[Axem]

Did you happen to catch what recently got dropped on Steam? Why our old friend, Descent: Freespace. But where is FreeSpace 2 you ask? Worry not, it's on its way.

So what did we get done with last month in anticipation of all of this.




A campaign release! At long last! BlackWolf and his swarthy team have released their first episode of Frontlines! Anyone who loved the FreeSpace 1 feel of things, this is a must play.

And a campaign re-release! Droid803 and his minions have put out an update to Dimensional Eclipse. It includes lots of bug fixes, balance changes and support for the 2014 Mediavps!

And Lepanto's got another mission of his Blue Planet: Battle Captains experience out. Enjoy the lumbering might of the Orion as you tear apart the Shivan hordes with its many large beams.

If the bright outside isn't your thing, then why not go re-enjoy the classic Shrouding the Light, originally by Blaise Russel, brought back to perfection by Macfie!

And also by Lepanto is a preview for his own campaign, After Capella, which I am guessing… takes place after Capella goes kablooey. (Spoilers!)

BTA's also got a new campaign announcement for his Dusk Wars series, Side Arcs. It's got pretty screenies and everything!

And finally Rheyah's got some more updates and fluffy text for your to enjoy for his Shetland mod. You're killing us here with all this temptation!



by niffiwan
 
The 3.7.2 Release Candidate (RC) phase has now started! Both RC1 and RC2 were released during the month, go grab RC2 and road test your favourite campaign. I should also note that nightly builds will continue through this RC phase, the main difference to normal is that feature requests are much less likely to be added to the RC branches, especially large features or features that don't directly relate to a hosted mod.
 
 
Anyway, on with the normal spiel; here's a list the new features which have been committed to trunk in the last month.  These will all be in the latest Nightly Builds. Check them out if you're feeling brave or are developing mods, or if you just want to help with testing.  Just remember that the nightlies also have the latest bugs as well as the latest features (but hey, it's better to find bugs in a nightly build than in the next release!)
 
New features! (should be less of these, and more squashed bugs)
 

• Add support for countermeasures that will pull aspect seekers away from their previous targets - m!m (apart from the obvious, it allows capship mounted countermeasures to effectively decoy bombs)
• z64555's debug console (heaps of ways to tweak / inspect the engine state while its running. May have some sharp edges...

 
Here's the current bugs scoreboard. The bugs on mantis have... gone up slightly (boo!). And there's more Coverity issue outstanding as well... hrmmm... well there's always next month! Right, coders?!? (to be fair, there were a lot of new bugs found at the end of the month)

	fixed	new	delta	outstanding
Coverity (this month)	10	14	4	439
Mantis (last 30 days)	10	17	7	192

In other news, the new FreeSpaceInstaller has been officially released! This should make it much easier for everyone (newcomers and veterans alike) to install FSO mods, and even Freespace2 retail from a GOG installation .exe. Kudos to Goober5000 for seeing this over the finish line. If there's a particular mod that you'd like to see added to the installer, either post in the linked thread or have a friendly word with the mods author.
 
Arising from a discussion about Occulus Rift support, m!m implemented FSO support for the Freetrack API. Now, I just need to get around to buying a webcam (etc) for my PC... and integrating LinuxTrack... (ok, so it may be a while before I'm using it )
 
Swifty has updated his deferred lighting and shadow builds, now 132% less likely to drive your framerate into the nearest supernova. Go marvel at the poisson sampled shadowy goodness (and provide feedback about any issue encountered).
 
And that's about it for this month. It's been quiet...

Axem would just like to pop in and put a shout out to himself for this preview of a Visual Novel style conversation script! Coming eventually to a anime-themed mod near you!

Also that FreeSpace RTS Script isn't quite dead yet! Admiral MS just found a way to reduce that nasty not-so-friendly fire.



Fightermedic gives us another intense preview of his corvette with 200(!) destroyable sub-objects plus capital ship turning thrusters. INSANE. He's also got a science ship in the works for you nerdy times.



Betrayal is helping out Bryan See with his SC Raguel HTL, and its coming out pretty nicely. I especially like the scary instruments of pain coming out of that thing's back side!


Bryan See meanwhile has started another new Shivan ship, The SuperRavana-esque SBs Sariel. I can already see it eating Terran and Vasudan ships up for breakfast.


Lepanto's a busy guy! He's doing all that FRED-work and he still has time to do some work on his creepy crawly Geryon Shivan freighter! It looks full of NOPE.


A long time ago, in a forum far far away, BrandX started the near impossible task of building the greatest Imperial Star Destroyer for FreeSpace ever. Well he's been real busy lately, so zookeeper has continued work on it and man, does it look amazing.


And while we're on the topic of Star Wars, Rhettro's got some more updates on his Assault Gunboat! Definitely looking nice.
http://lazymodders.fsmods.net/hlpnewsletter/2014/06Jun/assaultgunboat.jpg[/img]

And meanwhile, in Scooby's workshop, he's gone mad with science as he's merging animals to give you the Bearcat. Or maybe it's actually a space fighter. Either way, crazy work as always!


And the adventures of Cahdoge's space galleon continues!


Over in MediaVP-land, DahBlount's got some nice looking polygons of the explosive Zephyrus going. Dat gas.




Nothing this month I'm afraid! I had stuff planned, but had to put it off. Next month I'll have something cool. So let's highlight a pretty cool tutorial post by The Dagger about using the Cycles renderer in Blender to make nice looking baked glowmaps.

Cycle Baking Tutorial!


by mjn.mixael
Last month's theme was Desolation. This really brought out some creative shots.
 
tnathan475 submitted three fantastic images.. But in the end, I really loved this one.

