Hard Light Productions Forums

FreeSpace Releases => Mission & Campaign Releases => Topic started by: Asteroth on April 20, 2018, 08:16:20 pm

Title: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on April 20, 2018, 08:16:20 pm
(https://i.imgur.com/WBwka0U.png)

Trimurti is a 12-mission campaign that follows the events of Freespace 1 from the perspective of the Shivans.
Please note: This campaign can be very confusing and vague. If during any mission you feel unsure of what you are doing or how to proceed the recommendations on a failure will explain the mission in perfectly clear english.



Installation instructions:
Grab it on Knossos!

(https://i.imgur.com/TZH623q.png)

(https://i.imgur.com/JUpcQnj.png)

Changelog
Hidden Text: Show
1.0.1
Hidden Text: Show
Properly hidden delta's names in Good Luck
Regenerate directive made clearer and extended to m4
Scorpion's voice enhanced somewhat
Removed redundant remixed FS1 tracks
1.0.2
Hidden Text: Show
Fixed a bugged voice line that didn't get overwritten from 1.0.1
AI classes and enemy numbers and types in many missions adjusted
1.0.3
Hidden Text: Show
Fixed improper personas for asura wing in m4
Valk spawn event in m2 made more rigorous
Primary objective in m3 fixed
Fixed a bug where you could get stuck attempting to jump out while regenerating
Guardianed the freighters in m4
1.0.4
Hidden Text: Show
Fixed a voice line in m1 that was too quiet
Valks in m3 now warp away after the kestral is destroyed
Updated regenerate events in many missions
Nerfed amelioration's subsystem damage
Fixed weapon animations
Removed some weapons from m7's pool
Cyclone's death scream now properly cuts out
Replaced some missile models
1.0.5
Hidden Text: Show
Fixed several bugs in the last mission
Properly unguardianed the Bastion's attack fighters in m10
1.0.6
Hidden Text: Show
Made the fact that the isis repair repairs the hope more obvious
Some shivan dialogue adjusted/fixed typos
Changed some cargo container names to hide the fact that their real names are peeking through
1.0.7
Hidden Text: Show
Strengthened the Duat's reactor to avoid accidental destructions
Cutscene wings in the final mission made invisible again
1.1.0
Hidden Text: Show
Beautiful remastered FS1 Intro by MjnMixael!
1.1.1
Hidden Text: Show
Hid some visible names in the last mission
Adjusted some persona messages
Reoriented the Menhit so it won't block Gale if disabled mid-escape
1.1.2
Hidden Text: Show
Regenerating now restores the ETS settings when you re-enable, and you can longer use the ETS while regenerating
Fixed a bug where you could give yourself orders while regenerating, as a side-effect until a better solution comes along, you can no longer give orders while regenerating
Removed the Jump Node when the Lucifer is destroyed in Good Luck
1.1.3
Hidden Text: Show
Removed some anomalous event logging
1.1.4
Hidden Text: Show
M7: Renamed a ship and the mission wont end and the Taranis won't leave until you destroy the Aten
Properly added radar icons to the subspace variants
Removed the Ursa's Synaptics in Good Luck
Fixed the Ursa's spawn in the last mission
1.1.5
Hidden Text: Show
Small metadata update to work nicer with Knossos pre 14
1.1.6
Hidden Text: Show
Added play-dead-persistent, giving orders while disabled possible again, now requires >= 19.0.0 RC1
Shivan text refactored
Lucy's death scream adjusted
Skjoldr's maps fixed
Fixed a bug in m3 that made the Kestral jump out sooner than intended and cargo greatly strengthened
Made some small adjustments to cutscene irascibilities in the final cutscene
1.2.0
Hidden Text: Show
Added awesome new Shivan main hall by MjnMixael!
Fixed a bug that prevented any ship other than nephilims from getting their shields back after regenerating in m8 and m9
1.2.1
Hidden Text: Show
Fixed a bug that made that new main hall not actually appear!
1.2.2
Hidden Text: Show
MVPs 4.3.x compatability
Fix non-nephilim shields coming back in default nephilim missions
"No homing speed ramp up" for contrition
Better logic for m7 success
Transports actually have vasudans in m7
Only 5% heal in m11 in realspace
Made nephilim bomb only banks bottom two instead of top two so you can take a bomber in m11/12

Credits
MjnMixael for the awesome Shivan mainhall and remastered FS1 Intro
The Scroll of Atankharzim team for the Vasuda Skybox
HerraTohtori for the Earth skybox
HLD_Prophecy for Dark, Ambient 0.1 (the mainhall music)
PIe and JSRNerdo for playtesting
Axem for a useful script to swap ship classes while preserving weapons (https://pastebin.com/ws2yd73c)
Spoiler:
Esarai for the Skjoldr
The Blue Planet team for some sound effects, music, the Orion refit and cosmology
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: CapellaGoBoom on April 20, 2018, 09:55:07 pm
Tried getting it on knossos but I got an error saying "FS2 is missing." Also in the description it displays a bunch of strange code
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: JSRNerdo on April 20, 2018, 10:01:39 pm
I installed FSport to test this and it was worth it. Probably.

Also in the description it displays a bunch of strange code
This is a "feature"
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on April 20, 2018, 10:26:19 pm
Tried getting it on knossos but I got an error saying "FS2 is missing."
Should be fixed now.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: CapellaGoBoom on April 20, 2018, 11:39:51 pm
Tried getting it on knossos but I got an error saying "FS2 is missing."
Should be fixed now.

Just got it...and I just realized the weird code is shivan
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on May 02, 2018, 12:40:07 pm
So, any thoughts on this? Good or ill, especially for something as ... unconventional as this, would be very helpful.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Nightmare on May 02, 2018, 12:47:39 pm
Have you asked one of the staff members to highlight it? It seems a bit unnoticed to me.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on May 02, 2018, 01:29:08 pm
I haven't, no. Should I have?
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Nightmare on May 02, 2018, 01:47:16 pm
Releases are not as common as they once were, so your chances are good. Admitted, I haven't played it yet, but making 12 missions takes some work, and 300 views after almost 2 weeks is sad. So, yes. :)
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on May 02, 2018, 08:36:37 pm
So sorry I didn't see this before, it looks awesome! I always wanted a campaign like this when I was younger.

Will play!
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: CapellaGoBoom on May 02, 2018, 09:58:32 pm
I don't think we have ever gotten a true campaign from the shivan perspective in freespace before. Tides of Darkness explored that but we played as a former NTF pilot flying shivan ships. Trimurti was a fun little campaign with strange yet straightforward objectives. I had a bit of trouble figuring out the best course of action in some of the missions but nothing resulting in hair pulling :D

I recommend (if possible) we explore FS2 from the shivan POV. Maybe we can get a deeper understanding of what happened when the shivans got bosch and the "12 others" (quoting because of what was revealed in BP). That campaign would be cool IMO. Not demanding it, just sayin :)
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on May 02, 2018, 11:46:44 pm
I recommend (if possible) we explore FS2 from the shivan POV. Maybe we can get a deeper understanding of what happened when the shivans got bosch and the "12 others" (quoting because of what was revealed in BP). That campaign would be cool IMO. Not demanding it, just sayin :)
As I finished Trimurti this idea, of course, played heavily on my thoughts. Would you believe that the biggest obstacle (immediately anyway) is that I've simply run out of storm-themed names for ships? The only untaken ones I believe are Tornado (undesirable because it just makes you think of the FS2 missile) and Typhoon (way too similar-sounding to Typhon, even if there's no actual relation between the words).
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: General Battuta on May 02, 2018, 11:54:00 pm
Whoa this looks extremely my ****
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on May 03, 2018, 12:14:26 am
Whoa this looks extremely my ****
I'm sorry to fan-girl like this, but you have no idea how happy I am you've taken notice of this. Your work has been a major inspiration for me.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: rubixcube on May 03, 2018, 12:19:33 am
Damn, I haven't played a FS campaign in a while, time to break my dry spell!
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Rhymes on May 03, 2018, 12:21:34 am

Would you believe that the biggest obstacle (immediately anyway) is that I've simply run out of storm-themed names for ships? The only untaken ones I believe are Tornado (undesirable because it just makes you think of the FS2 missile) and Typhoon (way too similar-sounding to Typhon, even if there's no actual relation between the words).

The wikipedia section has a bunch of storm types that you might want to try using (check the sidebar). Some of them might be a little too human-sounding, if that makes any sense, but it's worth checking out if you haven't--there's some stuff beyond the storms everybody thinks of (Supercell is my personal fav for the Sath, btw).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: rubixcube on May 03, 2018, 12:34:41 am

Would you believe that the biggest obstacle (immediately anyway) is that I've simply run out of storm-themed names for ships? The only untaken ones I believe are Tornado (undesirable because it just makes you think of the FS2 missile) and Typhoon (way too similar-sounding to Typhon, even if there's no actual relation between the words).

The wikipedia section has a bunch of storm types that you might want to try using (check the sidebar). Some of them might be a little too human-sounding, if that makes any sense, but it's worth checking out if you haven't--there's some stuff beyond the storms everybody thinks of (Supercell is my personal fav for the Sath, btw).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm

Largest ship should be called a hypercane imo  ;)
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: General Battuta on May 03, 2018, 10:00:27 am
Whoa this looks extremely my ****
I'm sorry to fan-girl like this, but you have no idea how happy I am you've taken notice of this. Your work has been a major inspiration for me.

Keep bothering me until I play it. I really mean this, I made bigchunk bother me every week for a YEAR until I played his campaign and it turned out to be one of my favorites ever.
Title: u
Post by: rubixcube on May 03, 2018, 02:15:02 pm
Got a taste of all the missions through the Tech Room (yes I'm lazy)

Overall impressions are really positive:
Love the atmosphere, this campaign rivals Sync and BP in terms of eeriness. Like the use of fractal patters for loading screens, seems very fitting for Shivans.
Music choice for briefings is excellent as well.

Last mission gave me the chills, very well done, music was also a wonderful touch. (BTW why are the tracks called Psamtik and Aquitaine?)

I can certainly see the BP inspiration here, this could almost be BP cannon, not that that's a bad thing.
Quite like the use of storms for ships; fits with the theme of Shivans being a force of nature, calling jump nodes web tendrils was also a clever choice.

Mission design is overall solid, but will have to play more to get a better idea.

Whoa this looks extremely my ****
I'm sorry to fan-girl like this, but you have no idea how happy I am you've taken notice of this. Your work has been a major inspiration for me.

Keep bothering me until I play it. I really mean this, I made bigchunk bother me every week for a YEAR until I played his campaign and it turned out to be one of my favorites ever.
Yes, I think you'll like it  :)

My only criticism is the use of number sequences for Shivan dialogue, IMO it would have been better to use vague english (like some of the BP stuff), but then again maybe thats just me.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: CKid on May 03, 2018, 08:53:14 pm
This one flew under the radar. Will check it out this weekend.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Rogue Assassin04 on May 05, 2018, 08:54:21 am
Woah.

This campaign is epic! I must now break into GTVA intelligence to recover the ETAK specs and hope i can construct a similar one using whatever i find in my kitchen. :P

But this campaign showed me a great deal about shivans and all. Amazing campaign man.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: McMad on May 05, 2018, 11:48:34 am
Man, after all these years fighting the Shivans, it's really hard not to blast your wingmen as they unexpectedly fly in front of you :p
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: CKid on May 05, 2018, 03:12:18 pm
All done.

Spoiler:
Starting out, you think you're just seeing the events of FS1 from the shivans perspective however you begin noticing things are not lining up with what we know of FS1. Those fighters aren't in FS1, wasn't that Demon destroyed? Why is the PVN Hope not being defended by Terran escort? The moment that I realized this taking place in a certain alternate universe my jaw hit the floor. What you did for the shivan comms was brilliant, really gave the campaign an eerie feel. I don't think I have ever played a mission where you witness the bombardment of Vasuda Prime. Well done creating this campaign, It certainly was a fun little play-through.

I did have one bug. Playing the last mission the Lucifer was absence, leaving it to me and the few fighters that survived the battle in the subspace node to engage the Terran forces. It did not end well. Had play it through the techroom to complete it.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on May 05, 2018, 06:42:10 pm
@CKid
Spoiler:
I'm super happy that you managed to figure out the subtext of the campaign, really the whole campaign is filled with stuff that can only be implied instead of outright stated, and it was a bit of gamble to see if enough would actually be understandable to players to prevent them from simply being confused.

And the Lucifer bug is unfortunate, but should be fixed in 1.0.5.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: emark4 on May 05, 2018, 07:28:02 pm
All done.

Spoiler:
Starting out, you think you're just seeing the events of FS1 from the shivans perspective however you begin noticing things are not lining up with what we know of FS1. Those fighters aren't in FS1, wasn't that Demon destroyed? Why is the PVN Hope not being defended by Terran escort? The moment that I realized this taking place in a certain alternate universe my jaw hit the floor. What you did for the shivan comms was brilliant, really gave the campaign an eerie feel. I don't think I have ever played a mission where you witness the bombardment of Vasuda Prime. Well done creating this campaign, It certainly was a fun little play-through.

I did have one bug. Playing the last mission the Lucifer was absence, leaving it to me and the few fighters that survived the battle in the subspace node to engage the Terran forces. It did not end well. Had play it through the techroom to complete it.

