[TopAce]

(v1.44)

Story Background
Capella happened. Though the Shivans are sealed off in Capella and the Neo-Terran Front is crushed, optimism soon fades when both Terrans and Vasudans start realizing what they actually lost during the war. It is not enough that they lost billions of innocent civilians, theColossus with many hi-ranking officers on board, and the bulk of their fleet, there is no guarantee that the Shivans won't find another route into GTVA space in the future.

High Command and numerous galaxywide civilian corporations are willing to put more effort and money into research and development, both civilian and military, to press the severely weakened Terran-Vasudan alliance into a new age. Countless reconstruction plans had been suggested in three months, the most promising and thorough devised an ambitious and potentionally gainful project: a giant scientific endeavor to learn more about the Ancients' civilization. They all know that, even though the Ancients were defeated by the Shivans millennia ago, it is them who supplied the Terrans and Vasudans with knowledge that allowed these two species to survive the attack of the SD Lucifer's task force. Discovering multiple Knossos subspace portals has convinced all leading figures that Ancient Empire indeed stretched much further than anyone could have imagined.

Civilian corporations saw the ambition and the possibility for profit in the project, and subjected themselves to study the unknown. Though the GTVA, a military alliance, was justifiably low on funds after a devastating conflict of such a scale, it was a matter of time until civilian corporations, who suffered lightly during the war, started supplying the initial preparations with seemingly unlimited funds. Within a year, the Altair system, which is believed to have played a major part in the Ancient Empire's history, was teeming with practitioners of all walks of science, including archeology, xenolinguistics, astronomy, and physics.

However, the rest of the GTVA was more bothersome. The Terrans and Vasudans diverged from each other, minding their own businesses. The Vasudans were concerned with their own traditions and respect to their deities. The Terrans were preoccupied by the welfare of their society and steadiness of their economy. Despite all this, the alliance remained officially intact. The General Assembly assembled, the Security Council communed, and the Vasudan Imperium did not hesitate to assist the other two branches when requested. The two governments withdrew to their respective homeworlds: the Terrans to Vega, where they intend to rebuild Earth in their own way, and the Vasudans to their desolate yet beloved Vasuda Prime.

Very soon, disturbances take place at Altair. Unknown Terran fighters and cruisers keep harassing supply depots and unguarded science vessels. As more military vessels are deployed, the pirate strikes intensify. Their intents are not as clear as those of most pirate organizations. Pirates typically don't destroy science vessels just for the sake of it, but take hostages and demand a ransom. These Terrans are different. Not only different, but more powerful. As the project's existence is gradually jeopardized by the escalating number of thefts, the Security Council hastily orders the deployment of the GTD Phobos and its fighter wings, along with a number of other corvette and cruiser-sized vessels. Because of the intermittent and unpredictable nature of pirate strikes, it is impossible to keep the entire task force in one place. The ships of the scattered task force gradually disappear. None of them ever sent a distress signal. On a dark day, the Phobos also vanishes.

Notable Changes

• All 31 missions have been revisited to various degrees. There were major alterations and additions to most of them. There were numerous bugfixes, thus you will be able to play through all the thirty missions without show-stopping bugs.
• Apart from the mandatory bughunt, this update's primary focus was to provide a fun playthrough not present in the earlier releases. Thus, gameplay has improved a great deal. There are a lot of quality-of-life improvements compared to the previous v1.1 release, including many more messages that give you useful advice on how to approach a given situation, more informative briefings, directives, mission goals, and a more intuitive use of the escort list.
• Pilot banter and, generally speaking, mission messages have become more military-like and mature. There's also far less yelling !!! during the missions.
• Use of Lightspeed's nebula backdrops and the old, low-quality planet images have all been replaced with high-quality ones.
• Non-retail music tracks provided by fellow HLPer ShadowOfLight, freeplaymusic, and other sources.
• Inclusion of the GTF Rapier, also known as the TF Kvasir as a Myrmidon Mark II.

