Sunrise), where you have to escort the Freighters. This mission could be a bit shorter, here you're right.
And I will have a look into the music, maybe I change some tracks.
But thanks for your feedback ;)
@ MitoPL:
M 1: I don't know which music is from FS 1, is that a problem? I just ooked through the various options.
So maybe the transports should depart closer to the gate? I didn't see a problem so far...
M 2: The medical vessel should get another message, you're right. But the spyboats??? How fast were you? I mean they are supposed to be attacked after the wings are gone, so I thought the message would fit.
M 3: I don't know what's causing this high speed of the boarding pod, but I could make it slower with a waypoint and cap-waypoint speed...
I never thought of someone who attacks/destroys the second cruiser first, I'll look into the messages and give them an "or is destroyed" to make it better. You're just acting in unexpected ways :P
M 4: The spinning comes from the ship-maneuver sexp. This was some real hard work to get the movements right, great you appreciate it :)
And thanks for the options, b) is quiet good!
M 7: That's a good question. I'm not that familiar with effects, though...
M 10: Well the destruction is anticipated as another possibility, using the Uriel with the Archer would be the easiest way I guess to disable it, then the Sanctus would do the rest.
The other Apollo model: I remember that I wanted to use it, but had some problems. I'll think about it.
Is there any way to set a music just for the command briefing? I thought using the briefing tab is necessary.
Invulnerability: Was a mistake, will be changed soon.
The loadout: Well the starting ships are the ships they own, so this is their "standard". I thought it would be good for the players to be able to choose from a variety, didn't think that this was so annoying.
The FPS Drop: Well the Enigma missions are the ones with the most objects... This could be a reason, additionally I think there is the biggest collection of asteroids. They seem to be hardware demanding, at least that's my guess.
I didn't think that these were too many enemies/waves. I have the feeling you're just a better palyer than most of us here, since you come up with certain scenarios I didn't anticipate. During my tests, my wingmen were taking out more enemies so I almost never had this high kill count.
Thanks for the information about the coming update and maybe f***ing up the mod when changing things. I'll see if I can get this to work without BP by taking the models/tables and putting it into my mod, just to be safe. Is there a specific date until this should be done?
So thank you all, you're really helping here!
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Ooops, I meant mission 8, where you have to defend some boarding pods and later freighters from waves of fighters that have darts and hellfires. Those things, combined with the flag that lets the AI rapdfire dumbfires makes it a rather difficult mission as only 1 fighter getting through can wreck a fragile boarding pod in 3-4 seconds.
I was on Insane/reality and I was still getting kills into the high 20s or low 30s in the later missions. Some of these missions have quite a few targets.
That's not a bad thing by itself, I mean I got 40 kills in 'Delenda Est', but it starts to become a bit tedious and repetitive when you don't have good 'breakpoints' between large battles but instead have a constant drizzle of waved attacks.
@MitoPL If you've got an AMD card you should turn off shadows if you want decent FPS. For some reason they cause an abysmal FPS drop on AMD hardware, probably because their OGL drivers are crap.
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If you want to just go for the beams on the cruisers, that's the simplest thing on Earth (see what I did there?). Just move to a very narrow cone in front of the cruiser and spam at the beams. I suggest Paveways here too, but Dirk is the second best weapon to hit it, since it has a fairly big range of about 1,5km and does some nice subsystem damage. If you want though you can just get up close and go for primaries and dumbfires. Just watch out for flak on your way out. And take into consideration that the cruiser is moving forward.
As for the battle at Mission 3, since it's only a few weeks into the conflict, I highly doubt that either side had made their military doctrines against each other like we see after the fall of Jupiter. So I suppose that disorganised furball is even not that strange (although I didn't see any Tev fighters).
The way I moved a new Apollo model into my FSPort is just grabbing a proper .pof with maps and replacing them, leaving names of maps unchanged, but changing model name to the old one... That works there perfectly. I suppose the problem could be inside the table file.
The music from Freespace 1 isn't a problem - I just was wondering if it isn't a bug related to my VERY messy mod installation methods. And I *think* that the transports should depart inside the gate. It's a gate! :D
How fast was I with the spyboats? Well, that's thanks to Fury's AI - since I can at least partially trust my wingmen to not just instantly die, what would happen with retail AI, I'm usually taking a few shots at the fighters while I make a fly-by (that usually consists of some hive missile spam) and then go for the vital objective. And after that's done, go to clean up whatever is left in the battlezone. I must admit that wingmen give some nice cover. The same goes for capturing the pirate cruiser, just ignore the fighters (usually dead in like a minute) and disarm the bastard.
Just make a variable like "CruisersOut" with initial value of 0, and just add 1 to it when any of the cruisers jump or explode. And transmit a message based on the variable's value.
The large amount of enemies is... Well, at some point kinda cheap. I mean, both sides of the conflict have limited resources and manpower - look at the situation at Enigma. Some 20ish fighters, nothing spectacular. And the enemy, although reckless and treating people like tools, and supported by GTVA, throws total of hundreds of fighters and dozens of cruisers at Enigma's defenders. Where did they get so much stuff? I understand that the campaign has to have the feeling of being overwhelmed, but I'd expect such waves of everything from Shivans, not people.
