Hard Light Productions Forums
FreeSpace Releases => Mission & Campaign Releases => Topic started by: ryanchealth on April 22, 2023, 09:43:48 pm
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So I came up with a couple of mission using the Blue Planet 3.2.3 update. I am coming up with a bit of a storyline so tell me what you think. I am completely new to this and I have NO programming experience. I think I created a wepbage in my Computer class in either 96' or 97'.
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That looks like a campaign file, it'll need missions to play anything.
Highly recommend the tutorials included with the game, and the tutorial on our modding wiki.
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When I try to upload the other files it states the upload folder is full.
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When I tried to upload the initial set, I tried selecting multiple files and did not pay attention. You have to do them each individually. It still states the upload folder is full and it had the same issue a week ago when I created the first mission. I figure someone will fix it? I set it up like a campaign with the Four missions all connected. The Fred walkthroughs were great as was the Youtube Videos Silva (I think that is his name) created. Though seriously, go a little slower on the SexP!
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Try it now.
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See if this works
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I have one more done and working on another. I have 4 days experience so don't expect anything too fancy. Trying to figure out the switch the Cargo containers from Hostile to nuetral and the have a ship jump into collect it (after scanned).
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I immediately like the premise - have you played "Eagle Takes Flight" from ye olde FS1 days? Because that was an ADORABLE little campaign and we definitely need more like it!
FS was unable to find 1 ship class when trying to play the first mission. Hope that's not an issue :nervous:
Backstory seems cool! It's different from the type of post-FS2 campaign that HLP has kind of settled into, so it's definitely a refreshing change :) The "wretched-hive-of-scum-and-villainy" setting also seems ripe for smaller-scale storytelling, so that's a big plus.
Mission 1:
lolol we really have this many Kaysers and Prom S? Must be leaning hard on that post-war military surplus! (But he's rich, so it makes sense) Only real problem here is not having enough Tempests, they're so tiny that most missions with them available should give 1000-2000 instead of the default 500. (Also, you give 500 of most missiles, and 100 Kaysers and Prom S, which looks a little strange - maybe reduce some of these, like Harpoons and Trebs)
Everything is on the horizontal plane, which looks odd in space. Select the Y-axis in the top bar and move some ships along it!
All the messages play immediately - maybe chain those events with a delay, or use send-message-list. You can use has-arrived-delay for the message about friendly bombers. Also, the messages don't come from actual fighters in the mission, which makes it hard to tell who's who. If you put the person's name or callsign in the "Callsign" field instead of "alt name", they'll show up automatically in messages and the target box.
Olympus Station is a GTF Ulysses, so that's the ship class I don't have. (I made him invulnerable with cheats lol) Whatever it is, the table entry (usually in a "-shp.tbm") and associated custom model and textures, if any, should be packaged with your campaign. Packaging mods together is kind of complicated (once you're closer to done, you might want to upload your campaign, including all custom assets, to Knossos - but for now, just for testing, if you package it all in a zip file with proper folder structure (appropriate files in "missions", "tables", "models", "maps" etc), people who want to test it should be able to wrangle it all into the correct place. Alternately, if your campaign depends on a mod that's on Knossos, just tell us which one and it should work fine :)
(Aha! I looked in your mission and it uses Blue Planet weapons, and the Asteria which is... probably in BP as well idk BP has everything lol. Also every mission gives you the Balor, and mission 4 gives you Vishnan stuff to use lmaooooo, but these are never made available in the campaign file/via SEXP so they won't actually show up in the loadout.)
The pirate corvette is guardianed (it very conspicuously stays at 1% hull even when getting obliterated with bombs), and jumps out when its weapons subsystem is destroyed, but nothing specifically attacks that subsystem - I had to destroy it myself, which I wouldn't have known to do if not for FRED. Also, the last message gets played just before the mission ends, so there's no time to read it. Maybe simply have it leave when it's under 15% hull (or whatever number), and put a delay on that end-mission event (it's already chained (Good!) so just set the delay to several seconds.)
