Hard Light Productions Forums
Community Projects => The FreeSpace Campaign Restoration Project => Topic started by: praseodym on December 13, 2015, 06:35:36 am
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http://mt.hard-light.net/
Would be great to see this campaign renewed.
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/board,14.0.html
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THAT is an interesting proposal.
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THAT is an interesting proposal.
Indeed, but...
Well, this is MT. One of the biggest fallen mods ever developed here. I can only wonder how much work it requires, but it's deffinitly worth it!
The Machine is calling... Will You respond, FSCRP guys :)?
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Were missions/a full mission outline ever released for MT?
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The model dump (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=77434.0) the team released contained everything on their SVN, and I believe there was a mission outline in there as well. Setekh also released a design document for a prequel campaign (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=78588.0) that he never got around to FREDding.
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AFAIK a lot of missions are done. They are apparently not War in Heaven quality, but with new backgrounds and other stuff, refreshed MT would be enjoyable.
I might lend a hand at finishing Alcyone or Warhammer if I find some time.
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ShadowWolf expressed interest to me a while ago in picking up and finishing the project as it stood, but I don't know if he still has the time and/or interest to do so.
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So ages ago I actually did work on the MT dump. I went through it and fixed all its debug warning errors, made the tables modular, fixed any mission stuff that threw warnings and the like. There were lots of model issues; for instance the Warhammer destroyer had no fire points defined for half her weapons.
Here are some of the pros and cons of the dump. based on what I can recall from working on this a few years back:
Pros:
Many of the new Earth models still look interesting. They do need shine/normal maps, and they do need reconversion to fix smoothing issues. One could make a nice black ops fleet out of these ships for use in other campaigns. The GTVA Raptor fighter also looks very nice even at this date.
There are many missions in some working state that could be developed into a coherent release.
Cons:
I suspect the missions were developed with a different weapons.tbl than what was released. For example, the new Earth destroyer has 8 electrobeams. Each beam is roughly as powerful as an LRed. The mission in which you first encounter one there are two GTVA destroyers present. They are supposed to fight for a while and then have a conversation. Unfortunately the Earth destroyers beams are so super powerful they just melt the GTVA ships in seconds. I doubt the mission designer developed the mission with those beams in place.
The dump did not include a plot/mission design document and there really isn't a whole lot of plot in the missions as they stand. I suppose the creators intended to get the gameplay in place first and then go back and add the plot stuff later. For instance, many of the missions have just a sentence or two briefing/debriefing, and then only generic dialog such as "Ship XYZ destroyed". Some missions even have just something like "insert message text here" as dialogue.
Just from looking at the missions alone, I don't think the plot is understandable, really. Why is the campaign even called Machina Terra? What is "The Machine"? The missions tell us nothing at all about Terra except that they are essentially the GTA with cool new spaceships. Why is the GTVI evil again? What is the significance of the intro cutscene showing an Earth fighter drifting around and being picked up by a Shivan vessel? No idea -- it is never referenced by any mission. In the absence of a clear design document, or one of the original story writers returning, I don't know that much can be made out of the campaign beyond "blast the bad guys."
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Some MT members are still around. Dragon released the dump, so maybe he still has design doc files. You may PM him guys.
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What is the significance of the intro cutscene showing an Earth fighter drifting around and being picked up by a Shivan vessel? No idea
Basically the Terran Alliance, was able to send unmanned drones trough the unstable Sol/delta for years the GTVI have been capturing them to study em and hide them from GTVA but the problem is that the Terran Alliance uses a special engine core on their ships that is based on shivan tech so it's like a beacon to shivans.
Well to be honest GTVI is not really evil they just want to hide their own shadow projects(modified Human part of ETAK project etc) and that fact that GTVI is trying hide the fact that in polaris shivans are trying to destroy GTVI blockade
They are apparently not War in Heaven quality
Well of course they aren't they they are just WIPs
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The dump did not include a plot/mission design document and there really isn't a whole lot of plot in the missions as they stand. I suppose the creators intended to get the gameplay in place first and then go back and add the plot stuff later. For instance, many of the missions have just a sentence or two briefing/debriefing, and then only generic dialog such as "Ship XYZ destroyed". Some missions even have just something like "insert message text here" as dialogue.
Just from looking at the missions alone, I don't think the plot is understandable, really. Why is the campaign even called Machina Terra? What is "The Machine"? The missions tell us nothing at all about Terra except that they are essentially the GTA with cool new spaceships. Why is the GTVI evil again? What is the significance of the intro cutscene showing an Earth fighter drifting around and being picked up by a Shivan vessel? No idea -- it is never referenced by any mission. In the absence of a clear design document, or one of the original story writers returning, I don't know that much can be made out of the campaign beyond "blast the bad guys."
I thought those docs were uploaded with the dump... Anyway, I just took a look at my files, and I digged those docs up, the most up-to-date I have (and I suspect they are the most updated there is)
So there you go :)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2tI7SEDvaw4ZUU2U3o1Y1AzbGM/view?usp=sharing
Edit: I don't remember what was the deal with the drifting fighter, but I do remember that "Machina Terra" was the name of a project that dealt with the perservation of earth, via a network of "shield stations" surrounding earth.
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If there is renewed technical interest in turning this into a functioning campaign, I'd be willing to do some writing for it. I haven't looked at the plot and mission outlines - ever - but I see no reason if we have a general direction to work with that it couldn't be written into a coherent, FREDable state. Of course, it's been YEARS since I used FRED, and I definitely will not have time to do mission design/tests, but I sure as hell could clean up a story for you.
I'd want a solid commitment on the technical end, though.
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I think that if this campaign was revived, the majority of the campaign will have to be rebuilt from the ground up, especially with the engine's latest developments. Development stalled way the **** back in 2010 so it's possible a lot of the things that worked then are very much broken now.
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I just stumbled on this thread, as I'm not really following the forums regularly. A very interesting proposal, indeed.
I joined Styxx in this failed journey called "MT" more than ten years ago as a fredder. I helped in conceiving the campaign outline and fredded some of the first missions to completion. While in my opinion the plot is still pretty solid and catches my imagination, the main problem of MT has been the campaign outline. Styxx had a cinematic approach and conceived the campaign from a narrative point of view. While this is perfectly valid, the actual missions lacked a proper gameplay-centric design. The campaign was full of "Battle-of-Endor"-style missions and felt very repetitive. There have been attempts to improve on these flaws, but due to organisational problems, the occasional departure of team members due to RL-issues (myself included) and some form of "feature creep" due to the new possibilities of the SCP, the project never really gained enough momentum to really go forward.
Long story short: I still like the plot and the mood of the narrative a lot and would fully endorse another approach, to get it to a playable and enjoyable state. It's no easy task, as the whole campaign is in need of a thorough rewrite with proper gameplay-centric design. If I can be of any help, drop me a line. I would be interested in collaborating.
Side note: Check the storyline section on the MT page (http://mt.hard-light.net/storyline.html), as it has some very detailed lore pieces.
PS: Greetings to Gloriano and Raven2001. Nice to read something from you after all these years :)
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Hey hey Slanker! :D
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For those interested the cleaned up version of the Machina Terra dump is now available on Knossos:
(https://fsnebula.org/static/kn_download.png) (https://fsnebula.org/mod/MT_Dump)
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Did you do any other changes since the release in 2015?
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One or two small things. I'm not sure if the older release had the movies in it, they are there now in H.264 format. The design docs are also now included.
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Ah OK, just wanted to know. :D
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Coooool. Which MediaVPs are in use, if any?
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Latest ones.