I don't say that it's that bad - dogfights in BP aren't boring when compared to typical FS2 escort mission - but kinda illogical.
@FrikgFeek: I also tried this with shadows off. The FPS gain is visible, but not big. About 5 average. I feel like I should have tested it with a non-PBR build or some settings toned down, but meh. Too lazy.
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FrikgFeeK:
Ooops, I meant mission 8, where you have to defend some boarding pods and later freighters from waves of fighters that have darts and hellfires. Those things, combined with the flag that lets the AI rapdfire dumbfires makes it a rather difficult mission as only 1 fighter getting through can wreck a fragile boarding pod in 3-4 seconds.
Yeah I should look at the loadout of the fighters, maybe I should give them more Javelins, they don't do that much damage to freighters and can't be fired that quickly...
MitoPL:
As for the battle at Mission 3, since it's only a few weeks into the conflict, I highly doubt that either side had made their military doctrines against each other like we see after the fall of Jupiter. So I suppose that disorganised furball is even not that strange (although I didn't see any Tev fighters).
Well I could do a little choreography here, though it should be a bit of chaos, I think so, too. There actually are a few fighters for both sides, maybe the fighters of one side got shot down early on...
The large amount of enemies is... Well, at some point kinda cheap. I mean, both sides of the conflict have limited resources and manpower - look at the situation at Enigma. Some 20ish fighters, nothing spectacular. And the enemy, although reckless and treating people like tools, and supported by GTVA, throws total of hundreds of fighters and dozens of cruisers at Enigma's defenders. Where did they get so much stuff? I understand that the campaign has to have the feeling of being overwhelmed, but I'd expect such waves of everything from Shivans, not people.
I don't say that it's that bad - dogfights in BP aren't boring when compared to typical FS2 escort mission - but kinda illogical.
You have a point here, maybe I should look into the battle for Enigma as well, trying to make it a bit better with less cruisers etc ;)
EDIT: The first updated version has been released: Several suggestions were implemented (including the "invulnerable player" in M 7 and M 12).
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Played through this and this was really great. Had a lot of fun.
More of a technical question. I took a look at some of the missions and the Fiction Briefing section. What song is Fiction 3? The really somber one, can't get it out of my head and wanted to ask. Also I tried looking but I didn't see a music file in your VP so I dunno where it's pulling it from.
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Hello and thank you for your kind words.
I'm sorry but I don't know the answer. The mod is based on Blue Planet, that's also where most of the songs are coming from. I just took it from the drop down menu when I created the missions and liked the song, too. When you have a look at the Wiki entry about Blue Planet, you can see that Belisarius is responsible for the music of the mod. So maybe ask him :)
Cheers!
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Fiction 3 is "War in Heaven" by Belisarius and yes it is a great track.
Probably my favourite one done by him.
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Finally started my playthrough. So far, after first mission I found no significant bugs. Good narrative, decent character development and good balance are worth mentioning. Definitly something worth to continue playing :).
Also I remember I played it before. Did you release any demo or something like this before? I'm not sure.
And new version is up. I'll update and keep going!
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Yes, he did release a demo. It was about 4 or 5 missions long.
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Hey, thanks for your feedback. Yes, the first 5-6 mission were already released in a WIP-thread (though without finishing touch), but on the story-side I didn't change much in them.
Greetings!
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Ok, seriously. Not enough people are paying attention to this campaign. NOT. NEARLY. ENOUGH.
This was seriously good, bomb3rman! I love a good story, and this campaign had that in spades. You really thought out each of the characters in detail, and it made for a very immersive experience. I also really liked having to work with a more restricted set of equipment and have to get inventive to make good use of it. We've gotten used to battles where cruisers are tossed in as chaff of minor consequence while the heavy hitters do their business. In this campaign, with no Super Destroyers or SSJs breaking down the door, it felt a lot more like every ship mattered. Every loss mattered, even down to a lousy Apollo! But I never felt like my wings were clipped, either.
There was one mission that seemed to glitch a bit for me. The one where the Invictus first appears and Sid dies. For some reason, two tracks of music were playing simultaneously. And the first time I played it, I was shooting the crap out of one of the boarding pods, but it was having no effect at all. The double music problem never went away, but the invincible boarding pod thing went away after I rebooted FSO.
What surprised me even more was how effectively your writing style dovetailed into that of Blue Planet. I was honestly expecting the difference to be kind of jarring. To me, at least, it wasn't at all. It fits really well with what's already been released.
Just, everyone stop what you are doing and PLAY THIS CAMPAIGN! You can thank me latter.:yes: :yes: :yes:
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Wow, thank you for your kind words :cool:
The boarding-pod issue is strange, I never experienced this... Maybe it was a one-time problem, since no one else mentioned this before.
