Author Topic: RELEASE: Legion's Demise- a playable FS2 Intro!  (Read 9448 times)

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Offline DefCynodont119

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Re: RELEASE: Legion's Demise- a playable FS2 Intro!
Any possibility of getting this on Knossos? It's on my radar (duh), but an easy way to play it without futzing about with too many settings manually would probably bump it up a few notches in priority, if you know what I'm saying.

I too would like to know if this can be done please . .  :)




It's nice short campaign. It takes another aproach on known events.
First mission keeps me occupied all time. I wonder
Spoiler:
if it's possible to save all cruisers.

Spoiler:
It can be done on very easy,but it's really hard even then. I'm not sure if it's possible on hard/insane tho.
The crux of this mission is that you need to use your wingmen to mutitask, most of them have general-rank AI so they do help you.

As for the support ship being reusable after departing, If I knew how to do that FREDding wise, I would have.  :blah:

This mod replaces some of the stock visuals so I'm content to let players play the retail campaigns with them. :D
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Re: RELEASE: Legion's Demise- a playable FS2 Intro!
Ah, ok then :p

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: RELEASE: Legion's Demise- a playable FS2 Intro!
Any possibility of getting this on Knossos? It's on my radar (duh), but an easy way to play it without futzing about with too many settings manually would probably bump it up a few notches in priority, if you know what I'm saying.

I too would like to know if this can be done please . .  :)
Anyone can upload a mod through the Knossos client; if you want help figuring it out, hop on the HLP Discord server and ask in the #knossos channel.
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(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
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Re: RELEASE: Legion's Demise- a playable FS2 Intro!
Alright, some thoughts... Take this all with a grain of salt; I'm a pretty blunt critic, and also not the greatest player out there.

Right from the get-go, I started noticing grammatical and tonal mistakes. Now, missing a comma or using the wrong "there" isn't the worst thing in the world, but I recommend anyone without a very solid command of English mechanics get a proofreader. I'm emphasizing this because it was a major issue throughout every briefing, debriefing, mission, and the
Spoiler:
tech room entry
, and also because it's relatively easy to fix. The briefings were generally serviceable at getting the gameplay across, but as a result of the aforementioned issues, they didn't contribute anything to the campaign's tone.



Right, individual missions...

Spoiler:
The first mission felt disorganized. I think it was supposed to feel chaotic, but between the lack of dialogue and long stretches with nothing in particular going on, it fell flat. For example, the player's first objective is to escort Delta as they try to penetrate the Lucifer's shields. It's a neat idea, and should have emphasized Command's desperation regarding the Lucifer, but the player ends up shooting at some random Shivan fighters while Delta sits there going pew pew for a bit. The player's actions are too decoupled from the interesting part. Putting Delta under more direct pressure and adding status messages would have gone a long way towards making it work; the former re-couples the gameplay with Delta's survival, while the latter helps them feel connected while also adding to the chaotic feeling.

The part with the cruisers was better. I actually want to talk about the bombers gauge a bit here, since it was a nice quality of life improvement, but also because it went a ways towards rectifying the decoupling problem. Why do we care about that destroyer wot's sitting there, not actively messing with our objectives? 'Cos it's spewing bombers, of course! Unfortunately, the cruisers fell victim to the same lack-of-messaging issue, which made it difficult to prioritize targets in the heat of battle; at the same time, however, the Shivan attack never felt organized enough to make me really care. The briefing emphasized how I'd have to make tactical decisions, but in the actual battle, it felt like repetitive, mindless bomber-killing. Also, I'm pretty sure that a Hemsut was referred to as a cruiser, which threw me off for a bit.

The part with the escape pods was probably the mission's strong point. Defending a bunch of small ships while bombers and cruisers duke it out is pretty challenging, for obvious reasons, especially with my wings messed up by the previous cruiser action. The gimmick with the beacon was cool, but I'm pretty sure the correct solution is always "fly away from the destroyer a bit".

