Author Topic: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution  (Read 22743 times)

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Offline Dan1

  • 27
Re: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution
Played through this and this was really great.  Had a lot of fun.

More of a technical question.  I took a look at some of the missions and the Fiction Briefing section.   What song is Fiction 3?  The really somber one, can't get it out of my head and wanted to ask.  Also I tried looking but I didn't see a music file in your VP so I dunno where it's pulling it from.
Cause what you got is what we need and all we do is dirty deeds!
-Best FS Campaign Theme Ever

 
Re: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution
Hello and thank you for your kind words.

I'm sorry but I don't know the answer. The mod is based on Blue Planet, that's also where most of the songs are coming from. I just took it from the drop down menu when I created the missions and liked the song, too. When you have a look at the Wiki entry about Blue Planet, you can see that Belisarius is responsible for the music of the mod. So maybe ask him :)

Cheers!

 

Offline Darius

  • 211
Re: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution
Fiction 3 is "War in Heaven" by Belisarius and yes it is a great track.

Probably my favourite one done by him.

 

Offline Nyctaeus

  • The Slavic Engineer
  • 212
  • My "FS Ships" folder is 582gb.
    • Minecraft
    • Exile
Re: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution
Finally started my playthrough. So far, after first mission I found no significant bugs. Good narrative, decent character development and good balance are worth mentioning. Definitly something worth to continue playing :).
Also I remember I played it before. Did you release any demo or something like this before? I'm not sure.

And new version is up. I'll update and keep going!
Exile | Shadow Genesis | Inferno | Series Resurrecta  | DA Profile | P3D Profile

Proud owner of NyctiShipyards. Remember - Nyx will fix it!

All of my assets including models, textures, skyboxes, effects may be used under standard CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

 

Offline Mito [PL]

  • 210
  • Proud Member of Slavicus Mechanicus
Re: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution
Yes, he did release a demo. It was about 4 or 5 missions long.
How do you kill a hydra?

You starve it to death.

 
Re: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution
Hey, thanks for your feedback. Yes, the first 5-6 mission were already released in a WIP-thread (though without finishing touch), but on the story-side I didn't change much in them.

Greetings!

 
Re: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution
Ok, seriously.  Not enough people are paying attention to this campaign.  NOT.  NEARLY.  ENOUGH.

This was seriously good, bomb3rman!  I love a good story, and this campaign had that in spades.  You really thought out each of the characters in detail, and it made for a very immersive experience.  I also really liked having to work with a more restricted set of equipment and have to get inventive to make good use of it.  We've gotten used to battles where cruisers are tossed in as chaff of minor consequence while the heavy hitters do their business.  In this campaign, with no Super Destroyers or SSJs breaking down the door, it felt a lot more like every ship mattered.  Every loss mattered, even down to a lousy Apollo!  But I never felt like my wings were clipped, either.

There was one mission that seemed to glitch a bit for me.  The one where the Invictus first appears and Sid dies.  For some reason, two tracks of music were playing simultaneously.  And the first time I played it, I was shooting the crap out of one of the boarding pods, but it was having no effect at all.  The double music problem never went away, but the invincible boarding pod thing went away after I rebooted FSO.

What surprised me even more was how effectively your writing style dovetailed into that of Blue Planet.  I was honestly expecting the difference to be kind of jarring.  To me, at least, it wasn't at all.  It fits really well with what's already been released.

Just, everyone stop what you are doing and PLAY THIS CAMPAIGN!  You can thank me latter.:yes: :yes: :yes:
"Wouldn't it be so wonderful if everything were meaningless?
But everything is so meaningful, and most everything turns to ****.
Rejoice."
-David Bazan

 
Re: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution
Wow, thank you for your kind words  :cool:

The boarding-pod issue is strange, I never experienced this... Maybe it was a one-time problem, since no one else mentioned this before.

