Author Topic: [WIP] FS1 Upgrade  (Read 19600 times)

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Offline Trivial Psychic

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Just an update.  I'm up to "Enter The Dragon" now.  My new job doesn't leave me with a lot of good free time to FRED these days.  Most of my free time is spent sleeping or getting ready for my next shift, but I digress.  I'll be changing the tables for most of the more advanced fighters and bombers, so they can mount the advanced disruptor, and have disabled the "scramble" mode so you can select your own ship.  I've always hated the wide spacing of the Ulysses' firepoints, so now I can mount the D-Advanced on the center-line bank of the Valkyrie and land some serious hits on Arjuna 1.  I'm also expanding the number of freighters present with "interesting" cargo.
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Offline Trivial Psychic

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End of year update... or nearly anyways.

I'm actually up to "Doomsday" now.  I've added a bunch of more content to "Playing Judas", some of which will make the mission much more challenging, but if you achieve a bonus objective from "Enter the Dragon", you get a boost that helps quite a lot.  "Evangelist" now has a more staged mission, rather than just the destroy-the-Eva mission it was before.  "Doomsday" includes more ships and some sacrifice.  With me having the weekend off, I could very well be done with it by the end of the year, but that still leaves going back through the missions to make sure everything works as I remember, make sure all of the is-previous stuff is in place, change messages and other text content to support any changes I've made in later missions, as well as finish work on my loop missions.  I'd also like to create some form of in-game custscene to start the chapter off.  I was thinking of something depicting the Tombaugh attack.  I created a solo mission of this event a long time ago, but that's not quite right for a cutscene.
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Offline Trivial Psychic

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WOW.  So, another year gone... and very little real progress to report.  Basically, I took a break from working on my own projects to try out some of the other releases that came out, like Inferno: Nostos, Inferno Classic with upgrades ships, the upgraded Sol: A History, as well as SA.  Some of these got interrupted by me needing to replace my computer during August.  Fortunately, in terms of Freespace, all I lost was a few of my newer pilots and their campaign progress.  On the upside, my new computer leaves my old one in the digital dust.

I've recently begun the process of playing through my complete or semi-complete missions to see if I need to change anything.  Again, finishing my loop missions looms over me like that fish that got away that keeps showing up to rub my face in it... that got weird.  Anyway, to keep myself working on the project, and at the same time putting off finishing the loop, I've begun doing some more modding updates, such as turret sounds, adjusting subsystem strengths, and even adding new models.  Some time ago I decided to include the Shivan Armaros corvette, planning to introduce it for Chapter 3, but after playing SAH I decided to include the Tyr as well.  I liked the updated model from SAH and its Fenris-style fits with the time.  I've decided to make it a fast attack cruiser with turrets that can switch weapon types on the fly, so light, fast pulses to engage fighters, or heavy pulses against warships.  It can switch from FighterKillers to Fusion Mortars or Fusion Swarm missiles.  It supposedly a new design built only in Sol so far, so that's why you don't see it later in the GTVA timeline.  I've also decided to keep the Neith model, which was in the CH1 release but not used in any missions.  I've decided that it's a new Spec Ops cruiser, with advanced long-range sensors (as evidenced by the large ventral array), a networked, redundant NAV system to plot fast and precise jump coordinates (since the model has 6 NAV subsystems), and a special turret on the front that can launch a rapid laser-pulse salvo over great range for providing fire support.  Again, to explain why you never see these cruisers in the GTVA time-period, I've decided that their ship-yards were destroyed when the Lucifer attacked Vasuda Prime, and restarting development would be too costly, so the 3 or so in service are the only ones of their class.  Some of these new ships will only be see in Loop 3... once I get that far.  I am also considering trying to use those asteroid environment models used in SAH to make some asteroid missions feel a bit more real.  I haven't done anything on that line yet though.

My New Year's resolution is to complete and release the merged Chapter1&2... with a finished Loop.  This I vow!

Merry Christmas to all (if you're OK with it), and may next year not suck as much as this past one did (from a global perspective).
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Offline Black Wolf

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Looking forward to the next release. More FS1 era stuff! :D
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Offline Mito [PL]

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 :yes:

Wishing you luck in doing the stuff! :D
How do you kill a hydra?

You starve it to death.

 

Offline Trivial Psychic

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Well, I don't make New Year's resolutions as a rule... and now I know why.  I JUST got back into working on this again... like in the past 2 weeks.  I've found a few minor bugs, but one weird one.  In one mission, freighters jump in with cargo attached, which get dumped immediately upon jumping.  The mission used to work fine for this but on newer builds (don't ask me which older builds this worked for, as they'd be a year old by now), but now when the cargo is dumped, although they are visible, they are intangible... in that they are completely untargettable, can't be hit by weapons fire, and barely make contact if rammed.  They also appear blue on radar, as if they were still warping.  The event has the cargo jettisoned 2 seconds after their freighters arrive, so I adjusted it to 3 seconds.  This allowed me to target them, and they weren't blue on radar anymore, but they still couldn't be hit by weapons as before.  Not until I changed the delay to 4 seconds did they become vulnerable when I needed them to be.  Weird huh?
« Last Edit: January 27, 2020, 07:59:08 pm by Trivial Psychic »
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Offline CT27

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Glad to hear this is still alive. :)

 

Offline Trivial Psychic

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So, for the first time I am attempting to use persistent variables.  The new FRED differs from what's listed in the Wiki, but I assumed that marking it as "Save On Mission Complete" would save that.  Then, I assumed that all I would need to do would be make another variable in the next mission with the same name, and it would carry the same data.  This is meant to transfer various ships' hull strengths and engine status between missions.  This is because the ships in question jump out before the mission is done, and are not yet present when the next mission begins, and red-alert-carry-status doesn't seem to work in those instances.  Should I do anything special with the variables' default values in the second mission?
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Offline Bryan See