Aside from playing at least FS1 and silent threat reborn, do you recommend playing another mod to understand said plot point?
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: rubixcube on May 05, 2018, 09:28:24 pm
All done.

Spoiler:
Starting out, you think you're just seeing the events of FS1 from the shivans perspective however you begin noticing things are not lining up with what we know of FS1. Those fighters aren't in FS1, wasn't that Demon destroyed? Why is the PVN Hope not being defended by Terran escort? The moment that I realized this taking place in a certain alternate universe my jaw hit the floor. What you did for the shivan comms was brilliant, really gave the campaign an eerie feel. I don't think I have ever played a mission where you witness the bombardment of Vasuda Prime. Well done creating this campaign, It certainly was a fun little play-through.

I did have one bug. Playing the last mission the Lucifer was absence, leaving it to me and the few fighters that survived the battle in the subspace node to engage the Terran forces. It did not end well. Had play it through the techroom to complete it.

Aside from playing at least FS1 and silent threat reborn, do you recommend playing another mod to understand said plot point?

Spoiler:
BP AoA
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: ssmit132 on May 05, 2018, 10:26:57 pm
Whew, it's been a while since I've posted on anything around here

Hi there Asteroth :)

I really like the concept of this campaign and the interesting way you've presented the Shivans  :yes:

Spoiler:
However I've hit a bit of a snag on mission 3. It seems that I can't stop the wing of Valkyries from destroying the cargo container - it doesn't take long for the Faustus to detect the jamming and even lowering the difficulty to Very Easy, I can't really take down one, let alone all four of the fighters before they turn to the container and easily destroy it since it's, well, a cargo container :P I had a go at positioning myself to be near the Terran ships when I switched out of regeneration, and I tried playing around with my wingmen's loadout - changing them between Basilisks and Scorpions and giving them the swarm missile - but that didn't really seem to help.

It's possible that it might be me being too rusty on FS2, but Is there something in particular that you would recommend to try to pass the mission?
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: emark4 on May 05, 2018, 11:33:41 pm
All done.

Spoiler:
Starting out, you think you're just seeing the events of FS1 from the shivans perspective however you begin noticing things are not lining up with what we know of FS1. Those fighters aren't in FS1, wasn't that Demon destroyed? Why is the PVN Hope not being defended by Terran escort? The moment that I realized this taking place in a certain alternate universe my jaw hit the floor. What you did for the shivan comms was brilliant, really gave the campaign an eerie feel. I don't think I have ever played a mission where you witness the bombardment of Vasuda Prime. Well done creating this campaign, It certainly was a fun little play-through.

I did have one bug. Playing the last mission the Lucifer was absence, leaving it to me and the few fighters that survived the battle in the subspace node to engage the Terran forces. It did not end well. Had play it through the techroom to complete it.

Aside from playing at least FS1 and silent threat reborn, do you recommend playing another mod to understand said plot point?

Spoiler:
BP AoA

Interesting.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on May 05, 2018, 11:42:37 pm
Spoiler:
However I've hit a bit of a snag on mission 3. It seems that I can't stop the wing of Valkyries from destroying the cargo container - it doesn't take long for the Faustus to detect the jamming and even lowering the difficulty to Very Easy, I can't really take down one, let alone all four of the fighters before they turn to the container and easily destroy it since it's, well, a cargo container :P I had a go at positioning myself to be near the Terran ships when I switched out of regeneration, and I tried playing around with my wingmen's loadout - changing them between Basilisks and Scorpions and giving them the swarm missile - but that didn't really seem to help.

It's possible that it might be me being too rusty on FS2, but Is there something in particular that you would recommend to try to pass the mission?
Spoiler:
Go straight for the Kestral. Don't bother trying to keep them off the cargo container. The time it takes it to realize it's jamming, destroy it, and jump out should be enough time to to destroy the Kestral, and certainly with Acerbities. You can also try revealing yourself earlier, making the fighters take longer to take out the jammer.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Kestrellius on May 06, 2018, 06:04:55 am
Just wanted to say that I played part of it several days ago and have had a very positive reaction so far. I will give in-depth critique once I finish.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Farkas on May 06, 2018, 02:35:49 pm
Great campaign, with very good ideas! When I got suspicious that it isn't exactly the same universe than the retail I waited for TAHT moment in the end. That connection brought great satisfaction!:D The only thing I wanted to ask, that why did you use the new type of fighter? For balance reasons? Or just some creator freedom?
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: ssmit132 on May 07, 2018, 05:19:12 am
Spoiler:
Go straight for the Kestral. Don't bother trying to keep them off the cargo container. The time it takes it to realize it's jamming, destroy it, and jump out should be enough time to to destroy the Kestral, and certainly with Acerbities. You can also try revealing yourself earlier, making the fighters take longer to take out the jammer.
Spoiler:
Oh, that makes sense - for some reason I thought the Faustus in this mission was tougher than it was. Thanks :)

Other missions I'd like to comment on:

- Mission 4: In my first run I fell for the Medusa bombers distracting me from the cargo hook line and sinker. These smart Terrans, who do they think they are? :p

- Mission 5: This was a bit shorter than I expected - It makes sense since the GTA doesn't throw wing after wing at things but just having to take down two waves of enemies does seem a tad short.

- Mission 6: I found it amusing that the Lucifer Hurricane arriving is a failure condition. It made me imagine some kind of rivalry between the Tempest and the Hurricane. "Geez I have to clean up after these bungling Tempest guys..."

- Mission 7: A fun mission and a bit challenging for me - I ended up taking advantage of having to replay the mission by going to disable the Kamikaze Satis at mission start and sending Shiva to destroy the Thoths before they got near the Cyclone :P I did think the sudden kamikaze was a clever touchh; considering the mission's recommendation I did expect more kamikaze attempts though, such as some fighters.

- Mission 8-9: Giving the Nephilim an afterburner but giving it limited fuel was an interesting touch. It took me a little while to adapt to that. Also, is it supposed to keep its shields when regenerating?

I'm enjoying the campaign a lot :yes: Since we've prevented some canon aspects of FS1 such as the destruction of the Eva Tempest and destroying the Hope, I'm wondering just where this is going...

Also, something I encountered often: If I give my wing or "all fighters" orders while in regeneration, my ship will start responding to that order as well. It can get a bit awkward when I need to give orders while regenerating, since I need to switch out and back in to stop moving. I'm not sure how tricky that would be to fix, though.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on May 07, 2018, 08:04:50 am
Spoiler:
- Mission 7: A fun mission and a bit challenging for me - I ended up taking advantage of having to replay the mission by going to disable the Kamikaze Satis at mission start and sending Shiva to destroy the Thoths before they got near the Cyclone :P I did think the sudden kamikaze was a clever touchh; considering the mission's recommendation I did expect more kamikaze attempts though, such as some fighters.

- Mission 8-9: Giving the Nephilim an afterburner but giving it limited fuel was an interesting touch. It took me a little while to adapt to that. Also, is it supposed to keep its shields when regenerating?
Spoiler:
There are actually some kamikaze fighters. They simply aren't very effective. I'm not sure what exactly to pin it on, but they end up sort of missing and circling around Cyclone several times before impacting (giving it plenty of time to destroy them.)

And that is not a bug, that's correct.
Also, something I encountered often: If I give my wing or "all fighters" orders while in regeneration, my ship will start responding to that order as well. It can get a bit awkward when I need to give orders while regenerating, since I need to switch out and back in to stop moving. I'm not sure how tricky that would be to fix, though.
And this, unfortunately, is a known SCP bug (http://scp.indiegames.us/mantis/view.php?id=3206).
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: rubixcube on May 07, 2018, 05:04:18 pm
Spoiler:
- Mission 7: A fun mission and a bit challenging for me - I ended up taking advantage of having to replay the mission by going to disable the Kamikaze Satis at mission start and sending Shiva to destroy the Thoths before they got near the Cyclone :P I did think the sudden kamikaze was a clever touchh; considering the mission's recommendation I did expect more kamikaze attempts though, such as some fighters.

- Mission 8-9: Giving the Nephilim an afterburner but giving it limited fuel was an interesting touch. It took me a little while to adapt to that. Also, is it supposed to keep its shields when regenerating?
Spoiler:
There are actually some kamikaze fighters. They simply aren't very effective. I'm not sure what exactly to pin it on, but they end up sort of missing and circling around Cyclone several times before impacting (giving it plenty of time to destroy them.)

And that is not a bug, that's correct.

Spoiler:
Interesting design choice, but why?
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on May 07, 2018, 06:04:29 pm
Spoiler:
Interesting design choice, but why?
Spoiler:
Mostly to counterbalance it's sluggishness and the extra time you'll be spending regenerating in order to regain afterburner fuel. The Nephilim is meant to feel rather 'tanky' even while regenerating.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Kestrellius on May 08, 2018, 10:52:34 am
So! Finished it, finally. You get tons of points automatically just for doing something with a Shivan PoV. Spoopiness was well-executed, fractals were cool...Mission design was pretty good, considering the constraints of FS1. I didn't have too much trouble figuring out what I was supposed to do.

Some of the missions were pretty difficult, mostly because Shivan gear is ass. Or, possibly, I'm just bad at this game. That's an option too. I had particular difficulty with the rescuing-cargo-and-defending-Tempest one -- don't remember what it was called. I got through it in the end, though.

I ran into the same bug as CKid; had to come here and use his solution. I wasn't even sure it was a bug at first, or if I was supposed to fight like five wings of fighters with three ships.

I liked the Apoplexy. Nice shotgun-bomb.

Out of curiosity, how much did you modify the fighters' stats? Like, I'm pretty sure the Shaitan wasn't usably good in retail. Maybe I'm wrong, though. I could check.

Spoiler:
It took me a little while to realize that this was the AoA-verse. I was starting to get the sense that it was an AU during the Battle of Deneb, and then destroying the Hope confirmed it. It wasn't until after I'd finished Last Hope that it occurred to me this might be the Sanctuary universe.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on May 08, 2018, 12:01:12 pm
Out of curiosity, how much did you modify the fighters' stats? Like, I'm pretty sure the Shaitan wasn't usably good in retail. Maybe I'm wrong, though. I could check.
'Hard' specifications like HP and shields were unchanged, rotation times and speeds were slightly adjusted to create distinctions were they didn't exist before (Shaitan and Nephilim both had identical speeds, so I slightly sped up the shaitan to give it more of a logical role as a fast strike bomber) or swap values were it seemed logical (Did you know the scorpion is more maneuverable than the dragon?!). And perhaps most obviously the Shivan bombers were given afterburners so as not to make playing them horribly painful.

But otherwise the Shaitan isn't that massively changed, you'd be surprised what actually decent primaries and a player behind the wheel can do for a ship.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: rubixcube on May 10, 2018, 01:57:23 pm
Okay, just finished it
Spoiler:
As I've already said, very good atmosphere, music choices for briefing and final mission was spot on. Nice to see the enemy behave intelligently, I also like how you logically prevented the Lucifer from making missions impossible to fail (except the last one of course).
Not making the Lucifer invincible was a nice small touch that I appreciated; 800000 shield hp already make it practically (if not literally) impervious to all weaponry

Some small critiques:
Some missions, such as Evangelist and Good Luck could have been longer.
I wish there was more Shivan-suited music for all the missions; the standard fs1 music kinda breaks the mood at times, though I can't really fault you for this as there aren't many other tracks available.

Some other observations:
Why didn't we start with interrupting the T-V skirmish then following LT Ash to Tombaugh?
The series of numbers in the briefings, I noticed they're all 0's, 1's, and 2's, are the Shivans communicating in some kind of Ternary computer code?

Can't wait for Battuta to try this
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on May 10, 2018, 03:10:07 pm
Spoiler:
Some small critiques:
Some missions, such as Evangelist and Good Luck could have been longer.
I wish there was more Shivan-suited music for all the missions; the standard fs1 music kinda breaks the mood at times, though I can't really fault you for this as there aren't many other tracks available.
Spoiler:
Evangelist and Good Luck are indeed rather short, which isn't ideal, but the standard FS1 approach, far more befitting of the Shivans, would be many wings coming in over a long time, or at least however long you want them to fight. This approach jars a bit with human beings, especially so since they have furyAI, since it would seem they would be smarter than that. And for Good Luck as well my initial draft of the mission had extra fighters and bombers warping in, but it simply breaks immersion (is it really so easy to just warp in to an in-progress battle in subspace) and breaks the strong memory of continuity we have of the event since we KNOW that there were only the 4 wings of 4 fighters each (although it's 3 wings in my version for unrelated reasons). So my intention was merely to settle for 'short, but intense'.

Custom music for everything would have been ideal of course (the 'victory' music that plays once you've completed your objectives and destroyed all enemies, being the worst offender in terms of breaking the mood), but I simply didn't have the skill/ability to do that. There is a custom track, but it's used for a very specific scenario, for a particular purpose, and happened to be within the purview of my abilities.
Spoiler:
The series of numbers in the briefings, I noticed they're all 0's, 1's, and 2's, are the Shivans communicating in some kind of Ternary computer code?
Spoiler:
Quite possibly!
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: CKid on May 10, 2018, 04:56:54 pm
Great campaign, with very good ideas! When I got suspicious that it isn't exactly the same universe than the retail I waited for TAHT moment in the end. That connection brought great satisfaction!:D The only thing I wanted to ask, that why did you use the new type of fighter? For balance reasons? Or just some creator freedom?

