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"Is the universe really that complicated to you?...
Or is it just simple enough that you utterly fail to understand?"
--- Draktar
Amidst tragedy in battle, the brutality of the great Wars, the corruption of those in power, the political strife and the personal struggles, an ultimate revelation is waiting to unfold just beyond the horizon. A revelation that might bring peace to society or death to all who lived. A story of a female pilot who outlived the horrors of The Third Shivan War that ended just six months ago only to face something even worse than her nightmares.
FEATURES:
The campaign has a fair number of 38 missions (including cutscenes) that are meticulously designed. Additional new ships, new weapons, new space backgrounds and new weapon effects are added. The missions are no longer just about shooting and blasting things, all of them require strategy and judgement like how will you disarm a destroyer in the shortest possible time or to take down an enemy cruiser in 25 seconds. Enemies will react and have strategies of their own to outflank, outmaneuver and outwit the player. some of them will even respond if you try to destroy their engines or their offensive turrets and even retreat in a disadvantage---Now, how to prevent them from escaping other than disabling their engines? Enemies will even have random behaviors. Here, you will have to use your survival skill, wits, and sheer will as you will pit against intelligent enemy fighters. The player will be faced with dilemmas on which targets to take on first or which asset to protect more. There are gameplay elements from bombing raids, artillery strikes, remote beam cannon control, capital ship piloting to fleet tactical command. The game will have a different feel. Aside from the epic battles and intense dogfights, the story is also character-driven which means more dialogue lines. There will be outrageous moments and even ridiculous ones adding more meat to the narrative as the mysteries pile up and explode until the very end. And everything will converge at the very end. This sequel also answers the questions that were brought up (intentionally) in "The Aftermath: Reboot" and the answers to these questions will actually sprinkle spice to this campaign.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:
Special thanks to CT27 who contributed more than half of the story, his plots and ideas that made the missions quite complex. And I also thank those who posted their suggestions that guided me to make this sequel.
IMPORTANT
Please read this before playing:
https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=98170.msg1913983#msg1913983
SPECIFICATIONS:
The required SCP Build needed is FSO 19.0 and MVPS 4.3 but it had been tested to run with FSO 22.0 and MVPS 4.6.
This mod is dependent on "MVPS" and "The Aftermath: Reboot" with the latest July 31 2022 update. Download the Reboot's latest update.
The Aftermath Reboot latest update download link:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/5kw5imma680bs5p/AFR-Update-7-2022.rar/file
The Blue Guardian
DOWNLOAD LINKS:
Total Download size: 390mb
TBG-Root2.rar ---- http://www.mediafire.com/file/lgc7m9kg2x9unxg/TBG-Root2.rar/file
TBG-Files2.rar ----- http://www.mediafire.com/file/wb1988diq9dgb7j/TBG-Files2.rar/file
ADDITIONAL UPDATE :
(July 2022)
This will replace some files---
https://www.mediafire.com/file/afh1zqarzrm5mky/TBG-Update-7-2022.rar/file
LATEST UPDATE 1/02/2023
DOWNLOAD LINK:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/64ann6jryqg1rpl/TBG-Missions-Update-01-02-2023.zip/file
Download and extract to the mod's root folder. This will replace the old files.
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Congratulations! :yes: :yes:
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Congratulations! :yes: :yes:
Thanks a million
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Woo! Looking forward to playing it! Congrats on the release, that's gotta feel good!
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Congrats on the release good sir! Will this be on knossos soon? I got rid of my wxlauncher some time ago
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Congrats on the release good sir! Will this be on knossos soon? I got rid of my wxlauncher some time ago
I guess you can if you can set the mod manually like in Wxlauncher. Just manually download it from Mediafire using the links here. I don't know how Knossos works.
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Congrats on the release good sir! Will this be on knossos soon? I got rid of my wxlauncher some time ago
I guess you can if you can set the mod manually like in Wxlauncher. Just manually download it from Mediafire using the links here. I don't know how Knossos works.
Who put Aftermath I on Knossos then? Probably you could authorize that person to handle that for you (you said that you had some very bad internet connection).
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Yeah, if the Aftermath Reboot updates and Aftermath II can both be put on Knossos, that would be beyond awesome. It certainly would be a lot easier than trying to mess with wxlauncher again.
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Yeah, if the Aftermath Reboot updates and Aftermath II can both be put on Knossos, that would be beyond awesome. It certainly would be a lot easier than trying to mess with wxlauncher again.
Yep, elseway the campaign will have a mod.ini that links to BP instead to this board. :D
website = http://blueplanet.hard-light.net;
forum = http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/board,169.0.html;
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Yeah, if the Aftermath Reboot updates and Aftermath II can both be put on Knossos, that would be beyond awesome. It certainly would be a lot easier than trying to mess with wxlauncher again.
I have updated Aftermath Reboot and Aftermath Reboot II is uploading as I type this.
Herkie, I fixed three typo related bugs (One in Aftermath 1 and two in Aftermath 2). All three were in ships.tbl referencing sounds. If you run the mod through debug, you'll find them pretty quickly.
Additionally, the first mission/cutscene CTD's for me in the exact same place every time (right as it's facing the hangar near the beginning). Not sure what the cause is.
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I got a CTD on the same opening cutscene, but i otherwise moved on from it, and the Floating Fortress also hits CTD once when the self destruct sequence hit in, which is already bitter considering the length and how aggravating the mission is
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Ok, I can independently confirm that both Aftermath campaigns are on Knossos and both have been updated as of today judging by their "Last updated" dates.
SQUEE! (By the way, we really need a squee emoticon. I don't think the :D emoticon is cutting it.)
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Got that bug in the opening scene too.
Debug coming:
https://fsnebula.org/log/5e812847cb0d3321b0c98630
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OH MAN when I saw this pop up on Knossos :D Awesome that this game is finally out! I'm actually in the middle of replaying the first Aftermath right now, once I finish I'll gladly dive into the sequel!
Also glad to know you're alright Herkie! I recently visited the first game's thread and it seems you disappeared a long time and no one knew what happened...glad you're ok! ^^
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Are you using FSO 732. I don't know about Knossos but there is "setting.ini" file included in the download. Try deleting that.
I will download knossos and try it in my end. I am still using the 5.5g launcher. My PC is not connected to the internet, I'm using my phone.
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Ok... ran this on knossos but switched to 19.0.0 RC3 in FSO settings and I got passed the weird hangar CTD in the opening scene. It is running fine at the moment. There might be something in the 20.1.0 2020 nightlies which conflicts with Aftermath2. I will update this if I can get past the opening scene and mission1
UPDATE: Passed mission1 and starting the next one. I can tell this campaign will have tougher missions than Aftermath1
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NOTE:: please use FSO 372. It is a compatibility issue
https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=89597.0
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Can someone give me link to Knossos?
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Ok, I can independently confirm that both Aftermath campaigns are on Knossos and both have been updated as of today judging by their "Last updated" dates.
SQUEE! (By the way, we really need a squee emoticon. I don't think the :D emoticon is cutting it.)
Wow... That is awesome! :)
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FSO 372 is almost 5 years old... You really should figure out why your mod crashes modern builds and either fix your assets or submit a ticket to SCP with steps to reproduce.
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Yeah, if the Aftermath Reboot updates and Aftermath II can both be put on Knossos, that would be beyond awesome. It certainly would be a lot easier than trying to mess with wxlauncher again.
I have updated Aftermath Reboot and Aftermath Reboot II is uploading as I type this.
Herkie, I fixed three typo related bugs (One in Aftermath 1 and two in Aftermath 2). All three were in ships.tbl referencing sounds. If you run the mod through debug, you'll find them pretty quickly.
Additionally, the first mission/cutscene CTD's for me in the exact same place every time (right as it's facing the hangar near the beginning). Not sure what the cause is.
Thanks, mjn. Help me with this compatibility issue so that I can have an update soon.
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I have confirmed the first mission does not crash on 19.0. You really need to be playtesting your mods on a build muuuuuuch newer than 3.7.2. There's only a handful of nightlies since 19.0, so it should be pretty easy for you to nail down what code revision started causing issues with your mod.
EDIT: For anyone having issues with the mods on Knossos, you may need to check file integrity and/or uninstall-reinstall. I forced a metadata update to set the mods to use 19.0 only. The mods seem to run fine on that build release build. You may also need to set your Knossos Preferred Engine Stability to Stable so Knossos doesn't use the 20.0 nightlies.
Herkie, the particular crash in mission 1, I'm not sure how to debug. It occurs at the exact same moment every time, so I'd start with checking into assets that arrive in mission or weapons that are fired at that moment for bad data. I'm not gonna lie, that kind of crash can be a PITA to debug. You gotta figure out what asset is causing it and either fix the asset or notify SCP so that can figure out what changed in the build revisions. However, in most cases newer builds offer you much better debugging features and mod stability than something that's five years old. Not to mention all the new engine features you get access to. Time to upgrade my man.
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I will try testing with 19.0 and I find some issues
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Oh yes, everyone please give me FPS, frames per second. I want to know if you have performance issue. In my end, I get an average of 45 to 60.
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Now I got another problem. I grabbed some kind of "update" for Aftermath and got the "FSO is missing" bug after applying it
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I made it to the battle against the Demora and her escorts, disabled and destroyed the escorts, and debeamed and disabled the Demora. After said superdestroyer finishes dying, well... Nothing happens. No matter how long I wait after destroying the Demora, nobody says anything of consequence and the Oberon and Venture just hold position.
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I made it to the battle against the Demora and her escorts, disabled and destroyed the escorts, and debeamed and disabled the Demora. After said superdestroyer finishes dying, well... Nothing happens. No matter how long I wait after destroying the Demora, nobody says anything of consequence and the Oberon and Venture just hold position.
Weird. I got past that no problem before the update ruined my mod
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I made it to the battle against the Demora and her escorts, disabled and destroyed the escorts, and debeamed and disabled the Demora. After said superdestroyer finishes dying, well... Nothing happens. No matter how long I wait after destroying the Demora, nobody says anything of consequence and the Oberon and Venture just hold position.