The double-music problem is already known, I now realised it, too. Maybe it has to do with the red-alert status of the mission. Since I'm trying to get into the ship-save-script right now, I might change the mission to be not "red alert" in a future update so the problem will be solved then. But thank you for telling me.
Greetings,
Bomb3rman
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First of all, when i finished playing this campaign i said "That was a very awesome campaign!"
Here's my review:
I really loved playing in the point of view of a merely normal ex-military pilot, it leaves aside the typical "chosen one" protagonist POV (or the chosen one that don't want to follow his destiny), it even leaves aside the typical new military pilot POV of the original games and personally i relate more to a civil type of character, making me more involved with the story.
The limited loadout and ships to use also makes me feel the very limited logistical background and because of that is a must to choose selectively the weapons and ships of the squadrons and give them orders in-mission accordingly, also it was a pretty good detail the fact that any additional effort in fulfilling the bonus objectives come with the prize of new ships and weapons to choose, things that are insignificant in a normal military context because your superiors gives to you new equipment without any extra effort.
I liked a lot how you sticked to the Blue Planet lore, trying to use the unused assets and respecting the timeline of the events (i loved seeing for the first time the Sanctus MK2 and the Karuna MK2 in-game) and even trying to make a parallel story without affecting the events of the main story of the universe.
The character development is good, i also liked the development of the friendships of the protagonist, those very informal conversations gives an interesting change to the strictly military chatters of the original game.
Also, i think the choice of a second person narrative after and before the missions was very good, it's sounds strange in a book novel, but in a game it's fit perfectly IMO, because actually you are the protagonist.
And while it's true that in the last missions the story turns into a guerrilla warfare and winning it or not wouldn't make any significant change in the UEF-GTVA war, the emotional attachment that i felt in that stage was so good that i also wanted revenge against DuValle at any cost, the ending was superb (maybe a slightly cliche with the speech of "your friends will be always with you", but really i couldn't have done it better by myself, so i'm not really in a position to criticize that)
Now... talking about flaws in technical details of the missions, i've noticed these:
1. In Treasure Hunt II and Evidence, the briefing music keeps playing alongside the in-mission music.
2. In Sunrise, the Akebono's engines got all destroyed when it's hit by the shuttles, but magically all re-appears when her engines are repaired, it's a purely aesthetic detail (and considering the limitations of the engine i think there is not much that can be done for a visible reparation process) but maybe it may seem more realistic if only two engines get destroyed and the other two simply get turned off (if i recall correctly this can be done via SEXP) to then turn them on when the Akebono jumps, again, it's just a aesthetic detail.
3. In all missions where the Apollos are present in a squadron, their icons don't appear in the ship/loadout selection, however i can change their loadouts but not the ships.
Anyway, none of these disrupted my gameplay, and i'm not sure if the culprit are my files for the 1st and the 3rd (i have played with the 3.8.0 release and latest bpcomplete at the moment i'm writing this)
In general i felt the missions balance good (maybe Sunrise is a slightly hard, but if that was your intention then that's ok)
To end my review i only have one more thing to say... i want a sequel please :D! i'm available to be a betatester if you want because it's hard to me to find a game (belonging or not to the space simulation genre) with a story similar to this mod, it's even difficult to me to find a series, movie, comic/manga or novel book of that type!
By the way, i tried to play the campaign via Knossos but it doesn't appear in the in-game list of campaigns when the mod is started (i have checked the file integrity and it tells me that everything is ok)
P.S. English it's not my first language, excuse me if i speak it bad (i will appreciate any corrections to my grammar)
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Hello kaptein,
thank you for your review! It's good to see that you liked the way I tried to form the characters and give them some life and background.
1. The briefing music seems to be a known issue with the "red alert" status. In a future update, the red-alert status will be replaced by using a ship-save script, so this problem will be gone when I find the time ro rework FaF 1.
2. Yes that's an idea I might think of. Not destroying all of the engines but instead deactivating the thruster status of some of them might work.
3. Ooops, I forgot to lock the weapons of these squadrons. I locked the ships so you can't see the icons/ships (i.e. Gamma wing in M 3 (The Bait), but not the weapons. My idea is to let you just chose the weapons of the Flying Pumpkins, so the others should be locked. This will come on my list :)
So first of all thanks for the helpful review.
I'm ashamed to tell you that this isn't on Knossos because I seem to be too stupid to upload the files. Didn't work when I tried it... After a revision, I will try this again. But if you know how this can be done feel free to upload it to Knossos (or anyone else).
I created the campaign with 3.7.4, but it's good to hear that there are no major issues with 3.8.0. The things you mentioned are not because of the versions, to clarify this. They are because of bugs/my mistakes during fredding.
Well it's nice to hear that you're interested in betatesting. I could really use another betatester once the sequel is ready. I think I am going to "split" the next campaign to enable betatesting for this part and can stat working on the second half. FaF 2 is getting much longer, but the first ~ 16 missions will be done within the next 2 months (13 are already done, just a few more to finish chapter 1). These missions will then be put together for a campaign file and sent to the betatesters. So if you wish I will come and talk to you once this is done and you can decide if you still want to help. During the next 8 weeks I won't have much time due to a pending exam I have to write, but after May 16th, there's plenty of time :)
But be warned, FaF 2 might take a huge step away from the Blue Planet universe ;)
And since I'm not a native speaker myself, my english really isn't better than yours :P
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FaF 2 is getting much longer, but the first ~ 16 missions will be done within the next 2 months (13 are already done, just a few more to finish chapter 1).