Spoiler:
I got a theory and Asteroth can tell me if I'am close or not. The new fighter replaced the GTF Ulysses. The Ulysses was built by Terran and Vasudans engineers together, however in this other universe the Terran - Vasudan relationship was maybe more strained. I point to the mission of taking down the PVN Hope where we are told that the Terrans where not coming to assist as evidence. What we end up getting is a Terran fighter built to match the specs of the Ulysses like high speed and agility but with out the Vasudan input in deployment.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Farkas on May 13, 2018, 04:23:36 pm
Great campaign, with very good ideas! When I got suspicious that it isn't exactly the same universe than the retail I waited for TAHT moment in the end. That connection brought great satisfaction!:D The only thing I wanted to ask, that why did you use the new type of fighter? For balance reasons? Or just some creator freedom?

Spoiler:
I got a theory and Asteroth can tell me if I'am close or not. The new fighter replaced the GTF Ulysses. The Ulysses was built by Terran and Vasudans engineers together, however in this other universe the Terran - Vasudan relationship was maybe more strained. I point to the mission of taking down the PVN Hope where we are told that the Terrans where not coming to assist as evidence. What we end up getting is a Terran fighter built to match the specs of the Ulysses like high speed and agility but with out the Vasudan input in deployment.

Now that you mention... There really aren't any. I don't know how I overlooked this  :wtf:
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on May 14, 2018, 03:20:02 pm
lol I totally didn't notice that you used my music for the menu until I loaded the mod! Thanks! :D
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: CapellaGoBoom on May 14, 2018, 09:47:27 pm
This mod really tied BP: AOA together  :cool:
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: rubixcube on May 15, 2018, 02:08:29 pm
This mod really tied BP: AOA together  :cool:

There are some differences between this and AOA

Spoiler:
  • 1. In AoA the Lucifer beams are red, in Trimurti they are orange
  • 2. Shivan primary weapons in AoA are weak, in keeping with their portrayal in the main game, in this mod they are buffed to make them usable
  • 3. The destruction of earth plays out a little differently; no Shivan cruisers are escorting the Lucifer, nor are their any Terran cruisers protecting earth, in AoA the Bastion is destroyed in front of the lucy by her main beams, in this mod, it is destroyed by Shivan bombers while pursuing the Lucifer
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on May 15, 2018, 10:06:44 pm
Spoiler:
in AoA the Bastion is destroyed in front of the lucy by her main beams, in this mod, it is destroyed by Shivan bombers while pursuing the Lucifer
Spoiler:
There's actually no evidence that suggests that's the Bastion in AoA, it has no nameplate, and the mission itself only calls it "GTD Orion". It's certainly a reasonable candidate, but it's these ambiguities that are the nooks and crannies that allow me to take advantage of my artistic license.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: rubixcube on May 17, 2018, 06:38:49 pm
Here's an odd thing I noticed

Spoiler:
Why is Tombaugh station 2 Arcadia's stacked on top of each other?
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on May 19, 2018, 01:42:10 pm
Here's an odd thing I noticed

Spoiler:
Why is Tombaugh station 2 Arcadia's stacked on top of each other?
Eh, just a way to make it seem bigger, since it was described as a "fortress".
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: rubixcube on May 20, 2018, 12:55:19 am
Here's an odd thing I noticed

Spoiler:
Why is Tombaugh station 2 Arcadia's stacked on top of each other?
Eh, just a way to make it seem bigger, since it was described as a "fortress".

Fair enough,

I hope this campaign gets more attention, would love to see more content from you.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: DudeMannerisms on May 25, 2018, 07:47:23 pm
This mod seems like the exact kind of mod I would love to play. Unfortunately, Knossos is telling me that I require the 'MediaVPs" to play it, but the only MediaVP I didn't included was the remixed music and advanced graphics.

EDIT: (https://i.imgur.com/h6BWG0s.png)

Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: ssmit132 on May 26, 2018, 03:33:48 am
I did finish the campaign shorty after my last post here, so sorry about the long time it took for me to reply :nervous:

Spoiler:
Mission 11: It's kind of scary how easily all of the Terran ships went down here; the mission is very short for that but I think that works well in context.

Mission 12: I got the same Red Alert problem as CKid, with the Hurricane not appearing at the end. Not having read his spoilered post, I kinda wondered whether the resulting impossible fight was intentional to punish the player for dooming humanity :p and so I ended up using cheats to make myself invulnerable. Nevertheless, the effect of the sounds gradually going quiet along with the foreboding music worked quite well.

Good job with this campaign :) I felt the difficulty might fluctuate around a bit, but atmosphere-wise I really like the presentation, and as I said previously, an interesting way of presenting things from a Shivan point of view that still allows them to seem alien.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: rubixcube on May 26, 2018, 05:49:47 am
This mod seems like the exact kind of mod I would love to play. Unfortunately, Knossos is telling me that I require the 'MediaVPs" to play it, but the only MediaVP I didn't included was the remixed music and advanced graphics.

EDIT: (https://i.imgur.com/h6BWG0s.png)



You need the fsport, fsport-mediavps, and regular mediavps. You got all of those?

Also, isn't Knossos still in beta? Might be a problem with the launcher?
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: DudeMannerisms on May 26, 2018, 06:21:45 am


You need the fsport, fsport-mediavps, and regular mediavps. You got all of those?

Also, isn't Knossos still in beta? Might be a problem with the launcher?

I do. The only Media VPs I don't have are the advanced graphics, and the remixed music.

And I could run all my other modules just fine. Trimurti is the only mod I have a problem with
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: rubixcube on May 26, 2018, 07:29:32 am
Maybe try it with advanced graphics and remixed music to see if that solves your problem?
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on May 26, 2018, 05:44:36 pm
Spoiler:
Mission 12: I got the same Red Alert problem as CKid, with the Hurricane not appearing at the end. Not having read his spoilered post, I kinda wondered whether the resulting impossible fight was intentional to punish the player for dooming humanity :p and so I ended up using cheats to make myself invulnerable. Nevertheless, the effect of the sounds gradually going quiet along with the foreboding music worked quite well.
Are you using 1.0.5 or later? This shouldn't be happening in the later versions.

This mod seems like the exact kind of mod I would love to play. Unfortunately, Knossos is telling me that I require the 'MediaVPs" to play it, but the only MediaVP I didn't included was the remixed music and advanced graphics.
And I unfortunately can't diagnose this issue more than already has been until after the weekend.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: DudeMannerisms on May 26, 2018, 08:20:21 pm
Maybe try it with advanced graphics and remixed music to see if that solves your problem?
That worked! Thanks for the help. Now I'll see if my computer can handle the advanced graphics.


EDIT: This campaign is so awesome. I love how alien it is.
Title: Re: u
Post by: DudeMannerisms on May 26, 2018, 09:20:30 pm
Got a taste of all the missions through the Tech Room (yes I'm lazy)


Sorry to doublepost, but it's possible to play all the missions without having to play the campaign in order?
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on May 26, 2018, 10:09:54 pm
Sorry to doublepost, but it's possible to play all the missions without having to play the campaign in order?
Ctrl+Shift+S at the campaign missions screen unlocks all of them, makes testing significantly easier.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: DudeMannerisms on May 26, 2018, 11:22:09 pm
Sorry to doublepost, but it's possible to play all the missions without having to play the campaign in order?
Ctrl+Shift+S at the campaign missions screen unlocks all of them, makes testing significantly easier.
Thanks, and your mod is heavily underrated.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Iain Baker on June 03, 2018, 10:41:59 pm
I'm enjoying this a lot. The main difficulty is that the descriptions of the weapons are a little confusing, since they use terms such as 'shell' 'sheath', 'essence' etc., and there is no description for the missiles, so it's a bit of trial and error guessing game as to which does what, but I guess that is kinda the point ;-)
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Novachen on June 10, 2018, 10:44:18 am
This was indeed one of the strangest FreeSpace experiences i ever had.

Because this whole campaign is a single mystery. What is going on, what i have to do and what i have for weapons?
This is a campaign where you have to find out everything by yourself.

And the biggest mystery is... why is the god damn Scorpion by far the best fighter i can play as a Shivan? :D
Its gunpoints were simply the best. And also it is fast and quite maneuverable. It is even better fighter than the Dragon.

But well, fair enough, i never had so much problems with PVF Anubis than in this campaign... that is a enemy ship and not a flying tomb after all :eek2:

I did not understand what really happened here and i have to buy a Shivan translator software next time, but yes, it was an unique experience i wait for since the demo of Hidden Terror over nearly one and a half decade ago.


Small bugs nevertheless:
I actually would like to see Nameplates for the terran ships :).
There is no shivan speaking tech database  :D
Eschaton: Actually i was not sure, if i had to press ALT+J or to fly back to the Hangar of the Lucy to end this mission... i tried to land and it did not work.
False Hope: The Aten has a visible name.
False Hope: It is intended, that i am able to destroy the Karnak Core from the outside? Or is this one of the mentioned bugs for Nightlies? I have to repeat this mission a couple of times, because my AI shivans had the same idea.
The End: I can see and target the ROFL and LOL wings... even i do not understand their purpose in general (or are they a trigger for something?)


Spoiler:
And it is nice, that you are able to change the history for the Shivans. Even the last mission was a little strange in my opinion, because it miss sound effects and have a very long fade out, where i have to fight blind for nearly half a minute, before the mission ends in a cutscene that also seem to imply some sort of sequel...

Or is this a different ending, because i was able to find all Spoons? Even i miss a hint even in this thread, that there is this archivement system and i miss some hints in-game, too.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on June 10, 2018, 08:37:25 pm
Eschaton: Actually i was not sure, if i had to press ALT+J or to fly back to the Hangar of the Lucy to end this mission... i tried to land and it did not work.
False Hope: The Aten has a visible name.
The End: I can see and target the ROFL and LOL wings... even i do not understand their purpose in general (or are they a trigger for something?)
Thank you, all were unintended and should be fixed now.
False Hope: It is intended, that i am able to destroy the Karnak Core from the outside? Or is this one of the mentioned bugs for Nightlies? I have to repeat this mission a couple of times, because my AI shivans had the same idea.
This isn't that aforementioned bug, you'd get a hard crash if it were. This is an unfortunate side-effect of the Apoplexies massive AoE, and the weakness of the reactor core, I should probably bump its health up to withstand accidental damage. Ideally of course I would have area damage not damage things if there are intervening objects, but that would require ray-tracing and a complete rewrite of how shockwave damage is dealt and that's rather unreasonable to ask.

Spoiler:
And it is nice, that you are able to change the history for the Shivans. Even the last mission was a little strange in my opinion, because it miss sound effects and have a very long fade out, where i have to fight blind for nearly half a minute, before the mission ends in a cutscene that also seem to imply some sort of sequel...

Or is this a different ending, because i was able to find all Spoons? Even i miss a hint even in this thread, that there is this archivement system and i miss some hints in-game, too.
Spoiler:
I'm quite surprised and impressed you managed to get all of them on presumably your first playthrough! I had originally planned for them to do something special, but as is they do nothing other than bragging rights. You experienced the ending as intended.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Erebus Alpha on June 14, 2018, 03:32:27 am
This is a fascinating campaign. Not many people can tell stories just by moving icons around on the briefing screen. Even better, it's funny how often I misinterpret them, and end up doing something completely different in the mission.

I like the difficulty of the missions. It requires a bit of attention to detail, acclimation to a completely new weapon set, and good use of tactics like targeting engine & weapon subsystems on capital ships. Given the FS1 era of technology, hitting the weapon subsystem on a ship absolutely cripples their ability to return fire. A few of those Shivan weapons do fantastic damage to subsystems.

The regeneration mechanic is unique too, it's nice being able to press 1 during downtime and re-armor myself.

One thing confuses me though: The unintelligible Shivan code. Why? It seems like it should be exactly the other way around, with Shivan stuff being easily readable, but human transmissions being completely alien gibberish. I have not finished the campaign, so...

Spoiler:
...is the player supposed to be a human who defected to the Shivans, and doesn't understand their language?
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on June 14, 2018, 06:26:40 am
One thing confuses me though: The unintelligible Shivan code. Why? It seems like it should be exactly the other way around, with Shivan stuff being easily readable, but human transmissions being completely alien gibberish. I have not finished the campaign, so...

Spoiler:
...is the player supposed to be a human who defected to the Shivans, and doesn't understand their language?
Spoiler:
So there are several ways of going about this problem. The approach you assume is the meta-level one. It seems that the player is a Shivan because none of the other Shivans treat you specially or consider you abnormal. But since the 'reality' of the situation is that 'Shivan speech' is unintelligible to humans like you or me it creates a gap between player-knowledge (the person at the controls who doesn't know Shivan) and character-knowledge (the Shivan in the cockpit who does. So you can simply translate the Shivan into English (and English into gibberish) at the meta-level; we know 'that's not how it really is' but that I'm doing it purely for the sake of player understanding.