I tried this last night and I too had this problem (I tried it on different builds too).
My only suggestion is to let one of the escort ships escape. If the secondary objective in that mission is failed, I could progress.
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Did the Asuras always have 90 mps? And if so, why did you picked A Floating Fortress to demonstrate this? Their hitpoints are already massive enough that the burst of speed to outrun not just my bomber, but also a Cyclops, makes the mission frustrating when you're trying to deal with them fast and efficiently. I understand you tried to pick a more realistic tone with this campaign and nobody's gonna sit there and get nuked, but it slows the game to an unreasonable standstill and allows your fleet to be overrun.
It's a cruiser for crying out loud, the fact it takes as much nukes as a corvette is bad enough, light bomber speed is being genuinely unfair and otherwise inexcusable.
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For now looking around a bit, I see that there is a lot criticism coming about mission balance. While Shivans were very weak singularily and that made for an enemy that could be deployed in squadrons against your mere wings without excessive frustration, this time you're fighting against ships that actually match you. That means you can't realistically fight swarms of them that appear in your missions. Also it makes for absolutely no sense for actual people to act like Shivans did.
So, I guess you'd need to equalise the forces in your missions.
Other criticism turns to absurd speeds of cruisers that outrun bombers. While I can understand the friendly cruiser in that Shivan installation mission moving faster so the mission doesn't get overly tedious, Shivan cruisers that can outrun bombers and bombs while also being too absurdly tough to be feasibly killed by fighters make for hell that you need to cheat through. So even if you need their tabled speed to be so high for some reason, you can just make sure they are flying a waypoint path at all times and use the cap-waypoint-speed SEXP to limit their speed.
Also, Shivan Mjolnirs that take ten Trebuchets to disarm, there are five of them, and you cannot let any of them fire a single shot while being very time limited? This is a problem, another mission unpassable without cheats.
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For now looking around a bit, I see that there is a lot criticism coming about mission balance. While Shivans were very weak singularily and that made for an enemy that could be deployed in squadrons against your mere wings without excessive frustration, this time you're fighting against ships that actually match you. That means you can't realistically fight swarms of them that appear in your missions. Also it makes for absolutely no sense for actual people to act like Shivans did.
So, I guess you'd need to equalise the forces in your missions.
Other criticism turns to absurd speeds of cruisers that outrun bombers. While I can understand the friendly cruiser in that Shivan installation mission moving faster so the mission doesn't get overly tedious, Shivan cruisers that can outrun bombers and bombs while also being too absurdly tough to be feasibly killed by fighters make for hell that you need to cheat through. So even if you need their tabled speed to be so high for some reason, you can just make sure they are flying a waypoint path at all times and use the cap-waypoint-speed SEXP to limit their speed.
Also, Shivan Mjolnirs that take ten Trebuchets to disarm, there are five of them, and you cannot let any of them fire a single shot while being very time limited? This is a problem, another mission unpassable without cheats.
I agree with these sentiments too. The difficulty should be toned down and maybe allow for a few more wings to start with in these missions. Also capships going like a Lambo is quite odd indeed. During the "floating fortress" mission, I would highly recommend arming up with Maxims for your wingmen instead of the Trebs. The Asuras would get shredded apart easily and the heavy guns can get sniped much more efficiently. That worked wonders for me.
Oh and 1 more thing: have all wingmen hit the heavy guns 1 at a time
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And while we're at it: using ship-subsys-guardian-threshold on engine subsystems when the objective is to disable a ship is not what I'd consider good form. It's akin to dangling a carrot in front of a player's face and then pulling it away from them when they're about to finally get it. What also doesn't help things is when destroyers seem to be going extremely fast for something that large (which one would come to expect after a couple missions of seeing Molochs and Rakshasas flying at speeds of over 50) and then, when it seems like one is about to cripple the ship, the above SEXP kicks in and the ship unexpectedly jumps. It may be more realistic in comparison to real-life physics, but at the same time, this is Freespace 2. Big ships enter Subspace with rapid acceleration from a near standstill, right?
To be succinct and entirely blunt, this campaign could've used a lot more playtesting and revision before release. I know this is just more criticism getting lumped on with all of the rest, but herkie, I'm begging you: please get some people to thoroughly test this so the big concerns can be worked out. The Aftermath's reboot's sequel can be so much better. It's just going to take some time and effort, but I think it's going to be worth it in the end.
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Also one more thing that was mentioned in the Discord server: FSO 3.7.2 is ancient. Please, Herkie, consider upgrading to 19.0.0 FSO release, it has got multiple upgrades compared to 5 year old builds and people report that this campaign works just fine with the modern FSO versions, just as with MediaVPs 4.1.23.
Not only that, some people mentioned getting better FPS on newer builds!
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I found a gamekilling bug in an act3 mission(forgot the name of it). You are facing 4 zod destroyers alongside the new emperor and a bunch of fighters/bombers. 2 zod vettes show up and I batter them down to 10% integrity. After that, they are totally invulnerable. Herk, I strongly recommend scouring missions for gamekillers like this. Also, please tone down the diffculty in these missions. It is really tough to take out 2 vettes against a very beat up destroyer and the mission will be over before you can blink
Debug:
https://fsnebula.org/log/5e840fdbcb0d3321afc98624
The mission is "lightning from heaven" looking in the techroom
UPDATE2: the only way to get past this mission until it is fixed is the 5 death skip
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First things first, congratulations on the release!
So I believe I'm around 70% through the campaign, I've been playing through on hard difficulty. Here is some early feedback: (some spoilers ahead obviously)
The swarm tactics that were used by the Shivans don't translate so well with the Vasudans, given their much tankier nature. On top of that is the armament used by the Vasudans. Their primary is a rapid fire laser and the secondary they use seems to be a rapid fire swarm missile. On top of having significantly more HP than the Shivans, the armament makes the Vasudans overpowered. Perhaps their loadouts should be more varied with the occasional wings being this well armed.
Next I would say the Anubis cruiser needs to be looked at. It's far too well armed for a cruiser. While it does have an exposed reactor, its anti-fighter capabilities are off the charts. Perhaps reduce the number of flak turrets or reduce the range?
This one isn't so much a balancing issue but I find it very strange that in the mission "Lightning from Heaven" that the only fighter escort is provided by the Midway. Why aren't the 2 allied Vasudan destroyers providing fighter/bomber wings as well?
On a personal note, I wish the Tempest were available in more missions, it's my usual go to in the first Aftermath.
Overall it seems like there are few friendlier wings this time around, when compared to the first Aftermath.
I'll return to this post when I'm done with the campaign. So far though I'm having an alright time with this, but the balancing issues are very much affecting the mod's quality.
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First things first, congratulations on the release!
So I believe I'm around 70% through the campaign, I've been playing through on hard difficulty. Here is some early feedback: (some spoilers ahead obviously)
The swarm tactics that were used by the Shivans don't translate so well with the Vasudans, given their much tankier nature. On top of that is the armament used by the Vasudans. Their primary is a rapid fire laser and the secondary they use seems to be a rapid fire swarm missile. On top of having significantly more HP than the Shivans, the armament makes the Vasudans overpowered. Perhaps their loadouts should be more varied with the occasional wings being this well armed.
Next I would say the Anubis cruiser needs to be looked at. It's far too well armed for a cruiser. While it does have an exposed reactor, its anti-fighter capabilities are off the charts. Perhaps reduce the number of flak turrets or reduce the range?
This one isn't so much a balancing issue but I find it very strange that in the mission "Lightning from Heaven" that the only fighter escort is provided by the Midway. Why aren't the 2 allied Vasudan destroyers providing fighter/bomber wings as well?
On a personal note, I wish the Tempest were available in more missions, it's my usual go to in the first Aftermath.
Overall it seems like there are few friendlier wings this time around, when compared to the first Aftermath.
I'll return to this post when I'm done with the campaign. So far though I'm having an alright time with this, but the balancing issues are very much affecting the mod's quality.
I just wrapped up the campaign and I echo these same comments. Decent storyline but the difficulty holds it back quite a bit. The difficulty definitely should be looked at and tweaked. This mod can be fun to play again if said tweaks occur. I had to play it on easy for most of the way through. Medium was near impossible IMO. Not a fan of playing anything on easy since medium is optimal for most campaigns in FS
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at the time ive written this, im absolutely salty and practically livid, so take that into regard.
i haven't finished TBG, and i probably won't. I got up to Solar Eclipse Part 2 and I practically lost all hair on my head.
this sequel's came off as something of a disappointment. i loved the sheer corny and absurd nature of the first AF1; you're playing in hyperlethal vector fighters against swarms of shivans, but you're armed with military grade bug sprays. to add to the corny nature you got Halo's OST, X-Wing noises, Star Trek and a down-on-his-luck protagonist who God chose to save the day, as you obliterate entire fleets, let alone battlegroups, with the least amount of members with the biggest guns.