For a full list of credits, see the accompanying credits.txt

Requirements

• MediaVPs 4.4
• FreeSpace Open 21.2.0 Release Candidate 2
  
  Known Issues
  
• Debug builds produce a warning message at the start of every mission that features the GTF Rapier (TF Kvasir). This does not affect gameplay in any way.
• The mission "In Front of the Gate" produces a fatal crash when playing with a debug build. Release builds play the mission without problem.
• The mission "Warming Up" might crash during loading with lower-end machines with an error saying you're out of memory. If this happens, lower graphical settings, mainly by turning off more graphical features in the launcher. Computers with more than 4 GB RAM will likely not run into this issue.

See the campaign's FreeSpace Wiki article for more information

DOWNLOADS



wxLauncher version:
MediaFire mirror
(unextract using 7-Zip)

Put into your FreeSpace 2 folder, so the .vp should be in the FreeSpace 2/RR_v144 folder. Your MediaVPs must be in the MediaVPs_44x folder, otherwise you have to edit the included mod.ini. Open the file with a text editor, find the line starting with "secondarylist" and edit the folder's name accordingly.

.vp checksum

Code: [Select]

Found root pack 'C:\Games\FreeSpace 2\RR_v144release\RR_v144.vp' with a checksum of 0xc1776b8c
.vp file number

Code: [Select]

Searching root pack 'C:\Games\FreeSpace 2\RR_v144\RR_v144.vp' ... 190 files

[CapellaGoBoom]

Congrats on the release but I think you forgot to put in MVPs 4.4x with it. I looked in the "modify" tab and 4.4x was not in there. I also checked the tech room and the ship models were vanilla

[TopAce]

This is the Knossos release, right? I did put the MediaVPs as a dependency, but I'll check it out.

[CapellaGoBoom]

This is the Knossos release, right? I did put the MediaVPs as a dependency, but I'll check it out.

It is knossos...forgot to say that

[TopAce]

Check now. I refreshed the dependency settings and ran it myself, and the MediaVPs loaded.

[CapellaGoBoom]

Check now. I refreshed the dependency settings and ran it myself, and the MediaVPs loaded.

Currently doing a fresh reinstall of the mod and MVPs 4.4x just popped up for me so I think whatever bugged the release is gone

UPDATE: reinstall worked for me!

[ShivanSlayer]

 Mission 4 does not load.  Another thing I think should be fixed is that medals still don't align in the medal box like they should

[TopAce]

The medal thing is not my field of expertise. I simply renamed some medals in the medals.tbl to be more appropriate for the Post-Capella Era. If that causes a problem, it's a coder you need to find. I did have that thing, though I thought it was just a visual bug on my end.

I'll investigate Mission 4 a bit later. My guess is that somewhere it uses a post-21.0.0 coding somewhere. Knossos didn't let me mandate 21.2.0. RC2 as a required build. so I was forced to set it to 21.0.0 official. 

[EDIT]Yes, it's a build issue. I ran it with the 21.0.0 build via wxLauncher and it didn't load. RC2 21.2.0 debug loads it without any compaints, so I'm assuming my initial guess was correct. I'll investigate it once I have the time.

I'm editing the release post until then.

[TopAce]

SCREW KNOSSOS!!!

The wxLauncher file is "upgraded" (downgraded) to run on FSO 21.0.0 official. I've wasted hours "fixing" the issue that wouldn't have been there in the first place had this piece of garbage of a mod manager allowed me to require my mod be played with RC2, only to find Knossos is completely incapable of simply overriding one VP with another. Then I deleted the whole project, and that piece of **** complained someone is already using the mod ID I already deleted.

I'm done with Knossos.

[Novachen]

I know what you mean  .

But well... somehow you have to arrange with it as many people are using that.
Sometimes it is tricky, as mods with Developer rights are handled different to mods were you only have playing rights.
It helps if you create a second account that you can use as an internal tester and then switch the users to download and start the mod in a regular manner.

It is still a nightmare from a developer perspective sometimes... but well, it is the best you can do.
That is actually the reason, why i was against the switch to Knossos as a sole release platform as long such severe problems still exists.