I LOVED that the main character noticed how weird it is for pirates to simply run in suicidally and destroy everything. Too many campaigns (lookin' at you, Derelict) use pirates as simply low-level mooks to shoot, so it's very nice to have a try at realism.
Overall, a very good mission for someone who's been FREDding for 4 days!
Mission 2:
Lol this guy seems like such a melodramatic douchebag :D (But he's rich, so it makes sense) Definitely colorful writing, which is a nice touch! I'm noticing that mission objectives in the briefings are very specific about the wings you'll be facing - that's not the kind of thing we'd know ahead of time. Leave a little surprise for the player! In general, destroying specific wings usually aren't mission objectives.
I definitely like that large ships tend to depart instead of simply letting themselves get destroyed. Very nice realistic touch. :nod:
Maybe use a cap-waypoint-speed on the Poseidons to keep them from getting so far ahead. The waypoints are all in a line with one another, so it doesn't actually avoid the problem where they all bunch up at the end :D Waypoint path 4 should be nudged a little to the right, and waypoint path 3 to the left, so the convoy sort of stays in formation.
Needs a return-to-base directive (or otherwise telling the player to jump out) when the convoy leaves.
Mission 3:
Briefing objectives are better! (though it should be "destroy all enemy fighters") (I didn't go through the whole thing for typos, but one thing that stuck out was the overly elongated ellipses.............. remember, it's never more than 3)
Names are a bit weird in this one: the cruisers have generic names, and the ship name is shunted to the "alt name" field. That's not how FS does it - ship names are always ship names, and "alt name"s are for alternative type names (like "unknown" if the ship type is supposed to be new/unrecognized).
Good god, this is the first hard mission in the set. Cancer and Omega wing (odd pair of names btw lol) are as well-armed as we are!
lol you spaced out the waypoints in this one (good!) but swapped them - freighter and transport 1 start on the left and veer to the right, and freighter and transport 2 start on the right and go left. So they still bump into each other a bit lol
Also, think about giving freighters and transports unique names, just for flavor, rather than just "1" and "2". Maybe "Shippy mcShipFace" :P
Lots of dead time at the end of both missions 2 and 3 where nothing much happens after the combat is done, so I just time-compress by x16 and wait for the freighters to get to the node. Though, having too much time is better than having too little time and making the mission way too hard. Timing a mission right is not easy!
Mission 4:
Mordock is named properly this time, so that's nice. I liked the twist where you're not supposed to fire on them first, but they're hostile to begin with, so I don't think it actually affects how the mission plays out.
Also "Lamda" 2 is ordered to dock with Alpha 1 and tow me back to base lmao :P
An intermediate thing you may want to think about: Acknowledging player failure, and adding debriefs for various failure states. I only went back and tested missions 2 and 4, but in mission 2, if the Nexus dies or I jump out right away, there's no debrief at all, and in mission 4, you get a success debrief even if you jump out the moment the mission begins.
This is the long and complicated and... kinda unrewarding part of mission design, because the "real story" you're trying to make is the one where the player succeeds and can continue with the campaign. But to make a really complete mission, you have to think about each important goal, and how the debriefing would respond to partial failure, total failure, or the player going AWOL before he's supposed to. Usually this is just a military CO scolding the player, but for your mercenary outfit run by the player, you may have to get a bit more creative. (Some missions just disable the player's jump drive with the never-warp and allow-warp SEXPs to avoid this)
Also, backgrounds! You may want to add "starfield.pof" from the MediaVPs as a skybox (just type it in the "skybox model" field in the Background Editor, and save your mission, and anyone using the MediaVPs will be able to see it). Also possibly nebulae and planets - you could play around with making a custom background, or importing one from another mission file (The background editor can do this with the "Import..." option at the top).
Overall, very promising work IMO! Keep it up :yes:
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Thanks for the feedback. You can see as went from Mission 1 to 4 I started figuring it out more. I will polish them up a little more this coming weekend. I have 1 more mission complete (Simple one were the get to fly some of there captured toys) and one about 80% complete. Mission 6 is going to be more complicated so that one I could use some more feedback on. The Trubechet are in there to finish the missions FASTER so I can test it. I don't think I am going to leave them in....maybe just a couple. I find they make the missions too easy.