AFII's development cycle feels as if you've learned something from AFI, but also didn't. missions are no longer more than just charging in and shooting things until they're space dust, but there's actual objectives to accomplish to fully call your mission complete. yet, somehow and someway, this proves to be one of TBG's weakest points: not due to the fact they don't work, but due to the same reason everyone's already voiced, they're not balanced. the swarms don't stop. they've went from bees that can overwhelm you in numbers to violent wasps that wants to see the whole galaxy burn. the vasudans are the strongest offender of this, with the seraphis and horus fighters; unless you're using an avalanche with a weapon that combos off the Kayser, their heavy and ultra heavy armour is tough to punch through. but that's not all the vasudans got, because their weapons and missiles rival yours, and their numbers are no different from the shivan arcs. what you find then is your "squadron" of 2 or 3 wings depending on the mission against 3 Ultra Heavy or Heavy fighters at once that easily matches yours. that isn't a challenge, that's sheer absurdity, throw in vasudan capital ships and you get a fine mess. when did you ever plan to tell players about the weapons subsystem trick? there's definitely a prompt to target reactors but weapons never gets one, and that's the best thing you can target?
up until where i dropped i have yet to complete a single mission without cheating. again, balance. some objectives are next to impossible (The Floating Fortress being, by far, the WORST offender, and the Atlas Cannons defense, but that mission has more issues than just that) without `+k'ing or godding yourself. i also really don't appreciate these mission recommendations: they reek of a smart-alick grinning and pinching his chin going "i gotcha you at your dumbest". Solar Eclipse Part 2 is an example of this, but there were other missions beforehand, and they all had the habit of hoping the player had precognition of the mission. make them playable in one go, or don't at all. these are the objective failures, not the fact the player gets shot down.
the writing was significantly worse this time around. gone were the corny humour and laughable writing of AFI, replaced with the love triangle subplot where your character proclaims she is horny on the open comms and a vasudan arc that houses more than a dozen vasudan ships you blow up, forcing their fleet to be around the same as the terrans post war. richter the NPC is now incredibly vague and mysterious, which makes no sense and you would've probably gotten the same impact by making the nuRichter a guy named "Sensei" and making him just as one dimensional. the political tension that was promised is overshadowed by these bizarre subplots and characters i just cant care for.
final thoughts: TBG was a huge downgrade from AFI. In attempt of trying to be better, you've somehow went worse. TBG desperately needed more time in the oven of playtesting and bughunting by more than just CT27. for crying out loud, there's a debug message in one of the missions. i'd be lying if i said you're awful at mission designing but you're a person that desperately needs refinement, a slap on the knuckles with a blunt object, someone to actually say yes or no to your decisions, may that be a playtester or even a partner you need to work with. you clearly have the talent for it, but at the moment, you're also holding yourself back. i hope to see these missions rebalanced and updated and look forward to possible future projects but as they currently stand, i make my stop with TBG.
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Well, it seems Spart managed to say almost everything I was going to say about TBG. To sum up what I would've said, this campaign needs a general overhaul badly. Now, as for the parts that my friend didn't cover...
The characters, aside from those previously established in Aftermath Reboot, never get proper backstories and what info you do get about the new people, including the main protagonist, is... well, it's all thrown at you like birdshot from a shotgun: some hit and stick around (and some are even kinda effective), some glance off and get lost in the background, and the rest miss their mark by a decent margin. And Courtney Aguilar? She comes off as a Mary Sue.
The enemy factions... WHAT?!
The Shivans go from hive minds, massive numbers of fighters, bombers, and ships, and scary weapons to mind-controlled bug people that end up changing sides in a way that seems like it was a plot pulled out of a crappy "what-if" story on fanfiction.net.
The Vasudans... No. You don't send in Serapis and Horus fighters equipped with heavier-than-FS2 armor and spammable missiles in wings hordes like that. And since when did the Vasudans get such a huge xeno-boner for ASMs? This is supposed to be semi-connected to canon FS2, not Blue Planet 2, so why would you pit the player against multiple ships with 2 or even 4 ASM launchers? Oh, and while I'm at it, why would you equip Osirises with HELIOS BOMBS?! Just use Sekhmets. It's post-FS2, so those are fair game. No need to use something that's been around since the Terran-Vasudan War when there's already something better in large quantities.
The Rigelians became the new FS-era Shivans. They can't be touched until someone starts deploying X weapon (either R&D has been developing it from captured tech or it's already in limited use and is now being given to your squadron because Snipes and his SOC friends are "nice" guys) and using them against Y weakness. In this case, it's the Widowmaker missile (speaking of which, why would you hold out on me with those things? I LOVE them!
They're like if you took a Treb, gave it the maneuvering of a Harpoon, and then made it a disruptor weapon as well! It's so OP!). The advice given about using it on Rigelian ships, though... First off, you're right. Don't chase the warships. They're faster than you. However, you got something dead wrong: DO NOT ATTACK RIGELIAN SHIPS FROM HEAD-ON. Approach from side-on, lock on, fire, and wait a bit. 9 times out of 10, that warship will end up a sitting duck without it ever touching you.
Onto the special mechanics...
Point-and-click turret defense with 6 Mjolnirs? ****ing awesome.
Point-and-click turret defense that requires you to juggle blasting incoming capships and defending a fragile Charybdis from bombers and other dickery, the latter of which is so you don't end up with ****-tons of bombers coming in and blasting the turrets and the installation you're guarding? And did I mention that only the first four Atlas targeting hotkeys work, so you end up having to quickly use the vanilla command menu to manually order Atlas 5 and 6 just to use them? Not so much.
Commanding a fleet with the implemented tactical interface is really cool, but when you can only use the first 4 keys to do it, it becomes... frustrating. It was such an obstacle for me that the only ships I managed to save in the final mission were my destroyers and a single corvette, my Chimera-X excluded, and all because I couldn't effectively counter Akhmim's fleet spreading out with a hook.
TL;DR: the 5 and 6 keys don't trigger anything in the Tactical Command Interface.
And one last thing, Herkie: that last message before the final mission (see the link below), considering the dumpster fire that version 1.0.0 of TBG has been... While I understand that it was intended to just be a message to CT and removed later, I'm somewhat glad it stayed in because, to be completely honest, it comes off as you basically just telling your coworker to do all of the work you should've done (but didn't), and then walking out to never return.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/607738712884772876/695039616021168148/unknown.png (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/607738712884772876/695039616021168148/unknown.png) (linking here instead of inserting because it's just too big)
I get that you want to be done with this, but no, you can't just dump this all on CT. That's not fair to him, even if you had some kind of agreement during development.
This is an unfinished campaign that deserves better because it could be so much better with more time and effort.
EDIT: I talked with someone with more background on Herkie's situation. I wish I'd known sooner. I admit, I was too harsh.
CT, if you're reading this, DM me if you'd like some help with proofreading and possibly reworking some of the dialogue and story. You don't have to do this alone, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that would like to step in and help.
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For what it's worth, I didn't do much design work on TBG. I was mainly involved in writing the plot for Acts 1-3. So as far as technical problems people encountered go (some of which I encountered and some I didn't), unless he decides to revisit the campaign you might be out of luck. I know what I would fix if I could, but I'm not good at FRED'ing or designing campaigns (or whatever the term is).
I loosely wrote the plot for Act I
Shivan remnant cleanup in Mutara
though I originally only had it at three missions and Herkie made it into five.
I also wrote most of the plot for Acts 2 and three
New Imperium Insurrection
Basically I gave Herkie most of the plot and script for those missions (though he would sometimes make additions) and he made the gameplay. I also helped somewhat with the plot for Acts 4 and 5.
I do want to mention that although Herkie may not be posting here much anymore (I'll post later on that) I do occasionally message and talk with him on Facebook. Out of respect for him I got permission from him to talk about this stuff because I don't want to appear like I'm trying to throw him under the bus (all I'll say for now unless he gives me permission to talk about specifics is that occasionally we had some disagreements on what to do after I got the initial three acts of the campaign for testing...though it never got heated or bitter).
Like lordhood117 said, Herkie's not in a great situation right now (on FB Herkie did give me permission to talk specifics on that later so I'll try to do that later). Hopefully he just needs a break and can come back to do some cleanup work later.
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I just ran into a problem (right before the final mission of TBG unfortunately):
I tried to start the final mission and got this:
Error: Can't open model file <AF-Scylla.pof>
File: modelread.cpp
Line: 1062
ntdll.dll! NtWaitForSingleObject + 20 bytes
KERNELBASE.dll! WaitForSingleObjectEx + 147 bytes
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Apparently there's a problem with the new Scylla model (I couldn't even bring up the Scylla in the techroom...that caused a crash too). This happened on multiple builds I tried.
However, when I tried the previous version of "Reboot" (the version before this recent update of Herkie's) I was able to look at the Scylla successfully.
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This model is in AF. You don't have AF or you named AF folder differently than it is in AF-TBG mod.ini.
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Yep it works fine on my end.
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I figured out a work around for it.
I was playing Reboot and had some problems with the newest version so I switched to the previous version of "Reboot" which fixed those problems. However that newer Scylla model wasn't in the previous version of Reboot so I extracted it from the newer Reboot folder I saved (I have both saved, though obviously I don't put both in my FS2 folder at one time) and put it in the TBG folder. That solved the issue and I was able to progress with TBG.
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After playing about 1/3 of the campaign, sorry to say, I resign. It's barely playable - it requires serious tweaking, testing and bughunting. It's difficult as hell, sometimes it's just impossible without cheating. And I'm astonished by some solutions, like Moloch 100 m/s, basically outpacing my 20-times-smaller bomber... I'm very interested in a story, but I wish I could have fun more playing by chance :/. Then I guess - nothing remains but to wait for the update..
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Does anyone remember the "The Lightning Marshall" series of campaigns? I ask because I'm using them as an example for what I'll try to talk to Herkie about.
Basically when they first came out, TLM had a unique physics engine (basically FS/FS2 combined with Independence War). It was semi controversial as many people found TLM way too difficult. However, a few years ago someone remade the TLM campaigns with traditional FS/FS2 physics and people were much more receptive to that version.
Bottom line: if you make changes to something fundamental people are used to, that change could prove controversial. Fighting against capital ships in your bomber/fighter is a fundamental element of FS/FS2 and if you change how that happens it can really alter how playing a FSO campaign 'feels' IMO. How a game controls is one of its most basic elements (a reason the game Star Fox Zero was so divisive was that it changed the traditional way a Star Fox game controls).
Some people may have had issues with the plot of The Aftermath/The Aftermath: Reboot, but at least it felt like Freespace. Having capital ships of 'known' species (Vasudans/Terrans/Shivans) be 100m/s (faster than your craft at normal speeds) feels like a big shift from what we're used to. I don't know the normal speeds of cruisers/corvettes, but I don't think it was above 50. I could settle for maybe 60 (and that can justify slightly the ingame explanation of capital ship advancement and us learning from Shivans), but I thought 100 was too much.
It may be scientifically accurate for capital ships to go as fast as fighters, but when playing a videogame...fun and playability can be placed slightly above science in the case of Freespace IMO.
I noted that I thought capital ships were too fast when I tested the first three acts of TBG (I didn't get the last two acts for testing).