 
First runner up was MPez's cool shot near the sun.
 
Screencap Scoreboard:
Ckid - 1
Mpez - 2
AndrewofDoom - 1
tnathan475 - 1
 
As a reminder, we're going to do things slightly differently this year. Our many campaigns are filled with emotional ups, downs, and/or lackthereof. So we'll highlight that with a whole year's worth of emotional themes. I don't care what's in the image as long as it portrays the particular feeling for the month.
 
The new theme for June is Anticipation.
 
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.





Let's have a moment to look at the original FRED and all the sexps they used to make that first game.

[karajorma]

I love that last screenshot. So limited.

[Axem]

I had thought as a challenge to get a list of 30 randomly chosen FSOpen sexps and make a mission with them!

[Lepanto]

It'd be a nightmare to FRED a good modern campaign with so few SEXPs at one's disposal. That screen's another thing that shows how far FSO has come.

I had thought as a challenge to get a list of 30 randomly chosen FSOpen sexps and make a mission with them!

That sounds like a cool idea, actually, IMO.

[Hobbie]

Hey baby, lookin' for a good-rearm-time?

[CT27]

You should probably add Macfie's FSCRP upgrade of Shrouding The Light.

[Macfie]

So much for the effectiveness of the news scroll at the top of the page.  Ironically "The FSCRP has released a Shrouding the Light upgrade." was on the top of the page in the news section as I read the news letter. 

[The Dagger]

The quality of the tutorials is really going down.

[Axem]

Wow, I am a terrible newsletter dude.

[Rodo]

what? only those sexps where available?
Amazing, I didn't know it was so limited at first.

[Mpez]

Let's have a moment to look at the original FRED and all the sexps they used to make that first game.

[mjn.mixael]

 

[Lorric]

Would someone mind telling me what that winning shot has to do with desolation?

Also, the first runner up had nothing to do with desolation, it was just a pretty shot. If you can win with just any shot that has nothing to do with the theme, then we might as well drop the pretence right now.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Also, the first runner up had nothing to do with desolation, it was just a pretty shot. If you can win with just any shot that has nothing to do with the theme, then we might as well drop the pretence right now.

...You, uh, haven't played Blue Planet: War in Heaven yet, have you?

[Lorric]

Also, the first runner up had nothing to do with desolation, it was just a pretty shot. If you can win with just any shot that has nothing to do with the theme, then we might as well drop the pretence right now.

...You, uh, haven't played Blue Planet: War in Heaven yet, have you?

No.

He had a comment in the thread saying it was deSOLation, and two shots with sun backgrounds, so I assumed it was just that play on the word and nothing more. I'll take your word for it then that it does indeed fit the theme of the month.

[mjn.mixael]

Desolation
des·o·la·tion
ˌdesəˈlāSHən/Submit
noun

• a state of complete emptiness or destruction.
• "the stony desolation of the desert"
• synonyms: bleakness, starkness, barrenness, sterility;
• anguished misery or loneliness.
• "in choked desolation, she watched him leave"
• synonyms: misery, sadness, unhappiness, despondency, sorrow, depression, grief, woe;

[Luis Dias]

Also, the first runner up had nothing to do with desolation, it was just a pretty shot. If you can win with just any shot that has nothing to do with the theme, then we might as well drop the pretence right now.

...You, uh, haven't played Blue Planet: War in Heaven yet, have you?

No.

He had a comment in the thread saying it was deSOLation, and two shots with sun backgrounds, so I assumed it was just that play on the word and nothing more. I'll take your word for it then that it does indeed fit the theme of the month.

You must amp up your sensibilities here. Both shots are incredibly well focused on that "Desolation" thing, they absolutely nail the emotion. The first with a tilted Deimos lost in some asteroid belt with a red tinted light invading everything in sight. Implicit is the lone sentiment of fear and horror that Shivans might be coming here, the sentiment that these are the last moments of civilized existence before a lovecraftian horror comes crashing down on the ship. The second shows a beautiful contrast shot (quite rare in FS2 too) of the Indus falling into the sun to its lone death just a few hours after it miserably failing its mission and watching similar frigates of its kind being shredded to pieces. Just a few more minutes until radiation starts killing everyone aboard.

[Lorric]

The first with a tilted Deimos lost in some asteroid belt with a red tinted light invading everything in sight. Implicit is the lone sentiment of fear and horror that Shivans might be coming here, the sentiment that these are the last moments of civilized existence before a lovecraftian horror comes crashing down on the ship.

Unless that is another specific shot from a specific mission, then I don't know where you can get all that from from that single shot.

EDIT: I appreciate the information on the other shot though.

[Luis Dias]

Imagination helps. This is Freespace universe, after all. The asteroid belt also contributes a mental image of wreckage and destruction. Perhaps the rocks are the remains of something else, a planet, a moon, an artificial construct? You can feel the ship has to navigate through these rocks by its framing, and you wonder, is it hiding here? Is it scavenging anything? Waiting to get out of its parking spot wondering if there are still Shivans around?

[Lorric]

Imagination helps. This is Freespace universe, after all. The asteroid belt also contributes a mental image of wreckage and destruction. Perhaps the rocks are the remains of something else, a planet, a moon, an artificial construct? You can feel the ship has to navigate through these rocks by its framing, and you wonder, is it hiding here? Is it scavenging anything? Waiting to get out of its parking spot wondering if there are still Shivans around?

Well sure, I could let my imagination loose on things and create a story. But for something like this, it should just happen on it's own, right? The message of the screenshot should be clear, right?