The actual Legion's demise was something of a let-down. It just happened too quickly, and the hulk afterword looked weirdly intact. Once again, more dialogue would have saved the day. (In fairness, my comm system was in the low 20s here, so it's possible that I missed a message.) My playthrough ended with me timeskipping while a single Osiris solo'd a disabled Demon for several minutes, which is probably worth having some sort of contingency for. (What if a player disabled the Demon only to find all their bombers down? Would the mission continue indefinitely?)

Spoiler:
Mission 2 is where the campaign redeems itself. The gameplay was pretty standard stuff, and honestly, that's a good thing. After the disorganization of the first mission, a simple escort mission was welcome. The story elements, however, were very well-done. The implications for ST:R and Blue Planet are both neat, Iota 1 became an intriguing character out of nowhere, I really want to know what the deal with the phasing node is, etc., etc. I do want to point out, though, that if the player follows Intelligence 3 too closely, and turns back immediately when ordered, they'll miss the phasing node message. That's pretty suboptimal.

I don't want to sound like too much of a broken record, but mission 2 needs more dialogue. In particular, Theta 1's message about the Idun jamming sensors should really have been followed up on. Also, "some kind/sort of" is an extraordinarily weak phrase; repeating it in so many messages is a tonal disaster. The gimmick where the jamming doesn't shut off properly had me rolling my eyes - yes, I can understand why intel spooks would have that ability, but implementing it so badly strains plausibility to the breaking point. That said, the jamming does do a lot for the mission's intrigue, so I can see where that's coming from.



Well, that's my review, such as it is. Try not to take it too harshly - there's definitely potential, and I absolutely admire the story, especially in the second mission. Oh, and just out of curiosity,
Spoiler:
is there any deeper significance to the HOL freighters
?




EDIT: As for the support ship in mission 2... You can detect a support ship dying with when-argument, if that helps.

Code: [Select]
( when-argument
    ( any-of "Support 1" "Support 2" "Support 3" "Support 4" "Support 5" )
    ( is-destroyed-delay "<argument>" 0 )
    ( invalidate-argument "<argument>" )
    ( set-support-ship <appropriate arguments to disable further support ships> )
    ( send-message "#Command" "support dead oh noes" )
)
« Last Edit: December 18, 2017, 09:52:40 pm by xenocartographer »

 
Re: RELEASE: Legion's Demise- a playable FS2 Intro!
of was hun iv e besteld with 2 cruiser lost the 2nd mission is protect mission iets maken dure you meet the transports its good to gaurd but none fall and you win it but then i thought the story continues but its enjoyble
but afther the escape return to base nothing more

 

Offline DefCynodont119

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Re: RELEASE: Legion's Demise- a playable FS2 Intro!
Thanks for the feedback!


First off,
You defiantly missed a few dozen messages, and the thing with the mission having to be time-stepped to be finished, should NOT have happened. The mission force-ends after a little over 20 minutes, so unless you were accidentally ignoring a jump-out objective- something is wrong. I never had that happen in testing before. Can you tell me more details? what was the health of the Barbatos at? did the Anhur jump out? What build?

I've actually had a proofreader go over the mod, but finding a good proofreader is dang-near impossible.  :blah: If you are offering/think you an do it, please PM me.

About the first mission:
Spoiler:
This was the first mission I ever made, (aside from the walkthough) so it was bound to be imperfect, :rolleyes:

The idea of the mission is that the player has more then one means to complete each objective, and tons of side goals, sort of like "Her Finest Hour".
The other thing about this mission, is that it was made to follow the FS2 intro, even if it's somewhat inconvenient to the gameplay, I will look into adding more messages tho. But do to limitations with the AI I can't make the bombers do anything other then sit and go pew-pew.

mission two:
Spoiler:
I was actually worried that this would be a weakpoint, but you have alleviated my concerns!  :) good to know this mission was liked!