This is a common approach when it comes to Shivans (in what few mods actually face this problem), but actually one of the main reasons I created this mod in the first place is that I don't really like this approach! If you do translate it, what exactly does it sound like? Just regular English?! I don't know about you, but I find the idea of Shivans speaking normal English rather comical and immersion breaking. Every approach to Shivans differ, and everyone is entitled to their idea of how they function. The way I like to depict them functioning is very very different from our own. In virtually every way I can get away with. Whatever form of communication they use I believe would be massively downgraded and simplified when put into English, quite possibly unavoidably so for any target language we could understand. Shivan's cognitive capacities and format are probably extremely different, if not outright incompatible. And I still feel this way even about their current communication in the mod! That it is a huge oversimplification and an artistic interpretation of whatever form of communication they use.

Having them speak in normal English removes some of the barriers of understanding and mystery between us and them, and one of my major goals was to keep as much as possible still alien to us, and only allow small rays of understanding to peak through, just enough to keep them interesting and provocative. That's why Shivans are interesting in the first place.

Keeping Shivan speech 'as it truly is' (although as I've mentioned as I think their current implementation errs too much on the side of understandable by us) not only maintained that sense of strangeness, but also providing the interesting challenge of making everything still understandable enough for a player to play the missions without being utterly lost. Both the directives and recommendations are painful but regrettably necessary concessions I had to make, I knew I couldn't count on everyone being willing or able to follow such obtuse instruction. I'm slightly disappointed that some briefings weren't clear enough for you, and I'd be curious which ones they were and what were mistaken impressions you got from them.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Novachen on June 14, 2018, 08:45:27 am
Actually i liked this approach. Because, if the shivans would talk in clear english (or any other human language you could translate)... you had to mention their motivation for all of this in the first place... which would actually demystify them completely. And would cause discussions about it, for sure.

So you still do not know why you are doing this, what keeps the Shivans as there is, a species with higher goals we do not understand (maybe we cant even with ETAK).

And i liked the fact, that the briefings are visual only and i was surprised how understandable they were only with the moving icons.

I actually would not feel as a shivan, if there were human speaking shivans. Maybe Vasudan speaking Vasudans are missing here, but that is the only thing, i can think of ^^
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: CapellaGoBoom on June 14, 2018, 03:28:25 pm
Spoiler:
And it is nice, that you are able to change the history for the Shivans. Even the last mission was a little strange in my opinion, because it misses sound effects and have a very long fade out, where i have to fight blind for nearly half a minute, before the mission ends in a cutscene that also seems to imply some sort of sequel...

Or is this a different ending, because i was able to find all Spoons? Even i miss a hint in this thread, that there is this achievement system and i miss some hints in-game, too.
[/quote]

Spoiler:
I'm of the opinion the end ties into BP:AOA because the Terran pilot said the Bastion failed to stop the Lucy. The Vasudans became extinct (another BP:AOA story point). Also, we saw the Sanctuary leave Sol in the cutscene just as Lucy was glassing Earth
[/quote]
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Novachen on June 14, 2018, 06:17:56 pm
Spoiler:
I'm of the opinion the end ties into BP:AOA because the Terran pilot said the Bastion failed to stop the Lucy. The Vasudans became extinct (another BP:AOA story point). Also, we saw the Sanctuary leave Sol in the cutscene just as Lucy was glassing Earth

Spoiler:
Ah okay, i actually never played BP and i thought BP take place in FS2's timeline. Have to admit that the situation of this ending remembered me more of the first campaign of the dump of Project: Outreach by Droid303 six years ago. Because it was dumped it also looked like, that this campaign maybe picked up some of its scenario again, only in a shivan pov.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on June 14, 2018, 06:47:26 pm
Spoiler:
Ah okay, i actually never played BP and i thought BP take place in FS2's timeline. Have to admit that the situation of this ending remembered me more of the first campaign of the dump of Project: Outreach by Droid303 six years ago. Because it was dumped it also looked like, that this campaign maybe picked up some of its scenario again, only in a shivan pov.
Spoiler:
BP does take place in FS2's timeline, specifically 20 some years after the fact. BP: AoA has the player accidentally travel to an alternate timeline where the Great War had been lost those 50 years prior, and then later return to the normal timeline.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Novachen on June 14, 2018, 11:14:36 pm
Spoiler:
Ah okay, i actually never played BP and i thought BP take place in FS2's timeline. Have to admit that the situation of this ending remembered me more of the first campaign of the dump of Project: Outreach by Droid303 six years ago. Because it was dumped it also looked like, that this campaign maybe picked up some of its scenario again, only in a shivan pov.
Spoiler:
BP does take place in FS2's timeline, specifically 20 some years after the fact. BP: AoA has the player accidentally travel to an alternate timeline where the Great War had been lost those 50 years prior, and then later return to the normal timeline.

Spoiler:
Never know that. Even this fact actually reduced my interested in BP.

But well, another question appeared as i introduced this campaign in another forum. As someone suggest (only in a joke of course), that i should translate the complete campaign into german, including the shivan messages of course.
Because that would a very nice twist... are the Shivan messages english ones, that were decoded into a ternary system or are the numbers totally random?  :D
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on June 15, 2018, 05:31:27 am
But well, another question appeared as i introduced this campaign in another forum. As someone suggest (only in a joke of course), that i should translate the complete campaign into german, including the shivan messages of course.
Because that would a very nice twist... are the Shivan messages english ones, that were decoded into a ternary system or are the numbers totally random?  :D
I'd prefer not to spoil too much of how it works, but suffice it to say that a legitimate english to german translation would change the content of the messages (to something equally opaque).
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: General Battuta on June 23, 2018, 06:19:01 am
AHM A SHIVAN, PARDNER

I'm up to Eschaton, about halfway-ish through!

This **** is dope. There's so many ways this concept could've gone wrong, from overexplaining (We are Shivans from Shiva, we exist to shiv) to underselling (stock FS2 interface, no dialogue, directives only, etc) to furry highly emotional Shivans (yeah that did get made at one point). But right from that superb main menu you're plucking my artistic heartstrings. I ****ing love FRACTALS

This campaign might have the best briefings ever done and that's really embarrassing to admit coming from a guy who slathers on the :words:. It's essentially ridiculous how effective they are at communicating what to do. I wonder if they'd be as effective to a new player — they tap knowledge of stock FS2 mission archetypes — but for me they work wonders. There have been a few times where I misunderstood my objective, but I'll get to that later.

The missions are hard so far because I'm playing on Hard, but I've never felt like I don't have the tools or options I need (thank you for not forcing the player into a lot of dogfights in Basilisks, that'd be true hell). Regeneration is a great touch and only enhanced by the fact that you can ****in give yourself orders while regenerating which while probably not intentional is hilarious. Your weapons stay locked but you'll fly around after targets and stuff.

I'm not completely sold on the weapon names. I think if I took more than a second to think about the meaning of the names I'd figure out how they relate to the function, but as is I'd sort of prefer a little more affordance in the names – maybe tap the euphemisms you use in directives to name them 'rapid abort', 'heavy abort', 'paralyzer'? Or do storm names — 'bolt', 'slow bolt', 'rain', 'shock'? I dunno. Since you kept the Terran names for the fighters it seems like it wouldn't hurt the mood to make the weapon names more transparent. (I just use the weapon's energy usage to figure out what it probably does.)

A few directives could be a little clearer. Telling me to 'end threat' when in fact I need to wait for it to get closer feels like it's the bad kind of ambiguous. But that leads me to the really cool thematic stuff holy **** I'll dance around spoilers so everybody can read how good this is:

The actual experience of playing is so full of loneliness and — not confusion, exactly, but absence of meaning, poverty of context, in a very good way — that it's genuinely startling to see the human and Vasudan voices break in through the encrypted wails and howls of the Shivans. You really do get a sense of what it means to be Shivan in a way that I don't think any amount of description could evoke, but which gels perfectly with what it's like to fight them. I mean that you get a sense of emptiness. I mean specifically: what if this is what it's really like to be a Shivan? Not the imagined 'Trimurti but I understand all the numbers', but actually what if the experience of playing Trimurti is what it is to be Shivan? You don't experience meaning or internality when your Lucifer howls at you, it's just a set of symbols that evoke a response (because you get a directive). You don't say 'oh no my Cain is getting blown up', you just react to the changing data to make new combat decisions. You're nothing on the inside. You just act and react. No Shivan fighter in FS2 ever really seemed like it was piloted by a person, did it? But they sure do feel like they're piloted by things-that-are-experiencing-the-world-as-we-experience-Trimurti.

And this leads to the best part, which is the occasional confusion over mission objectives, and the ability to get a clear description of what to do only after you fail. (Let me be clear to people who read this as a negative: the missions are not confusing and you will not be like 'wtf wtf I lost why?' You just get a clear English explanation of your objectives in each failure debrief, as a fallback) DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW ****ING GENIUS THIS IS? It is admittedly genius only in a specific fictional context, but: forcing the player to learn through failure and repetition is such a perfect ludonarrative encapsulation of the BP idea that Shivans develop local optimae not through a conventional process of modeling the task but through brute-forcing it. You gain the data you need through inefficiency and mistake until you have enough data to do it right.

I am having a lot of thoughts now about ways you could do even more, avenues of the interface and design you could use to further suck the player into this alien mindset. But I will finish the campaign before I start spewing them.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on June 23, 2018, 07:13:35 am
I'll save diving into the really deep stuff until you've finished it, but I'll respond to a few things here
I wonder if they'd be as effective to a new player — they tap knowledge of stock FS2 mission archetypes — but for me they work wonders. There have been a few times where I misunderstood my objective, but I'll get to that later.
I certainly do not think they'd be as effective for new players, not only for the reason you mentioned but also because several missions impart extra meaning or even gameplay advantage due to the player's meta-knowledge of Freespace 1.
Regeneration is a great touch and only enhanced by the fact that you can ****in give yourself orders while regenerating which while probably not intentional is hilarious. Your weapons stay locked but you'll fly around after targets and stuff.
Play-dead has been broken for months now! Go bug a coder about it!

I'm not completely sold on the weapon names. I think if I took more than a second to think about the meaning of the names I'd figure out how they relate to the function, but as is I'd sort of prefer a little more affordance in the names – maybe tap the euphemisms you use in directives to name them 'rapid abort', 'heavy abort', 'paralyzer'? Or do storm names — 'bolt', 'slow bolt', 'rain', 'shock'? I dunno. Since you kept the Terran names for the fighters it seems like it wouldn't hurt the mood to make the weapon names more transparent. (I just use the weapon's energy usage to figure out what it probably does.)
So, if I were to go slightly more transparent with the weapon names, to refer to them more directly to their purpose, even if in that slightly oblique manner such as the directives, it sort of makes it more clear what each weapon's purpose is. Well I suppose that's what transparent means anyway, but it would put the player's 'headspace' in the more utilitarian aspect of the weapons, and doing so raises question about how the Shivans interpret the utilitarian aspects of their weapons. Would a purely utilitarian approach really have so many weapons? Couldn't you boil down the functions you need from your weapons to just 2 or 3? Would a weapon really do this? Why did they make their weapon do that? While their arsenal as is is certainly a defensible one from this approach I've kind of already lost the angle I wanted the player to be coming at it from.

The names as they are are meaningless to the player (and as a side-effect are nicely evocative emotionally), which puts them in the position of trying to figure out what the **** they even do, and as they play they learn what they do, and feel as though they've 'translated' this aspect of the Shivans. While in after-the-fact reflection they can still question what the utilitarian motives of the Shivans were with the these weapons, in the moment I keep them engaged instead with the task of finding out what they do, instead of understanding what they do, and possibly questioning how they do it. But I'm definitely open to more debate on this.

You also mentioned keeping the Terran names for the fighters, so I should point out that they were also meant to be changed originally. But it'll be easier to get into why didn't that work out once you've finished it.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on June 23, 2018, 12:58:13 pm
Regeneration is a great touch and only enhanced by the fact that you can ****in give yourself orders while regenerating which while probably not intentional is hilarious. Your weapons stay locked but you'll fly around after targets and stuff.
Play-dead has been broken for months now! Go bug a coder about it!
Thanks for the reminder, but I just checked and there's absolutely nothing in the code that should be stopping play-dead from having a priority up to 200, like any other goal. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: General Battuta on June 23, 2018, 09:28:10 pm
What a good campaign. I finished and really loved it. It's incredible how a few good artistic choices — no translated speech, custom sound effects, and an excellent interface — can make such a powerful statement.

One of the things I loved most was that the campaign evoked in me, and earned my participation in, the Shivans' monumental indifference. I didn't get angry when I failed a tough mission, or feel any resentment of the jerks shooting me down. I always had this sense that I was still in control and that I would inevitably win in the end, even if my individual fighters were frail. When we got to hear the Washington's heroic speech in the last mission I remember thinking not 'a lot of species must've made this speech' or 'you guys are really ****ed' but something more like...clinical remove? Just this sense that the outcome was inevitable and all the human yelling was a symptom, a byproduct of the process, as meaningless in content as the Shivan transmissions.

(Now if I'd been trying it on insane, I might've gotten mad!)

I read back in the thread and saw the discussion about player-understanding vs. character-understanding; I get that the Shivan character probably understands the transmissions, but I still like the idea that the player's incomprehension is evoking something fundamental about the Shivan psyche, a process by which information is received and acted upon without interiority or qualia.

It's a tribute to the campaign that I left with my brain fizzing with ideas. Here is a vomit of some of them:

—I'd love, love a pseudo-sequel set during the events of FS2, which I think could be far weirder and delve even deeper into the psychological ab-space of 'existing as a Shivan.' I say pseudo-sequel because of the spoilery stuff around the ending. I just want to see such more! I want to be inside the Shivan response as it evolves and develops structure.

