October is upon us, my friends. Leaves will be falling, ghosts will be rising, and more amazing FreeSpace news is upon us.
The Babylon Project has released another incremental release of its
Zathras media add-on. Zathras likes this, yes. Very much.
Have you been following Rheyah's
frequent writings as he discusses FreeSpace gameplay and in universe fluff for his Shetland campaign? Because if not, you have no excuse now.
Likewise BlackWolf's been posting
little updates on his Frontlines 2334 campaign (with several subtle hints on progress on TI)
(AMAZING CONFLICT OF INTEREST ALERT!) Did you know I'm working on something that will eclipse FreeSpace 3 AND Transcend Planet of Dawn? Check out this
groin-grabbingly awesome preview I wrote and ignore the snobby replies I get from my employees.
I heard that!
Did you know... that
3.7.0 Final was released? Do you know what that means...? The code freeze is OVER. So let's introduce a new-sub-segment as we give a quick summary of cool and new features committed to the head branch of the FSO codebase.
For those of you not in the know, the trunk code base sort of the main branch where all the code gets committed. It always has the latest features, but it also has the latest bugs, and features may get taken out or completely changed before they go into an official build. Once a day, new builds get built from head branch and posted on the
Nightly Builds board. So check it out if you're feeling brave or are developing mods.
Exciting new features!
- show-subtitle-text can now display messages as well as raw text - Goober5000
- toggle subsytem scanning, scannable, cargo revealed, hidden from sensors, stealth and friendly stealth added to the alter-ship-flag sexp - karajorma
- Support added to add more languages besides English, French, German and Polish, leading the way to better localization! - karajorma
- event.log can now snapshot events checked in a frame and record the status of an event the previous time it was checked as well as the current state - karajorma
- added a player-is-cheating sexp (I requested that one, and you can bet I'll only be using it for evil!) - The E
- allow a user-specified number of credit images - Goober5000
- allow the specification of the positions of medals, callsigns and labels on the medal screen. - Goober5000
- lua function to check if a ship is warp capable, and access to a ship's auto-aim FOV - zookeeper
- is-facing now works for things that aren't ships (like waypoints!) - zookeeper
- experimental configurations to make AVX builds (see this post for more explainations) - The E
- new ship flag to enable smarter AI use of afterburners. Now it can use them while flying waypoints or attacking capital ships (use the free-afterburner-use flag with alter-ship-flag) - Admiral MS
- the number of medals is now dynamic! (Now we can pave the way for a North Korean General Mod) - Goober5000
- frame profiling code, see what exactly is slowing down FreeSpace. Is it your 500000 weapons or some untested patch you're trying? (Mostly for devs or coders) - Swifty + The E
- allowing fade-in and fade-out sexps to use any color, not just black, white and red. (Are you guys encouraging me to give people seizures or something?) - Goober5000
Phew! And that's only the ones I thought were interesting and not bug fixes! (Not that bug fixes aren't cool, they are. But new features are cooler)
Also Kobrar has some pretty cool stuff on the shader front with
parallax mapping! Very much worth a look, especially the video.
On the short scripting front, FelixJim has put out another small and neat script that reveals where those pesky
invisible waypoints are. Now we, the players, can see what kind of crazy patrol route the FREDder wants us to fall asleep to.
Well, well, well. In theory the first modelling modding contest is now over. But BlackWolf, in his infinite compassion, has allowed a potential 2 week extension for those who have made amazing last minute progress.
See post for more details.Anyway, let's take a look at stuff.
Released Worksbobbtmann's released his very
sleek looking fighter Iapthatheuas. Ifperatus. I-AP-ET-US. CLASS. FIGHTER. Look for it on freespacemods.net!
(Nailed it!) (Seriously guys, please choose names that I can pronounce in the future)
Oddgrim releases his crazy
Vasudan Miner for the competition. It's not 100% complete, but its enough to play around with and add to your amazing Vasudan mining campaign you have in development.
DahBlount comes out of no where and develops and releases this ultra sleek fighter, the
GTF Gilgamesh. Looks like I found the perfect fighter for Delta 1's Hyper-Evolved Form...