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I THINK I fixed all Briefing/Debriefing, edited the story a little bit, disabled the Subspace until the missions are either lost or complete (Also included text indicating when to do it), Fixed the access weaponry, yout get to find out about what you stole, and then added 2 more missions. First one is a simple defense to test our your new ships and the 2nd one is more complex. More complex for me anyways. I kept trying to enable the subspace engine using the OR function but no luck. Just added additional events to make it work. Tota of 6 Missions
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Just out of curiosity. How big is the Freespace community? How many people play and how many create the new games? Freespace Blue is a hit or miss program for my computer. Sometimes it works really well and sometimes my graphics card is fans are running at 100%. I run it on the HIGH settings but have to keep the refresh down to 60 HZ at 4K. Everytime I run it at 120/144 it ends up crashing.
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Hard question to answer, how did you hear about it?
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Just finished the first mission. I did like it, but if I may make some -hopefully constructive- criticism, you shouldn't be able to give orders to the triton freighters, at least. Also, i got the deimos to 1% because i took the turrets first, and not the weapons subsystem (gamers gonna game, ie i'm not that good at following orders without directives in my screen). Maybe add a second event in which the deimos get lower than 20% hull for example it departs, because it stayed at 1% for like 3 minutes before it left.
Also the text messages are too long to read, I'd recommend splitting them into more but shorter messages.
Also I felt like the mission was a bit self playing, like 2 or 3 objetives were completed without my input. Maybe limit the quantity of allied fighters and make the enemy fighters appear in waves with different timing, to allow for the player to contribute more to the affair.
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Second mission:
If we don't know what will attack us, it doesn't make sense to have the objectives at the end of the briefing. Just put a "Defend convoy" directive and the rest can appear after the enemies have appeared.
No directives in battle
Mission is an autowin with trebs - prolly remove trebs. One bank of them and 1 rearm later, killed every fighter, took out the beam from the fenris.
I didn't even have to move or anything. Maybe get them closer or on the sides. Actually, trebs are probably the problem.
Also the poseidon transports end up colliding with each other and jump into the node too much, you could make them jump earlier, like when they reach the outskirts of the node.
Also a lot of dead air once the fenris departs, like 2-3 minutes. You could fill that up with conversation, crying for your lost wingman, rage, anything you want. The nexus could even say something like sorry for your loss.
I did like the pirate reinforcements but realistically they're too far away to even be a threat, probably cause i sniped those 4 hercs instead of dogfighting with them, so the reinforcements appeared relatively early.
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I replaced the first missions with TCS.7z zip file and added two new ones. The Corvette Jumps out at 50% now and the first mission is more of an introduction then a REAL mission. I didn't know how to do most of the intricate sexp's (Still don't bit figuring it out as I go). I expect to go back and probably redue most of them as I learn more. I will space out the text. I typically use the boring computer voice so I don't read it.
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I liked the command briefing with the little john memorial. Although they don't talk enough for me to get attached. Maybe give them more lines, especially one when he dies.
Also your command briefings are walls of text. A little more spacing between paragraphs might do the trick. Also don't forget you can change some words color when referring to enemies or allies. That makes it easier on the eyes imo.
3rd mission: No complains, except the last objetive should be fighters instead of fighter
Another one where having trebs makes it a walk in the park. Also you should have a low priority order on the wingmen to guard the convoy or alpha 1. Cause if you don't, they don't do anything. I ordered them to guard the convoy and they didn't even move. Also the fenris has some weird turrets, the frontal beam is a regular laser turret and has more beams on the sides (intended?).
Also the leviathan wasn't even a threat, i just sniped the myrms and it was out. Realistically, it should at least try a bit, shoot some beams or sth before it jumps at 100% hull integrity.
Also debrief suffers from wall-of-textism. Just put some enters in there, it'll be more readable.
I didn't even need to call in reinforcements as the fenris is made of butter and the leviathan took off without fighting. I'd rather have that fenris jump us from another place so we need to rush to intervene.