—The measure of great video game lore is how it alters moment to moment gameplay decisions, and there were definitely times when I stubbornly persisted in attack runs, or threw myself at certain targets with unusual aggression, because I thought 'I'm a Shivan and my life doesn't matter' or 'this is what I always see the Shivan AI do.' Similarly, lurking around regenerating, waiting for prey to show up, was A+ ludonarrative.

—Talking about weirder stuff: this edges into pushing my artistic interpretation of the Shivans onto yours, but I would love to see more symbolic/semiotic weirdness. A downtime mission about what Shivans do while they're not killing everything, by which I do not mean domestic theater, but 'a mission where you do things you don't understand for reasons that aren't apparent, but which are clearly having some effect'. Moments of failed contact, meaning-corrosion, miscommunication: things reaching out, but in vain. It may be that your Shivans are highly functional and do not experience this. But I dream of what you could do with a notional Trimurti 2 — interaction between Shivans that isn't as cleanly hierarchical and uniformly efficient, eruptions of consciousness or interiority which are starved or destroyed, mentality arising and vanishing in the crevices of the cold Shivan structure. Images appearing to you as you act. Imagine receiving conflicting objectives from outside, neither understanding those purposes nor having any criteria to choose between them — and observing the results of your choice for some hint as to what you've actually done. Such depths of incomprehension and enigma to evoke! You could explore whether Shivans are a tightly integrated unit, or as alien to themselves as they are to us. You could show us individual Shivan vessels or minds developing idiosyncrasies, madnesses, strange malformed psyches gestating in a mindless space and awakening surrounded by incomprehension and mindless hostility only to vanish again into the turmoil. Oh, the possibilities! Thank you for making me think about all this.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on June 23, 2018, 11:55:40 pm
I want to stress that I really like BP's take on Shivans, and I pretty much took it as canon in those few ways where it was relevant. But trying to fit in all that stuff about the non-functional side of Shivans seems almost impossible given the format! Remember we're making a Freespace campaign here, at the end of the day it needs to come down to flying a fighter shooting at other fighters. Non-combat missions have certainly done before, but a Shivan one seems intractable. The player still needs to be doing something they understand, at least at some level. So it seems you'd either have to explain too much, or have a string of tasks that the player is utterly baffled by and feels as though his time has been wasted. Accurate, perhaps, but not very fun to play!

Something 'far weirder and delves even deeper into the psychological ab-space of 'existing as a Shivan.'' sounds really cool, but probably not suited to a Freespace campaign, maybe a short story? As I've said before, you can't go too far on the side of incomprehensible, both in terms of how Shivans work, but also in gameplay terms. Without anything to latch on to, the player may as well be reading a book in a different language.

Quite ironically, its entirely because FS2 makes the Shivans more compelling and less straightforward that a Trimurti during FS2 would be much harder. That straightforwardness could be relied upon as an anchor for player to not get completely lost. The avenues for FS2 actually showing new viewpoints/re-contextualizing the actions of the Shivans or otherwise changing or enhancing what we already know about the events of FS2 (because otherwise there's no real point in making such a campaign) are much less clear to me than FS1, at least in way that keeps the player relatively grounded in 'normal' Freespace gameplay.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: rubixcube on June 25, 2018, 07:12:47 pm
One of the things I loved most was that the campaign evoked in me, and earned my participation in, the Shivans' monumental indifference. I didn't get angry when I failed a tough mission, or feel any resentment of the jerks shooting me down. I always had this sense that I was still in control and that I would inevitably win in the end, even if my individual fighters were frail. When we got to hear the Washington's heroic speech in the last mission I remember thinking not 'a lot of species must've made this speech' or 'you guys are really ****ed' but something more like...clinical remove? Just this sense that the outcome was inevitable and all the human yelling was a symptom, a byproduct of the process, as meaningless in content as the Shivan transmissions.

I actually felt really bad during that last mission; like someone culling a den full of invasive baby rats. You know it has to be done, but it still feels so wrong.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: IronBeer on June 28, 2018, 04:01:21 am
Just finished. I had a bit of a bumpy start, needing to get my Freespace reflexes back to fighting shape, but I absolutely LOVED the "feel" of the campaign. From the stark fractal loading screens, to the pervasive use of base-3 numbers, the verbal un-intelligibility of your allies, and the cold minimalist briefing music, every element seemed perfectly tailored to put the player in a very different mindset from traditional Freespace.

Brilliantly done!

A handful of specific comments or things that stood out:
Spoiler:
-The humble Scorpion turned out to be my most-used fighter! Just couldn't get the hang of the Manticore or the Dragon somehow.
-I found missions 2 and 3 to be fairly challenging, though for different reasons.
Mission 2 was tough because you needed to keep enough wingmen alive to mix up with the Valkyrie/Athena avenger-party at the end of the mission.
Mission 3 was actually kind of frustrating until I found out about the "wait until 1000m range" trick. Nailed the mission on the first try.
-I can't tell you how good it felt to be pouring Acerbities out of a Basilisk in the Vasuda Prime mission. Payback for all those escort missions is a *****, and I really enjoyed being the "bad guy" for a change
-Called in the bombers too early in The Great Escape, wound up having to abort the cruiser single-handedly. D'oh. Could've and should've waited a bit.
-Good Luck. Goddamn. Just, Good Luck. Starts with one hell of a bang. Died a few times, finally managed to clear it at 4% hull with 2 wingmates keeping the remaining fighters away from me as I took out the bombers. The bank of Desideriums finally paid off- sure as hell couldn't line those up in the opening moshpit!
-Is the final mission supposed to end with an indefinite black screen?
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on June 28, 2018, 05:44:29 am
Spoiler:
-Is the final mission supposed to end with an indefinite black screen?
Spoiler:
It should not. Was the black screen after it faded out after the Washington was destroyed? Or after the cutscene? And can I confirm you're using Knossos and the mod is version 1.1.0?
-The humble Scorpion turned out to be my most-used fighter! Just couldn't get the hang of the Manticore or the Dragon somehow.
It's quite interesting to me how many people seem to feel this way! For me, of course it seems the Dragon is obviously the best dogfighting option, and I quite imagined many players would be going into the campaign saying "When do I get to fly a Dragon? When do I get to fly a Dragon?!" and that I was cruel for making people wait until mission 7, but it's good to see that it has some competition.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: HLD_Prophecy on June 28, 2018, 02:39:10 pm
Sorry that I haven't finished this campaign by now, but I'm having a significant amount of trouble with mission 1.

Spoiler:
Some humans always manage to reach the node. Sometimes I have no idea who managed to get there. Every time I think that I've destroyed everyone headed for the node, I fail the objective.

Any help with this?
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: General Battuta on June 28, 2018, 04:50:10 pm
Haven't had that issue but try constantly hitting F3 or F4 or whichever key brings up the 'all ships in mission' list, then add everything to a hotkey group and use that hotkey to look for **** near the node.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on June 28, 2018, 06:54:45 pm
Sorry that I haven't finished this campaign by now, but I'm having a significant amount of trouble with mission 1.

Spoiler:
Some humans always manage to reach the node. Sometimes I have no idea who managed to get there. Every time I think that I've destroyed everyone headed for the node, I fail the objective.

Any help with this?
Spoiler:
The radar should make it fairly obvious who is still alive, the big culprits in terms of stealthyness are the two wings of fightersthat try to go around you, and the escape pods, which don't auto-targeted
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: DefCynodont119 on June 28, 2018, 08:32:51 pm
I expected the SB-Shaitan to be awful, turns out: It's one of the best strike bombers I ever flown.   :lol:


I can see why as well: Freespace's AI is divided between fighter or bomber with no middle point, and the bomber AI doesn't bother dog fighting or light strafing, even when given a strike bomber capable of doing so.

Hence, why the Zeus and Shaitan are just weaker bombers when given to the AI, but total killing machines if flown by the player.

I never realized that until now.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on June 29, 2018, 09:20:34 am
Freespace's AI is divided between fighter or bomber with no middle point, and the bomber AI doesn't bother dog fighting or light strafing, even when given a strike bomber capable of doing so.
Freespace's AI doesn't distinguish between fighters and bombers at all; it just uses different functions for attacking capital ships.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: EatThePath on July 04, 2018, 05:56:10 am
Spoiler:
"Welcome to the Chain", eh?
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on July 04, 2018, 06:29:12 am
Spoiler:
"Welcome to the Chain", eh?
Spoiler:
0|101|22|111|10|112|12|20|122|112|202|120|110|0|10|11|12|122|112|110|22|111|10|22|210|22|10|202|0|102|200|
211|112|122|101|22|111|20|201|112|20|11|201|21|11|122|12|112|122|0|200|22|111|20|202|102|0|122|120|202|122|120|112|200|11|
0|200|211|11|102|102|0|200|0|211|112|122|10|111|112|201|2|112|110|110|112|111|102|220|202|200|11|10|22|111|201|21|0|201|211|0|220|
122|11|22|111|12|112|122|2|22|111|20|201|21|11|200|11|111|200|11|112|12|200|201|122|0|111|20|11|111|11|200|200|112|122|0|102|22|11|111|11|200|200
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: EatThePath on July 04, 2018, 06:43:04 am
Spoiler:
200|120|11|2|202|102|0|201|22|210|11|120|122|112|1|0|1|102|11|2|0|202|200|11|0|1|200|11|111|201|210|0|2|0|111|201|200|220|110|1|112|102|200|22|110|22|102|0|122|20|112|0|102

200|201|22|102|102|110|0|101|11|200|122|11|0|10|22|111|20|201|21|22|200|0|122|11|0|102|2|21|0|102|102|11|111|20|11|200|112|110|11|201|22|110|11|200|201|21|112|202|20|21
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on July 04, 2018, 06:50:25 am
Spoiler:
211|11|102|102|111|112|201|21|22|111|20|22|200|110|112|122|11|200|21|22|210|0|111|201|21|0|111|1|11|22|111|20|120|0|22|111|12|202|102|201|112|21|202|110|0|111|200
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: DefCynodont119 on July 04, 2018, 09:16:31 am
Freespace's AI is divided between fighter or bomber with no middle point, and the bomber AI doesn't bother dog fighting or light strafing, even when given a strike bomber capable of doing so.
Freespace's AI doesn't distinguish between fighters and bombers at all; it just uses different functions for attacking capital ships.

ahh, then the bomber function for attacking cap ships must be to "fly slowly in tight formation and launch bombs far away from target" and that works for big Ursas I guess, but strike bombers should probably strafe instead, idk.  I've never looked at the AI flags so do correct me if i'm wrong.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: rubixcube on July 04, 2018, 05:56:13 pm
Spoiler:
"Welcome to the Chain", eh?

Damn, looks like someone learned how to speak Shivan.

Care to give any hints?
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: General Battuta on July 04, 2018, 06:04:07 pm
Post the translations man they're really good.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: EatThePath on July 04, 2018, 09:39:31 pm
Actual commentary on the mod: Battuta talking about it got me to reinstall fso for the first time in years and start modding. Trying to figure out what to do can be frustrating and my flow is pretty fragile lately so I haven't passed mission 3 yet, but I hope to make myself push past that sometime soon. Wish there were a few more missions against unsheilded terrans and/or vasudans, that's was a fun powertrip

And now, at the general's request, the first mission+mod description decoded.
Quote
Spoiler:
MOD DESCRIPTION
nonetrulyunderstandtheshivanarmadasavethemselvesandtakingparti ntheeventsoffreespacefromtheirperspectivemaynotbeasenlightenin gasyouhopeneverthelessyoumightfeeldrawntopartakeintheirstrange aliennatureandtakepeekbeyondtheveil

experiencetwelvedifficultandrewardingmissionsusingshipsandweap onsyouveseenmanytimesbeforebutneverusedyourself

theeventsmaynotendlikeyouexpect

welcometothechain

MISSION 1
breifing
shivasynthesischainadapt

humanvasudandefecthegemonoutbreakprobableforcebinaryisolatione xtinctionoutcome

stage
cullcommencehumanstation

stage
webtendrilproximityhumanvacateprobable

stage
shivapreventhumanvacate

stage
humanvacatehumanchaincullcognitionprobable

Debreif
A
humanentiretyabortionconfirm

shivachainadaptationparametersacceptance

B
humanleaveshivapurposefailure

shivachainadaptationparametersrejection

C
shivaleavepurposeincomplete

shivachainadaptationparametersrejection

$Name: lucy go and stop em (1)
vacateescapehumanabortshipprevent

$Name: sure, lucy (2)
understoodhurricaneacknowledge

$Name: lucy, you fail (3)
humanvacateirrelevantfurtheractionunitehurricane

$Name: lucy you win (4)
humansabortsucceedentireshivaunitehurricane
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: EatThePath on July 05, 2018, 10:47:43 pm
I just had a bug on mission 3.

