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Announcing the relase of my first campaign 'A Walk in the Sun'
You are Alpha 1, wing leader on the GTD Messana during the Second Shivan Incursion and one of very few surviving officers from the Battle for Capella. That war is now over. The GTVA fleet has been devastated. Some fleets have effecively ceased to exist and experienced pilots are a rare breed.
It is in this backdrop that you have been posted to the GTD Phonecia, currently in the Mintaka system. Your mission; to take a destroyer's worth of untrained fighter pilots and turn them into a force which could withstand the next Shivan invasion. However, fate has other things in mind and the inexperienced ships of GTVA Training Command Group 2 are about to face yet another crisis from an unexpected direction.
Well after around 30 playthroughs (seriously I am getting a beta tester next time) I think this is ready for release. A Walk in the Sun (Slang for a mission with low chance of encountering the enemy) is a four mission mini-campaign set in the Post-Capella period. Fredding this has been a very interesting experience, much more challenging than making a single mission and I found I was learning new Sexps and ways of doing things in every mission. Balancing was by far the most time consuming part of this project and some missions would swing from impossible to self playing with just a minor change.
The campaign was made with Fred 2 open 3_7_3 and should be played on that or later builds. Just unzip the mod folder into your Freespace main directory and set as the mod on your launcher of choice.
Hopefully some people out there will enjoy this and any comments, positive or negative are welcomed.
Disclaimer: Whilst writing this post I have just realised that Phoenicia has been mispelt Phonecia throughout the whole campaign. I am now sobbing quietly but will press on with the release regardless. Please try and ignore this.
Download link
http://www.mediafire.com/file/tceo9q8c8dd6l5u/A_Walk_in_the_Sun_V1.00.rar
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New mod ^^
I will download it ASAP after school. Any mods included?
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It uses several ships which have been released for open use by their creators (you're actually in the credits), some skyboxes, music and a few other things. 135 MB so not massive. Only external mod it uses is the 2014 Media VPs.
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Downloaded. Shall play soon! Thanks for sharing it.
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Bad:
- Lack of directives - Things like Escort Phoenicia etc. I would add some more to make player sure what he should do in each part of mission. I know you are doind this via messages, but... That's what directives are for :P
- Mission failure as campaign ending?
- VERY classic scenario.
Good:
- Balancing
- Nice nebulae :D
- Bug-free!
- BHAAL! ^^
Hummm... Pretty good start :yes:. I really like when a newcomer bring something good quality to the community. Maybe try to extend your dialogues a little bit? Add some jargon. War in Heaven is probably the best source of inspiration in terms of dialogues. Also, this is post-capella. Why not to add some new weapons and beautiful warships :D?
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Disclaimer: Whilst writing this post I have just realised that Phoenicia has been mispelt Phonecia throughout the whole campaign. I am now sobbing quietly but will press on with the release regardless. Please try and ignore this.
Someone correct me if this is dangerous (I'm pretty sure it's not), but a quick fix could be, open all your mission files in Notepad++, hit ctrl+f, there should be a button for replace in all open files, replace the misspelled words and do a mass save. It should replace all the briefings, in mission references, events, goals, etc.
The only thing it wouldn't replace is references in fiction files, which you could easily just open, too.
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Thanks for playing Betrayal, the fact you listed Balancing as a Pro has just made the last few weeks all worthwhile.
About the campaign ending in failure check the directives and mission text and make sure you fulfil the comms one in particular
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I returned to base when the Bhaal appeared and destroyed Phoenicia. I assumed that she have to be destroyed here for obvious reasons :P. Only one minor thing is worth to be noted here. I recived a message about changing course of the demon on something like that, just before Phoenicia fell down by the Bhaal main beams. Like it's not supposed to be mission ending. So... Maybe I did something wrong xD. Is Phoenicia supposed to be destroyed here?
Another note is that I destroyed Demon's comm subsystem, so in theory enemy destroyer should be unable to call reinforcements.
I forgot about one, minor issue. RTB in second mission [the one with GTC Diadem and GTC Impulsive] appear as completed [lightblue], while it supposed to be white.
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Disclaimer: Whilst writing this post I have just realised that Phoenicia has been mispelt Phonecia throughout the whole campaign. I am now sobbing quietly but will press on with the release regardless. Please try and ignore this.
Someone correct me if this is dangerous (I'm pretty sure it's not), but a quick fix could be, open all your mission files in Notepad++, hit ctrl+f, there should be a button for replace in all open files, replace the misspelled words and do a mass save. It should replace all the briefings, in mission references, events, goals, etc.
The only thing it wouldn't replace is references in fiction files, which you could easily just open, too.
That works, I've done it. I've even done it to change whole wing names...
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Downloading, will give it a whirl soon.
Congrats on releasing - highlighted.