About the players sensors not turning back on correctly: The plot demanded that Iota 1's sensors stay down longer then the other ships,
Making the players fighter reboot due to damage was the only way I could think of doing that, the thing is; your wingmen/cruisers need to be able to use their missiles, so I can't have the jamming stay on longer without either making a plothole (by letting them fire anyway) or braking mission balance. But if the effect only lasts for the time the jamming stops, then the players sensors will be back on by the time they fly back, so there would be no point in having it.

Oddly enough, more then one tester that I gave this to never followed Intel-3 despite being instructed to, because they assumed it would be killed by plot and thus did not bother protecting it,   :doubt: :lol: So I can't force the player to go to the Idun or to find the phasing node, I can however delay the arrival of the Shivans by a few seconds so the player's more likely to get the node message if that's what you mean.


I'm glad you liked the story! the
Spoiler:
ST:R and Blue planet
connections are definitely there! And the
Spoiler:
Mission 2 Failure debrief
is much more revealing!
« Last Edit: December 19, 2017, 11:06:04 pm by DefCynodont119 »
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Offline rubixcube

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Re: RELEASE: Legion's Demise- a playable FS2 Intro!
I'll give this a try sometime tomorrow, nice choice of subject to base your first campaign around, I'm surprised nobody did this yet.
Stuff

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: RELEASE: Legion's Demise- a playable FS2 Intro!
There was an actual playable FS1 intro way back when.   
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

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Re: RELEASE: Legion's Demise- a playable FS2 Intro!
coorect i expacted that you play through cutscenes campaigns it will be nice
but thats not so easy as i thought

 

Offline Snarks

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Re: RELEASE: Legion's Demise- a playable FS2 Intro!
Cool idea for a mission. I'll check it out.

 

Offline Rhymes

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Re: RELEASE: Legion's Demise- a playable FS2 Intro!
There was an actual playable FS1 intro way back when.   

Goober made a single mission out of it--it's in the fsoinstaller download as Ross128.
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Offline DefCynodont119

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Re: RELEASE: Legion's Demise- a playable FS2 Intro!
So any new reviews? I still want some input before I do any updates.
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Re: RELEASE: Legion's Demise- a playable FS2 Intro!
You've already seen my review, but I just wanted to say, I'd be down for proofreading, if you'd like that.

  

Offline DefCynodont119

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Re: RELEASE: Legion's Demise- a playable FS2 Intro!
You've already seen my review, but I just wanted to say, I'd be down for proofreading, if you'd like that.

Sending PM soon. . .  ;)
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Offline MC_Kejml

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Re: RELEASE: Legion's Demise- a playable FS2 Intro!
Hey DefCynodont, I have just finished your campaign and man, did I like it. I played it on hard; the thing about the first mission is that it is a working BoE where you can both enjoy the "huge battle atmosphere", but you also have an influence of how it turns out.  I love well-made BoEs which neither depend on you almost solely (Delenda Est), nor leave you a useless peon in the overall chaos. I played it about 16 times and after 14 years of playing FS2, I finally learned to use the "J" key. :D I am kind of disappointed you can't save all the cruisers (the Elko dies pretty fast), but that is a minor quib.

The second mission was less immersive, although I have enjoyed
Spoiler:
the phasing node and the implications on BP and Silent threat
. I am looking forward to more missions from you; if this really was your first, then good job.

Pretty cool seeing another SCP Foundation fan around here, too!

 

Offline DefCynodont119

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Re: RELEASE: Legion's Demise- a playable FS2 Intro!
Hey DefCynodont, I have just finished your campaign and man, did I like it. I played it on hard; the thing about the first mission is that it is a working BoE where you can both enjoy the "huge battle atmosphere", but you also have an influence of how it turns out.  I love well-made BoEs which neither depend on you almost solely (Delenda Est), nor leave you a useless peon in the overall chaos. I played it about 16 times and after 14 years of playing FS2, I finally learned to use the "J" key. :D I am kind of disappointed you can't save all the cruisers (the Elko dies pretty fast), but that is a minor quib.