GET
FRICKING
HYPE!!!
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:lol:
And by the way: Thanks to the person who uploaded this on Knossos :)
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Ok bomb3rman! whenever you want send me a PM, I would enjoy my spare time testing your content :).
So if Gamma wing is not a wing customizable by the player you could also consider to simply don't make it appear in the ship selection (I mean, like others friendly wings besides Beta in-game)
And the sequel will consist of multiple chapters? well, take the time you consider necessary to do it, I know that the process of FREDding elaborated missions is long... but the wait is worth it, BTW I share this opinion about that:
GET
FRICKING
HYPE!!!
Also I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one here with a non-fluent English, because actually I started visiting this community since a long time, but just now I created a account to participate a bit and try to improve my English in the process (and I hope someday be able to make a retribution of all the hours of quality gaming with something of my own creation!).
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Hey kaptein.
The problem is that I wanted to have this wing appear in the HUD. and this is only possible with Alpha to Epsilon Wing. Wings with other names don't appear there.
And the sequel will consist of multiple chapters?
There will be one campaign file. I'm using a lot of campaign and player persistent variables that aren't carried over if I create Campaign A for chapter 1 and Campaign B for chapter 2. The chapter is just a good word for an internal "break" between two "highlights/parts" of the story. But to make betatesting easier, I will finish chapter 1 and send it to the people who are interested. Then I'll start work on chapter 2 (aka the other ~ 15 missions). It is just easier this way to keep fredding and let people test the first part at the same time. Finally, all missions will be put in 1 campaign file.
whenever you want send me a PM, I would enjoy my spare time testing your content
Good to know, so you will hear from me some time after May ;)
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Hey kaptein.
The problem is that I wanted to have this wing appear in the HUD. and this is only possible with Alpha to Epsilon Wing. Wings with other names don't appear there.
And the sequel will consist of multiple chapters?
There will be one campaign file. I'm using a lot of campaign and player persistent variables that aren't carried over if I create Campaign A for chapter 1 and Campaign B for chapter 2. The chapter is just a good word for an internal "break" between two "highlights/parts" of the story. But to make betatesting easier, I will finish chapter 1 and send it to the people who are interested. Then I'll start work on chapter 2 (aka the other ~ 15 missions). It is just easier this way to keep fredding and let people test the first part at the same time. Finally, all missions will be put in 1 campaign file.
whenever you want send me a PM, I would enjoy my spare time testing your content
Good to know, so you will hear from me some time after May ;)
Assuming that we will still be civilians in the misdst of the gtva-uef war, will there be more variety of pilotable civilian ships asidr from the usual scimitar and claymores?
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I don't want to spoil too much of the story right now, but the short answer is: Yes, there will be several other ships that are flyable (and buyable). Just think more of a mercenary role than a civilian role for the characters in FaF 2.
Long answer: If you combine the events at the beginning of Age of Aquarius and my question asked here https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=93382.0 (https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=93382.0), you might get an idea of things that might happen. Wherever these people are going, there they will find other ships ;)
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I think my guess is very probably a spoiler by itself, so...
It seems almost obvious that the rest of the story will happen beyond Sol (now I understand what you mean with a huge step away from the Blue Planet universe), if you accept suggestions, I think it will be interesting to see the Post-Capella consequences in GTVA space according to the Blue Planet lore, especially from the particular POV of the characters.
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Maybe, maybe not ;) Well, if you are going to be a betatester, you'll be one of the first to find out :)
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I don't want to spoil too much of the story right now, but the short answer is: Yes, there will be several other ships that are flyable (and buyable). Just think more of a mercenary role than a civilian role for the characters in FaF 2.
Long answer: If you combine the events at the beginning of Age of Aquarius and my question asked here https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=93382.0 (https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=93382.0), you might get an idea of things that might happen. Wherever these people are going, there they will find other ships ;)
Sound like we may see more fs2 era ships then? Sweet.
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The difficulty seems like a massive jump from what I'm used to, I died 5 times in the first mission trying to engage the pirate fighters alone. The enemies feel a lot tougher and you don't really have the DPS weapons (hellfires, rapiers) to kill them quickly enough before they all gang up on you.
The salvage and persistence mechanics are real good! There's some great potential in these if you're considering a sequel.
In M2 when I'm supposed to attack the pirate spyboats your friendly wingmen don't actually do anything and you can't order them to attack the spyboat.
Is it really necessary to have the ship prefixes (GTCv, UEFg, etc) in front of ship names?
It's actually really hard to kill that transport during the flashback sequence. I was hammering away with all my primaries and hellfires but it kept getting away and giving me the fail state. Maybe put it further away so I can get to it faster?
