Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => FreeSpace Conversion => Topic started by: zonination on February 20, 2021, 12:02:04 pm
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Basically title. I want to play the OG Freespace 1 and Freespace 2 with Fury AI, but I don't know how to do that in Knossos.
Is there some sort of flag setting?
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No. You could play FreeSpace Blue (included with Blue Planet) to get FS2 with some of the Fury AI features, but you'd need to edit the actual ships in the missions to get them to use Fury AI classes.
This might be an interesting and easy mod to make!
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Does this need to be added to ships.tbl, or does this have to be added to every single mission?
Side note: h*ck it, let's do it live. Why not glide, strafe, and reverse thrust capabilities for every ship? (I find that Fury AI is most satisfying to beat while in reverse-afterburner, and putting a missile right up my opponent's cockpit—so I'm the last thing they see before they die. :drevil:)
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The first step would be to include an AI table and AI profiles table that add the Fury AI.
The second step would be to open all the missions and change the ship AI classes to use Fury AI classes. OR to edit ships.tbl to alter the default AI classes of various ships to use Fury AI classes by default.
The third step would probably be to alter some weapon loadouts in the mission files. Fury AI will use Trebuchets, which for some reason are in the default loadout of a lot of Shivan ships. And Fury AI removes the random turret refire delay, which means beam and flak weapons will shoot MUCH faster; so you might have to swap out or modify some of these weapons to fire more slowly.
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The following Shivan ships also use fighter guns for (some of) their laser turrets - which causes them to get a significant boost from the removal of the random turret fire delay:
SB Nephilim
SB Seraphim
ST Azrael
SFr Dis
SFr Mephisto
SFr Asmodeus
SC Rakshasa
SC Cain
SSG Trident
SSG Belial
SSG Rahu
some GTVA ships have the Subach HL-7 randomly in thier turret loadouts, e.g. the Mentu
You might want to adress that with a -shp.tbm and -wep.tbm.
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Perhaps as an option for FS2 blue?
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Okay: a minor update for Freespace 1:
- I added Fury's ai.tbl, ai-aip.tbm, and ai-obt.tbm found here (https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=76330.msg1660978#msg1660978) into /fsport-3.6.8/data/tables
- I modified a ships.tbl, so I can glide and reverse-afterburn with Apollos. I did the same with Seths and Anubises. (Might mod the whole thing later.) Same folder: /fsport-3.6.8/data/tables
- I inspected the Fury AI classes: Coward, Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Colonel, General—the same ones as the defaults in FRED so I didn't mess with 'em.
- I fired up the first and second mission on Medium difficulty to test.
The ship table worked!
But... is there any way to find out if my AI brothers are... "Furious"? Are there any behavioral qualities that I should look into?
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Well they won't really be Furious until you start giving them BP2 AI classes. I don't know what those are called in the FSP table.
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If this was made as a full mod that would be awesome. Throw in 'check hull to everything except VLS' to stop ships beaming through themselves and the new HUD icons, wingman gauge etc. and we would have the ultimate FS experience (from my perspective anyway, but then I'm a video game masochist :lol:)
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Well they won't really be Furious until you start giving them BP2 AI classes. I don't know what those are called in the FSP table.
Well, I renamed the BP2 AI classes to the default FS AI classes in the ai.tbl file, so this shouldn't be a problem. Just doing the same thing in reverse, eh?
So, reporting back on the results:
The thing is... obviously first few missions are meant to be easy, so I didn't notice a difference. But when I played "First Strike" on Medium... HOLY CRAP. I have a hard time winning. I must have played this mission a million times on Insane, and I keep losing my meat shields wingmen (which are set to Lieutenant while the Shivan ships are set to Captain?). Not to mention the turret refresh rate on the Taranis. (Although the Glide and Reverse-Thrust feature I built into the Athena is cool!)
I guess I have some rebalancing to do after I fully modify ships.tbl. (Figure only some ships should get reverse-afterburn, only some should get strafe, the Apollo and Anubis should get neither because they're deathboxes... but all of them should get glide since this is, you know, S P A C E and all...)
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I for one would totally be down for furious space 2.
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I for one would totally be down for furious space 2.
That's a good one. I had Freespace Fury in mind when (1) I modify all the ships in the table (2) I alter and test individual missions with AI rebalance (a la Freespace Blue). Now that I know how to overwrite ai.tbl and ships.tbl (to allow for some S P A C E G L I D E), it's only a matter of surgically editing the mission files' AI profiles and seeing what works—so ya don't get kilt right dead when ya warp in.