It looks as fragile as his ego...Hey, go use your own account to insult him.Betrayal has re-released the
GTCa Sagittarius, a cool pre-Orion carrier. This version fixes some problems with the previous release, like closing up collision detection holes.
Continued in ProgressLepanto continues work on his
Vasudan bomber, the Ammit. Its got some basic coloring done and... am I crazy or does it look like a duck?
Enioch gives us another update for his
Renegade Legion mod. He also posted a p3d of his amazing battleship. Flying with it will be a dream... He's also still looking for help! Give it to him, people!
Col. Hornet continues with his
GTF Hydra, a heavier version of the GTF Ezechiel/Nyx. I'm going to be all over that as soon as he releases it...
Whitearrow's got some nice pics up to show the
size comparison of his frigate and Steve-O's Vexor. The two look really good together! Love those angeled armor plates.
New and Hotness StuffStarbug brings us a menace that overshadows other evil species... The Daleks! Prepare to be:
EXTERMINATED.
Esarai sneaks in for a last minute entry with a
Colossus Gargant Skybox sized fighter called the
Murugan. It's everything I could ever hope for in a fighter. Huge guns, turrets, and the ability to just plow over anything that looks at me the wrong way.
Vasudan Admiral also sneaks in a
last minute entry for the modelling contest with this amazingly detailed station! Bare bones texture right now, but maybe with that 2 week extension, VA can whip up something amazing!
fightermedic's been working like a mad man on a ton of
Lego-inspired ships. There's just way too much to cover! I'd just go through the thread and enjoy the pics. Hey, Holley, I found a new fighter for you!
Oh, just because I'm a girl, you think I'm going to like that pink fighter. Is that it? It's not like I could have any other colors I could like!Well, it's just your text is always pink and... ANYWAY...starbug bringing us some Homeworld stuff with this
upgunned Hiigaran ship. The more guns the better! (Also there's a bonus video!)
Not too long ago, in a forum down way down below the Modding Board... bobbtmann shows off his workings of the iconic
Corellian Corvette! I'll still blow it to bits, even if it is a consular vessel. Those ambassadors are just rebel spies anyway!
And rhettro also shows off his own vision of the not-as-iconic, but still pretty cool,
Imperial Assault Gunboat. I always preferred this ship in XvT since it had like, shields.
Scooby's got
a pair of new ships for our drooling eyes. Some kind of... space fighter and some kind of... EW-type ship. (Oh I see, they're called the Shrike and the Spectre!) (Also for release somewhere in this
thread)
Pandora's Box is an older campaign, another one the predates the SCP and all our modern tools that we enjoy today. But its so well put together that it doesn't feel that old. There's some mods included with it, but they're small and actually just taken from FreeSpace 1 (though the FSCRP version has some extra skyboxes and oddly enough not in VP form...). Pandora's Box's strength comes from its straight and to the point action. For people who wondered how the NTF fought the GTVA before FreeSpace 2, it certainly gives a good experience.
So what's the story all about? Well, stop if you've heard this one before. You're assigned to escort a convoy, when suddenly... The NTF charges in with a bunch of destroyers to attack GTVA positions in the system. Oh and by the way, you're part of a Terran-Vasudan exchange program, so you're flying great Vasudan fighters such as the... Anubis...
What did I do to deserve this?! Look guys, the 14 year war was so long ago!I guess you could say the story is pretty no-frills. We're not looking for understanding in any special thoughts or themes. It's life in the military and you just do what you're told, hoping that your superior officers aren't complete idiots and will lead you to victory. And they've got quite a hill to climb since the NTF is able to catch the GTVA off guard on multiple occasions. Complete surprise attacks on the GTVA, managing to capture the GTD Pandora and making it out with minimal casualties. It's an almost perfect operation that only starts to fall apart for the NTF near the end. It sets up a good reason to want to defeat the NTF. They're put here as a formidable opponent, someone you want to defeat and win against. It's a neat war story to see both sides trying to outsmart each other.
So gameplay wise, what are we looking at here? Nothing ground breaking or jaw dropping, atleast by today's standards. But for the most part, everything is fairly robust with a minimal amount of escort. The missions range from patrol/hunting to attack this area. The campaign is probably a perfect example of campaigns of its era. Simple, no frills, trying to fill in some of the empty spots while keeping mods down low. Just the Valkyrie, Anubis (mark 2) and Chronus from FreeSpace 1, which I guess were the best "mods" you could get for FreeSpace 2 back then!