Spoiler:
I disabled the vasudan ship's engines while it was in the act of jumping out, so it got stopped forward of it's normal position. The Gale subsequently ran into it, got stuck, and never deployed the crate. The mission never advanced to the next stage.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on July 06, 2018, 12:33:52 am
Well, that should be easy enough to get around for the time being, but I'll be sure to fix that from happening.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: emark4 on July 07, 2018, 05:26:16 am
What's the story behind the GTF Skjoldr in the mod? I don't recall this fighter being in FS1 at all.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: CapellaGoBoom on July 07, 2018, 07:54:44 pm
What's the story behind the GTF Skjoldr in the mod? I don't recall this fighter being in FS1 at all.

Terran-only version of the jointly built T-V Ulysses in the canon universe
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: emark4 on July 07, 2018, 08:16:59 pm
What's the story behind the GTF Skjoldr in the mod? I don't recall this fighter being in FS1 at all.

Terran-only version of the jointly built T-V Ulysses in the canon universe

Oh wow, I didn't even realize the ulyssess isn't present in the mod.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: EatThePath on July 09, 2018, 04:49:04 pm
I was curious about the persona messages so I decoded those and wasn't disappointed. Also got the traitor debrief.

Quote
Spoiler:
Traitor Debrief

ERRANTBEHAVIORMALFORMEDTARGETPRIORITYSHIVAPURPOSEFAILURE

SHIVAOPERATIONCHAINFAILUREREQUISITETERMINATION



MESSAGE: Attack Target

Scorpion: ABORTCOMPLYAGGRESSION
Manticore: DESTROYIMMEDIATE
Basilisk: ENGAGEABORT
Dragon: UNDERSTOODABORT
Shaitan: REQUISITEDESTRUCTION
Nephilim: ANNHILATEACKNOWLEDGE


MESSAGE: Check 6

Scorpion: DANGERREARALERT
Manticore: BEHINDAWARENESS
Basilisk: MANEUVERIMMEDIATETHREAT
Dragon: FIRSTSHIVADEFENDSELF
Shaitan: RISKDANGERREAR
Nephilim: AWARENESSDANGER


MESSAGE: Death

Scorpion: DAMAGEUNABLEMANEC
Manticore: DAMAGECRITICAD
Basilisk: SHEATHDISSIPATEDSHELLUNABLE
Dragon: EVASIONIMPOSSIBLEREC
Shaitan: DEFENSEREQUIREDSHEL
Nephilim: SHEATHBREACHEDCANNOTEVA
Cyclone: SHELLBREACHEDORGANCRITICALINJUR


MESSAGE: Depart

Scorpion: AFFIRMATIVE
Manticore: ACKNOWLEDGE
Basilisk: AFFIRM
Dragon: AFFIRMATIVE
Shaitan: ACKNOWLEDGE
Nephilim: ACKNOWLEDGE


MESSAGE: Disable Target

Scorpion: ACKNOWLEDGEIMMOBILIZE
Manticore: VESSELPARAYLZEIMMEDIATE
Basilisk: ACKNOWLEDGELOCOMOTIONTARGET
Dragon: ATTEMPTIMMOBILIZEUNDERSTOOD
Shaitan: PARALYZEACKNOWLEDGEVESSEL
Nephilim: UNDERSTOODDESTROYINGLOCOMOTION


MESSAGE: Disarm Target

Scorpion: UNDERSTOODREMOVEWEAPON
Manticore: TURRETSUNDERSTOODDESTROY
Basilisk: WEAPONREMOVEORDER
Dragon: DESTROYWEAPON
Shaitan: TURRETSREMOVE
Nephilim: TARGETINGTURRETS


MESSAGE: Engage

Scorpion: ATTACKABORT
Manticore: ATTACKINGALLTARGETS
Basilisk: ENGAGEUNDERSTOODENEMY
Dragon: ATTACKDESTROYHOSTILE
Shaitan: ALLATTACKIMMEDIATE
Nephilim: DESTROYINGVALIDTARGETANY


MESSAGE: Help

Scorpion: ASSISTDESIRE
Manticore: DAMAGERECIEVEAIDREQUIRE
Basilisk: MANEUVERUNABLEASSISTNECESSARY
Dragon: STRESSUNDERGOAIDREQUIRED
Shaitan: ASSISTIMMEDIATEDANGER
Nephilim: ASSISTANCENEEDEDUNDERATTACK


MESSAGE: Ignore Target

Scorpion: TARGETDISREGARD
Manticore: UNDERSTOODAVOIDENGAGE
Basilisk: NEGATIVEATTACK
Dragon: DEFINITIONINVALIDTARGET
Shaitan: ATTACKINGAVOIDANCE
Nephilim: CURRENTLYAVOIDINGTARGET


MESSAGE: No

Scorpion: NEGATIVE
Manticore: NEGATION
Basilisk: NEGATIVE
Dragon: NEGATION
Shaitan: NEGATIVE
Nephilim: NEGATION


MESSAGE: No Target

Scorpion: NEGATIVE
Manticore: NEGATION
Basilisk: NEGATIVE
Dragon: NEGATION
Shaitan: NEGATIVE
Nephilim: NEGATION


MESSAGE: Oops 1

Scorpion: AIMINCORRECT
Manticore: CEASEFIRE
Basilisk: ALLIEDTARGET
Dragon: AIMINCORRECT
Shaitan: CEASEFIRE
Nephilim: ALLIEDTARGET


MESSAGE: Praise

Scorpion: POWERFUL
Manticore: ACCURATEFIRE
Basilisk: INDOMITABLE
Dragon: AIMINCORRECT
Shaitan: CEASEFIRE
Nephilim: THEHUMANVASUDANBANE


MESSAGE: Traitor

Scorpion: COMMUNEDISCONNECTED
Manticore: ACTIONSFAULT
Basilisk: ERRORCORRECTION
Dragon: BREAKCHAINMEND
Shaitan: COMMUNESEPARATIONDETECT
Nephilim: INCONSISTENCYDETECTED


MESSAGE: yes

Scorpion: AFFIRMATIVE
Manticore: ACKNOWLEDGE
Basilisk: AFFIRM
Dragon: AFFIRMATIVE
Shaitan: ACKNOWLEDGE
Nephilim: ACKNOWLEDGE
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: General Battuta on July 09, 2018, 05:07:31 pm
Hell yeah  :yes:
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: EatThePath on July 09, 2018, 06:20:38 pm
And heres mission 2's text too.
Quote
Spoiler:
M2 No Rest for the Wicked

Breifing
stage
   CYCLONEPARALYZEDREMOVEWEAPONHUMANABDUCTED

stage
   HURRICANEABORTSTATIONCYCLONELOCATION

stage
   GALERETRIEVECYLONE

stage
   SHIVAPRESERVEGALECYCLONE

Debriefing

if has departed   "Human Abductor"
   CYCLONESECONDABDUCTIONRETRIEVALIMPROBABLESHIVAPURPOSEFAILURE

   SHIVAOPERATIONCHAINFAILUREREQUISITETERMINATION

$Recommendation text:
    Your objective is to safely retrieve Cyclone. Gale (launched shortly after you) will dock with it and warp out with it. Take out 'Human Abductor' quickly before it hauls Cyclone away and after that you need to keep the area around it clear, and later protect it from the terrans. Don't get too focused on the Valkyries, a wing of Athenas will tear through Cyclone quickly if you don't keep pressure on them.

if "Retrieve Cyclone"
   CYCLONERETRIEVEDSHIVAPURPOSEEFFECTUATED

   SHIVAOPERATIONCHAINACCEPTABLE

if is destroyed "Shiva 1"
   CYCLONEDESTROYEDSHIVAPURPOSEFAILURE

   SHIVAOPERATIONCHAINFAILUREREQUISITETERMINATION

$Recommendation text:
    Your objective is to safely retrieve Cyclone. Gale (launched shortly after you) will dock with it and warp out with it. Take out 'Human Abductor' quickly before it hauls Cyclone away and after that you need to keep the area around it clear, and later protect it from the terrans. Don't get too focused on the Valkyries, a wing of Athenas will tear through Cyclone quickly if you don't keep pressure on them.

if  is-in-mission "Cyclone"
   SHIVALEAVEPURPOSEINCOMPLETE

   SHIVAOPERATIONCHAINFAILUREREQUISITETERMINATION

$Recommendation text:
    Your objective is to safely retrieve Cyclone. Gale (launched shortly after you) will dock with it and warp out with it. Take out 'Human Abductor' quickly before it hauls Cyclone away and after that you need to keep the area around it clear, and later protect it from the terrans. Don't get too focused on the Valkyries, a wing of Athenas will tear through Cyclone quickly if you don't keep pressure on them.


$Name: taranis: help :( (1)
   CYCLONEPARALYZEDUNABLEDEFENSE

$Name: lucy: i got you (2)
   SHIVATRANSITPROTECTGALETRANSITRETRIEVE

$Name: help! a cruiser sco (3)
   CRUISERARRIVESHIVAPURPOSEIMPROBABLE

$Name: help! a cruiser man (4)
   CRUISERARRIVESHIVAPURPOSEIMPROBABLE

$Name: lucy you win (5)
   CYCLONERETRIEVEDSHIVAPURPOSEFULFILLEDUNITEHURRICANE

$Name: lucy you lose (6)
   CYCLONEDESTROYEDSHIVAPURPOSEFAILUREUNITEHURRICANE

edit: structured the post but forgot to paste the content lol
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on July 10, 2018, 01:11:09 am
Oof, really need to change some of those persona messages, there's some mistakes in there.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Hopeful on July 11, 2018, 03:28:53 pm
I'm gonna be 'that guy' and ask: How do I translate this stuff? I'd love to do so on my own but I'm stumped.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on July 12, 2018, 05:36:32 am
I'm gonna be 'that guy' and ask: How do I translate this stuff? I'd love to do so on my own but I'm stumped.
Spoiler:
I've already given you the means.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: EatThePath on July 13, 2018, 12:21:03 am
Though if you're thinking with portals you're going to have to do some unpacking first. (Unless you make your life more difficult and do it from scratch like me.)
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: rubixcube on July 13, 2018, 07:37:54 am
Story question:

Spoiler:
In your mind, how long do the GTA and PVE hold out after the Lucy glasses Earth? A month maybe?
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on July 13, 2018, 09:35:21 pm
Spoiler:
In your mind, how long do the GTA and PVE hold out after the Lucy glasses Earth? A month maybe?
Spoiler:
You'll have to wait 6 - 12 months to find out.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: rubixcube on July 14, 2018, 12:09:16 am
 
Spoiler:
In your mind, how long do the GTA and PVE hold out after the Lucy glasses Earth? A month maybe?
Spoiler:
You'll have to wait 6 - 12 months to find out.

:(
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Bryan See on July 19, 2018, 08:58:47 pm
I am curious, how did the Shivan dialogue and text are made? How am I going to translate them?
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: carnivorousmeerkat on July 22, 2018, 03:08:31 pm
Here's my feedback about the campaign so far:

- Mission objectives are extremely vague and don't give a clear indication about what the player must do. In the first mission, for example,  instead of just saying "Abort Humans" I suggest changing to "Abort humans and prevent them from escaping".

-  Is there any way to translate the dialogue ? I would definitely love that.

- I think the Amelioration would be better if its firing rate was slightly increased.

Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on July 25, 2018, 01:01:10 am
- That's partly on purpose, as mentioned, were you aware of the recommendations? They'll explain your objectives more clearly.

- Already answered in the thread.

- It certainly would be! I take this to mean you thought it was underpowered due to its fire rate, which is very slow but that's mostly to compensate for its tremendous hull dps.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Bryan See on July 25, 2018, 06:32:46 pm
Actual commentary on the mod: Battuta talking about it got me to reinstall fso for the first time in years and start modding. Trying to figure out what to do can be frustrating and my flow is pretty fragile lately so I haven't passed mission 3 yet, but I hope to make myself push past that sometime soon. Wish there were a few more missions against unsheilded terrans and/or vasudans, that's was a fun powertrip

And now, at the general's request, the first mission+mod description decoded.
Quote
Spoiler:
MOD DESCRIPTION
nonetrulyunderstandtheshivanarmadasavethemselvesandtakingparti ntheeventsoffreespacefromtheirperspectivemaynotbeasenlightenin gasyouhopeneverthelessyoumightfeeldrawntopartakeintheirstrange aliennatureandtakepeekbeyondtheveil

experiencetwelvedifficultandrewardingmissionsusingshipsandweap onsyouveseenmanytimesbeforebutneverusedyourself

theeventsmaynotendlikeyouexpect

welcometothechain

MISSION 1
breifing
shivasynthesischainadapt

humanvasudandefecthegemonoutbreakprobableforcebinaryisolatione xtinctionoutcome

stage
cullcommencehumanstation

stage
webtendrilproximityhumanvacateprobable

stage
shivapreventhumanvacate

stage
humanvacatehumanchaincullcognitionprobable

Debreif
A
humanentiretyabortionconfirm

shivachainadaptationparametersacceptance

B
humanleaveshivapurposefailure

shivachainadaptationparametersrejection

C
shivaleavepurposeincomplete

shivachainadaptationparametersrejection

$Name: lucy go and stop em (1)
vacateescapehumanabortshipprevent

$Name: sure, lucy (2)
understoodhurricaneacknowledge

$Name: lucy, you fail (3)
humanvacateirrelevantfurtheractionunitehurricane

$Name: lucy you win (4)
humansabortsucceedentireshivaunitehurricane

How do you do that? How to translate back into Shivan text (e.g. "0|1|2|10|11|12|20|21|22|100|101|102|110|111|112|120|121|122|200|201|202|210|211|212|220|221|222")?
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: PIe on July 25, 2018, 07:53:50 pm
It looks like Asteroth has already answered this as concretely as he wants.  You'll have to use your intelligence to figure out the specifics.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Bryan See on July 26, 2018, 11:21:00 am
It looks like Asteroth has already answered this as concretely as he wants.  You'll have to use your intelligence to figure out the specifics.
Then how to begin with?
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: General Battuta on July 26, 2018, 01:50:11 pm
Well, you’ve got strings of digits consisting of 0, 1 and 2. If it were just 0 and 1 what would you do?
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Bryan See on July 26, 2018, 06:24:35 pm
De-binarize them.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Nightmare on July 26, 2018, 07:23:03 pm
De-binarize them.
If I'm correct, you kinda provided the awnser yourself in the earlier post. Task: can you find a pattern in that sequence of numbers you posted?
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Fusion on August 09, 2018, 06:58:53 am
Well, this certainly explains what happened in the parallel universe you run into in Age of Aquarius. Not going to lie, a very interesting, if enigmatic mod. I suppose if there's one thing that's most confusing, it's that the communications from Shivan ships are completely different from what one would expect to hear having heard the Kalki in AoA.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: rubixcube on August 09, 2018, 08:50:28 pm
Well, this certainly explains what happened in the parallel universe you run into in Age of Aquarius. Not going to lie, a very interesting, if enigmatic mod. I suppose if there's one thing that's most confusing, it's that the communications from Shivan ships are completely different from what one would expect to hear having heard the Kalki in AoA.

