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RELEASE: Solaris - Black Sun (A FreeSpace Open Total Conversion)

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Darius:
Thanks  :yes: I'm looking forward to releasing it at some point.

MatthTheGeek did a stream of the first couple missions of Act 3 a couple months ago

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1594319053

The missions are very WIP but should give an idea of where the story's headed next.

SF-Junky:

--- Quote from: Darius on August 17, 2023, 03:54:11 am ---Thanks! I'd be interested to see how much story gaps will be filled by act 2 (or whether it creates even more questions  :confused: )
--- End quote ---
I'll answer this one here. :)

Worldbuilding and characters improved a lot. Act 3 brings meat to the universe's bones. Various factions feel credible, realistic and divers. I also liked the characters, particularly Meiks. You're a good writer, keep that up! These people feel really alive and like real personalities. The voice acting adds a lot to the atmosphere here. Is that really all TTS? How do you do it exactly (iirc somebody already asked that in the first thread...  :nervous: )?

I'm sure there's people out there who'd say that this should have been the first act, and what's act 1 and 2 now should be 2 and 3 because this feels a lot more like the exposition. Start small and harmless and then evolve the story into something bigger. I generally like the approach you have taken: Throw some huge chunk of WHAT DA HECK at the player as an appetizer and then slow down a little bit to allow the audience to take a breath, take a step back and take a close look. But I think it's become too extreme. We had an interstellar war, planet killers and gargantuan alien structures in part 1 and this is all completely forgotten in the first half or two thirds of this campaign and nobody even talks about it. The war between the Combine and the Federation should have been more present in the earlier stages of part 2. Not neccessarily by involving these faction directly, but via character dialogues, media broadcasts, etc. Towards the end, you bring attention back to the alien artefact nicely, though.

Two missions really annoyed me tbh. Mission 14 which I haven't beaten without cheats yet. I really think that this is too difficult and needs rebalancing. In mission 15 the beginning is super annoying because these refugee transports are extremely fragile and it's very difficult to fight enemy craft while trying to evade at the same time - moving the Hoshikuzu more into the enemy fighters' attack path to scatter their formation would probably help a lot already. In the second part the mission makes a transition into "sit there and shoot missiles" followed by "disarm a cap ship, take 124"...

In the mission with the bomb (19, I think it was) it would really be helpful to either set the checkpoint right before you start shooting the doomsday cracker or give the player more precise instructions on how to properly disable the freighter without setting the damn thing of. ;)

Overall, I liked Black Sun and I look forward to part 3.

Darius:
Thanks :yes:

What specific trouble were you having in mission 14? Is it surviving, the Hoshi getting destroyed or not having enough time to disable the capital ship at the end?

The Hoshikuzu covering the transport is a good idea and an elegant solution to a problem I've been having with that mission.

SF-Junky:
I'm usually overwhelmed by the enemy bombers/gunships. As I said, dogfighting is really tough in this mod. What particularly bothers me is that I often feel that if somebody has you in their sights it's very difficult to evade. Maybe I'm just slow, but it happens so often to me that I lose no less than 30% or so of my hull integrity whenever I'm hit.

The enemy capship escaping has also happened, but not so often. In the beginning, Meiks' advise to ignore the enemy fighters is just not what's the best way to go in my opinion. One missile for each of them asap and then go for the enemy ASMs works quite well for me.

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