I've had quite a few PMs, IMs and emails asking me general questions about Inferno. So for the newbies I thought I'd give a detailed explanation of the mod to date.
GENERALWhat is Inferno?It's a mod for FS2! (as if you stumbled on to it by accident). Set about 30 years after Capella went supernova, Inferno is a non-canon campaign that deals with the end of one war and the beginning of another.
R1, R2, re-R1... errr, WTF?Sometimes even I confuse myself with these things. R1 (release 1) was released in June 2003 and
is still available from FilePlanet. It depicted the last month of a civil war with the Earth Alliance and the re-emergence of the Shivans. 'Re-R1' was originally going to be a separate redux of the R1 campaign with completely different missions, and while this is still in development, it will ship in the R2 pack instead. R2 will include the remake of this first chapter and the second chapter which will see the player fight the Shivans in the biggest war yet. The as-yet unplanned R3 will succeed this as the final chapter in the Inferno saga.
How many ships are in the modpack?I just counted - 173 unique ships spread across four fleets - the GTVA Terrans and Vasudans, the Earth Alliance, and of course the almighty Shivans. Each has a complete inventory of fighters, bombers, warships, supporting craft and non-combatants. We add and remove entries on a semi-regular basis depending on what we feel has become obsolete, ugly, or unnecessary.
What's this big 'change' you keep talking about?After R1 was finished we decided to scrap a lot of things and bring in completely new content of our own devising. All the weapons were removed and new ones added with more variety and less all-killing power. A complete rebalancing of every ship in the game is currently in progress as we build the missions of the next release. Warships, instead of being almost equally capable of killing fighters and each other, are now mostly equipped with specialised armaments depending on their role. Fast and maneuverable cruisers, for example, will have the best anti-fighter weapons available. Conversely, heavy destroyers will be equipped with platform scale beam cannons, massive railguns and plasma cannons.
Does Inferno utilise the Source Code Project's new features?Yes! A specialised SCP build will be needed to play R2 when it's finished. We break the limits imposed by Volition in its original release, as well as using features provided solely by the SCP, and so our campaign is not backwards compatible. However, R1 *can* be played with the regular retail EXE or a regular SCP build (though there are problems in some missions).
What will be happening in R2 then?First of all you'll get to partake in a more immersive version of the EA civil war. I always got the feeling that the war depicted in R1 didn't feel like much of a conflict. We've tried to address this in designing the new mission set. It'll be about as long as the original chapter, but with a few twists along the way. The all-new chapter featuring the war between the GTVA and the Shivans will see the most intense firefights and the largest battle we think possible while preserving gameplay.
Uh oh. Sounds like a supercap-fest. You sure the player isn't going to be sidelined?No way! There are BIG ships in our modpack but they only show up in a few missions, and even then they're mostly just gigantic props to use in furthering the story. There'll be situations where you have to interact with them but you won't have to fly 10km to get from one turret to the other, we promise.
Any chance I can help out?If you're skilled enough, sure - we're always on the lookout for more mission designers providing you're capable of designing decent scripts. If you think you can make missions verging on the quality of Volition's, we want you. Contact me or Woomeister through HLP's PM system if you want to offer a demo of your skillz.
Effects artists are equally desirable. Although we've got adequate placeholders for our weapons right now, if anyone thinks they'd like to improve on what they see in our screenshots or trailers then get in touch.
We
don't need modellers because our ship list is basically complete. Unless you have something extra special which you know'll make us salivate uncontrollably at the thought of putting into our missions, you should donate it to the other campaigns instead.
TROUBLESHOOTINGFS2 crashes when I try to play mission 8 of Inferno R1! What's up?A ship in this mission can't be used with the SCP's regular builds because it exceeds the limitations for the HTL engine. Either download the Inferno SCP build or play it with the retail EXE (the latter is recommended).