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Not to be a prick, but is there a reason you chose not to use FuryAI? It really makes a big difference. Was that an intentional choice or were the missions already finished by the time you realised it existed?
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First reactions to Mission 1:
Minor stuff:
Level off your briefing map! this is a pet peeve of mine, but it makes them look so much better.
The loadout seemed very open, but that may have been a choice. Still, the fact that I can fly a Perseus and a Boanerges on the same first mission of the campaign seemed a little off.
No akhetons for my wingmen?
The Tampa didn't use a head ani, and started on the opposite side of the ship to where it was docking, leading to a long docking sequence of mostly dead air. Personally, I'd either adjust the Tampa's arrival location to ensure that docking path is shorter and quicker, or use that time for some expositionary dialogue.
Structural stuff:
Not much! The mission was fun and well balanced, but didn't feel frantic unless you stay alive too long and end up overwhelmed by enemy interceptors. One suggestion I'd make is to use guardian-threshold on the Rookies, then use events to protect them at 1% hull (so the AI will stop shooting at them), then get them to jump out a few seconds later. I know that the briefing says "an explosion effect will be played" but it's a pretty realistic one when you see the fighter break apart into debris. :P
Overall, mission 1 is a fun start - and not an escort mission! :) Good stuff, looking forward to M2.
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Thanks Cyborg, that tip's going to save a lot of time when I get around to fixing it.
The highlight is awesome Black Wolf, I've spent so much time playing Freespace mods I never really thought I'd have one of my own up there.
Fair critique of the first mission. The rookie explosion thing was mostly laziness, by the time I thought of doing something like that I was in the middle of Fredding M3 and 4 which took much more time than expected. Loadout choices are pretty open throughout the campaign, I like having choice although you may be right in that an interceptor and heavy bomber might be a bit too far apart. I found giving your wingmen Akhetons instead of duel kaysers made them under-perform in the early dogfight.
I knew about FuryAI before making the campaign and will definitely be using it in the future. However it's been a little while since I played a campaign that uses it and was used to the retail AI behavior. By the time I thought about using AI improvements I had the bones of all four missions Fredded and working reasonably well and going back to rejig them around better AI would have killed my motivation probably.
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Mission 2:
Minor Stuff:
Again, the briefing map needs levelling (I'll stop mentioning this from now on :P)
I played the mission many times before I finally got it with both cruisers alive - is it passable with only one?
Structural Stuff:
Nothing big, the mission seemed sound, not too much dead air or anything. Could have timed it a bit more carefully - if you're slow killing Seths, you get the suicide message after the cruiser has jumped in.
Mod Stuff:
I love flying the Draco, especially against Seths ("Oh, your afterburner gets you up over 100 m/sec? That's nice..."). But there's something funky with the rearming - the support ship seems to take ages to get to you, often minutes when the counter says it should be second. This felt like a pathing issue, so I deleted the existing path on the model and used PCS2's auto generate feature to redo it, seemed to help quite a bit. Might be worth considering for future releases (also, you're using the model for Aesaar's Draco, but the HUD ani for mine and StratComm's, so there's a mismatch there).
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And finished. Felt like it ended too abruptly, which is praise - I was getting into it. :) Really solid little release, enjoyed playing it. Congratulations!
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Thanks for playing and the mission reviews. Could you just say how mission 4 ended for you. Betrayal said he
destroyed the comms but the Bhaal jumped in anyway. Did you have the same experience or could you destroy the Bergelmir and finish the mission?
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I destroyed the Demon I think my wingmen must have gotten the comms. I was somewhat disappointed that the Bhaal never showed up, actually. :P
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Thanks for playing and the mission reviews. Could you just say how mission 4 ended for you. Betrayal said he destroyed the comms but the Bhaal jumped in anyway. Did you have the same experience or could you destroy the Bergelmir and finish the mission?
I had problems with orders. I assigned Delta wing to destroy comm, but they had "no orders" instead and did nothing. It's obviously not a bug of mission itself, bur rather my nightly is having some strange issues. I will replay the mission in days
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i had trouble with secandary objactive destory the cruisers
mission named illumenetion the m3
it didnt achived it if i destoryed the cruisers
even the last mission its onbalanced becouse you have to be quick with everything it isnt fear
and fun and if i beaten the last mission you can do better with credits or to be continued
becouse it looks it isnt finished
but the rest was away too easy fast too finish it
even its small
you can better make 1 mission before building the campaign
i know it isnt easy
but even my missions are 10 a 20 minits long
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Thanks for playing Woutersmits.
If you found the campaign too easy try playing on insane difficulty. Extra enemy wings are added to some missions and the last mission is particularly tricky on insane.
I didn't want to add 'to be continued' at the end as at the moment I do not have any plans to continue this storyline, the next project I plan on working on will be significantly larger in scope and whilst I'm not certain what direction I want to go in will probably break with Freespace canon.