In the final mission of Act I, the Reliant's speed of 100 is that high because it was said the mission would be too long otherwise. I would ask Herkie to then change the mission so that the Reliant comes in after sentry guns are destroyed and it jumps in near the entrance of the Shivan facility.
Basically I'll try to tell Herkie about this issue on FB, but on the off chance he sees this here: I would strongly consider reducing the speed of the Vasudan and Shivan capships closer to what they normally were. A slight increase is okay, but people are finding 90-100 too much.
On the other hand I think the speed of the
Rigelian ships
can be kept as they are because they're a different element.
I'll make a post on difficulty of the campaign later since that seems to be another major issue people had.
FYI: I have permission from Herkie to post about differences we had regarding TBG.
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Generally, it's not about making ships faster. It's about making only some ships much much faster than they used to be, upsetting the balance between ship classes and roles. If you double the speed of ships, double the speed of *all* ships.
Also, while the idea of a race of aliens who are flying much faster in sublight travel than GTVA/Shivans do is really cool, although changing the speeds of known ship classes in the middle of the plot is definitely strange.
I think I played this version of Lighting Marshall and the speed itself wasn't the problem. While everything got a rather conservative speed boost, the entire flight model also got introduced to the concept of inertia (like in Diaspora) and there was a big weapon rebalance in place.
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Generally, it's not about making ships faster. It's about making only some ships much much faster than they used to be, upsetting the balance between ship classes and roles. If you double the speed of ships, double the speed of *all* ships.
Also, while the idea of a race of aliens who are flying much faster in sublight travel than GTVA/Shivans do is really cool, although changing the speeds of known ship classes in the middle of the plot is definitely strange.
I think I played this version of Lighting Marshall and the speed itself wasn't the problem. While everything got a rather conservative speed boost, the entire flight model also got introduced to the concept of inertia (like in Diaspora) and there was a big weapon rebalance in place.
Personally if it was up to me I'd only give a slight boost to the speed of GTVA/Shivan ships; but your suggestion has merit too. Since combat against capital ships is much more difficult now, fighter/bomber speed would need to be increased too.
Also, I'm sorry I didn't clarify, but you are right about TLM. I didn't have an issue with the speed, but what I remember the big issue being with the earlier version was the flight model/inertia. I don't remember problems with weapon balance.
I also just got a FB message from Herkie and he says for those who are having issues with the difficulty of TBG to play on medium (I don't know what difficulty you all are playing on). I tried both campaigns (Reboot and TBG) on very easy even...I still found TBG a noticeable spike in difficulty.
He also said he may have trouble making updates since his FS installation is from 2014 and things have changed in versions since them. He said he feels obsolete now (his words not mine). So now the chances of an update look a little less unfortunately.
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Changing the speeds might be difficult, I mean Herkie built the entire campaign with the current values.
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You're probably right. People are raising the issue though so I'll tell Herkie about it and it's up to him whether he wants to or can do something about it. If he chooses to keep things as is because it would be too difficult to change them or because he likes this vision of the campaign, that's his right.
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To be fair, I think some of the speeds of ships were reduced from the version of TBG I got for testing back in September. Now there are only a few instances of capships going 90-100 (it was more before).
I've played through most of TBG now (the only mission left to play is the final mission and I'll try to get to that next week or so). I'll give my thoughts on what I've played so far (mechanics wise...I'll try to talk about the story later).
Generally, I haven't found many technical/gamebreaking errors. However, my personal opinion is that the game is a little too difficult. If you play The Aftermath/Reboot and TBG on the same difficulty level you will notice a tangible jump. (I'll try to also give suggestions on how to improve things/constructive criticism).
In the second mission of Act 1, it is impossible to get the primary and secondary objectives achieved. I managed to disable and destroy all the escort capships and then the Lucifer class ship...but I never got a message to return to base or anything like that. On the other hand, I did get clearance to jump out at the end of the mission if an escort ship escaped earlier. Another weird thing I ran into on that mission was that as soon as I started the mission the "Demora" objective in Directives was blued out.
Also, I would suggest adding "Disable Demora" as an objective in the Directives list because it can take people by surprise. Or, since you already have lots to do in the mission, I would suggest having the Demora start disabled to slightly lessen the difficulty.
In the final mission of Act 1, it does seem rather long for what's essentially a prologue. I think the amount of enemies need to be reduced. Even if you have your whole squad pounding on an Asura it can take a while. I think there should only be one Asura. (Like Nightmare said, I'll try not to ask too much for speed redesign though I think some would prefer that). I also think there were a couple too many of those large sentry guns you had to destroy. Like the Asura, they take a while to destroy even if your whole squad is shooting at one. Honestly I'd say reduce the health and number of those sentry guns in that mission.
Also, in that mission...to reduce the time length of the mission...perhaps have the Reliant come in after the sentry guns are destroyed. It would start/jump in near the opening of the Shivan facility.
Like someone said before, the dynamics are very different between Reboot and TBG. In Reboot the good guys have high technology but relatively lower numbers and the bad guys (Shivans) are swarms of numbers but lower technology. So your one squadron against three of four of theirs creates a challenge but not one that can't be overcome. Plotwise it does create a sense of challenge (and pilots do wonder if they'll ever be able to overcome the vast hordes of Shivans), but gameplay wise it doesn't feel frustrating.
However, in TBG,
until Act 4 and 5 mostly though you do see a hint in Act 2
you are mostly facing an enemy that is for the most part your technological peer. So if you put the same numbers of enemies in that you faced in Reboot, the difficulty will go up dramatically. It can feel like a chore to go through multiple squadrons. I know the bad guy/rebel Vasudans
you face are supposed to outnumber you in the plot...,but gameplay wise that ratio should be reduced in a number of missions. I also think the health of the newer Vasudan bombers/fighters is fine...but I honestly feel the health of Serapis and Horus fighters should be reduced since that's mostly what you seem to face I'm not saying they should be paper thin like in FS2, but they shouldn't be as tough as they are in TBG. I tested on very easy at least once and a Serapis ate multiple dual launched Trebs...that just doesn't feel right. Again, I'm fine with the enemy outnumbering you in TBG, but the numbers you face (or their fighter's health) should be reduced somewhat.
Maybe I encountered a technical error, but I think the new Blizzard cannon needs a bit of a subsystem damage buff. Since a primary tactic against the enemy is attacking reactor or weapons subsystems, a disruptor cannon is important. The Blizzard only seems to do a tiny bit more subsystem damage than the Maxim...but the Maxim has a much better range. Since enemy cruisers have deadly anti-fighter weaponry it doesn't make much sense to choose the Blizzard over the Maxim. So I would say enemy cruisers need to be slightly reduced in weaponry or the Blizzard needs to do a little more subsystem damage (I'm not a FRED expert but I guess the Blizzard option would be easier to program in) to cause someone to want to choose the Blizzard over the Maxim.
I also encountered a technical error in "Long Shot". Only cannons 1-4 work using the number keys. Cannons 5 and 6 don't work using number keys (you have to go through a couple manual steps through communications to use Atlas cannons 5 and 6). So either you need to get 5 and 6 working somehow...or just take them out entirely. However, if you remove two cannons and the player now only has four, you'll likely need to remove a number of enemy forces as well to compensate (or make cannons 1-4 more powerful and have a quicker refire rate and longer range perhaps).
I will say the first part of "Long Shot" was easier than the testing version I got months ago. In that there were more enemy fighters and bombers attacking your AWACS so you had to divide your attention a lot more.
As for the second part of "Long Shot", I don't have technical issues to report, but I agree with some who say Courtney's "horny" line feels weird and out of place. I would recommend taking that part of her line out.
Someone reported a technical problem with "Lightning From Heaven" in that the enemy corvettes wouldn't die. I didn't run into that problem, but perhaps take the corvettes out. That would help reduce the difficulty of that mission (you get a lot of stuff thrown at your destroyers) and remove a technical problem.
There was a technical problem I ran into with the Donald Esquire
missions. The first mission "Deadly Contraband" went fine, but when you jump out and the second mission "Reunion" begins I was in the Eclipse gunship even though I was in a fighter in the previous mission (since the game proceeds right from that first mission to the next and doesn't give you a debriefing I would presume you're supposed to be in the fighter you were in the first part of the mission). It wasn't a gamebreaking error since I was able to play and win the second part but a weird technical glitch.
"Solar Eclipse pt. 2" was a real challenge and frustrating. Depending on how much damage the Sol Gate and control facility
take you can get slightly different dialogues at the end. However, I found it impossible to get the light or even moderate damage dialogue lines. I think there were too many enemy fighters and bombers in that mission and they should have their numbers/health reduced. This was one of the more challenging missions and it didn't seem this hard in testing months ago. In addition to slightly reducing enemy health and numbers, perhaps don't have the enemy bombers come in right away. Have them come in a little later so your fighters can take out more of the enemy fighters before they have to help you with bombers. I would also give the player some warning that the cruisers are about to decloak so the player can get in position. If you want it to at all be possible to get the light or moderate damage lines (in addition to what I've said before) I'd suggest not having the cruisers be able to fire right away after decloaking. Perhaps have Courtney say something like "The cruisers have decloaked but will need some time to begin firing. Hit their reactors before they can do damage to our facilities!"
Also, I ran into a technical error in that part of the mission. In this mission most of your allied squadron never fired weapons. You would have three or four fighters behind an enemy but just chasing it and never firing. So somehow in part 2 (and sometimes it happened in part 1 of Solar Eclipse as well) most of your fighters seemed to lose their weapons.
I forgot the name of it but the mission where you send your ambassador to meet with the Rigelians and try to prevent Akhmim's Vasudans from doing the same
really needs a difficulty rebalance. You face three enemy squadrons while having to destroy a dozen transports. It's near impossible. Plus the transport you're escorting gets ambushed by enemy bombers while you're doing other stuff unless you're in exactly the right place almost.. I felt lucky to make it past this mission. Enemy health of fighters/bombers need to be reduced here...or lessen their numbers somewhat (perhaps face two squadrons and eight transports instead of three/12).
There is also another suggestion if you don't want to do that: let the player have access to Widowmakers. Not just in this mission but you should have access to Widowmakers more often (that would also help reduce the difficulty that people are mentioning).