After everything is done, you still have like 5 minutes of dead air without any conversation of anything.
Also, the waypoints on the miners literally go past the node.
The mission wasn't that bad, I'm just nitpicking it in an attempt to help. I'm not even that experienced in fredding.
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I replaced the first missions with TCS.7z zip file and added two new ones. The Corvette Jumps out at 50% now and the first mission is more of an introduction then a REAL mission. I didn't know how to do most of the intricate sexp's (Still don't bit figuring it out as I go). I expect to go back and probably redue most of them as I learn more. I will space out the text. I typically use the boring computer voice so I don't read it.
Also the TTS voice alters the timing on the messages. It doesn't match the timing of the mission most of the time.
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Trebuchets will NOT be in there forever. I keep them in there to make the mission easy so I can test it.
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Mission 4 briefing Erinyes instead of Enrinyes
Also you could paint the Mordock name red in the briefing by writing $r before the word i believe
Alright...just finished mission 4.
It's difficulty is appropiate, trebs are useful but not game breaking as the last missions. Those aaa hit like a truck.
Those lambda (also a typo there) tritons are cursed. 1 didn't even pick up the cargo, just jumped to subspace through me, which apparently managed to heat up my fighter so much it soldered the support ship to mine, allowing me to move and burn with it attached.
Also...name your jump node.
Good job guardianing the cargo containers, but maybe don't and reduce the ammount of damage the triton exploding does?
They go from 100 o 1% without even touching them.
Also...is Mike a vasudan?? :lol:
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From what I was told one of th Lambda Freighters actually tries to pick up Alpha 1......I fixed that
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I changed up Mission 1. Less Trebuchets and allowed the Deimos to open fire will all guns. I think it's WAY more fun.
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LOL that would explain the ramming.
Finished missions 5 and 6
Five is relatively good, don't want to pile up the complaints.
Mission 6:
I like the premise. Stealing **** from wrongdoers feels great. But you said the Atalanta and you gave me an Aurora :( I was hoping for the other one! (The one in BP for example)
The thing it, the defenders die easily and never even threaten the freighters. Also escort lists would be nice, to have a good overview of what's happening. Or the red skull being slightly far away so you have to come and go to cover everything. Also give me a bonus objective for scanning all the containers or at least tell me what's inside!
And I leave you with this nice shot of the argo taking a leviathan through subspace...idk it if should work like that. I figured you were gonna capture it and repair the engines... LOL
Also i'd remove the option of giving the saving grace or red skull orders...it doesn't make sense. Also it's all greyed out.
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Colonel Dekker (Wing Commander iV/Prophecy) - I heard about Freespace through WCNEWS and Wing Commander Saga. Been Playing Wing Commander since SNES days which lead me to computer games. Wing Commander had the best story while Freespace has the best gameplay.
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It should be the Atalanta from Blue Planet. Make sure you are playing it in Blue Planet 3.2.3. Here is Mission 7. I would say it is mostly done as I have not tested it thorougly.
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I am still working on tweaking these a bit and changing a few things. I have tried to setup a Nebula Account and I keep getting an error. Said to check my email but I never received anything. Though now it says I am logged in.
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Anything in spam?
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I checked it after a few minutes and nothing. I tried my secondary and even work email but nothing worked
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I have about 7 Missions complete and 2 I am still testing. I have attempted to create the campaign through Knossos but I am really not getting the instructions provided. It seems there are some missing steps. Like creating the mission and campaign folder and where the VPS file goes. Also which Dependencies is the new MEDIA VPS file since it does not seem to be an option anymore. I am using the Blue Planet complete as the basis.
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I created a campaign but then later deleted it from Freespace Blue. The Campaign still comes up in Blue Planet even though I deleted the Campaign and Mission files. Is there a way to flush this out or is there some temporary folder that still has it? Another question. Created new campaign and no weapons show up. They work as single player missions but once I build it into a campaign there are no weapons available.
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TCS has been loaded to the Knossos. Only 10 Mission.....Good luck on Mission 9