I'll take some inspiration from Freespace Blue but with FSPort. A one-person show for now, but I might ask for testers for Act 1.
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If you need testers count me in, I’ looking forward to playing this and getting my ass handed to me 😂
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I'd be down as well.
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Is it the sort of thing that could be done with a batch "find>replace"?
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Is it the sort of thing that could be done with a batch "find>replace"?
Well I did something a lot simpler:
Instead of swapping out the BP AI classes with "Find > Replace" in every mission file, I simply renamed classes already tabled in the default BP2-AIs, and dropped them into %DIRECTORY%/data/tables/ai.tbl:
- None
- Coward
- BP2-Lieutenant --> Lieutenant
- BP2-Captain --> Captain
- BP2-Major --> Major
- BP2-Colonel --> Colonel
- BP2-General --> General
- BALLS OF STEELE --> Ace
Nice. All of them are now default FS1/FS2 classes except for Ace. Which I can manually edit in the mission file. We can now ship the campaign, right?
HOLD THE PHONE. Now comes the issue of rebalancing the missions. Fury AI is such a powerful dynamic, it changes things. (Like, imagine if you suddenly turned on your VCR—because people still totally have those now right?—and watched Big Trouble in Little China, and it was different because Jack Burton didn't "NO U" the knife in time, or Lo Pan wasn't able to survive the truck crash because he ran out of magic, or Miao Yin was able to karate chop the Lords of Death and everyone sat and drank and partied for 90 minutes on screen instead... it's the same concept. Insert favorite action movie here.)
Remember, I want things to be more intense. But the initial issues I'm dealing with:
- Your wingmen getting all the kills? I don't think so.
- Escort missions where the cargo go kablooey, because wing after wing of shivans. You know the one I'm talking about.
- Training missions where the instructor is so smart and overpowered, he destroys a drone instead of injuring it and fails you for not following instructions.
- Long-ass missions where you just end up defending yourself after yer winkmen get kilt
Oh. Did I mention that there's no check for cheating in the most recent iteration of FSO? That's right. I don't know how, but you can cheat your way through a campaign. Any campaign. Any mod. Just type www.freespace2.com, slap BFReds (or equivalent) on your puny little interceptor, and send a beam straight through the spine of a capship—not even kidding. (I'm going to add an event called "PUMPKINEATER --> while --> player-is-cheating" to check for cheating and set conditions "and --> is-event-incomplete" for every mission in order to advance through a campaign, in my FSO campaign. Possibly also send a message from command about what a loser the cheater is.)
By the way: I'm also working on a combat training mission (https://i.redd.it/1ljf1yi5jzn61.png) where you learn the basics of glide, reverse thrust, reverse afterburn, and strafe. That's some delay but it's gonna look snazzy.
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wasn't the part about cheating essentially widespread public knowledge and also how people usually skip through missions that are too difficult?
i think the reason no one does any cheat events is because there's just no point to it
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Superb! I am seriously looking forward to playing this on hard or insane and having my a$$ handed to me.
If you want to make it even more intense try implementing whatever Blaise Russel did to make Bem Cavalgar so 'challenging'. Shivan fighters that can circle strafe and flip on their axis like a starfury, shivan shields about three times stronger than normal, shivan primaries as deadly as balors, shivan missiles that can wreck pretty much all of your fighter's subsystems in a single hit even if you were at full shields, and all this on NORMAL difficulty setting. Any of these take your fancy :lol:?
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wasn't the part about cheating essentially widespread public knowledge and also how people usually skip through missions that are too difficult?
i think the reason no one does any cheat events is because there's just no point to it
Yup, its what I did once or twice back when I was a crap pilot :p Its easy to find - just google FSOpen cheats and it comes up.
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If you want to make it even more intense try implementing whatever Blaise Russel did to make Bem Cavalgar so 'challenging'. Shivan fighters that can circle strafe and flip on their axis like a starfury, shivan shields about three times stronger than normal, shivan primaries as deadly as balors, shivan missiles that can wreck pretty much all of your fighter's subsystems in a single hit even if you were at full shields, and all this on NORMAL difficulty setting. Any of these take your fancy :lol:?
I'm not that cruel—but let's just say I'm definitely going to make the player think twice about engaging the Vasudan Ace.
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Now, let's not be too ridiculous. Bumping up the difficulty level by raising enemy stats to stupid levels is just distasteful. That's why it's more fun to improve the AI, as done by the OP, instead of just giving stupid enemies vastly better armor and weapons.
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Better trained soldiers are better than more soldiers with better guns.