One more technical error I've noticed (though this one isn't gamebreaking): At some point in Act 4 Richter says you can have his Phantom fighter
however I never saw that fighter available. In the ship selection screen I never saw that I could pick it.
Admittedly I'm biased, but I do see good in this campaign. I'm just talking as a FS player and fan here as to what I see that could be improved (and also taking other thoughts that were put out here into consideration).
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^ I am stuck on that exact mission right now... it is utterly ridiculous... Even on Very Easy, I cannot do it. There are just too many enemies to defend the transport, while destroying the enemy transports at the same time. I've been ordering my wingmen to defend the transport while I go after the enemy transports myself, which seems to work the best. This also allows me to be near the bombers when they come in, so I can destroy them ASAP. But after that's where it gets hairy. My wingmen just stop killing things once the first 2 squadrons are mostly eliminated, and do a terrible job defending against the 2 wings of 4 fighters that jump in some time after you get the order about the destroyers. I think these wings are what's ripping apart my transport, but if I go to protect it myself at that point, the enemy transports will get to their destination. And if I divert wingmen to take care of them, that just means less protection against the overwhelming odds being thrown against my own transport.
All I can say is I agree with CT27. Lower the number of enemies/transports, or give us access to Widowmakers there. That would balance it out very nicely, actually. Could take out the transports from a distance, or snipe those deadly wings that warp in near the end before they can get too close.
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Thank you to Mjn for making this campaign a highlight.
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The HUD is way too small for me. I can barely read anything, and it's giving me a headache. The message gauge is particularly bad in this regard. Also, the arrows that tell you what weapons you have selected - and whether your secondaries are in single-fire or double-fire mode - seem to be missing for some reason. I'm excited to play the campaign, but it's hard to enjoy it when I'm so busy squinting to make out the text and I'm not sure what's going to launch when I pull the trigger.
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I have an issue with the "Give no quarter" mission (rescue the Diligent...).
Flying into the shivan ship and find the core (or whatever it is) could be an easy task, flying into a blueberry soup - even into the shivan ship - and find the core is not an easy task; in fact I've not found it, yet.
:banghead:
Suggestions?
Thanks!
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Just press subsystem targeting until it shows up.
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Done and thanks!
Anyway I'll take a pause, the game will be better more playable after some rebalancing.
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You can always just cheat..
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Done and thanks!
Anyway I'll take a pause, the game will be better more playable after some rebalancing.
I found it by targeting the fighterbay subsystem.
Anyways, the game is noticeably more difficult than "Reboot". I'm hoping Herkie will eventually do a rebalancing (I don't think much would actually need to be done...just 1-Nerf the health of Serapis and Horus fighters and 2-Give the player Widowmakers more often)...but I unfortunately can't promise that will ever happen. His schedule is unpredictable and he doesn't seem as enthusiastic about it as before...and unfortunately I was just a plot/script helper along with being a tester so I can't be much technical help. If you truly can't get by a mission, Nightmare's suggestion of cheating might be the way to go about it.
I generally agree there needs to be some rebalancing and I've tried to offer some constructive suggestions.
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Update:
Some good news and some bad news:
Good-I just talked with Herkie on FB and he said he will probably be doing an update in the future. Hopefully this means some of the gamebreaking errors get fixed.
Bad-For those who have had issues with campaign difficulty...he said he doesn't want to give more access to Widowmakers. He said he liked the reason he gave in a command briefing about why Widowmakers are rare. He said they would make things too easy. I tried to say this would be a relatively easy way to address all of your issues with difficulty and balance of the campaign (probably easier than going in and removing fighters or changing missions), but this is his opinion on the issue. He also said he regrets ever inventing them (a pity, I found them rather fun to use).
So hopefully this means some of the technical issues you all encountered could get fixed. As for the issues about difficulty and balance...that's more up in the air.
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Just my personal opinion... in a campaign where GTVA just wipes out the Shivans, has tons of new ships and ship classes to the point that loosing dozens of destroyers is sad but not a really big deal and the constant reminder that all that this doesn't happen decades or centuries in the future but 3 years after Capella the idea a weapon that could make the campaign perhabs more fun to play is scarce does not seem to fit. Pretty much anybody appreciated AF1 FWIW - a fun shooter where you kill swarms of enemys, with the story of Richters advantures being intriguing enough to look over everything that might not fit into "orthodox" campaign design, and it'd be nice to have that for AF2.
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So just so I know, can anyone tell me if I'm the only one with this problem?
Also, the arrows that tell you what weapons you have selected - and whether your secondaries are in single-fire or double-fire mode - seem to be missing for some reason.
It's turning out to be an even bigger annoyance than I thought, and I'd at least like to know if it's normal for this campaign or if something in my setup is causing it. I'd also greatly appreciate if someone could tell me how to make the HUD font bigger. I figured out a way to make the message gauge font more readable, but no luck so far on the rest of the HUD.
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@CT27:
Giving the player a miracle weapon when the mission is too hard to pass normally is an option, but you could as well not have the missions be that hard in the first place. This calls for a large rebalance, that's it.
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I think adding a weapon isn't a big deal compared to rebalancing a mission, or in this case 37 IIRC.
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Having the player rely on a crutch weapon all the time in order to progress in the game is a... cheap and boring move. Having actually balanced missions is - should be - the goal for mission designers. That is, unless you want to have some of the power fantasy as seen in AF1, using overpowered weapons every once in a while is sweet.
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I talked with Herkie on FB about the overall difficulty of TBG and this was his response (he gave me permission in the past to say here what he says in FB PMs):
"I wonder why its difficult in your end when it is easy here. I even played hard. And the fact that I had tone down the difficulty factor in the AI profile. That may be attributed to the FSO build. Remember, I said that FSO 374 has better AI than 372. That could be it. Have you tried using 372 so that you can see what I really intended. I cannot really balance it unless I am using your FSO build and, for some reason, the new FSO 19 and Knossos does not work for me. Partly because Knossos is dependent on the internet and my PC is isolated and offline."
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Ok i have been playing and uploading to Youtube but am currently stalled as im stuck on missions that would require the cheats to get past. Not sure if i can discuss here as i dont want to spoil anything here
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I never really thought I was particularly good at Fs2 -- just a normie who enjoys playing and a writer who desperately wants to help out with more mission writing. But hearing everyone's complaints about how impossible everything is, I've gotta say I'm super proud of myself for getting up to Solar Eclipse Part 2 all on my own (besides the mission with the debug message, which i assume is objectively broken.) Early on, i was annoyed, but due to quarantine, actually had some fun re-doing the missions until I could get that random trick just right.
But Solar Eclipse 2, as far as I've seen, is absolutely impossible. My wingmen just aren't aggressive enough to achieve any individual objective on their own, so I'm afraid this is where the road ends for me.
I also wanna add, like everyone else, the "horny" line is so, so bad in that moment. I've never cringed so hard during a campaign over the years, and as y'all know, theres been a lot of hilariously bad campaign moments over the years.
THAT SAID! The makers of this clearly are very talented, and I congratulate them on the accomplishment -- for real, I really did enjoy the hours and hours of fun I got out of this, and it brightened up my days for sure. Thank you so much for this!
I suppose my broader feedback is, this needed more testing. I'd love if this could be a campaign where it is reasonably possible to complete the average mission on the first try on Medium, or even on Very Easy, for that matter.
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Hey I just played this and I haven't gotten very far in yet but so far I'm having a blast. This is a really cool campaign, thanks for putting it together ! It's up there with my favorites so far :)
I can see some others have some philosophical issues but I just gotta say it's nice to be playing with fighters and weapons that can kick some shivan butt :). So sick of firing off hornets and never having them hit so it's a nice change of pace :0
I've played a lot of mods over the years, some better, some worse. Some people love, and some people love to hate. Pretty much all of them have some problems. I think the attention to detail you did was great.
Cool thing is that at least it's out :) I hope you continue to work on it and improve it :)
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I am finished with my tweaking and testing with TBG. While there is very little change in the missions and no change with regards to hit points, things are easier now (at least on my end, send me feed back if it is still difficult and I will tweak some more.)
The trick was adjusting the difficulty factors in the AI table. Damage factor, shield recharge factor, and others but most importantly, the number of fighters allowed to attack the player and the number of turrets allowed to target the player. So only 2 hostile attackers will harass you at any given time and 3 turrets (I think it is 2) will target you. I am not sure if newer FSO will implement this, I hope it does.
In general, you will mostly survive. Attacking an Anubis or Hathor with their long range flaks will not be a deadly proposition. Flaks have little effect in your shields now just like in AF. Your damage factor to hostiles are increased and damage received reduced. It will feel almost like AF now. I say "almost" because there is still the difficulty of finding the correct strategy and vasudan fighters will take a little bit more time to kill, just a bit, since they are a agile.
By the way, the speeds of Shivan Cap ships are still fast. And so as the Terran and Vasudan Cap ships. But you only notice this in the second and third mission and the last mission of Act 1. Everything after that are controlled by cap ship way point speed SEXP, at most 70 and one or two instances, 90 if I need a ship to go from one place to another without taking too much time. This was done in PS1's Colony Wars. I hope this is still forgivable.
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I honestly say with regards to FS canons and tradition, it is true that The Aftermath universe picks up from FS2 but AF was a step drifting away from FS (I mention that in "Words From The Author" text file that came with the release and previous update). TBG, on the other hand, is a complete separation from the FS Canon.
By the way, the Shivans were not defeated and can never be defeated. You will learn this at the end of the campaign.
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For those who have trouble with the Num Pad option, only usable up to 4, read the Read Me file. You will find important instructions there in setting your controls.
Also this mod must be played with1366x768 resolution. There will be HUD indicators that will not display correctly if played in different or higher resolutions. This is also in the Read Me file.
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And lastly, forgive me for taking too long.
I did all the technical job of both mods all by myself. Solo. Until now.
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We're all glad you're recovering Herkie. Good to see you around.
