[ChronoReverse]

Very nice.  Still going through it as I'm playing it slowly on Medium so I could savour it.  There's still a couple typos I've noticed (e.g., maneuverability not manoeuverability) and Bei was put as Alpha still in one scene.  Bei's voice also seems a bit soft at times whereas everyone else's voices were nicely loud and crisp.  It was nice that his voice doesn't have the "comm effect" though =)

[blowfish]

There's still a couple typos I've noticed (e.g., maneuverability not manoeuverability)

I'm not sure but that might just be an alternate spelling.  Different things are accepted in different countries.

[General Battuta]

Very nice.  Still going through it as I'm playing it slowly on Medium so I could savour it.  There's still a couple typos I've noticed (e.g., maneuverability not manoeuverability) and Bei was put as Alpha still in one scene.  Bei's voice also seems a bit soft at times whereas everyone else's voices were nicely loud and crisp.  It was nice that his voice doesn't have the "comm effect" though =)

I do wish we'd found a better way to amplify Sam's voice without losing quality. It's too soft as compared to the other VA. Unfortunately, simple amplification hits issues with clipping and quality loss.

[Goober5000]

Don't miss your special thanks!

Indeed!  Thank you for the thank you.   I'm excited to finally hear Jim Collymore, Dorothy Conway, Rina-Chan, and the others.

[Klaustrophobia]

i just re-discovered where i saw one of the weird dialouge lines before.  after destroying the lucifer, "without your intervention, the outcome would have surely been uncertain"

?

[Colonol Dekker]

I like the UEF red alert siren.

[Mongoose]

Gah, it's waaaay too late to play this now.  I know what I'm doing tomorrow, though.

(The completionist part of me is wondering if I shouldn't go through the original release after playing through this, since it's been long enough that I don't think I'll notice some of the more subtle changes. )

[Herra Tohtori]

i just re-discovered where i saw one of the weird dialouge lines before.  after destroying the lucifer, "without your intervention, the outcome would have surely been uncertain"

?

The Lucifer and the Orestes had been playing cat and mouse for a while. Presumably they could have continued the merry chase with the Lucy for some time still. The critical thing for the player to do was to prevent the Lucifer from jumping away once it required repairs.

[-Norbert-]

I finished forced entry and so far I'm astonished. The voice acting is great and the different amounts of static depending on how far away the ships are from the player is really nice.
I don't think that Bei is overacting. His performance is just right. The only exception would be in Ceremonies. I think he could have tried to speak with more conviction. His tone of voice is conversational, not that of someone who beliefs in the GTVAs ideals with all his heart.

As far as bugs go, I didn't run into a single problem so far, with the exception of forgetting to switch to a Inf build in the beginning (seeing a Ulysses instead of a Vishnan ship in the nebula was quite the WTF moment) and having to replay the first few missions because of it. Thanks again for the skip option in the cutscenes.

In case anyone's interrested I'm using the latest nighly build (fs2_open_3_6_11r_INF_SSE-20100131_r5862.exe), but I had to disable post-processing, since it crashed. Since I never tried to run the game with PP before, I can't tell wether this is due to BP or a general problem yet.

[Fury]

Norbert, aren't you aware that 3.6.12 RC1 has been out for several days? It would be well worth upgrading. Hell, RC1 is recommended in the BP installation instructions! Crash was because you don't have post processing shaders installed, link to the shaders is in the RC1 topic.

[Klaustrophobia]

i just re-discovered where i saw one of the weird dialouge lines before.  after destroying the lucifer, "without your intervention, the outcome would have surely been uncertain"

?

The Lucifer and the Orestes had been playing cat and mouse for a while. Presumably they could have continued the merry chase with the Lucy for some time still. The critical thing for the player to do was to prevent the Lucifer from jumping away once it required repairs.

i understand the situation, i just think the phrase "would have surely been uncertain" sounds very strange.  am i the only one?  i'll shut up.

[Colonol Dekker]

It does sound odd to use surely uncertain. Uncertain is a pretty concrete word without a need for emphasis.
 
 
But I can live with it.

[-Norbert-]

Norbert, aren't you aware that 3.6.12 RC1 has been out for several days? It would be well worth upgrading. Hell, RC1 is recommended in the BP installation instructions! Crash was because you don't have post processing shaders installed, link to the shaders is in the RC1 topic.

No I wasn't. When I saw the Highlight, I just ran straight to the BP forum, ignoring everything else. I only made a quick stop into the SCP forum to grab the nighly build when I noticed I didn't have any recent INF build.

I now saved the Orestes and consorts from the shivan attack in "preserving the balance" and noticed that the bomb shockwave damage was massivly reduced. While I certainly think it's good not to get instantly killed by bombs, I think you took too much damage out of them.
As for the Vishnan voices, they kind of remind me of a mix of Babylon 5s Vorlons (especially evil Kosh), Starcrafts Overmind and a Robot. And all that mixed with a british accent. Which maked for a quite unique and interresting combination. I too had problems understanding their first few lines, but I quickly got used to it, and was able to understand the last few lines of that mission very well.