On mission length I'm afraid I have to disagree. I've seen very few good missions longer than 15 minutes in length and I personally feel that anything that length either has to be quite easy or include checkpoints (beyond my current ability). Thanks for the feedback though and I'll certainly be making some full fleet engagements in future that will be longer missions.
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Not quite sure what the issue is, but I get a crash in the first mission, which is just as beams fire for the first time/fighter wings launch.
The debug build gives some errors concerning missing beams, so that's not too surprising.
As other people don't have this issue, I'm assuming the problem is at this end. I don't see this with other mods though.
[attachment DELETED!! by Strong Bad]
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What missing beams are you getting with the debug build? There should be an error message for the MRed which I never fixed since no ship in the campaign uses it. The beam fired in this case is a regular BVas. I do have a different checksum to you for some of the mediavps files so the issue could be there.
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MRed is used in Walk-shp.tbm for SSD Bhaal. Check turret18 nad 19. ;)
Anyway this build crashes when Typhon jumps in and launches fighter wing: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=91436.0
and this not: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=91428.0
Can someone confirm this?
Further testing.
On linux I got this backtrace:
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x000000000060b50b in vm_vec_sub (dest=0x7fffffffd610, src0=0x4, src1=0x10)
at math/vecmat.cpp:170
170 dest->xyz.x = src0->xyz.x - src1->xyz.x;
(gdb) bt
#0 0x000000000060b50b in vm_vec_sub (dest=0x7fffffffd610, src0=0x4, src1=0x10)
at math/vecmat.cpp:170
#1 0x00000000006df615 in get_submodel_delta_angle (sii=0x0)
at model/modelread.cpp:632
#2 0x00000000006ee66d in model_get_rotating_submodel_list (
submodel_vector=0x7fffffffd750, objp=0x1377b28 <Objects+570216>)
at model/modelread.cpp:4427
#3 0x00000000007a496e in ship_ship_check_collision (
ship_ship_hit_info=0x7fffffffd970, hitpos=0x7fffffffd940)
at object/collideshipship.cpp:259
#4 0x00000000007a7f17 in collide_ship_ship (pair=0x7fffffffda70)
at object/collideshipship.cpp:1132
#5 0x00000000007ad472 in obj_collide_pair (A=0x1376e38 <Objects+566904>,
B=0x1377b28 <Objects+570216>) at object/objcollide.cpp:1653
#6 0x00000000007ac228 in obj_find_overlap_colliders (
overlap_list_out=0x7fffffffdb50, list=0x7fffffffdb70, axis=2, collide=true)
at object/objcollide.cpp:1270
#7 0x00000000007ac01f in obj_sort_and_collide () at object/objcollide.cpp:1239
#8 0x00000000007b466e in obj_move_all (frametime=0,0279998779)
at object/object.cpp:1514
#9 0x0000000000417257 in game_simulation_frame ()
at freespace2/freespace.cpp:4013
#10 0x0000000000417e1f in game_frame (paused=false)
---Type <return> to continue, or q <return> to quit---
at freespace2/freespace.cpp:4405
#11 0x0000000000418af7 in game_do_frame () at freespace2/freespace.cpp:4816
#12 0x000000000041ae01 in game_do_state (state=2)
at freespace2/freespace.cpp:6507
#13 0x00000000004e4b8c in gameseq_process_events ()
at gamesequence/gamesequence.cpp:409
#14 0x000000000041bce1 in game_main (cmdline=0x1e2b0a0 "")
at freespace2/freespace.cpp:7074
#15 0x000000000041bef3 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffdfa8)
at freespace2/freespace.cpp:7209
And git bisect shows this:
975e108841e74f64ba43b1c7bbf8ba1109ec7ed2 is the first bad commit
commit 975e108841e74f64ba43b1c7bbf8ba1109ec7ed2
Author: Goober5000 <[email protected]>
Date: Mon Jan 25 01:29:51 2016 -0500
further accommodation of the dumb-rotation movement type, including, finally, proper collision detection!
So maybe it is bug in FSO.
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I had this campaign (and Templar when I played that) crash on a recent build when a Typhon started launching fighters/bombers; though I was playing on Windows. I was able to fix my issue at least by playing on an earlier build.
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I saw an address sanitiser issue recently that IIRC was something to do with the new dumb/intrinsic rotation code and a wild memset, I was hunting a different bug at the time so didn't dig into it at all. Needs more investigation, but it certainly sounds like an FSO bug so far.
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I saw an address sanitiser issue recently that IIRC was something to do with the new dumb/intrinsic rotation code and a wild memset, I was hunting a different bug at the time so didn't dig into it at all. Needs more investigation, but it certainly sounds like an FSO bug so far.
For what it's worth, some of the more recent nightly builds that I've had mysterious crashes on have had "3_7_5" in the file name. The older build I'm using that works without the crashes had "3_7_3".