I really don't like the bit in Treasure Hunt where you have to actually land your ship. I took ~60% hull damage just trying to find out where I'm actually supposed to land and then 20% more in the next mission crashing into the hull while launching. It's a cool concept and I can understand why you did it but FSO really doesn't do collisions or tight spaces well enough for it to be viable.
I liked the story and characters - classic revenge story.
Overall there's a lot of good stuff here, the gameplay's enjoyable and it's technically quite well executed. Just one request: Give me more hellfires!
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Hello JSRNerdo,
I'm pretty sure you played the version 1.0, not the updated 1.1. I reworked mission 01 to make it a bit easier (no dumbfire missiles for the enemies for example). You also can order your wingmen to help you in this mission. The most difficult part is to survive the initial engagement where both groups are flying on each other. This is pretty hard without your wingmen occupying some of the pirates.
I also reworked M 04 (the flashback/dream), but also in the initial release you couldn't kill the transport. Since this is a dream sequence about things that already happened long ago, you can't change the outcome. The fail state of the directive is intended to be there :)
The salvage and persistence mechanics are real good! There's some great potential in these if you're considering a sequel.
Well except the salvage mission I dnd't really use variables in this campaign. The additional ships you could find by achieving the bonus goals were activated by the goals giving you an additional +1 on a certain ship in the loadout screen. But the sequel will use the persistence mechanics by giving you more money for bonus goals (and this is used to buy additional equipment). But I'm glad you liked it :)
In M2 when I'm supposed to attack the pirate spyboats your friendly wingmen don't actually do anything and you can't order them to attack the spyboat.
Since Arctic is the wing leader in this mission, he's the one giving orders. The attack on the spyboats was an idea to test if I could bring the results to a later mission. I was new to FRED and experimenting. If you don't kill them in M02, they will arrive in M03 making it a bit harder to protect your boarding pod, but all in all it's not that of a big deal if you don't manage to kill them both. Someone also said that he just concentrated on the spyboats first and, after they were killed, headed over to support the medical frigate.
Is it really necessary to have the ship prefixes (GTCv, UEFg, etc) in front of ship names?
Definitely not. In the sequel, the prefixes are deleted (and will be after reworking this campaign).
I really don't like the bit in Treasure Hunt where you have to actually land your ship. I took ~60% hull damage just trying to find out where I'm actually supposed to land and then 20% more in the next mission crashing into the hull while launching. It's a cool concept and I can understand why you did it but FSO really doesn't do collisions or tight spaces well enough for it to be viable.
I might put the navpoint somewhere saver. Though I didn't find it that hard nor did someone else say something about it.
Overall there's a lot of good stuff here, the gameplay's enjoyable and it's technically quite well executed. Just one request: Give me more hellfires!
Good to hear, and yes, maybe I'll look into the loadout again ;)
So thanks for the reply, glad you enjoyed most of it :)
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Actually, you can fiddle with names of wings visible on your HUD in Mission Specs -> Custom Wing Names.
My suggestion on prefixes is to leave them for military vessels, but remove them for any civilian ships. I mean, they are there to indicate belonging to military, right?
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I always had my problems with the long prefixes in the escort list. Having a UEFg XXX... there always hid half of the name.
I nowadays tend to show the specific class (or something comparable like "heavy cruiser", "light carrier" etc. in "Alt. Name" of the ship. If there is no specific person involved who's name will be displayed there.
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After all the recent good press, I thought I should give this a go. I'm really enjoying it! I don't know how far in I am percentage wise (we just rescued the UEF Frigate and brought it home), but so far it's been really fun - some genuine surprises that have left big goofy grins on my face. :)
I'm less fussed than others about the ship prefixes, since I use them myself. If I had any commentary, it would be some small language issues, which you're well aware of, and a few missions where checkpoints would be extremely welcome. Any time I have to do something boring like flying waypoints to hear exposition, or difficult and somewhat chance dependent (like defending a convoy) I'd like the opportunity to skip it the second time if there's still plenty of mission after that.
Otherwise though, really well put together. I've not encountered any bugs (except occasionally seeing Hygeia support ships, but that was in a mission where during other playthroughs I'd gotten a UEF support ship, so I think that's an engine bug rather than on your end), and the difficulty has been a little spiky, but otherwise a nice challenge. A few missions have needed some replays, but never to the point where my frustration even came close to overwhelming my desire to keep playing. Looking forward to finishing the campaign, and to chapter two.
Well done!
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Hey Black Wolf,
glad to hear hat you're enjoying it so far. Yes, there will be some checkpoints implemented in a future update. I just didn't know how to implement them when I finished the campaign. But one day, they will be there :p
The problem with the support ships might get solved by using the "set-support-ship"-sexp to prevent a Hygeia from appearing on screen.
So I hope you're enjoying the rest of the missions, too. :)
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I am missing ESFG Clarkston, with an Ulysses in its place. I could work with this error in earlier missions, but can't anymore when I have to protect it. My config is
fs2_open_3_8_0_SSE2.exe -mod "FaF,bpcomplete,MediaVPs_2014"
-ambient_factor 75 -spec_exp 11 -spec_point 0.6 -spec_static 0.8 -spec_tube 0.4 -ogl_spec 60
The advice posted earlier in this thread did not help. What can i do?