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So, for the first time I am attempting to use persistent variables.  The new FRED differs from what's listed in the Wiki, but I assumed that marking it as "Save On Mission Complete" would save that.  Then, I assumed that all I would need to do would be make another variable in the next mission with the same name, and it would carry the same data.  This is meant to transfer various ships' hull strengths and engine status between missions.  This is because the ships in question jump out before the mission is done, and are not yet present when the next mission begins, and red-alert-carry-status doesn't seem to work in those instances.  Should I do anything special with the variables' default values in the second mission?
It depends on the mission designer who proposed it before.
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Offline Trivial Psychic

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Thanks.  Anyone else?
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So, for the first time I am attempting to use persistent variables.  The new FRED differs from what's listed in the Wiki, but I assumed that marking it as "Save On Mission Complete" would save that.  Then, I assumed that all I would need to do would be make another variable in the next mission with the same name, and it would carry the same data.  This is meant to transfer various ships' hull strengths and engine status between missions.  This is because the ships in question jump out before the mission is done, and are not yet present when the next mission begins, and red-alert-carry-status doesn't seem to work in those instances.  Should I do anything special with the variables' default values in the second mission?

Looking into WoD you don't need to enter anything special there.

 
BTW, I had some idea regarding one of the FS1 missions, is it OK if I post it here?

 

Offline Trivial Psychic

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Post away.
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I had some idea regarding the mission where you scan the Shivan fleet. It seems like the "go next to the Lucifers docking bay", which ends the mission by having the player exposed has no actual explained reason and numerous people here don't get why Command gave that order. I think the best explination would be that there's a plan to sneak into the Lucifers fighterbay with a number of bombers, evading/disabling the shield by blowing a large hole into Lucys hull. However, Command requires more intel to estimate whether that is feasible.

Following: Command orders Alpha 1 to investigate the docking bay. My idea is that both fighterbays aren't open (like on other ships) but secured with a blast door that only opens when fighters come in/out (Possibly Command is intending to re-use the Dragon in another mission where its goal would be to infiltrate and destroy the blastdoors to pave the way for the attack). Before that Command needs to know whether they are shielded too etc. While going very close to them the Dragon is hit by an EMP blast, disabling the engine and causing other subsystems to fail too - having come too close to entrypoint triggered some special defense mechanism.

For the DB I'd add that the officer says (under the hand) that Vasudan Command had secretly already circulated voluntary lists for a kamikaze attack into the fighterbays; however the Lucifer is a flawless design etc...

 

Offline Trivial Psychic

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I've been considering using a plotline similar to this for the Chapter 3 loop missions, but I've got to release Chapter 2 first.  As for "Playing Judas", the new mission includes a lot more scanning, including subsystem scans of the Lucifer.  Let me tell you, trying to scan that thing's subsystems while in motion is quite the feat.  Fortunately, if you play things right in the previous mission, you can make it much easier on yourself.
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Offline Trivial Psychic

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I've finally got my Loop2-04 to work the way I want it with regards to different outcomes and debriefing stages.  It still needs a bit of polish and re-balancing of one fighter class, but I've moved on to the last mission in Loop2.  Then I can string them in to the campaign file, maybe make a few more enhancements to the rest of the missions, and then she'll be ready for release.
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Progress :yes: :yes:

 

Offline Trivial Psychic

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I've figured out a trick to doing vasudan in-game messages.  I'm using sim-speech for the message, then using play-sound-from-file and using one of the vasudan speech files included in the original Inferno mod.  This allows them to play behind the sim-speech.  I haven't figured out a way to use it for briefings though.  There is no equivalent for it without sacrificing the sim-speech.
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You could try to make that with Audacity.

 

Offline Trivial Psychic

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So I need some help with my persistent variables.  For "The Evangelist" I've got three terran warships participating in the assault... the corvette Tychon, and cruisers Neptune and Orff.  My intent is to save the hull strength and engine strength of the three warships, and then have them jump in some time into the next mission "Doomsday" with these matching specs.  The ships may jump out at the end of the mission when the Eva objective is accomplished, or earlier on if they take too much damage.  Regardless, their hull and engine strength is stored.  If they jump out early, then they will already be near the Galatea.

I created six variables... NeptuneHull, NeptuneEngine, OrffHull, OrffEngine, TychonEngine, TychonHull.  I gave them default status of 100, and flagged them as "save on mission complete".
For each ship I created two events, one if it departs at the end of the mission and one if it departs because it's taking too much damage.

Event:
TychonJump
-when
--and
---is-destroyed-delay
----0
----Eva
---not
----has-departed-delay
-----0
-----Tychon
---ship-invulnerable (so it won't drop any further from a stay hit)
----Tychon
---modify-variable
----TychonHull(100)
----hits-left
-----Tychon
---modify-variable
----TychonEngine(100)
----hits-left-subsystem-specific
-----Tychon
-----Engine

Event:

TychonRetreat
-when
--<
---hits-left
----Tychon
----15
(insert invulnerable and get ship stats part from the other event)

For "Doomsday"

Event:

TychonStatusCarry
-when
--has-arrived-delay
---0
---Tychon
--set-subsystem-strength
---Tychon
---Hull
---TychonHull(100)
--set-subsystem-strength
---Tychon
---Engine
---TychonEngine(100)
--subsys-set-random
---Tychon
---(-)(that's a minus sign)
----TychonHull(100)
----25
---(-)
----TychonHull(100)
----5
----Engine (subsystem to be overlooked)

In "Doomsday" the variables don't have any persistence flags and are set with a 100 value as default.

Am I doing it right or did I miss something, because my mission is ignoring the variables completely and the ships are arriving with full hull and no subsystem damage.
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