The second mission was less immersive, although I have enjoyed
Spoiler:
the phasing node and the implications on BP and Silent threat
. I am looking forward to more missions from you; if this really was your first, then good job.

Pretty cool seeing another SCP Foundation fan around here, too!

Glad You liked it!  :nod:  I actually remade the main mission from scratch 2 or 3 times during development, so you could say it was and wasn't my first.  :lol: 
I only did so once or twice but It should be possible to save every ship on very easy, but you have to go out of your way and ignore all other objectives to do it.

Sorry if my writing/spelling was sub-par at any point, (and I know it was lol) I will patch that once I get everything set up.

Spoiler:
The New Intel entry (if you haven't read it) and the 2nd Mission's failure debriefing have more plot stuff as well. hint hint.


I have lots of mission ideas still floating around, but I tend to dream a little too big sometimes, hehe, I will make new missions at some point don't you worry.

Thanks!
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Offline Goober5000

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Re: RELEASE: Legion's Demise- a playable FS2 Intro!
Finally made time to play this.  Good work!  A fun set of two missions, and I was quite looking forward to comparing this vision of how the intro might look play in-game to my vision.

Xenocartographer said a lot of what I wanted to say, but I'll add in my two cents.


The Good

The first mission did a good job at fleshing out the intro cutscene.  Story-wise, the fleet engagement felt meaningful, and the player had some tasks to accomplish instead of just sitting there and watching things happen.  And I loved the very first clip before the action starts.  You did a great job of actually matching up that shot with the cutscene.

It was fun to see the excerpts from the FS Reference Bible and the FSPort tech entries for the Railgun and Prometheus A used in the briefing.

The second mission was quite imaginative.  I liked the subterfuge of the GTSC Idun and the phasing node, and was curious what that was supposed to connect to in the larger FreeSpace universe.  Also it's always a pleasure to see ST:R references.

I liked seeing the two new tech entries, and props for mentioning them in the debriefing, otherwise I wouldn't have known to check.  The first entry provided some interesting depth to the second mission, but unfortunately left the Idun a loose end.

It's nice to see some less common mission concepts like sniping the HOL cargo without actually attacking the convoy.  This is particularly commendable for a beginning FREDder.

I assume the GT Intelligence 1, GT Intelligence 2, and GT Intelligence 3 ships are a nod to the Avenging Angels mission in FS1.  Similarly, I assume the Juggernath is a nod to the FS1 prototype mission that Selectah discovered.


The Bad

The missions were pretty busy.  There was a lot of stuff going on simultaneously which could have easily been taken out with no impact on gameplay -- the Karnak evacuation in the first mission and the HOL attack in the second missions, to give two examples.

In the first mission, it was very difficult to keep track of what was going on.  Despite the briefing's emphasis on strategy, I didn't do much other than order my wingmen to attack the Shivan cruisers.  In fact, I was kept occupied for several minutes before getting a chance to deploy the virtual nav buoy, only to find out that I no longer needed to deploy the buoy because Intelligence had gone ahead and done the rendezvous without me.  Similarly, the escape pod sequence happened entirely without my involvement.  And although I tried to coordinate an attack on the Barbatos using what little remained of my forces at that point, we could neither destroy nor disable it and it managed to escape.

The second mission, while great story-wise, was badly balanced.  The HOL attack was a little too much, and it was all I could do to fight off all the Shivans more or less single-handedly.  I lost the Juggernath and the Thylacine made the rendezvous at 5% hull integrity, and that only by the skin of its teeth because I forced all the enemy fighters to attack me instead of it.

I didn't get the supposed Blue Planet references, though it's been a while since I played BP.  Was the loose end of the GTSC Idun a reference to BP?


The Ugly

So many spelling errors...


I'll give this a try sometime tomorrow, nice choice of subject to base your first campaign around, I'm surprised nobody did this yet.

Have you played Deneb III? ;)