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This is strange. Are you sure you've downloaded/ you already have the Blue Planet version posted at the beginning of this thread? And did you delete the older version? I'm asking because maybe if you have both, the launcher maybe might not get the right version for my campaign (just a guess...).
I used the Purusha (Clarkstown) from BP but didn't change anything to it. So the problem must be within your BP-folder...
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I will try to reinstall it. Thank you for the reply.
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You're welcome. Hope it works for you. If not, tell me and maybe we'll find a way to solve this.
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Getting an error trying to run the game after the Knossos 0.12.2 update and the recent Media VPs 3.8 update. I click play and get:
"Friends and Foes Retribution (1.1.0-REPACK) requires "FSO" which has conflicting requirements:>=3.8.0-2 (Friends and Foes), ==3.8.0-2(Blue Planet Complete),>=3.8.1-20180811 (MediaVPs)
It was running fine before those 2 updates.
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Getting an error trying to run the game after the Knossos 0.12.2 update and the recent Media VPs 3.8 update. I click play and get:
"Friends and Foes Retribution (1.1.0-REPACK) requires "FSO" which has conflicting requirements:>=3.8.0-2 (Friends and Foes), ==3.8.0-2(Blue Planet Complete),>=3.8.1-20180811 (MediaVPs)
It was running fine before those 2 updates.
I got this myself...revert back to a 3.8.1 FSO build with ALL mods you use. That should fix the issue. It seems to me MVPs 3.8.1 only likes FSO 3.8.1 for some reason...could be a knossos thing
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I got this myself...revert back to a 3.8.1 FSO build with ALL mods you use. That should fix the issue. It seems to me MVPs 3.8.1 only likes FSO 3.8.1 for some reason...could be a knossos thing
Unfortunately, that's not possible because BP is locked to 3.8.0-2. Until the BP team fixes this, it is impossible to play this mod (or BP or any mod that relies on BP) with the 3.8 MVPs on Knossos. For now, the uploader of this mod should change the MVPs dependency to 3.7.2 and make sure that "Allow newer versions" is unchecked.
As for why MVPs 3.8 requires a nightly, I don't know the specific reason (talk to Mjn) but it's not just for Knossos. It's the same in game_settings.tbl.
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Hey guys.
Since I was too stupid to upload this to Knossos, someone else did. I guess he's the one who should change the MVPs dependency to 3.7.2 and make sure that "Allow newer versions" is unchecked (or anyone else).
In a future version, this mod will not depend on BP anymore. But right now, my employee has sent me to another city to work there as from October 1st, so I'm quiet busy right now with organizing stuff and finding a new place to live. But since I was working on FaF2 before and managed to get this to work without BP, this will absolutely happen to this mod, too. It just will take some time...
But as it seems, I will live alone during the week again after October, 1st. This means a lot of free evenings and time to FRED :P
If you can't get it to work with knossos, maybe try to download manually and play with the wxlauncher. This way it should work since the mod still has the dependency with 3.7.2.
Cheers!
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So this made its way onto knossos once again and I decided to fire it up again. However, there was a MASSIVE amount of warnings. Attached is a debug...hope you see this and try to fix things
[attachment eaten by a Shivan]
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So this made its way onto knossos once again and I decided to fire it up again. However, there was a MASSIVE amount of warnings. Attached is a debug...hope you see this and try to fix things
Well, your posted log is about Between the Ashes.
This mod seems to have some model errors in general. But they seem to kick-in in Debug Builds only.
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So this made its way onto knossos once again and I decided to fire it up again. However, there was a MASSIVE amount of warnings. Attached is a debug...hope you see this and try to fix things
Well, your posted log is about Between the Ashes.
This mod seems to have some model errors in general. But they seem to kick-in in Debug Builds only.
I could have sworn I posted a debug on F&F:R...I will post it again
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Here it is...I think I forgot to run the debug in F&F
[attachment eaten by a Shivan]
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Because of BP Complete you need a newer build than 3.8.0.
So play it with Nightlies or the new RC one.
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Because of BP Complete you need a newer build than 3.8.0.
So play it with Nightlies or the new RC one.
I just found out the resolution was right under my nose the whole time...I didn't have knossos display the different builds in the mod lists. Thanks for the help either way
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I'm getting a weird error when I try to install the campaign from Knossos. "A critical error has occurred! Knossos might not work correctly until you restart it. The error has been reported and will hopefully be fixed soon."
The only other time I've ever gotten this error was when trying to install "The Mantle."
I'm running this from Linux Mint. May have something to do with it? I'm honestly not sure if I should be posting this here or in the Knossos release thread.
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Hey guys, sorry for answering so late, but life is keeping me really busy right now.
So THX Novachen for answering here. Hope it works for you now, CapellaGoBoom...