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That's expected, once the 3.7.4 RC was released, the nightlies were switched to version 3.7.5
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I meant that maybe there's something in these recent nightly builds that's causing the issue.
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oh right, yeah, there's two separate bugs being investigated in recent nighties
This one is probably the cause of the issue in this campaign:
https://github.com/scp-fs2open/fs2open.github.com/issues/572
This doesn't seem to be directly related, but might cause random crashes:
https://github.com/scp-fs2open/fs2open.github.com/issues/574
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Hmm I like the nebula, but sadly before the mission progresses I encounter the same problem of crashing when the Typhon launches fighters in mission 1.
It'll be good to add some conversation between the rookie pilots at the start of mission 1 to give the scenario a more in-game feel (although so far I've only played till the crash occurs)
Otherwise great work Taranis thank you :)
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GTVA Qlurzach, crash is fixed in recent nightlies after 2 April. :)
Try this build http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=91868.0
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This is totally awesome thank you tomimaki :)
is it just me though or are all the nightly build links dead? leads to an error 404
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is it just me though or are all the nightly build links dead? leads to an error 404
It's not just you, there's been a mishap with the server hosting the builds, alternative arrangements are being investigated.
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A simple, short, bug-free and pretty interesting minicampaign. Mentioning the balance - it was pretty easy (Medium difficulty), but not too easy. It's just good :yes:
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I played this just now. A fun, short, interesting campaign - but that last mission proved incredibly difficult. :wtf: All of my fighters, and myself, kept getting swarmed and wiped out no matter what I did. I finally ended up flying a Myrmidon with a secret Helios payload and assigning the rest of Alpha to be Erinyes, which helped. I still completed the mission as the only survivor, besides the "Phonecia". Never did see the Bhaal.
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IIRC, the only thing player has to do there is removing enemy beams facing friendlies, comm subsystem and then flying anti-bomber defence... I went in there to bomb the **** out of the Demon, but a Trebuchet spam (can't remember if available) might be sufficient...
The Bhaal arrives if you didn't destroy the comm subsystem.
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Thanks for playing Goober, glad you enjoyed it.
One thing to try out on M4 if you haven't is retasking beta wing to help kill the Karnatoth and deal with the comms subsystem yourself. The AI is horribly inefficient at destroying subsystems but they can help knock out the cruiser quite a bit earlier. Another thing to keep in mind is that your Alpha wing are equipped with trebuchets and can take out the second main beam on the destroyer in short order if you can keep them alive.
I actually found M3 to be harder in testing with the default loadout but that's more due to the deficiencies of the Rhea.
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I feel stupid for not playing this last year. I totally missed it. But, remedying that I played it and it was actually pretty decent. Nothing groundbreaking but that's fine.
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Because i am uploaded this campaign on Knossos and fixed the Phonecia spelling error on this way. (and added the Phoencia nameplate also) i played through it too, in this process.
Well it is hardly believeable that a whole HoL destroyer can hid itself for nearly 20 years (since Operation Templar at least) but nonetheless i liked this mini story. Nothing spectacular, but not bad either.
I actually do not think, that the missions are too short in any way. Also i actually had the most problems in the second mission
Actually i had no problems with the difficulty in this campaign either. Even on Insane. But actually i had more problems in the second instead of the other missions. Actually i did not have much problems in the last mission with the Beam cannon and the comm system thanks to Maxim and/or Trebuchets you can use in this mission.
Even i had to say, that the bad end is much more interesting in this campaign than the good one ;). That bad end reminded me much of Deep Blood 2... unfortunately with the same cliffhanger without any continuation.
But as i said before, a good small campaign i can recommend to every player who is especially short on time.
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Because i am uploaded this campaign on Knossos and fixed the Phonecia spelling error on this way. (and added the Phoencia nameplate also) i played through it too, in this process.
Speaking of the Knossos upload; I think there is an error with that version of the mod file. I've never had any other problems with mods on Knossos in the past, but every time I try to download A Walk in the Sun it fails to finish extracting both the root and animation bundles before telling me the mod only installed partially. When I open the mod, AWitS doesn't appear in the campaign room. Anybody else running into this problem?
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A short, but fun campaign, pretty much what a mini campaign should be like. One weird thing I found though is that in mission 1, if you fail to defend the cruiser, the debriefing simultaneously says you failed the objective and praises you for achieving it
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That's an easy fix for the author.
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*Looks at date*
If the author is still around that is...
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Well it's an easy fix for anyone then. 😊
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Hey, kinda cool to get an email four years later about my old project. Great to know the Freespace community is still going strong. I've not booted up FRED in quite some time since I managed 4/20 missions in my attempt at a larger campaign before realising what a mammoth undertaking it would be but I can probably still bugfix this if there's some issues I missed floating around, never got around to levelling the briefings :/