The double-music problem is already known, I now realised it, too. Maybe it has to do with the red-alert status of the mission. Since I'm trying to get into the ship-save-script right now, I might change the mission to be not "red alert" in a future update so the problem will be solved then. But thank you for telling me.

Greetings,
Bomb3rman

 

Offline kaptein

  • 21
Re: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution
First of all, when i finished playing this campaign i said "That was a very awesome campaign!"

Here's my review:

Hidden Text: Show
I really loved playing in the point of view of a merely normal ex-military pilot, it leaves aside the typical "chosen one" protagonist POV (or the chosen one that don't want to follow his destiny), it even leaves aside the typical new military pilot POV of the original games and personally i relate more to a civil type of character, making me more involved with the story.

The limited loadout and ships to use also makes me feel the very limited logistical background and because of that is a must to choose selectively the weapons and ships of the squadrons and give them orders in-mission accordingly, also it was a pretty good detail the fact that any additional effort in fulfilling the bonus objectives come with the prize of new ships and weapons to choose, things that are insignificant in a normal military context because your superiors gives to you new equipment without any extra effort.

I liked a lot how you sticked to the Blue Planet lore, trying to use the unused assets and respecting the timeline of the events (i loved seeing for the first time the Sanctus MK2 and the Karuna MK2 in-game) and even trying to make a parallel story without affecting the events of the main story of the universe.

The character development is good, i also liked the development of the friendships of the protagonist, those very informal conversations gives an interesting change to the strictly military chatters of the original game.

Also, i think the choice of a second person narrative after and before the missions was very good, it's sounds strange in a book novel, but in a game it's fit perfectly IMO, because actually you are the protagonist.

And while it's true that in the last missions the story turns into a guerrilla warfare and winning it or not wouldn't make any significant change in the UEF-GTVA war, the emotional attachment that i felt in that stage was so good that i also wanted revenge against DuValle at any cost, the ending was superb (maybe a slightly cliche with the speech of "your friends will be always with you", but really i couldn't have done it better by myself, so i'm not really in a position to criticize that)

Now... talking about flaws in technical details of the missions, i've noticed these:

1. In Treasure Hunt II and Evidence, the briefing music keeps playing alongside the in-mission music.

2. In Sunrise, the Akebono's engines got all destroyed when it's hit by the shuttles, but magically all re-appears when her engines are repaired, it's a purely aesthetic detail (and considering the limitations of the engine i think there is not much that can be done for a visible reparation process) but maybe it may seem more realistic if only two engines get destroyed and the other two simply get turned off (if i recall correctly this can be done via SEXP) to then turn them on when the Akebono jumps, again, it's just a aesthetic detail.

3. In all missions where the Apollos are present in a squadron, their icons don't appear in the ship/loadout selection, however i can change their loadouts but not the ships.

Anyway, none of these disrupted my gameplay, and i'm not sure if the culprit are my files for the 1st and the 3rd (i have played with the 3.8.0 release and latest bpcomplete at the moment i'm writing this)

In general i felt the missions balance good (maybe Sunrise is a slightly hard, but if that was your intention then that's ok)

To end my review i only have one more thing to say... i want a sequel please :D! i'm available to be a betatester if you want because it's hard to me to find a game (belonging or not to the space simulation genre) with a story similar to this mod, it's even difficult to me to find a series, movie, comic/manga or novel book of that type!

By the way, i tried to play the campaign via Knossos but it doesn't appear in the in-game list of campaigns when the mod is started (i have checked the file integrity and it tells me that everything is ok)

P.S. English it's not my first language, excuse me if i speak it bad (i will appreciate any corrections to my grammar)

 
Re: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution
Hello kaptein,

thank you for your review! It's good to see that you liked the way I tried to form the characters and give them some life and background.

Spoiler:
1. The briefing music seems to be a known issue with the "red alert" status. In a future update, the red-alert status will be replaced by using a ship-save script, so this problem will be gone when I find the time ro rework FaF 1.