@ perihelion: Since I have absolutely no clue about linux, I'm not sure if I can be a great help here. Maybe Knossos release thread is a better option?
For everyone who's interested: This mod is NOT dead, I learned a lot about Fredding the last months and will go and fix minor errors of this mod in the future, as well as keep working on the successor. But since I'm becoming a father the 2nd time in a few months from now, we're moving into a bigger house soon and the new job still taking a lot of time, it might take until the middle of 2020 until I can free up enough time to work on it on a greater scale.
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Maybe a video play through could rouse up interest?
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I'm sure a video playthrough would be welcome~
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Friends and foes got featured on SGJ's month of freespace 2, which is a good starting point. Hopefully will interest more people into playing the mod
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Oh this is so cool ;7
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In the mission file 7-Sunrise, the Akebono's class is given as "UEFg Karuna MK2", which causes the mission to not load
or an error message when the subsystem "rotatora" isn't found on the Ulysses she defaults to.
Setting the class to "UEFg Karuna" fixed that. I've attached the patched vp, if someone could re-upload it?
[attachment eaten by a Shivan]
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Mhh.. that is actually a tricky one. Because there is a Karuna MK2 in Blue Planet Complete. But it is not called so in the tables (anymore?). The ship class is called Karuna#MK2 actually.
I am really not sure if this one should be a Karuna MK2 or Karuna MK1 in the campaign. Because the Akebono is a Karuna MK1 in the fourth mission only, but it is classified as MK2 in mission 7 and 12...
EDIT:
After i took a look in some other data i got from bomb3rman a while ago, i am quite certain now, that the Akebono is intended to be a Karuna#MK2.
EDIT2:
Uploaded the Karuna fix.
As the manual installation version from the opening post is based upon an older Blue Planet Complete version, you also can still download manually in the BPC release thread, this fix should not be really needed for the mod.ini version.
If i am wrong, you can post a reply and i will offer a manual downloadable patch aswell for the time being until the next official release of F&FR.
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Thank you, Novachen, for your Support. Looks like an updated version of blue Planet complete is giving some trouble here. During the next week, i will try to create a non-bp-dependant version. This might rise up the size of the download, but most of the problems should be gone after that.
And yeah, the Akebono was intended to be an MK2. (though right now I'm a bit unsure if the MK2s were already available that early in the war... But hey, artistic freedom, I guess).
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I just tried running this campaign with FSO 19.0, MVPs 4.2.2, and the latest Blue Planet version, and got spit out during the first briefing with the following error message:
Could not load in 2_CommandBrief-mb!
File: window.cpp
Line: 81
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Debug log please.
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https://fsnebula.org/log/5eab33f6cb0d3321b2c98654
Thanks!
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Apparently no MVPs are being loaded. Most likely the mods settings are wrongly configured on Knossos by the person who uploaded it there.
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It wasn't me, though....
Could you try to install it by hand? Description is in the first post
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This issue came up on discord again. Looks like the issue is that in the knossos mod.json file, the mod_flag section which specifies load order doesn't have an entry for the MVPs. Add that in, it runs again. Lots of warnings though. The other problem is that by default Knossos thinks the last number in a version requirement is harmless bugfixes, so while the file specifies BPC 1.0.6 it will load the latest 1.0.X it has, which is bad. I can hand-edit it to require 1.0.6 but I bet it needs a specific MVP version too to work right.
If someone can tell me which version is stable for this mod(EDIT: I did the smart thing eventually and read the first post, will proceed with 3.7.2) , I can punch that in and attach a mod.json file for future players to use. It's not ideal for people to be messing with that themselves, but if the mod isn't working to begin with, I don't see much harm.
EDIT: Attached now is a working mod.json inside a zip file. Extract that file and put it the directory knossos creates for FriendsandFoes-1.1.1. In order for this to work you will either need BPC 1.0.6 and MVPS 3.7.2 installed already, or you will need to tell it to download them manually. You can this by finding each mod in the explore tab, clicking the "DETAILS" button, and then using the dropdown menu near the to left to select a specific version. Then even if you have a more recent version the install button will become available. Use that to grab each, and once they're downloaded you should be able to launch Friends and Foes.
Be sure to restart your knossos after putting in the new mod.json file or the changes won't take effect, though.
The result still generates some warnings in debug mode that are a bit concerning to me, but I don't have any familiarity with the mod so I can't take it further than that.
EDIT 2: See Mito's post below for a more complete effort.
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welp it works up until i begin the first mission after which it crashes.
The fast debugger thing feeds me this
Warning: Couldn't load effect 'exp05a' for weapon 'RFaCAP'.
File: weapons.cpp
Line: 1647
I assume that the civilian transports are carrying tables. Isn't modding wonderful
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Playing on debug builds isn't recommended unless you want to debug the campaign yourself. This shouldn't be a problem on normal builds.
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Eh, it is a shame that this mod became unmaintained. While not necessarily very polished (or actually prepared well for a Knossos release, it seems) it definitely has an interesting plot and some neat mission design.