When an Anubis can infiltrate your anti fighter screen, you've got problems.So I think the neat thing that the campaign deserves some recognition for is how the campaign splits up these Terran and Vasudan branches. One of the hot topics on campaign discussion is "non-linearity" which can be quite hard to plan out sometimes. Pandora's Box has a neat way of doing this. There's three "acts" if you will. As I said before you start off with a Vasudan Fleet. Then STUFF happens and you have the option of staying with the Vasudans to hunt the NTF, or go back to the Terran fleet to rout out a destroyer that is stuck in your system. Completely unique missions too, which is great for replay value. Once things settle down and your attention goes back to the Pandora. Here the branches kind of converge. The missions are the same, but one has Terran ships and one has Vasudan ships. It might be weird that a single pilot's preference determines which destroyer gets sent where, but hey, its a game. It might have been neat to have unique paths here too, maybe just converging on the final mission, but I was still happy with what I was given.
Ka-BOOM!I've got some criticisms for the campaign though. Nothing major. There's a little too much invincibility used to play things out. In one mission its expected that a friendly destroyer takes enough damage that its weapons are taken off line and this allows an enemy destroyer to escape. Well I did too good of a job of disabling and the ship went invincible while I had to wait 5 minutes for my friendly destroyer to get damaged from fighters and other "small arms fire". I guess it was a thing you had to do back then. So maybe play it on a higher difficulty if you're an expert on these things. And another
All in all, a fun romp and another fine non-canon chapter of the NTF war preceeding FreeSpace 2.
Next month: Many months ago I had asked 0rph3us to name the campaign of his that is most deserving of a spotlight. So hard to choose since he's done so many and I'm so unfamiliar with them! He pointed me to some of his FSPort campaign and I went "sure, I'll do that next month." And this was... like 6+ months ago. So let's play as many campaigns from his Memories of the Great War pack as possible! Grab the
core pack here and
the patch here. They're all FSPort campaigns, and I had to do some tweaking to the mod.ini to get no errors. So ASSUMING the core FS Port is in /fsport/ and ASSUMING the FS port media vps are in /fsport-mediavps/ and the 3.6.12 mediavps are in /mediavps_3612" THEN our mod.ini should be...
[launcher]
image255x112 = MoGW-logo.bmp;
infotext = The Great War has changed an entire generation. Many were forged in the fires of this war. Much has been told and recorded but so much has been forgotten as well....;
website = ;
forum = ;
[multimod]
primarylist = ;
secondarylist = fsport,fsport-mediavps,mediavps_3612;Hope this works...!
by mjn.mixaelLast month's theme was Explosions. Another tough call on this one. I really like how several of you showed off what soft particles can really do! The winner is...
Aesaar with this nasty moment-of-death screen.
Screencap Scoreboard:
ssmit132 - 1
X3N0-Life-Form - 1
FreeSpaceFreak - 1
mjn.mixael - 1
Belisarius - 1
MatthTheGeek - 1
knossosfs2 - 1
Betrayal - 1
Aesaar - 1 Only three months left to grab another point and take the lead! So without further ado, October's theme is... Asteroid! Show me your rocks!... er... wait...
Watch those HUD gauges (especially that sneaky FPS gauge) and check out the
Screencam Script to help you win a badge and bragging rights. You can see the rules and the previous winners here on the
Wiki.
There are only 2 more campaign spotlights for the year (November and December). There will not be one for Jan 2014 since I'll be compiling the annual campaign release roll instead.
For 2014, I'd like to change things a bit for the spotlight. If I continue to review campaigns, it won't be long droning like I'm doing now. Its sometimes hard to talk about this stuff without repeating myself. I was thinking some sort of semi-open IRC discussion about a campaign but I'd need wonderful committed people to actually play these.
Or instead would you like to see something different? Perhaps a FreeSpace tricks and tips feature where I go
harass ask the masters of FreeSpace modding how they approach different areas and maybe a short interview.
Let me know![/code]