2. Yes that's an idea I might think of. Not destroying all of the engines but instead deactivating the thruster status of some of them might work.

3. Ooops, I forgot to lock the weapons of these squadrons. I locked the ships so you can't see the icons/ships (i.e. Gamma wing in M 3 (The Bait), but not the weapons. My idea is to let you just chose the weapons of the Flying Pumpkins, so the others should be locked. This will come on my list :)


So first of all thanks for the helpful review.

I'm ashamed to tell you that this isn't on Knossos because I seem to be too stupid to upload the files. Didn't work when I tried it... After a revision, I will try this again. But if you know how this can be done feel free to upload it to Knossos (or anyone else).

I created the campaign with 3.7.4, but it's good to hear that there are no major issues with 3.8.0. The things you mentioned are not because of the versions, to clarify this. They are because of bugs/my mistakes during fredding.

Well it's nice to hear that you're interested in betatesting. I could really use another betatester once the sequel is ready. I think I am going to "split" the next campaign to enable betatesting for this part and can stat working on the second half. FaF 2 is getting much longer, but the first ~ 16 missions will be done within the next 2 months (13 are already done, just a few more to finish chapter 1). These missions will then be put together for a campaign file and sent to the betatesters. So if you wish I will come and talk to you once this is done and you can decide if you still want to help. During the next 8 weeks I won't have much time due to a pending exam I have to write, but after May 16th, there's plenty of time :)

Spoiler:
But be warned, FaF 2 might take a huge step away from the Blue Planet universe ;)

And since I'm not a native speaker myself, my english really isn't better than yours  :P
« Last Edit: March 19, 2018, 08:01:58 am by bomb3rman »

 
Re: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution
FaF 2 is getting much longer, but the first ~ 16 missions will be done within the next 2 months (13 are already done, just a few more to finish chapter 1).
GET
FRICKING
HYPE!!!
"Wouldn't it be so wonderful if everything were meaningless?
But everything is so meaningful, and most everything turns to ****.
Rejoice."
-David Bazan

 
Re: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution
 :lol:

And by the way: Thanks to the person who uploaded this on Knossos :)
« Last Edit: March 19, 2018, 03:46:25 pm by bomb3rman »

  

Offline kaptein

  • 21
Re: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution
Ok bomb3rman! whenever you want send me a PM, I would enjoy my spare time testing your content :).
 
Spoiler:

So if Gamma wing is not a wing customizable by the player you could also consider to simply don't make it appear in the ship selection (I mean, like others friendly wings besides Beta in-game)

 
And the sequel will consist of multiple chapters? well, take the time you consider necessary to do it, I know that the process of FREDding elaborated missions is long... but the wait is worth it, BTW I share this opinion about that:
 
GET
FRICKING
HYPE!!!

Also I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one here with a non-fluent English, because actually I started visiting this community since a long time, but just now I created a account to participate a bit and try to improve my English in the process (and I hope someday be able to make a retribution of all the hours of quality gaming with something of my own creation!).

 
Re: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution
Hey kaptein.

Spoiler:
The problem is that I wanted to have this wing appear in the HUD. and this is only possible with Alpha to Epsilon Wing. Wings with other names don't appear there.

Quote
And the sequel will consist of multiple chapters?

There will be one campaign file. I'm using a lot of campaign and player persistent variables that aren't carried over if I create Campaign A for chapter 1 and Campaign B for chapter 2. The chapter is just a good word for an internal "break" between two "highlights/parts" of the story. But to make betatesting easier, I will finish chapter 1 and send it to the people who are interested. Then I'll start work on chapter 2 (aka the other ~ 15 missions). It is just easier this way to keep fredding and let people test the first part at the same time. Finally, all missions will be put in 1 campaign file.

Quote
whenever you want send me a PM, I would enjoy my spare time testing your content

Good to know, so you will hear from me some time after May ;)

 

Offline emark4

  • 27
Re: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution
Hey kaptein.