A number of people have played that mission (Long Shot pt. 1) and found 5 and 6 broken. I know technically there's a workaround, but that's not going to be obvious for most people. They'll just think the mission's broken (though it's still beatable).
I would suggest just taking out cannons 5 and 6 and then doing one of two things:
1-Keep the same amount of bad guys (however this would require increasing the range/damage/refire rate of the remaining four cannons to compensate).
2-Lessen the number of bad guys by one-third to match the one-third reduction in cannons.
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We're all glad you're recovering Herkie. Good to see you around.
A number of people have played that mission (Long Shot pt. 1) and found 5 and 6 broken. I know technically there's a workaround, but that's not going to be obvious for most people. They'll just think the mission's broken (though it's still beatable).
I would suggest just taking out cannons 5 and 6 and then doing one of two things:
1-Keep the same amount of bad guys (however this would require increasing the range/damage/refire rate of the remaining four cannons to compensate).
2-Lessen the number of bad guys by one-third to match the one-third reduction in cannons.
It is not broken. You have not assigned the Controls for Num 5 to 6. It's in the Read Me file. You should set it because there are mission that option up to Num 7.
Plus, it will be difficult to have only 4 Atlas cannons which originally did but difficult to beat. So I added 2 more.
EDIT: And it is also better to leave cannon 5 and 6 there. They can still fire even if you cannot control them.
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ONE QUESTION:
Did the text files, Words From The Author (for AF) and Read Me, came with the Knossos installation? People should read it before playing.
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With the mission Solar Eclipse part 2 I will reduce the number hostiles in the initial wave especially the attacking bombers and slightly increase the hit points of the portal and station.
I haven't realised that it is a red alert mission. You may have expended your missiles in part 1.
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I just wish that someone can post a video of an actual mission so that I will know how it looks like on your end.
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ONE QUESTION:
Did the text files, Words From The Author (for AF) and Read Me, came with the Knossos installation? People should read it before playing.
Even if it did it probably ended up in Knossos folder, meaning most likely nobody who just installs it and hits play will see it.
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Yeah... Well I just have to post it here.
EDIT: I think I have to insert a command briefing at the very start of the campaign to give these very important instructions.
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VERY IMPORTANT:
You must set the Key Bindings for the following controls according to the reference below. These controls are used in some missions for in-game choices or options. You can set this in the "Options" screen in the game.
FUNCTION DEFAULT KEY ASSIGNED TO
(Multiplayer)Message All 1 ------------> Num Pad 1
(Multiplayer)Message Friendly 2 ------------> Num Pad 2
(Multiplayer)Message Hostile 3 ------------> Num Pad 3
(Multiplayer)Message Target 4 ------------> Num Pad 4
(Multiplayer)Observer Zoom to Target Alt-X --------> Num Pad 5
|
(Multiplayer)Toggle Network Info Shift-N ------> Num Pad 6
(Multiplayer)Self Destruct Shift-End ----> Num Pad 7
The mod has to be set in 1366 x 768 resolution ONLY as there are HUD indicators that will not appear right if set to other resolutions. But you can set it if you prefer otherwise. There are only 2 missions that requires this resolution.
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NEW UPDATE RELEASED
This update has tackled the issues found in TBG. The game balancing issue was due to the high difficulty factor encountered by players. This issue is now addressed in this update. Other fixes include some very hidden bugs that were found during my playthrough, there are rare instances or scenarios that break the mission's continuity. These are fixed by adding additional SEXPs. Some modifications were also made to the Command Briefing, Mission Briefings, Debriefings, and in-game dialogues to improve some of the narratives. Grammar and Spelling corrections were also made (as best as I can).
While very little change was done to the mission design itself, the adjustments I made will now improve the gaming experience while retaining the feel and intensity of the missions that I had intended for both the Reboot and TBG. The tradition of The Aftermath's chaos is still there but it will no longer be overwhelming like before. That being said, I still need your feedbacks and suggestions. Please let me know and I assure you that will get to it.
One important thing. I still use the very old FSO 372 when I'm updating this. But basing on your post, the mod works with the newer FSO builds so it is fine, I guess. Anyway, my method is still very much traditional FS2 modding and there are no radical modifications.
These are the download links for both The Aftermath Reboot and The Blue Guardian. Both mods MUST be updated.
DOWNLOAD LINKS
The Aftermath Reboot:
AF-RootMain23.rar ---- http://www.mediafire.com/file/diyegxus5e42up0/AF-RootMain23.rar/file-
AF-Extra23.rar ----- http://www.mediafire.com/file/oc5ijwzfemv6fyy/AF-Extra23.rar/file
---NOTE: These links are also posted in the Reboot forum thread.
The Blue Guardian:
TBG-Root2.rar ---- http://www.mediafire.com/file/lgc7m9kg2x9unxg/TBG-Root2.rar/file
TBG-Files2.rar ----- http://www.mediafire.com/file/wb1988diq9dgb7j/TBG-Files2.rar/file
The procedure is the same. Extract the downloaded files to the mod's root folder and the old files will be replaced with the updated ones (AF-RootMain23.rar and AF-Extra23.rar for Reboot. And TBG-Root2.rar and TBG-Files2.rar for The Blue Guardian).
The Release Posts of both mods are also updated. The new download links are also found there.
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Oh yes... The "horny" line is taken out. It was meant to be a joke, a very bad one it turned out. I don't know why I did that... :banghead:
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TO THE PEOPLE FROM KNOSSOS:
I'm not sure how to contact you so I just posted my message here.
I very much appreciated on how you made it possible for both Reboot and The Blue Guardian be added to the Knossos installer. I hope you can make the proper adjustments for the latest update. Please note that the secondary list in the mod.ini file for both mods in these updates is still MediaVPs 2014. I also hope, if its possible, that the extra files in the mod folder (the "Read Me" text files and the "Alternate Campaign Version.rar" file) be included in the installation because these contain some important instructions and an "alternate campaign" file.
Thank you.
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Oh, one more thing.
The "mod.ini" file still has "MediaVP_2014" as it's ssecondary list. I am not sure of the name of the latest MediaVPs. Please make the adjustments in the "mod.ini" file.
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Oh yes, one more important thing.
Whatever incompatibity fixes you had made when the March 2020 came out, you have to redo it again because I still used the FSO 372 in making this update.
Like I said before, Knossos and newer FSO builds doesn't work on my end, I tried it.
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October update is on Knossos now.
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I've had two issues at spots in the campaign where everything functionally freezes. Lightning From Heaven is one of them - the Gabriel jumps in, then stops moving after jumping in. It never attacks the VNI ships, the VNI ships never attack it, and the mission ends, forcing me to kill myself repeated times in order to move on. I have similar issues in a later mission(cannot remember which one) where ships will freeze in place and never engage to presumably move the story forward.
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Hello,
first off thanks a lot for all the effort and time you spent doing this. I really enjoyed the first part.
Unfortunately I cannot play the second aprt beyond the frist mission in act 1. There reason is pretty silly. I cannot board the Gettysburg to finish the mission. Nothing happens when I approach the fighter bay. Is this a known issue ? What can I do about it ?
Best regards,
Sorlag
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Unfortunately I cannot play the second aprt beyond the frist mission in act 1. There reason is pretty silly. I cannot board the Gettysburg...
You have to enter through the front of the ship, on the upper deck. It's where you started at the beginning.
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I've had two issues at spots in the campaign where everything functionally freezes.
Hmm... the game did frozed. Make sure you use FSO 19.0. Later builds or version tend to have problems.
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You have to enter through the front of the ship, on the upper deck. It's where you started at the beginning.
Hi,
I am sorry but finding where to land is not the issue. You made this very clearly visible by the fighter bay subsystem. The problem is that nothing happens once I arrive there, even if I lodge myself into the fighter bay. I have also tried every other cavity the ships has to offer. Furthermore I do not start at any ship. It is the mission where you start with three wings attacking a lufcier destroyer, a cruiser joining in later.
I managed to skip the mission by turning invulnerability off and killing myself five time, but that just delays the problem since nothing happens for me after finishing the second mission main objective, too. Just eerie silence and inactive AI for me.
Might it be an imcompatiblity with FSO or MediaVp ? I am running this on Knossos.
Best regards
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You have to enter through the front of the ship, on the upper deck. It's where you started at the beginning.
Hi,
I am sorry but finding where to land is not the issue. You made this very clearly visible by the fighter bay subsystem. The problem is that nothing happens once I arrive there, even if I lodge myself into the fighter bay. I have also tried every other cavity the ships has to offer. Furthermore I do not start at any ship. It is the mission where you start with three wings attacking a lufcier destroyer, a cruiser joining in later.
Hmm... That's strange. My counterpart in this mod, CT27, didn't have this problem. Yeah, must be compatibility issue. Use FSO 19.
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Hello,
first off thanks a lot for all the effort and time you spent doing this. I really enjoyed the first part.
Unfortunately I cannot play the second aprt beyond the frist mission in act 1. There reason is pretty silly. I cannot board the Gettysburg to finish the mission. Nothing happens when I approach the fighter bay. Is this a known issue ? What can I do about it ?
Best regards,
Sorlag
Having the same issue using version 1.2.0 on Knossos 0.14.3
Reaching the fighter bay doesn't trigger the mission end.
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Same here :(
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Hello,
first off thanks a lot for all the effort and time you spent doing this. I really enjoyed the first part.
Unfortunately I cannot play the second aprt beyond the frist mission in act 1. There reason is pretty silly. I cannot board the Gettysburg to finish the mission. Nothing happens when I approach the fighter bay. Is this a known issue ? What can I do about it ?
Best regards,
Sorlag
Having the same issue using version 1.2.0 on Knossos 0.14.3
Reaching the fighter bay doesn't trigger the mission end.
Managed to get on board the Gettysburg using the larger ship (x-wing style) but got stuck on "A wounded Fox" where after destroying Demora and all other cruisers & vettes, nothing happens, no mission success, no return to base no nothing :(
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CT27 also had this problem. I checked and it worked perfectly on my end so it's not a mission code bug. I suspect it's a compatibility issue. You have to use FSO 19.0 (actually this mod is made for FSO 374). I used variables to check for multiple scenarios. I don't know how the newer FSO builds handle those.
