Author Topic: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency  (Read 290961 times)

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Offline Terashell

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
CP, love the campaign...
Spoiler:
Except for the stealth missions...  I'm a fighter pilot, not a ninja.  I'm used to destroying my objectives, not sneaking over to sniff out com frequencies and then run like hell away from everything.

Example? It took me 37 tries to scan the Lucifer in FS1.  And the time I finally did, I was at 4% hull strength, minimal rear shielding, and barely jumped out with my hide...

Why does everyone condone these as "fun" and "exciting"?

Looking forward to my eventual defeat of this game!

 

Offline CP5670

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Yes, most people seem to have liked those missions, although as you said, the gameplay style they call for is quite different from the standard combat missions. If you have trouble with them, you can turn down the difficulty to make them dramatically easier. There are only two of them in any case. I mainly just intended them to add a bit of variety to the campaign, and certain aspects of the story needed them to be presented effectively.
« Last Edit: October 08, 2007, 11:46:25 pm by CP5670 »

 

Offline Terashell

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Heh, difficulty slider is already on Very Easy... I don't usually play any higher since I get the same story no matter what <.<

 

Offline Snail

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
They're exciting, but only if you are reasonably good at them. They make my heart beat faster than in a combat mission. They're a lot more thrilling and I feel more like I have mad skillz when I complete one.

 

Offline Cobra

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
I finished the first stealth mission on my first try, but couldn't do it afterwards, just like me trying to play FS2 on insane and being insanely crappy.
To consider the Earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field of millet, only one grain will grow. - Metrodorus of Chios
I wept. Mysterious forces beyond my ken had reached into my beautiful mission and energized its pilots with inhuman bomb-firing abilities. I could only imagine the GTVA warriors giving a mighty KIAAIIIIIII shout as they worked their triggers, their biceps bulging with sinew after years of Ivan Drago-esque steroid therapy and weight training. - General Battuta

 

Offline ShivanSpS

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
I just wanted to say something, i really like the way that turrets works and fire in this mod, none have think about adding this as a "improvement" to the retail? because it should be.

 

Offline CP5670

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
There have been some mods like that released in the past (I seem to remember one in Sandwich's signature), but they change the game balance significantly and I think they would really only work if the missions are designed from the ground up with the modified turrets taken into account.

 

Offline MP-Ryan

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I didn't want to necro' the PI release thread.

I've (not)attached [due to the upload folder being full] a screenshot of an odd visual effect that I've seen in a couple PI missions (notably 14b).  TThere is a golden sphere that looks out of place, specifically resulting from the file planetn in the PImain.vp file.

When I preview planetn in VP view, I see the same effect.

I just want to make sure this is how this is supposed to look.  Otherwise, there's a olid gold planet in my PI install.
"In the beginning, the Universe was created.  This made a lot of people very angry and has widely been regarded as a bad move."  [Douglas Adams]

 

Offline Hellstryker

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Your probably thinking of that ugly yellow gas giant no? well, thats how its supposed to look  :ick:

 

Offline CP5670

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
I merged this with the other thread. Resurrecting the big campaign threads is generally considered okay since it's cleaner to have everything on a given campaign in one place, especially bug reports.

Unless something is not rendering correctly on your end, the planetn is supposed to be a gas giant with some funky wind/cloud patterns on it. It's referred to in the briefings several times as it plays a minor role in the story. It looks decent enough to me, although I made it several years ago and probably could have done a better job if I had redone the thing more recently. :p

 

Offline MP-Ryan

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

 

Offline CP5670

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Looks fine to me. It's smaller than it appears in mission 11 since it is supposed to have been in close alignment with that location earlier but has moved away in the meantime. The lack of SSAA is making it look a bit jagged in that screenshot but it should look fine in the game (i.e. with motion).

 

Offline Hellstryker

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Couldn't you just have used a pic of jupiter or saturn instead?

 

Offline CP5670

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
It would have been too obvious and recognizable. Volition actually did that in a few places in FS2 (there is a Callisto, Europa and a purple shaded Jupiter among the default planets), which always looked a bit odd to me. :p

 

Offline ARSPR

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Hi CP5670, I'm actually testing DaBrain's new mediavps set and I've seen that PI is going to be incompatible with it.

You are using modular tables with "official" mediavps names (example mv_models-shp.tbm in PIassets). So you are overriding mediavps ones. You have tested that behaviour with actual media vps set but you can miss or brake future additions.

As an example, there's not going to be any bomberxxhp.pof models. So PI is not going to work with next version (GTB Medusa is going to use an non-existent pof).

Also, as you are overriding the WHOLE mediavps tbm, you can miss new effects or other important settings.

If you want a particular change, you can always force it through your own tbm with your own name. As it is in a higher priority folder, its changes will work despite the original tbms, (and their settings), in mediavps folder.

And I also feel that most of these mv_ tables are redundant. You are setting mediavps as a secondary mod in mod.ini so you are always going to load them. I mean, you don't need to say that Levy's model is cruiser01x.pof because that is already said in media vps.

(Another conflict example, maybe in future versions, cruiser01x.pof is going to disappear replaced by texture replacement over cruiser01.pof, read from this thread about a feature Taylor is coding).