Well, in this campaign your hearing them untranslated as a shivan, kinda makes sense to me
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Fusion on August 09, 2018, 09:05:12 pm
Well, this certainly explains what happened in the parallel universe you run into in Age of Aquarius. Not going to lie, a very interesting, if enigmatic mod. I suppose if there's one thing that's most confusing, it's that the communications from Shivan ships are completely different from what one would expect to hear having heard the Kalki in AoA.

Well, in this campaign your hearing them untranslated as a shivan, kinda makes sense to me

I would have at least expected the classic Shivan Comm Node sound to be intermeshed with the untranslated Shivan. Again, very minor gripe - it was a very good campaign, one I certainly enjoyed.
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: mjn.mixael on September 22, 2018, 07:34:05 am
Played the first couple of missions tonight. I have to say, I'm very impressed. There's some very creative ideas here. Excellent work!
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: Bryan See on September 28, 2018, 11:57:41 am
Well, this certainly explains what happened in the parallel universe you run into in Age of Aquarius. Not going to lie, a very interesting, if enigmatic mod. I suppose if there's one thing that's most confusing, it's that the communications from Shivan ships are completely different from what one would expect to hear having heard the Kalki in AoA.

Well, in this campaign your hearing them untranslated as a shivan, kinda makes sense to me

I would have at least expected the classic Shivan Comm Node sound to be intermeshed with the untranslated Shivan. Again, very minor gripe - it was a very good campaign, one I certainly enjoyed.
While I haven't played missions, I've included the shivan voice files (persona) from this mod into the demo of Shattered Stars (https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=94941).
Title: Re: RELASE: Trimurti
Post by: General Battuta on September 28, 2018, 12:51:12 pm
And what of trinary Shivan language? Will Shattered Stars feature full syntax translation?
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Cobra on October 04, 2018, 03:28:00 am
What does SKREEEEEE mean? Or is there a difference depending on inflection or emphasis, or both?
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: General Battuta on November 24, 2018, 04:01:57 pm
Hey, uh, while cleaning up hard drive space I found that Trimurti had generated a 500mb event.log. I think maybe a few too many events have logging turned on!
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Nightmare on November 25, 2018, 08:05:56 pm
Mission 1 has no No-RTB debriefing. I also can jump out instead of landing on the Lucifer.

Mission 4:
-has no No-RTB debriefing either.
-I'm receiving no directive for several minutes after the "Protect Cargo" one failed.
-Bonus goal has no text.
-I also can complete the mission by landing on the Demon, but not procede to next mission.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Nightmare on November 25, 2018, 09:28:33 pm
Mission 6 has no No-RTB debriefing. Is it intentional that I can skip immediatly to the ending to read the clear instructions?
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on November 26, 2018, 05:33:32 am
Hey, uh, while cleaning up hard drive space I found that Trimurti had generated a 500mb event.log. I think maybe a few too many events have logging turned on!
Wowee. So uh I never once used the event logging functionality, and yet in every single mission the 10th through 22nd events all log true and false (???). So yeah, I'm gonna turn all that off.
Quote from: Nightmare
-I'm receiving no directive for several minutes after the "Protect Cargo" one failed.
-Bonus goal has no text.
These are unintentional and should be fixed
Quote from: Nightmare
I also can jump out instead of landing on the Lucifer.
Is it intentional that I can skip immediatly to the ending to read the clear instructions?
These are intentional, you can always complete any mission by jumping out or landing on the nearby destroyer (even mission 7!), and is very purposeful, as I said in the OP, that you can get clear instructions at any time. I want to make sure people know that clear information is readily available if they need it.
Quote from: Nightmare
-I also can complete the mission by landing on the Demon, but not procede to next mission.
I'm not sure what you mean by this, it should only let you land if you've failed or succeeded the mission.

I also don't know what you mean by "No-RTB debriefing". Do you mean an AWOL debrief? Where you've left too early before the mission is done? Because all the missions certainly have those.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Nightmare on November 26, 2018, 09:39:53 am
Quote
I'm not sure what you mean by this, it should only let you land if you've failed or succeeded the mission.
As I said it takes several minutes after I failed the crucial "Protect Cargo" directive before I received the "landing" one, which appeared only after all fighters and the cruiser were destroyed.

Quote
I said in the OP, that you can get clear instructions at any time. I want to make sure people know that clear information is readily available if they need it.
Quote
I also don't know what you mean by "No-RTB debriefing". Do you mean an AWOL debrief?
I haven't seen one even when I looked into the mission file; whenever I jumped out before being told to do so I received failure debriefing that spoiled the rest of the mission but no "don't return before the directive". Depending on how much time you still want to invest into this, you could make some sort of help button that displays the info as subtitle.

BTW you could link only to Knossos for the main download and keep the files for those installing manual in the Dropbox link, makes it easier to update.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on November 26, 2018, 05:31:36 pm
Oh yeah the failure recommendation text is always the same, since of course you wouldn't want to chastise someone for purposefully going AWOL just to see it. The way you failed should be fairly obvious anyway, and the main text of the debriefing does explicitly chastise you for the particular way you failed, but of course, most players won't be able to tell that.

BTW you could link only to Knossos for the main download and keep the files for those installing manual in the Dropbox link, makes it easier to update.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. I currently just tell people to go to Knossos, and have a link to dropbox for manual. Are you suggesting creating a link for Knossos as well?
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Nightmare on November 26, 2018, 06:41:41 pm
I thought it's easier if you link to https://fsnebula.org/mod/shv and keep the files needed for the manual install (mod.ini, logo) in a seperate download so you have to update only 1 file (the one on Knossos) instead of 2.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on November 26, 2018, 07:17:13 pm
I suppose, yes, but it's more awkward and prone to confusion or mistakes for the user to ask them to download two sets of stuff and put them together. I don't really mind the added overhead when it comes to updating.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: General Battuta on November 26, 2018, 07:29:51 pm
The logging thing may be well be a FRED bug worth reporting.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: AdDur on December 15, 2018, 01:16:46 am
Masterpiece - probably one one of the best short campaigns i have played so far. Mission design is really good, difficulty level is OK... I have few campaigns or missions several times, but Trimurti... it is fun to lose or try to find new hidden secrets and elements by each time (like finding GTSC Einstein).

I can only have hope (not the false one!) that there will be another campaigns created by such a talented person.
 
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Bryan See on December 28, 2018, 11:05:42 am
Could you add more dialog/messages to the missions? It would be more fun that way.
This message inspired me to add Shivan dialog that requires the work to create those in this campaign.

Can I replicate yours to create messages?
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Novachen on December 28, 2018, 11:46:51 am
Could you add more dialog/messages to the missions? It would be more fun that way.
This message inspired me to add Shivan dialog that requires the work to create those in this campaign.

Can I replicate yours to create messages?

You know, that the messages in Trimurti are actually translateable into english, right? Replicating them means, that your mod would use the same english messages than this campaign.

Why do you not translate your own messages into the trinary encryption that is used in Trimurti, instead?  :confused:

So far the encryption from english into trinary should be easier for you than the other way around. Even Trimurti make it easier to identify how to decrypt the sequence back into english.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Nightmare on December 28, 2018, 11:53:52 am
Could you add more dialog/messages to the missions? It would be more fun that way.
This message inspired me to add Shivan dialog that requires the work to create those in this campaign.

Can I replicate yours to create messages?

You know, that the messages in Trimurti are actually translateable into english, right? Replicating them means, that your mod would use the same english messages than this campaign.

Why do you not translate your own messages into the trinary encryption that is in Trimurti?  :confused: Especially because the encryption into the 012-format is much easier than the decryption from it into english.

Once you understand how it works you only have to use "search and replace" in a text editor, should work both ways.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Novachen on December 28, 2018, 11:57:30 am
Could you add more dialog/messages to the missions? It would be more fun that way.
This message inspired me to add Shivan dialog that requires the work to create those in this campaign.

Can I replicate yours to create messages?

You know, that the messages in Trimurti are actually translateable into english, right? Replicating them means, that your mod would use the same english messages than this campaign.

Why do you not translate your own messages into the trinary encryption that is in Trimurti?  :confused: Especially because the encryption into the 012-format is much easier than the decryption from it into english.

Once you understand how it works you only have to use "search and replace" in a text editor, should work both ways.

Yes, in this case it is true, because Trimurti make it easier to identify each standalone word. Without the seperators it would be more difficult to convert it back. At least that is what i know and how i understand this language :D.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Nightmare on December 28, 2018, 12:12:48 pm
As for Trimurti, I think it would be cool if there was a TrueType font that would auto-translate the text (it would be written in plain text) to code, so that the player could choose between the code version (default) and the readable version (without the translation script). I don't think the player could specify that in mission though...

From what I've seen in the translated parts, Asteroth has put a lot of good ideas into the way the Shivan language is set up, encoding this makes it invisible (and it felt a bit as if the story just passed by).
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Bryan See on December 28, 2018, 01:01:37 pm
As for Trimurti, I think it would be cool if there was a TrueType font that would auto-translate the text (it would be written in plain text) to code, so that the player could choose between the code version (default) and the readable version (without the translation script). I don't think the player could specify that in mission though...

From what I've seen in the translated parts, Asteroth has put a lot of good ideas into the way the Shivan language is set up, encoding this makes it invisible (and it felt a bit as if the story just passed by).
I think I can agree with you, considering the time frame between FSPort and BP and Shattered Stars.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Nightmare on December 28, 2018, 01:18:35 pm
This thread is there to honor Asteroths work (and discussion about Trimurti), please stay on topic. :)
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Bryan See on December 28, 2018, 01:38:00 pm
This thread is there to honor Asteroths work (and discussion about Trimurti), please stay on topic. :)
OK. Let me remind you that this is one of these that inspired my current incarnation of Shattered Stars.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Nightmare on December 28, 2018, 01:39:53 pm
Yes I know. I think everybody knows that by now.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Mito [PL] on January 23, 2019, 10:35:11 am
Whew. That was an experience. The story is as simple as it needs to be, and the missions are built in a rather minimalistic way, but that comes out to be a good thing. The most original part of the experience is, of course, the matter of the tone of this campaign, story and "dialogues". Oh, and the interface! Everything feels very alien, but there's enough info for the player to complete any of the mission objectives. Also operating with the use of typical Freespace mission profiles help a bit.

Now, the part that got me the most: the ending. Such use of audio and visual effects made it into a quintesence of space horror. It's just perfect. Barely any sci-fi makes these kind of scenes as good as this. Really.

And the imperfections I found:
Hidden Text: Show
Playing on Insane.
- Now I know why Shivans in FS1 don't rely on their secondaries that much. They ****ing suck!
- The regeneration feature is really interesting, but it seems to not regenerate countermeasures. Also, Nephilim's shields are on while regenerating, is that intentional?

M1:
- Some Terran fighters are guardianed
- Ugh... I think Terran fighters at the time didn't have intrasystem jump drives? At least, canonically.
- Wingmen tend to often enter "pacifist mode" and stop firing at designated targets.
- Cargo: Spoons lol

M2:
- More spoons! Also, more funny cargo!
- It's actually horribly tough to survive the athena + valkyrie wave that attacks the Taranis later in the mission... Unless valks don't show up at all for some reason?

M3:
The mission is outright great, but a few questions. If the fighters escape with the info nothing happens? Also, is the Vasudan science ship supposed to be just left there like that?

M4:
- Fun cargo again :P
- Check the waypoint paths, cargo transports tend to miss the fighterbay entrance.

M5:
- A nice and simple mission, but makes me cringe when it comes to Scorpion's primary gunpoints...

M6:
- Oh my, is that the Galatea?

