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Duncan McPherson Blog

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Gamma39er:
So I was looking up the Freespace Developers and found that Duncan McPherson (level designer and voice of the untranslated Vasudan), has a blog. In one of those blogs, he shares level design mockups he wrote down, as well as his own node map, and his original Vasudan language document.

https://duncanmakesgames.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/from-the-vaults-of-game-design

Goober5000:
This is fascinating to read.  Especially the nodemap!  This sheds a lot of light on some of the idiosyncrasies of FS1.  For example:

1) Ross 128 is treated as a frontier system in FS1, both in the intro and in the subtext of the story.  And yet, on the official Volition node map, it's right in the middle of everything.

2) Many of the Node Inconsistencies can be explained by referring to Duncan's node map.  I wish the blog showed the full version.

And there are some tantalizing pictures of mission design and the Vasudan language.  As Gamma39er noted, Yo'yeh (no) explains that death sound sent when Omega 3 is destroyed in "The Hammer and the Anvil".

Grizzly:
I'm quite sad about the engine upgrade effectively rendering everyone's missions unplayable. That's a really big "what could've been" right there.

Mobius:
It's amazing how so many extra details on this series can come out of nowhere after a quarter of a century. That tiny bit of material coming straight from FS1's development does indeed explain some of the node inconsistencies mentioned by Goober earlier in this thread.

I wonder at this point if we can get some extra information on the matter, such as why some of the jump nodes were changed during late stages of development. (We may also ask for more pictures of those drafts.)

Gamma39er:
I've messaged him. Hoping to hear back at some point.

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