In simpler words, let mediavps improve FS2 effects/models for existing ships and weapons. It will NEVER change their game balance features (strength, range, ...) So you just have to worry about these game balance features or about the few effects/models you DO want to change (but in the latter, you'll have to include all needed textures or pofs; mediavps ones can change at any time). But you don't need to include overriding tables just to prevent that someone change some critical ship or weapon feature sometime somehow somewhere.

Please, update, simplify and rename your tables to make PI compatible with any version (future or past) of mediavps.

Do you remember this post?

Don't forget to release the compatibily patch with mediavps 3.6.10.
IF YOU HAVE TROUBLES WITH FS2:
  • Please, please, please, READ and UNDERSTAND the sticky threads in FreeSpace & FreeSpace Open Support board.
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Offline CP5670

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Yes, I have that in mind and will get around to it after my exam next week. It shouldn't take much time to do. As I've mentioned earlier in the thread, there are also a couple of minor bugfixes needed in the campaign, but I wanted to wait until this media VP update was out before releasing the new version. Of course, that took about six months longer than I was expecting. :p

I explained earlier why it is impossible to make the campaign compatible with arbitrary media VP versions, but those come out maybe once in two years, so releasing updates each time is not much work.

The one remaining issue is the thing with the points getting cut off at 72% that Goober brought up earlier. I still have not discovered what is causing it, and the nature of the bug is such that testing it is very time consuming. It may be a bug with the game (specifically, how the persistent variables are stored in pilot files), since a 72% value should never be generated at all by the mission code.

The RC7.9X build should also become obsolete after the update is out. I think the fades work properly in recent builds (need to verify it though) and the music was fixed long ago.

 
Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Now, that's the hell of a campaign! Long Live The Emperor its makers ;)

Volition, if they're ever going to finish the series, gotta look with attention at this one, since it looks really nice, despite its somewhat lacklustre ending (no more lacklustre than that of 'Silent Threat', anyway).

There are some minor setbacks, though, i.e. sending two or three wings of fighters/bombers against the ship which APPARENTLY carries many more - it is short-sighted, to say the least, at the GTVA command's side.

It's quite amusing to fly a bomber which can blow off a good handful of fighters supposed to have a great deal of advantage over these sluggish beasts (yet they don't have any).

There's a couple of tech-side doubts, though:

1. The dying Sekham commences a desperated strike against the Ancients Vessel main cannon and slashes it off in a single blow. It seems illogical then, that several GTVA vessels fail to chop Saturn's beams off, given that Ancients' ship is 'comparable' to Sathanas, while Saturn is 'not nearly as powerful' as Colossus have been (Sathanas and Colossus are almost evenly matched, if I'm not mistaken)?

2. The front cannons of Serkhet can be dispatched quietly while it is still green - without any retaliation from allies or from the vessel itself. Is it right?

Also, tech-side: I have seen repeatedly the 'disappearing' textures on certaing models (first of all, Terran destroyers and AWACS ships), which make them transparent. I'm not sure what is exactly buggy: models or my video adapter (mobile GeForce 7400).

Anyway, that's a great campaign, although teeth-crushing at some points ;) My profound respect to its creators.


 

Offline CP5670

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Nice to see that people are still playing this. :) I'll address some of the things you brought up:

Quote
There are some minor setbacks, though, i.e. sending two or three wings of fighters/bombers against the ship which APPARENTLY carries many more - it is short-sighted, to say the least, at the GTVA command's side.

In general, this is a compromise that has to be made in most missions for gameplay reasons. The enemy always heavily outnumbers you to keep the combat fun and fast-paced, since they are obviously far inferior to human players.

Quote
1. The dying Sekham commences a desperated strike against the Ancients Vessel main cannon and slashes it off in a single blow. It seems illogical then, that several GTVA vessels fail to chop Saturn's beams off, given that Ancients' ship is 'comparable' to Sathanas, while Saturn is 'not nearly as powerful' as Colossus have been (Sathanas and Colossus are almost evenly matched, if I'm not mistaken)?

I figured this could be explained away by the very large size of that turret and the general inaccuracy of anti-capital beams. At least canonically, warships don't attempt to disarm each other with their beams (and can't hit small ships with them either), but a cruiser-sized turret would provide a larger target to aim at.

Quote
2. The front cannons of Serkhet can be dispatched quietly while it is still green - without any retaliation from allies or from the vessel itself. Is it right?

Yes, this was a loophole in the mission. The game's traitor code apparently doesn't kick in fast enough to catch a player with two shots. :D I discovered this several months ago and the fix will be included in the next update. (which will come whenever the final media VP pack is finished)

Quote
Also, tech-side: I have seen repeatedly the 'disappearing' textures on certaing models (first of all, Terran destroyers and AWACS ships), which make them transparent. I'm not sure what is exactly buggy: models or my video adapter (mobile GeForce 7400).

Are you getting this in other campaigns? It sounds like either the -jpgtga flag needs to be enabled or there is some sort of driver issue.

 
Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
damn -jpgtga flag...why not just enable it by default in the next build and get it done with?
Fun while it lasted.

Then bitter.

 

Offline Jeff Vader

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Actually, it is enabled by default on the 3.6.10 builds. And I guess it will also end up on the official 3.6.10 as well.
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14:08 < achillion > Let's talk about politics instead
14:08 <@The_E > butts and dongs are part of #hard-light's brand now
14:08 <@The_E > well
14:08 <@The_E > EvilBagel's brand, at least

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01:09 < T-Rog > at least it's curable
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