M7:
- One of the last Isis transport is named "Vasudan Fighter"
- After the transports manage to get by the cruiser, they just... Fly further away. Shouldn't they jump out?
- After the friendly cruiser jumps out, the enemy cruiser just stays in place. Shouldn't the Cain jump out only after every Vasudan ship is dead or departed?
- Also, the bombardment effects are awesome, but shouldn't Lucy actually use its beams?

M8:
- So uhh nothing but the station gets rekt in the mission? ;_;
- I think Krishna's initial orders are empty.
- One of the cargo boxes has got purple designation for some reason. The one with spoons in it.

M9:
- Deva here also seems to not have initial orders.
- I can't help but notice how Mecross gets rekt by totally anything that looks bad at it. Poor cruiser.

M10:
- Pretty straightforward, nothing to add.

M11:
- The hardest part of the mission is to not get instakilled by fighters, after that it's a perfectly easy win.
- I believe that subspace variants of Shivan fighters need to have their radar icons assigned.

M12:
- I had Ursas spawning in literally just outside Lucy. Some of them even in its fighterbays, wut?
- The muting of sounds in the later part of the mission is super annoying since you can't hear most of the stuff that makes you know that someone's about to kill you.
- Also, how the hell did so many enemies just appear out of nowhere?
- The whole cinematic sequence is just on another level. It's just awesome. I can't praise it enough. Makes the whole campaign feel like falling down into the abyss of total space horror.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on January 23, 2019, 11:54:58 pm
*snip*
Wow, I'm quite impressed you had the determination and skill to play through a campaign that ended up much harder than intended (even after numerous nerfs) on Insane. You also have quite a few legitimate bugs and good observations here so I'll respond to just a few of the actual questions.

Spoiler:
Countermeasures should probably regenerate, yes, and the Nephilim's shields while regenerating is intended

I unfortunately realized a bit late that fighters indeed couldn't intersystem jump yet, and there is no easy fix without fundamentally changing the mission. I've also noticed the wingmate strangeness in the first mission, for me, I notice they tend to "forget" very quickly about their assigned targets as well as enemy turrets not shooting at the player, both of which were difficult for me to bugfix, and only seem to happen in M1.

In M3 the Kestral has the technology (or claims to) to track Shivans through subspace. Merely knowing that this technology existed from its escorts doesn't really help the GTA or PVE very much, and yes, you can leave the Menhit if you like, the Shivans don't really care what happens to it.

And for M4, it's entirely dock orders and depart via fighterbay orders so not much I can do there.

For M7 in the Vasudan bombardment cbanim the Lucifer is shown using these blue beams from its side instead of it's normal beams. Maybe they're specifically planetary bombardment beams?

Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Mito [PL] on January 24, 2019, 05:53:54 am
Hmm, okay... so, how about:
Spoiler:
There are a couple ships in FS1 that are actually quite fast. Centaurs, Poseidons, I think Hermes too? You could redesign the mission around fighters defending freighters and some smaller ships attempting to sneak in. Also, the station is supposed to be completely unprepared.

As for docking paths, I think it's possible to have these transports depart in the fighterbay using a normal waypoint path going into the place mixed with "departure: in fighterbay" tag.

And the beams - yes, that's probable, but I think I didn't see any of these planetary ones firing - but there were "bombardment" effects visible on the planet.
As for the difficulty, it was okay in my opinion. The campaign is hard enough to make players look for alternative solutions and plan their actions properly, with several replays of every mission, and really think of the loadouts. So, diving heads-on into enemy is definitely not an option here. However, it is easy enough to be playable, and on Insane difficulty you are supposed to have problems and a need to grind your approach to the mission a bit.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: AdDur on January 26, 2019, 08:23:04 am
One more thought - in second Hope mission, no matter how long you wait/let isis dock and repair Hope, the destroyer doesn't escapes - maybe there should be some possibility of screwing mission so badly, that Hope manages to retreat?
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Nightmare on January 27, 2019, 10:30:21 am
BTW, Asteroth did you read my earlier idea with the text? I think it went under in the derail.

I think it would be cool if there was a TrueType font that would auto-translate the text (it would be written in plain text) to code, so that the player could choose between the code version (default) and the readable version (without the translation script). I don't think the player could specify that in mission though...

From what I've seen in the translated parts, Asteroth has put a lot of good ideas into the way the Shivan language is set up, encoding this makes it invisible (and it felt a bit as if the story just passed by).
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on January 27, 2019, 02:44:21 pm
I did, yeah. If you want to set something like that up, be my guest, but I'm ultimately happy with the way it's currently presented in game. All the Shivan stuff was written with the knowledge that it would pass most players by in mind.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: General Battuta on January 27, 2019, 03:02:12 pm
You mentioned this earlier and I can't remember if you explained it - why did you end up keeping the original Terran names for Shivan (and otherwise) ships?
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Nightmare on January 27, 2019, 04:56:46 pm
I thought it was a cool idea to do that, but I'd have to figure out how to edit TTFs for that and I've got enough unfinished projects for now. :( Nice to hear you like the basic proposal though. :)
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on January 28, 2019, 01:14:40 pm
You mentioned this earlier and I can't remember if you explained it - why did you end up keeping the original Terran names for Shivan (and otherwise) ships?
Well, I probably shouldn't have mentioned it because both reasons are kind of embarrassing, but at first it was simply that I didn't know how to do it, when you're dealing with the FSPort, the FSPort-MVPs, and the MVPs, modifying ships in a .tbm becomes way easier than trying to copy an existing ship. I later would feel comfortable enough doing that, but then Shivan wing names became the odd man out (still having Terran names, that is), I simply couldn't come up with a naming scheme for them I liked, so I simply decided to leave the ship names as well, so at least it wouldn't be quite as jarring.

The names would've been Rain, Sleet, Snow and Hail for the fighters to keep with the weather theme (although 'Snow' sounds a bit too fluffy and harmless), and Lightning and Thunder for the bombers.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Admiral-Sabree on February 06, 2019, 06:13:42 pm
Ah so what is there to say about this campaign. Other then we be shivans. No I've got more to say. It was an interesting perspective to play. I liked the very ominous and foreboding tone set. The Missions were well designed and give or take that one with the transport fairly reasonable to understand from the image briefs. Also the diverging events, it was unexpected and welcome at the same time.  If anything there is to say, its that wow are the shivan ships just terrible. The scorpion is probably the most well balanced. Decent everything and definitely usable. The Manticores are death traps. I wouldn't even bother putting the AI in those things as they would last a total of 5 seconds. The Basilisks and Dragons seemed to have the best survivability when given to the AI. I preferred the Basilisk for it health pool and missile capacity although I'm certain its a death trap of its own on hard and insane. I'm not going to even bother talking about the weapons, except that there's a reason why they take awhile to kill you.

Spoiler:
Onto the missions themselves.

Not much to say exsept for mission 3, It took me about 4 trys before I relised I needed to hope into regeneration mode and stay in it. (I only relised this when i noticed the AI also went dark in this mission) Partially my fault for not understanding the description. But have to say proably one of the most unique ones.

Not sure which mission it was, but we had to defend the Tenpest. From like 3 wings. That died in 30 seconds and the mission was over, It was just kinda jarringly fast.

Then the Cargo depot mission, I think number 7? That was a fun challange, tricky to manage the Shivans effectivly. Meanwile defending the cargo, I kinda ingnored the bombers even after the mission was over and when we finally killed them i noticed the tempest was sitting at a wopping 4% hull. Just a fun note.

Mission 8, Lost hope was a short and sweet one. But the Karnack. That thing killed me a lot blowing up. The hardest part was not dieing from the shock wave. Just another fun note.

Onto the last mission. It was just an interesting mission. When the sound cut out with only the ambiance and the pilots screams it was jarring in once again all the right ways. Also first time I've heard some of thouse pilot death screams. A lot of them never are used due to the rariety of them triggering. It was just a brutal exspirance. Great ending.

Thats about all from me. Will have to go back for thouse spoons at a later date. When I saw the spoons and forks I thought it was just a in game nod to Vassago.

 
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: CJM on April 22, 2019, 01:15:20 pm
Beat the campaign twice on Medium and Insane difficulties. Pretty fun and unique. In case you plan to keep working on it in the future, here are some suggestions: https://pastebin.com/NG0rxkJv
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: 0rph3u5 on September 20, 2019, 01:43:50 am
So, in my ongoing effort to reduce my backlog, I gave this a try and well....

This campaign heavily relies on the strength of its pantomime* (or just "miming" if you are british), which is makes it worthwhile to check on as it is unique form of presentation. However that also turns out to be the root of its biggest flaw IMO.
*Technically it is not a "silent feature" but as text and audio are cryptic, I will regard it as such.

Said flaw is that it relies heavily on repetition for some missions to explain themselves, and FS_Open is not exactly set-up for quick-out-and-back-in-again cycles. As such it would be a great help if additional directives would unlock upon successfull completion of mission ciritical steps for future playthroughs - this would be esspecially helpful if you don't play the campaign in a single sitting (I played it across and entire week).
Normally you can keep that to a minimum because you either dialogue to foreshadow stuff or you keep such "need to remember" moments to a minimum, e.g. in Walking on Ashes I've kept that to a 2 instances per mission maximum (usually related to "oh there is an LRed").
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Antares on June 27, 2020, 11:54:49 pm
CTD upon completion of False Hope.

~

Error: shv-09.fs2 (line 1480):
Error: Required token = [#Goals] or [$Formula], found [+Event Flags: ()].

File: parselo.cpp
Line: 303

EDIT: Never mind, that particular error pops up for a couple of different missions toward the end of the campaign. Clicking through some debug window prompts allows the game to continue. Still annoying.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Nightmare on June 28, 2020, 08:33:52 am
Are you using a recent nightly build? If you use one that's older than a few months it probably has some issues bc of the Event Flags having been added.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Antares on June 28, 2020, 12:09:30 pm
Using 19.0 final; the first post says 19.0 RC1 is sufficient.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Nightmare on June 28, 2020, 12:12:49 pm
The error message says something different. What build is Knossos configured to use?
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Antares on June 28, 2020, 01:11:46 pm
The default build for the campaign is set to the latest nightly, but I have it set to 19.0.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on June 28, 2020, 01:27:26 pm
Given that list of flags is empty it doesn't seem necessary. I wonder if nightly FRED that I use is automatically putting that in, especially since the last few missions are the ones I've most recently edited. I'll be able check it out tonight.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Nightmare on June 28, 2020, 01:33:29 pm
It is, that's why I bumped into it.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Mito [PL] on June 28, 2020, 02:07:57 pm
How about providing a standard debug log? I think you are familiar with the procedure?
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Nightmare on June 28, 2020, 02:17:12 pm
I think the problem was already found
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Mobius on July 27, 2020, 04:09:39 pm
I've just completed my playthrough.  :pimp:

Spoiler:
If the main goal was to provide a gaming experience that would, as much as possible, get the player to watch the Great War from the perspective of a Shivan pilot, Trimurti succeeded and did so admirably. The last mission in particular, mostly because of its final cutscene, really added something to this campaign. I noticed a handful of glitches here and there that may be fixed in a later release via quick FREDding, but this is a miniscule drawback compared to the amount of work devoted to creating this campaign. It may eventually be expanded with a bit more of a "storytelling depth" in future releases, but that is mostly a matter of opinion. Many fans would disagree.

I see that Trimurti as a word has its roots in Sanskrit, although I have to say that "tri murti" means three dead men in my local dialect. At first, in fact, I was like... what the hell? Has this been developed by a neighbor?  :lol:

Oh, and I got 0/5 spoons.  :nervous:

EDIT: I'm reading comments about fans having trouble trying to figure out what to do in certain missions. I have to admit, in fact, that the mission featuring both an Imhotep and a Faustus was a headscratcher. I downloaded this mod via Knossos so I didn't know that debriefing suggestion texts actually explained what to do. My mistake.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: pipai on September 25, 2020, 12:09:41 am
Hi! I'm getting an error:

Error: shv-01.fs2(line 2355):
Missing required token: [$Arrival Location:]. Found [+Formation: Tetrahedron] instead.

Running it via locally-built knossos using FSO 19.0.0.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on September 25, 2020, 01:11:34 pm
Trimurti requires a nightly on or after 9/04/2020, Knossos should enforce that, although I may have set something up wrong.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Mobius on October 25, 2020, 05:17:16 am
There's a specific line in mod.json files that covers that. It should also take care of downloading a build compatible with the pre-set requirements (and it doesn't have to be a recent build, either - certain mods on Knossos will get you to download FSO 19.0.0 in case you don't have it).

Also - I was wondering, is Trimurti going to cover the FS2 timeline in a future release?  :)
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Asteroth on October 25, 2020, 08:17:58 pm
Let's just say I have plans for a continuation, but not in the way you might think. Don't hold your breath though, it will be awhile.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: Nyctaeus on October 25, 2020, 08:31:36 pm
Let's just say I have plans for a continuation, but not in the way you might think. Don't hold your breath though, it will be awhile.
He's making Sanctuary campaign :]
Title: Re: RELEASE: Trimurti
Post by: 0rph3u5 on October 26, 2020, 02:53:57 am
Let's just say I have plans for a continuation, but not in the way you might think. Don't hold your breath though, it will be awhile.
He's making Sanctuary campaign :]

No, it has to be (speculative, not commanding) an Into the Breach/Othercide/Star Renegades-like timeline hoping thing - otherwise it wouldn't take this long :P :P