[ngld]

The wxLauncher file is "upgraded" (downgraded) to run on FSO 21.0.0 official. I've wasted hours "fixing" the issue that wouldn't have been there in the first place had this piece of garbage of a mod manager allowed me to require my mod be played with RC2, only to find Knossos is completely incapable of simply overriding one VP with another.

This is just a hunch but could it be that in the Knossos settings (under General), your preferred stability is set to "stable"? That settings will hide RC and nightly builds. You also can't select builds that you don't have installed (the main reason behind that is that you wouldn't be able to test them anyway).
What do you mean by "overriding one VP with another"? Knossos doesn't allow several VP files with the same name since it'd lead to conflicts and it'd be impossible to tell which VP file a user would actually get when they installed the mod and chose two packages that contain the same VP. It never seemed necessary to allow it, either.

Then I deleted the whole project, and that piece of **** complained someone is already using the mod ID I already deleted.

You can't delete a mod ID, you can only delete releases and even if a release was deleted, you can't reuse the same version number. This rule was created to ensure that if two players have version x.y.z of mod ABC, they always have the same files not an earlier or later upload. Tracking who downloaded what would get very complicated so it's far easier to just allow one upload per mod ID and version number.
The warning should probably also check if you own the mod ID before it warns that it's taken but I never expected someone to create their mod after they already uploaded it once so I didn't consider that case when writing that warning. That said, you should be able to ignore that warning. There's a separate check during upload which should allow you to still upload your mod since you're the one who first used that mod ID. If that doesn't work, PM me your mod ID and Nebula account name and I'll sort it out.

[TopAce]

I now have my build settings set to "Nightlies" and when I try to direct my mod's FSO tab to that build, it first allows it, then when I try to upload, it says I can't use a local build. Of course I do have it installed, otherwise I wouldn't be able to point the "Browse" window to that .exe file. I still have the same three builds listed: 19.0.0, the december 11, 2020 nightly and the 21.0.0. I assume they're the requirements of the mods I have installed via Knossos.

By overriding it, I mean I had the original RR_v144.vp uploaded with the RC2 features at first (night of April 13), then changed some files to remove the post-21.0.0 features (changed four or five missions), recompiled the RR_v144.vp, then tried to get Knossos to change its version of RR_v144.vp to the new one (morning of April 14). When I tried to point my updated VP to it by clicking on the folder path below "Mod Path", it opened up a browser where if I double-click on a .vp, it opens up QuickVP as opposed to recognizing it as the new version I want to override the old version with.

Note: I'm developing from the traditional Games/FreeSpace 2 folder and using wxLauncher. Those few mods I have via Knossos are in Games/FreeSpace 2/Knossos. I haven't had a version of RR in my Knossos folder until I tried the version I uploaded following the "error" report about mission 4.

Also despite apparently deleting the mod, I was still able to re-download it from the Explore tab to check if your advice about Preference settings work.

From the previous post, I forgot to mention that my plan in deleting was to first delete the whole mod entirely, then upload the same thing again with the same settings and same steps (now with the RR_v144.vp I'm using as the base .vp being from the morning of April 14) to preserve the original link to Knossos in the OP by using the same ID, I wanted to avoid the confusion of having three version of RR available (the first one being Novachen's revision of an older version, the second one being the original release with 21.2.0 features, the third one with the 21.0.0 "updates").

[EDIT2]Hang on a second.

I just started the current version from Knossos and for some reason it ran the 21.2.0 RC2 build with it, and mission 4 loaded without a problem. I still don't have the 21.2.0 RC2 build in FreeSpace 2/Knossos/bin - it's in the root FreeSpace 2. Maybe it did recognize the RC2 build but the software believed it didn't and sent the error message instead? I have no idea what happened.

[ngld]

I now have my build settings set to "Nightlies" and when I try to direct my mod's FSO tab to that build, it first allows it, then when I try to upload, it says I can't use a local build.

You can't use a local build since Knossos won't be able to figure out which FSO version to use when someone wants to use your mod. Using your local .exe file works for local testing but you can't upload your mod unless you select a specific version from the drop down.