As for the starfield in the unknown system, I expected flying in there to be quite horrible because of all the suns (warzones, while being a good campaign, was really painfull for my eyes because of their use of suns), but for some reason it wasn't. Whatever that creative workaround and seldom used SCP-feature are that General Battuta mentioned, they seem to have worked nicely. I also had barely any problems with my HUD. The only thing that is hard to make out is the text line on top, but due to BP now being voiceacted, that's not much of a problem.

And thank you for the change of the demons weapons in "preserving the balance". Knocking out it's side-beam in the old BP was a horror, because of it's massive HP and high rate of fire (along with the incompetence of my wingmen, who were supposed to keep enemy fighters off my back - but didn't).

Just one more question: Why are there all the shivan weapons unlocked in the Techroom, but not a single Shivan ship?

[Herra Tohtori]

Probably because you have a new pilot so the hidden ships are hidden to begin with, and BP campaign is not designed to "unveil" ships in the tech room...

Pressing Ctrl+Shift+S will reveal all tech room entries.

Regarding the suns, I simply made a SunWhiteDummy.dds (copy of SunWhite.dds) and added SunWhiteDummy entry into our modular stars table which had zero light intensity, no glare and no flare, so it just shows the bitmap and glow of the star in the background superimposed on where the largest stars were. 

[-Norbert-]

Apart from being suggested in the release thread, I had no other choice than creating a new pilot, since so far I only played BP with an non-inf build, and the two have seperate pilot files.

I just noticed a problem with the collision detection of the Sacred Keeper. The actuall hull seems to be a bit below the texture. Unfortunately I can't provide any screenshots. For some reason they aren't placed into the screenshot directory and pasting the shot into another programm just gives me a black picture....

And a little typo in the Commanche's Techroom entry. "The Oast 50 years havn't...."

[blowfish]

The Keeper's collision detection seemed to be fine when I tested it.  How far below is it?

[Herra Tohtori]

I just noticed a problem with the collision detection of the Sacred Keeper. The actuall hull seems to be a bit below the texture. Unfortunately I can't provide any screenshots. For some reason they aren't placed into the screenshot directory and pasting the shot into another programm just gives me a black picture....

Might be clipping plane related?

Does the texture sort of disappear as you get closer to it, or does the viewpoint (or your fighter's nose) clearly breach the surface? You could try adding something like -clipdist 0.1 into the custom command line to test that, though I don't know if that could even possibly be the case.

Regarding the screenshot issue - do you have a directory named screenshots? Is your FS2_Open in C:\Program Files\ and you're running Windows Vista/7? Some ATI cards have had a history of problems with screenshots, but not having them saved at all is strange.

[-Norbert-]

I have Windows Vista 64 bit, but my FS in installed on D:\Spiele\FreeSpace2 and a Nvidia 9800 GTX+.
There is a screenshot folder, but it only contains my old shots from Win XP (I had the same graphiccard back then as I have now).

As for the clipping, with the spacesuit I could fly in about so far that only the helmet and part of the engines showed, before I collided with the hull. From inside the "cockpit" I could see out of the other side of the keeper and had the texture as a line about 2/3 up the screen. I'll try if I can make a screenshot with fraps.

Now back to more joyfull topics.
I am through and I can report that with the exception of a single, barely noticable skip on the first page of the command briefing in "Universal Truth" there was no problem with any soundfiles. In the flashback to the past the music that started after the arifiel arrieved stoped after about 15 seconds, but in every other mission and cutscene, it played correctly.
And the music that is now playing in the last mission,

Spoiler:

after the destruction of the Renjian

is truly great. It really made my skin crawl.
Though I too had the problem of my fighter starting without any primaries and the secondaries having somehow wandered up a bit, looking as if the Harpoons were the primaries (though they still fire fine as missiles, while nothing happens when pushing the primary weapon fire button).

I also had two very desperate moment in the fight against the Sathanas. First the Sath still had a beam turret when it came in range. The first shot tore the Orestes to 38%. And since it was already warming up for a 2nd and I didn't have a bomb lock I was sure it was all over. Just two Helios entered my field of vision and blow the turret just in time.
So I thought the thrilling part was over, but it wasn't. While the Sath went down the Orestes almost hit me with her beam. And then came the Sathanas shockwave and pushed me into the outer edges of the beam....
Again I though it would all be over, but somehow I survived it....
I wish I would have that as a video, that was really an intense experiance

Oh and I LVOE the personas you gave the Vishnans.

[Herra Tohtori]

I have Windows Vista 64 bit, but my FS in installed on D:\Spiele\FreeSpace2 and a Nvidia 9800 GTX+.
There is a screenshot folder, but it only contains my old shots from Win XP (I had the same graphiccard back then as I have now).

As for the clipping, with the spacesuit I could fly in about so far that only the helmet and part of the engines showed, before I collided with the hull. From inside the "cockpit" I could see out of the other side of the keeper and had the texture as a line about 2/3 up the screen. I'll try if I can make a screenshot with fraps.

Just to make sure, check the last modified date of the screenshots, or even sort by date. The screenshot counter sometimes flips over to zero and starts overwriting the old shots...

Good to hear you enjoyed playing the campaign.

[Darius]

Indeed. Thanks for everyone's feedback so far, it really does make all the hard work worthwhile