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Hello,
first off thanks a lot for all the effort and time you spent doing this. I really enjoyed the first part.
Unfortunately I cannot play the second aprt beyond the frist mission in act 1. There reason is pretty silly. I cannot board the Gettysburg to finish the mission. Nothing happens when I approach the fighter bay. Is this a known issue ? What can I do about it ?
Best regards,
Sorlag
Having the same issue using version 1.2.0 on Knossos 0.14.3
Reaching the fighter bay doesn't trigger the mission end.
Managed to get on board the Gettysburg using the larger ship (x-wing style) but got stuck on "A wounded Fox" where after destroying Demora and all other cruisers & vettes, nothing happens, no mission success, no return to base no nothing :(
For what it's worth, I was using the October 31, 2017 nightly (which I think was based off of 3.8.1) when playing the "The Aftermath" campaigns.
As for "A Wounded Fox", I used to have that problem too. I found two possible workarounds:
1-Let at least one of the Shivan cruisers or corvettes escape. For some reason I was able to progress if that particular secondary objective was failed (i.e. I got the return to base message).
2-This one is a little more difficult to achieve: You have to make sure the Demora doesn't force any of your ships to evacuate AND you have to achieve the secondary objective of no smaller Shivan ships leaving. You have to move very quickly, but (after ordering the rest of my squad to take out the Shivan AWACS/comms ships) disable a few of the smaller Shivan ships, then destroy the Demora's main forward beams, then disable the rest of the smaller Shivan capital ships. Then go to work on disabling Demora. I was somehow able to do this and I was able to progress in the campaign.
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Actually, there's only two failure scenarios here, when Demora escapes or when the task force backs out and Demora lives.
The others scenarios, one Shivan cruiser or corvette escaped, two or more Shivan cruisers or corvettes escaped, or all Shivan escort cruisers and corvette escaped, as long as Demora is killed, are all success scenarios, levels of success. The worst success is all escorting Shivan ships escaped. Success but thousands will die. Read the debriefing.
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I played the mission "A Wounded Fox" more than a hundred times but I haven't had the problem of no "RTB"
I heavily used variables as logical switches in all the TBG missions. It helps indicate the exact scenarios to render the exact success or failure debriefings as most of the missions have multiple levels of success and failures. I think the newer FSO builds have a different way of handling variables.
By the way, out of a hundred, I only got 3 best success wins, the one when Demora and ALL escorting Shivan ships were destroyed. Most of the time, 2 or more, even all Shivan escorts escaped when Demora was killed.
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So...wall of text AND spoilers incoming.
I've really liked this campaign. The post capella setting, the richter story, the capital ship missions, the boreas missions, it's really cool. I'm starting act 5 right now, but i had to skip 4 entire missions to get there. Here goes my experience in case it helps:
Lightning in Heaven No way to defend the aksha (vasudan ship with admiral tet), too many missiles to intercept, cruiser's missile launchers are really tough to take down, loads of bombers. Never get to see the gabriel come and save me.
Solar eclipse Pt. 2
No way to defend the gate, the regular laser cannons (not the beams) just cut through the eden installation, and without bomber availability in the previous mission, i can't take them down fast enough even if i have a full treb loadout. Even if the enemy bombers never get to hit the installation...
Plans to negotiate Lindos (Galahad) reaches the node but never departs. I managed to kill one rigelian bird (after 72 minutes of play) but i couldn't finish the mission because I'm guessing it should depart? (From dialogue).
A Caucus for peace
Those 2 destroyers destroy the Katrina and there's literally nothing I can do. I've killed every fighter, bomber, escort, diplomat, when the 2 vasudan destros come in, no matter if i send everyone to disarm one, and i take the other, the katrina always dies. And before it does, it clears me from the objective (cover the katrina) and then it gets irremediably destroyed. I must have played the damn thing like 20 times, put the difficulty in super easy, nothing works. I hate this, because i really liked the campaign and don't want to just skip missions but they're definitely impossible.
idk if it's bugs or what but i can't do it. Never happened before in any campaigns I played.
I tried lowering the difficulty in all these missions but it seems like nothing changes
Hope it helps.
Despite this, i really liked this campaign
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There's a special technique to defeating some of the newer Vasudan ships that might help with some of the missions you encountered:
For the newer Vasudan cruisers, attack and destroy the reactor subsystem...that should cause them to blow up.
For the newer Vasudan corvettes, take out the weapons subsystems. That will cause them to stop firing anything.
It's not like most campaigns where you take out some of the actual turrets on Shivan ships and then move on. One might disagree with how Herkie designed Aftermath 2 (and he's given me permission to say we did have some disagreements on Aftermath 2's design when I was testing it), but it's just how it is for better or worse (depending on one's perspective).
This should help with Lightning From Heaven and allow you to make surgical strikes on the Vasudan ships attacking your forces and then move on to the bombers (on these missions you'll want to have a Maxim or Blizzard Disruptor with you).
On Solar Eclipse Pt. 2, when the cruisers are targetable, go for the reactors like I said earlier (and not general damage attacks) and the gate should be able to be saved.
I'm not sure what to say about 'Caucus', sorry.
Hopefully this helps somewhat.
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My problem is that there are WAY too many bombers, and my idiot wingmen never go after them when I order them to. They just attack the fighters instead and I cannot take down the bombers in time by myself
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I'm not sure which mission you refer to, but I've defaulted to dual maxims in most missions, cause of the mere range and utility they provide (and widowmakers if available, those are OP)
Thanks for the info CT27!
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I'm not sure which mission you refer to, but I've defaulted to dual maxims in most missions, cause of the mere range and utility they provide (and widowmakers if available, those are OP)
Thanks for the info CT27!
I was referring to Solar eclipse part 2, the one CT27 spoke of. Also, I used the skip after dying 5 times trick to pass part 1 as it was just impossible for me to defend those cannons
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Probably gonna try again sometime soon, see if I can manage this with the new information.
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My problem is that there are WAY too many bombers, and my idiot wingmen never go after them when I order them to. They just attack the fighters instead and I cannot take down the bombers in time by myself
Move faster. If widowmakers are avilable, use them all and watch your radar. Practice destroying an entire squadron of bombers under 45 seconds..
and shoot the torpedos first, i mean really fast. Speed is the key. I played this in "Hard" and I got them all everytime.
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Like I said in the opening post of this thread, strategy is the key. Unlike Reboot, blasting away will not get you anywhere. And this campaign is unorthodox, everything you learn in FS universe does not apply here.
Now, dealing with many bombers. Although I can wipe them all out under a minute, i recommend giving orders to ALL your wings to attack just one of them, preferably the center of the pack, and your wings will help you decimate them.
Armed yourself and your wingmates with the best weapon available. The Starfury Scattergun, the Widowmaker if available (which is rarely available), the Screamer rockets (contrary to what everyone believes, it is very effective), trebuchets (they still have their worth) and lastly, the Blizzard SDG but only arm this yourself and not your mates (they tend to prerably use this and this weapon has no physical damage)
For capships. Vasdan cruisers, they are deadly to capships despite their size and very dangerous to approach with their flak cannons (they have 25)so brave the flak and destroy their reactors and they will explode. For the deadly Vasudan corvette, it has no exposed reactor so disarm it completely by targeting the "weapons" subsystem. This is the same as the Archania destroyer. You have to be quick or they will tear you apart with their flaks or devastate the assets you are protecting. Vasudan capships are armed to the teeth. Those Hornviper torpedoes will tear your assets apart at very long range. Those Neutrino cannons (these are not regular lasers) which is analogous to the Terran Antimatter cannons (green projectile) are devastating now than in Reboot. Don't take out the turrets, take out the subsystem controlling it. Do this in strictly 2 minutes everytime. Everytime. An example is the mission "Caucus for peace," the two Archanias will destroy the transport Katrina in two minutes. Neutralize the two destroyers in two minutes, and yes, two destroyers. I can do that by using the Starfury and widowmakers, no need for the Blizzard.
Oh yes, one more thing. I have coded in the mission designs that your enemy will react to your strategy (even to your loadouts and the ships you assigned to your mates. They will intentionally make diversions, destractions, and even lead you astray to complete "their" objectives. One fighter will lure in a merry chase while their mates are outmaneuvering you. I had said this in the opening post. Essentially, you are going up against my strategies. Strategies I have learned and used when I was a captain in Philippine Marine Corps, fighting the insurgencies. And you know why these are difficult? Because these missions are based in my real life combat situations. The feelings you have felt when playing this mod, the frustrations and desperation and the annoyance, are what I had felt while bullets whizzing past and a granade shrapnel tore my leg while watching many of men die or get injured. These are not design flaws or some game balancing issues (except for bugs or compatibility problems). They are intentional. Sorry for the drama. These mods, TBG and the Reboot is very personal to me.
I will make a walkthrough for all the difficult missions soon (Please post them and let me know). Available via MediaFire download.
As a side note, Blue Planet Act 1, 2 and 3 is even more difficult strategically than this campaign. To my opinion and mine alone, the BP campaigns are more complex and the best mod I played, my inspiration. Second is Between the Ashes tied with Exile, then third Shadow Genesis, awesome mods and I put mine last place. I played them all, I love them and I actually learned many coding techniques from them.
Stay tuned for my Walkthrough. I thank you all for playing this mod. I am 60+ years old now, and you all have made me feel young (tears flowing as I type). Sorry for the drama, when you are my age and having a few years left, you will understand.
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I'm not sure which mission you refer to, but I've defaulted to dual maxims in most missions, cause of the mere range and utility they provide (and widowmakers if available, those are OP)
Thanks for the info CT27!
Maxims... They are not really effective in this mod. Use the Starfury. Or the Blizzard SDG... Like I said, FS2, 2nd Shivan War era weapons are not effective save for the trebuchet.
EDIT: ... and dual Maxims, it's a bad idea. All Vasudan fighters and bombers in this campaign have massive shielding (1000!). Maxims have very little shield damage.