Of course I do have it installed, otherwise I wouldn't be able to point the "Browse" window to that .exe file. I still have the same three builds listed: 19.0.0, the december 11, 2020 nightly and the 21.0.0. I assume they're the requirements of the mods I have installed via Knossos.

You'll have to install RC2 through Knossos if you want to tell Knossos to use it for your mod.

By overriding it, I mean I had the original RR_v144.vp uploaded with the RC2 features at first (night of April 13), then changed some files to remove the post-21.0.0 features (changed four or five missions), recompiled the RR_v144.vp, then tried to get Knossos to change its version of RR_v144.vp to the new one (morning of April 14). When I tried to point my updated VP to it by clicking on the folder path below "Mod Path", it opened up a browser where if I double-click on a .vp, it opens up QuickVP as opposed to recognizing it as the new version I want to override the old version with.

If you click on the folder path, it opens your local mod path in Explorer. It's just Explorer, not a file select dialog. You have to replace the file there. Double-clicking the .VP there just opens it with the default program on your system (which seems to be QuickVP).

Also despite apparently deleting the mod, I was still able to re-download it from the Explore tab to check if your advice about Preference settings work.

Did you get this screen when you deleted the mod?


"Local Delete" and "Uninstall" only delete the mod from your system not from Nebula.

EDIT: If you haven't already, you might want to read this guide that explains the whole mod uploading process.

[TopAce]

I tried to install the build, but now it complained that the package folder was empty even though I had the build as the main download and the debug as a package. What package folder? Isn't a build just one download?

[ngld]

FSO builds have several packages for different OSes and different architectures. Each package (even for mods) is a separate download. That said, it shouldn't complain about an empty package folder if you install it. I think that error should only show up during mod upload. Let me just check the source real quick...

[ngld]

Yeah, the message "The package ABC is empty!" should only show if you upload a mod and that only happens if one of your packages didn't contain any files since that's pretty pointless.

[TopAce]

But what FOLDER? I have three files I'm using in FS root: the release 1) game engine and 2) FRED and the 3) debug game engine. Do I need to download every combination of platform + engine + FRED?

Okay, using the sample of /FSO-21.0.0/ in my Knossos/bin, I have a Knossos/bin/FSO-21.2.0 RC2/ with a /windows folder, within it an /x64 and /x86 folders with the four .exes, the .dlls and misc required techincalities. What's next?

[ngld]

What is the exact error message you got? If you got the error while uploading your own mod, only the folders in your own mod matter. The FSO folders don't since those are already managed by Knossos. When you click on your Mod folder link in the dev tab, Knossos should open your mod's folder in Explorer. There you should see a mod.json and maybe a few other files. Each package you create in Knossos will also show up as a subfolder there. If Knossos complains that one of your packages is empty, it is one of those folders. The error message should mention the folder name which should tell you which folder is empty.

[TopAce]

I created a new mod using "Create" and selecting "FSO build", then setting the main download to the release engine build. At first, alone, then trying to add the debug as a package. Same complaint. I can't quote the exact message, because I didn't take a screen, and deleted the whole thing when it became clear it wasn't working, but it said "Can't upload because the package folder is empty." Now I just have the build and its accessories in FreeSpace 2/Knossos/bin/FSO-2.21.0 RC2/.

[ngld]

Wait. You tried to create a new build? Why don't you just install the RC2 already available? If you wanted to upload your own FS2 build, you'd have to include the Linux and macOS files as well or it won't run on those platforms.
To install a specific FSO version, go to the settings screen, open the General section, make sure your preferred engine stability is either RC or Nightlies, make sure "Show Engine Builds in Mod List" is enabled, save, go to the Explore tab, hover over the FSO tile, click the Details button, select the version you want from the Version dropdown and click Install. If that version already looks like it's installed, close Knossos, delete your FSO-21.2.0 RC2 folder, open Knossos again and install it.
Once FSO is installed, go back to the Dev tab, select your mod and the correct FSO version from the FSO build dropdown. Hit Save at the bottom of that page. Now try uploading your mod again.