Also, uh, the release post specifies Blue Planet Complete (I presume 1.0.0 or 1.0.1 would be the proper version), FSO 3.7.4 and MVPS 2014. I'll try out this combo.
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Double-posting because important.
Okay, so I was right, and now after a quick modification of the mod.json, it works and I've quickly verified that it's possible to enter the three first missions without any crashing. Download the fixed file here (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/223511363807346691/713115755310350416/mod.json). In order to install it, just find the friends and foes directory in your mod library, and replace the old mod.json with this one. Then restart/reload Knossos and try it out.
It seems like it can function fine with recent FSO builds (done my testing on 20.1.0-20200511 nightly), so I've decided to leave the FSO requirement there as it was originally.
Also, if you're somehow trying to launch this mod with a debug build, don't. I've spent like ten minutes just clicking through the warnings showing upon mission load :P . See for yourself! (https://fsnebula.org/log/5ec6d9cfcb0d3321b0c9865c)
I'm leaving this here for now, and I'm going to try and bother whoever has dev access to this mod on Knossos to upload a new update with fixed dependencies. Maybe also some minor fixes to the warnings popping up, who knows?
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If i understand this topic and the description on Knossos right, Novachen seem to have maintained this one. And right now she has much bigger personal problems than mods.
At least she announced that on her Freespace2 related twitter (https://twitter.com/NovachenFS2/status/1248705049435475970).
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Hello guys,
sorry for answering so late.
YES, the newer versions of BP give this mod some trouble. I did not upload this to Knossos, though, so I can't fix the problems that are related to this.
But there is a workaround to get this playable again manually:
You need:
1. Use FS2 Open 3.7.4. or a newer version.
2. The Mod itself (Download link on first page or here): http://www.mediafire.com/file/yx5ep9qj0mrggwq/Friends_and_Foes.rar (http://www.mediafire.com/file/yx5ep9qj0mrggwq/Friends_and_Foes.rar)
3. Blue Planet complete, older version: Download-Link for the older version: http://www.mediafire.com/folder/6lmw0ioq6ynvl/bpcomplete
(http://www.mediafire.com/folder/6lmw0ioq6ynvl/bpcomplete)Download the necessary files and put them into a folder in your Freespace 2 directory. Name the folder "bpcomplete".
4. As it is needed for Blue Planet: The MediaVPs 2014: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=86475.0 (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=86475.0)
5. Extract the RAR-file from FaF and put the "Friends and Foes"-Folder within your Freespace 2 folder.
Then use your launcher (I recommend the wxlauncher, http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=67950.0 (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=67950.0)) and activate the "Friends and Foes"-Mod. The bpmod and the MediaVPs 2014 should automatically be activated with it.
Then start the game, go to the campaign room and activate "Friends and Foes".
Cheers! Feel free to ask questions if something is unclear.
EDIT: @MitoPL: Thanks for your help with the .json files!
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How to do that in Knossos? There, FaF installs the latest version of BP or asks for it as dependency. It also uses the latest MediaVPs 4.2.3
Thanks in advance.
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Please do not use Knossos for this. It has to be installed manually, since the dependencies are wrong and producing errors. I didn't put it on Knossos so I can't fix this.
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I remember when I first installed FaF searching (luckily) for the old BP files. And they worked.
Who uploaded FaF to Knossos? Maybe that person can bring those dependecies in line?! Of course, there is no option to install the old BP in Knossos
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Please do not use Knossos for this. It has to be installed manually, since the dependencies are wrong and producing errors. I didn't put it on Knossos so I can't fix this.
My modified mod.json file: Am I a joke to you?
:P
I believe the Knossos Friends and Foes upload was made by Novachen, who seems to be currently away from this community.
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Please do not use Knossos for this. It has to be installed manually, since the dependencies are wrong and producing errors. I didn't put it on Knossos so I can't fix this.
My modified mod.json file: Am I a joke to you?
:P
I believe the Knossos Friends and Foes upload was made by Novachen, who seems to be currently away from this community.
Oops :D
Ok, to make this clear: It works with my stuff manually or with the knossos files AND the modified mod.json-file from MitoPL!
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Got it, sorry. Installing BP 1.0.1 additionally from the BP complete entry in Knossos does the trick.
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Well... as i even mentioned myself in the Knossos description as uploader and do not watch all threads here all the time, especially at the middle of the year because of personal corona tragedy, someone had could simple message me nevertheless and so to inform me, that my knossos release did not worked at all?
Where was the problem in that? :confused:
Without any information via PM, Tweet or whatever, it is hard to know in general, that something is wrong next to the fact that was already mentioned in the description in terms of Model and Effect errors under Debug Builds. :rolleyes:.
But Version 1.1.3 fixed all of this now. So there should not be any error message with current MVP and BPC.
So every faulty F&F aswell BPC Models were fixed and corrected.
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Hate to necro, but is there any chance this could get an update to be compatible with the latest MVPs and BPC release?
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Well, if i am able to get back to the FreeSpace stuff after i overcome all the job and personal issues i can look for it.
However, this may take until March, though.