Spoiler:
The problem is that I wanted to have this wing appear in the HUD. and this is only possible with Alpha to Epsilon Wing. Wings with other names don't appear there.

Quote
And the sequel will consist of multiple chapters?

There will be one campaign file. I'm using a lot of campaign and player persistent variables that aren't carried over if I create Campaign A for chapter 1 and Campaign B for chapter 2. The chapter is just a good word for an internal "break" between two "highlights/parts" of the story. But to make betatesting easier, I will finish chapter 1 and send it to the people who are interested. Then I'll start work on chapter 2 (aka the other ~ 15 missions). It is just easier this way to keep fredding and let people test the first part at the same time. Finally, all missions will be put in 1 campaign file.

Quote
whenever you want send me a PM, I would enjoy my spare time testing your content

Good to know, so you will hear from me some time after May ;)

Assuming that we will still be civilians in the misdst of the gtva-uef war, will there be more  variety of pilotable civilian ships asidr from the usual scimitar and claymores?

 
Re: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution
I don't want to spoil too much of the story right now, but the short answer is: Yes, there will be several other ships that are flyable (and buyable). Just think more of a mercenary role than a civilian role for the characters in FaF 2.

Long answer: If you combine the events at the beginning of Age of Aquarius and my question asked here https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=93382.0, you might get an idea of things that might happen. Wherever these people are going, there they will find other ships ;)

 

Offline kaptein

  • 21
Re: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution
I think my guess is very probably a spoiler by itself, so...

Spoiler:
It seems almost obvious that the rest of the story will happen beyond Sol (now I understand what you mean with a huge step away from the Blue Planet universe), if you accept suggestions, I think it will be interesting to see the Post-Capella consequences in GTVA space according to the Blue Planet lore, especially from the particular POV of the characters.

 
Re: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution
Maybe, maybe not ;) Well, if you are going to be a betatester, you'll be one of the first to find out :)

 

Offline emark4

  • 27
Re: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution
I don't want to spoil too much of the story right now, but the short answer is: Yes, there will be several other ships that are flyable (and buyable). Just think more of a mercenary role than a civilian role for the characters in FaF 2.

Long answer: If you combine the events at the beginning of Age of Aquarius and my question asked here https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=93382.0, you might get an idea of things that might happen. Wherever these people are going, there they will find other ships ;)

Sound like we may see more fs2 era ships then? Sweet.

 

Offline JSRNerdo

  • [`_`]/
  • 29
  • Gone!
Re: [RELEASE] - Friends and Foes: Retribution
The difficulty seems like a massive jump from what I'm used to, I died 5 times in the first mission trying to engage the pirate fighters alone. The enemies feel a lot tougher and you don't really have the DPS weapons (hellfires, rapiers) to kill them quickly enough before they all gang up on you.

The salvage and persistence mechanics are real good! There's some great potential in these if you're considering a sequel.

In M2 when I'm supposed to attack the pirate spyboats your friendly wingmen don't actually do anything and you can't order them to attack the spyboat.

Is it really necessary to have the ship prefixes (GTCv, UEFg, etc) in front of ship names?

It's actually really hard to kill that transport during the flashback sequence. I was hammering away with all my primaries and hellfires but it kept getting away and giving me the fail state. Maybe put it further away so I can get to it faster?

I really don't like the bit in Treasure Hunt where you have to actually land your ship. I took ~60% hull damage just trying to find out where I'm actually supposed to land and then 20% more in the next mission crashing into the hull while launching. It's a cool concept and I can understand why you did it but FSO really doesn't do collisions or tight spaces well enough for it to be viable.

I liked the story and characters - classic revenge story.

Overall there's a lot of good stuff here, the gameplay's enjoyable and it's technically quite well executed. Just one request: Give me more hellfires!
Former Inferno lead, BTA fredder-ish and DE fredder. Driven out by ordinary fascists the_e, aesaar and general battuta. Will return if they're ever removed.