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It's not like most campaigns where you take out some of the actual turrets on Shivan ships and then move on. One might disagree with how Herkie designed Aftermath 2 (and he's given me permission to say we did have some disagreements on Aftermath 2's design when I was testing it), but it's just how it is for better or worse (depending on one's perspective).
CT27 is right. I told him this strayegy. The Vasudan Anubis cruiser is indeed deadly. But... It has a notorious weakness, the reactor. Read the ship's description. It's stated there.
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Ah, one tip I forgot to mention and an important one. In order for your wings or squadrons to be effective, order your wings to form up on you (not "cover me" because only 2 wings will comply) at the beginning of your mission. In this way, your mates will be readily available (close to you) if you issue them orders like destroying a squadron.
Like I said, strategy, strategy, strategy.
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Update upcoming in a few days...
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NEW UPDATE - 4/6/2022
DOWNLOAD LINK:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/1t43emd7f19gbq2/TBG-Update2022.rar/file
Download and extract to the mod's root folder. This replace the old files.
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Just for fun I did a list of the major wars that are a part of this Aftermath's universe (through the end of TBG). I've listed the name of the war (sometimes an unofficial name) and in parentheses the campaign it took place in:
Terran-Vasudan War (FS1)
The Great War (FS1)
The Hades Rebellion (Silent Threat: Reborn)
Deneb counterinsurgency campaign (Shrouding The Light)
Operation: Templar (Templar)
NTF Rebellion (FS2)
Second Incursion (FS2)
UPC Conflict (The Aftermath: Reboot)
Third Shivan War (The Aftermath: Reboot)
just in case someone hasn't finished TBG I'll spoiler its conflicts
Operation: Cleanup (TBG)
New Imperium Insurrection (TBG)
Rigelian Crisis (TBG)
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Nice list. We actually used them as a premise for the Reboot and TBG story.
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Your ships.tbl has typos. The attached version has those typos fixed.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/5xdnmg0rj91ris2/AF2ships.zip/file
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Hello Herkie,
The first mission in Act 3 is broken.
When the Gabriel jumps in, it just sits there and does nothing. However, when targetted the Gabriel has a speed of 254 (subspace exit speed) but isn't actually moving.
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That's a glitch or compatibility issue, not a bug. Use FSO 19.0
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Unfortunately, if I switch from using FSO 22 to 19, I will have to restart the campaign which is something I really don't want to do. It's a shame because the mod has worked pretty much perfectly using FSO 22.0 up to this point. Is there definitely nothing you can do to fix this or solve the compatibility issue? It would be very much appreciated if you could.
Another thing I noted is that the enemy destroyers speed also decreases to a full stop upon the arrival of the Gabriel
. I don't know if this is intended, but could the addition of a friendly bomber wing (or four) and the continued advancement of the destroyers be put in place as a workaround?
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Unfortunately, if I switch from using FSO 22 to 19, I will have to restart the campaign which is something I really don't want to do. It's a shame because the mod has worked pretty much perfectly using FSO 22.0 up to this point. Is there definitely nothing you can do to fix this or solve the compatibility issue? It would be very much appreciated if you could.
Another thing I noted is that the enemy destroyers speed also decreases to a full stop upon the arrival of the Gabriel
. I don't know if this is intended, but could the addition of a friendly bomber wing (or four) and the continued advancement of the destroyers be put in place as a workaround?
I think you don't need to restart. Just try.
As for compatibilty fix, I'm already very obsolete, stuck with FSO 3.7.4 (2015). There are many implementations and features in newer builds. Sadly, I don't think I will have enough time to study them and be updated. I am already 68. It took me 5 years to know FSO 3.7.4. I am retired from modding now.
And I have submitted both AFR and TBG for restoration by the HLP community.
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With regards to the Vasudan destroyers, they will stop if the Gabriel shows up.
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Your ships.tbl has typos. The attached version has those typos fixed.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/5xdnmg0rj91ris2/AF2ships.zip/file
Thanks, MJN. Downloaded already.
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I did try which is how I know that I would need to restart as I get a new error appearing when I select the existing pilot using an older version of FSO.
I know a while ago, FSO changed the way how pilots were being managed but I cannot remember which version this changed. I believe this could be the reason why I would have to restart the campaign.
Looks like I will have to wait for the restoration project to bring the mod up to date. Thanks for the content though Herkie, I have enjoyed playing them.
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I did try which is how I know that I would need to restart as I get a new error appearing when I select the existing pilot using an older version of FSO.
Oh man, yeah. I have this problem too. You need to start with a new pilot. Clone your previous pilot so that you will retain your settings.
It because there some changes in the files.
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NEW UPDATE - 5/3/2022
A follow-up update to the April 6, 2022 update. This covers the mission files. Some adjustments to the difficulty factor in some missions and some bug fixes. Download and replace the previous "TBG-Missions.vp" file.
DOWNLOAD LINK:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/r0834gyg4s7ibny/TBG-Missions-5-3-2022.rar/file
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I updated this file in TBG.
I got this error when playing on FS0 22.0 with the 4.5.x MVPs
Error: ships.tbl(line 944):
Error: Expected float, found [ 140..0 ].
File: parselo.cpp
Line: 318
ntdll.dll! NtWaitForSingleObject + 20 bytes
KERNELBASE.dll! WaitForSingleObjectEx + 142 bytes
fs2_open_22_0_0_x64_SSE2.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_22_0_0_x64_SSE2.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_22_0_0_x64_SSE2.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_22_0_0_x64_SSE2.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_22_0_0_x64_SSE2.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_22_0_0_x64_SSE2.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_22_0_0_x64_SSE2.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_22_0_0_x64_SSE2.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_22_0_0_x64_SSE2.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_22_0_0_x64_SSE2.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_22_0_0_x64_SSE2.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_22_0_0_x64_SSE2.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_22_0_0_x64_SSE2.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_22_0_0_x64_SSE2.exe! <no symbol>
KERNEL32.DLL! BaseThreadInitThunk + 20 bytes
ntdll.dll! RtlUserThreadStart + 33 bytes
Two comments:
1-After this went to desktop, I hit 'debug' on the little error popup that came up and then went back into the game. It appeared to play normally so while I would hope for an update to fix this...in the meantime it for now doesn't appear to be gamebreaking.
2-This only happened on 22.0 and 4.5.x
When I used the 10-31-17 nightly with 2014 MVPs this error never came up.
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It's a typo in the ships.tbl table. It's a value that should be "140.0"
I think I corrected that in AFR's ships.tbl table in the latest AFR update. Unfortunately, I haven't updated TBG's ships.tbl table. I forgot.
The latest TBG update are just the mission files. So... no, the mod tables are not updated.
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NEW UPDATE
June 12, 2022
DOWNLOAD LINK:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/6izvwp5fcsphhoe/TBG-Update-6-2022.rar/file
Download and extract the files to the mod's root folder. This will replace the old files. The Release Post is also updated.
The update covers the compatibility issue when using FSO 22 and MVPS 4.5 --- Yes, only one issue: the "Don't Move" flag in the ship miscellaneous option. I thank CT27 for his observations when running TBG on FSO 22 because I am still using FSO 3.7.4 to update things and I can't get Knossos and FSO 22 to run in my end (believe me I tried everything). It's like updating things blind.
But... I found out the cause of this issue through "deductive reasoning." So I made the adjustments. Actually, only 2 missions had these compatability error; the missions "A Wounded Fox" and "Lightning From Heaven."
I also adjusted the difficulty factors of these missions and other errors in the mission designs as reported by CT27. Also, some grammar corrections.
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Great stuff man;
I have actually become stuck in the game. On the mission to destroy the Dremora, after the destruction of the Dremora and all of her escorts there is no progression to end the mission.
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You too... hmm. CT27 had this too. Are you using the latest TBG update? Try playing it again and don't go for the "full success" scenario (ex. No Shivan warship escaped and taskforce intact), just destroy Demora and see if you get the error.
Anyway, I will check into this.
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Herkie contacted me on FB and told me to post some of these update notes for TBG (fixes that will be in the upcoming TBG update):
"Mission: A Wounded Fox
--- I fixed the Lucifer destroyer, Demora, not rotating to target Task Force Omega. Added a Lucifer asset with 0 foward velocity (old Lucifer model I'm afraid). I used the "ship swapping" method. But the swap will be detectable this time. An old Lucifer model suddenly changed to a new one, not much I can do there. However, you will only see this if you fail. I still can't see the "no RTB error" you said 2 years ago.
Mission: The Floating Fortress
--- I reduced the number of Shivan fighters protecting the 2 Asuras. I also added more time for the player to reach the big Shivan beam sentry cannons before they fire at the friendly fleet.
Mission: Reunion
--- fixed the "no conversation/progression" error.
Mission: Lightning From Heaven
--- Fixed the Archangel error. Used the same "add asset / ship swapping" method.
Mission: Plans to Negotiate
--- fixed the Galahad / Bellatrix issue.
I also made further adjustments in many missions, some of them reducing the difficulty."
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But the swap will be detectable this time. An old Lucifer model suddenly changed to a new one, not much I can do there. However, you will only see this if you fail.
My mistake. The new asset, "SD Lucifer#NoMove" still uses the default MVPs model. And since, I did not add a Lucifer model. No old Lucifer model will show.
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Last update of AFR2 is now on Knossos
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Last update of AFR2 is now on Knossos
A million thanks, MJN. I greatly appreciate it.
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NEW UPDATE RELEASED
October 28, 2022
Just a small update done to the missions:
--Minor mission adjustments
--Grammar correction
This replace the TBG-Missions.vp file in the mod's root folder. Also refer to the "LATEST UPDATES" thread.
DOWNLOAD LINK:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/pt2lnwy6vlluld0/TBG-Missions-Update-10-28-2022.zip/file
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NEW UPDATE RELEASED
January 2, 2023
Just a small update done to the missions:
--Minor mission adjustments
--Grammar correction
This replace the TBG-Missions.vp file in the mod's root folder. Also refer to the "LATEST UPDATES" thread.
DOWNLOAD LINK:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/64ann6jryqg1rpl/TBG-Missions-Update-01-02-2023.zip/file