But then I'm biased 😜😜
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(I'm going to add an event called "PUMPKINEATER --> while --> player-is-cheating" to check for cheating and set conditions "and --> is-event-incomplete" for every mission in order to advance through a campaign, in my FSO campaign. Possibly also send a message from command about what a loser the cheater is.)
Please do not do this. You can make fun of cheaters all you like but there are several legitimate reasons why someone may need to cheat through some missions. Notably for bug hunting, if there's a bug that only shows up in the campaign (and so you cant play it through the techroom) you may need to cheat through the missions quickly to get to where you need to. You may need this very thing yourself while testing, and its going to be a giant hassle constantly turning it on and off.
Everyone is here to have a good time and isn't going to ruin their experience on purpose. This isn't a competitive game, there's no reason to prevent cheating. If someone is cheating, they probably have a good reason.
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(I'm going to add an event called "PUMPKINEATER --> while --> player-is-cheating" to check for cheating and set conditions "and --> is-event-incomplete" for every mission in order to advance through a campaign, in my FSO campaign. Possibly also send a message from command about what a loser the cheater is.)
Please do not do this. You can make fun of cheaters all you like but there are several legitimate reasons why someone may need to cheat through some missions. Notably for bug hunting, if there's a bug that only shows up in the campaign (and so you cant play it through the techroom) you may need to cheat through the missions quickly to get to where you need to. You may need this very thing yourself while testing, and its going to be a giant hassle constantly turning it on and off.
Everyone is here to have a good time and isn't going to ruin their experience on purpose. This isn't a competitive game, there's no reason to prevent cheating. If someone is cheating, they probably have a good reason.
I kindof skimmed earlier and didn't notice that. I agree, there should be a path to cheat your way forward if so inclined.
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Also, if it was in retail, it should kinda persist.
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I think the other way around would be better.
Proceeding only with cheating :lol:.
Well, it was standard in FS1 that you were unable to continue with cheats on difficult levels that were higher than Very Easy. Actually i never got it, why that behaviour was changed in FS2. There you are even allowed to cheat on Insane :confused:.
So an event that make everything invalid with "is-cheating" would make sense for skill levels that are at least set to Easy actually. If some one want to cheat, Very Easy is traditionally the skill level for it... what actually make sense as the player is punished with a very low score anyway and does not gain much for it like a promotion (and as Medals can be given by skill level too, you can even ensure that someone on Very Easy gets nothing). It was always a difficulty to have some fun without consequences, but also with nearly no gain apart from the story experience, which is however enough for some people already.
So i am actually open to some kind of cheat-protection. But simple not for every difficulty. Medium, Hard and Insane would be enough i think. However, if you want to restrict the default difficulty Easy as well, feel free to do that.
But i would never put such thing in effect for the lowest difficulty as there are may some reasons why someone is playing on it and may even need cheats (Accessibility for disabled persons comes in mind i.e.)
And because of the latter, i would even never make fun of cheaters, especially in a single player game. A simple recommendation that is saying, that cheating is only allowed on Easy/Very Easy is enough.
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Notably for bug hunting, if there's a bug that only shows up in the campaign (and so you cant play it through the techroom) you may need to cheat through the missions quickly to get to where you need to.
Oh damn. You're right. I never thought of that.
Okay, I've switched it to just a plain ol' event called PUMPKINEATER that just calls it out via wingmen or Command.
It's simply a random comic message:
- Better hope you know what you're doing with those cheats, my dude.
- Watch out with those cheat codes - you could break something with that!
- While you're cheating, do you think you can give me enhancements in the "love department"?
- You know, the last pilot who cheated had to explain to command why he ended up with Shivan Super Lasers on his fighter...
- While we don't condone cheating, Terran Command has allowed it to slide since you're all-powerful now.
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Seems relatively tasteful
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I decided to do this myself as a learning exercise, and to basically mess around and have a laugh.
Take FS1. Add glide, horizontal, vertical and reverse thrusters to all fighters and bombers. Give afterburners to the fighters and bombers that lack it. Increase the RoF and projectile speed of most cap ship turrets. Give all fighters, bombers and missiles a 20-25 MPS blanket speed boost so they don’t feel sluggish. Rebalance some primaries. Give everyone “Fury-on-crack AI” (BP2’s AI mixed with Bem Calvalgar’s) and see what happens.
The effects are ‘interesting’ to say the least. Ever had a Manticore fly backwards whilst shooting your wingman in the face? I have now and it’s glorious. Moar tweaking needed of course to balance things out a bit but it’s hella fun 😎