Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => The Scroll of Atankharzim => Topic started by: Assassin714 on August 14, 2018, 12:58:12 am
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I will give my thoughts so far.
Missions 1 -2: Boring. Nothing particularly interesting other than the new Shu fighter.
Mission 3: Mostly boring, but with an interesting plot development at the end.
Missions 4 - 5: Very interesting, fun as well. Plot is looking great now.
Mission 6: Frustrating. Having to replay it over and over to get the right outcome was not fun. Plot and atmosphere are still great, though.
Will update as I continue through it.
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Mission 7: Short but fun. Expected to find something more interesting in the cargo containers than explosive materials, though.
Mission 8: Frantic, fun, great mission. A bit confused about the unscannable TC-TRI containers but that might be important to the plot later maybe? Wondering if it's possible to save the cruiser (forget the name).
Going for the ISF branch now.
Also I will mention that I really enjoy the new CBAnims.
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Mission 9 (ISF branch): I will be honest here, I am not a fan of stealth missions. And having more than one in quick succession even less. But this one wasn't all that bad, since the stealth part was only half of it.
Mission 10 (ISF branch): Better than the last one. Fun combat of the type I like. I don't believe I ever saw the idea of destroying a capship's fighter bays to prevent it from launching strikecraft used in any other campaign, which is odd as it is a good idea.
One thing I will comment on is the voices - I know the player character is supposed to be a Vasudan, but hearing weird gibberish 'translated' into English from the Terrans is just kind of odd. Also, the 'you fight like a Vasudan' message still plays, even though you're supposed to be one. I suppose it could mean something along the lines of 'good, you're fighting like you're supposed to', but it still seems out of place.
Also I don't know if this is just a problem on my PC, but one thing I have noticed in all of the missions so far is that the backgrounds have details/nebulae cut off by very sharp lines that meet at sharp angles which doesn't look natural at all. It doesn't really bother me, though.
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A lot of fighter bay subsystems are indestructible, which makes them hard to use for objectives.
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Mission 11 (ISF Branch): Fun mission, a bit intense but the atmosphere is great and I love the station. Just wish it was a bit longer.
Mission 12 (ISF Branch): Have I mentioned I don't like stealth missions? Because I don't. Also the background thing I mentioned before was especially pronounced during this one. But the mission overall wasn't too bad, especially compared to the next one...
Mission 13 (ISF Branch): Pardon my French, but **** THIS MISSION! By far the most frustrating and impossible one so far. Not only is it a stealth mission which is annoying as hell but there is seemingly no way to avoid the fighter patrols at all and scan enough stuff in time. I tried half a dozen times and failed. Usually, in that kind of situation, I decide to use cheats to kill all of the detectors (ships/objects that reveal you if you get too close to them) but apparently doing that here breaks the mission somehow so it doesn't end. That's right, even with cheats I couldn't beat this mission! :banghead: At one point I actually managed to evade all of the patrols until the AWACS arrived, lured Arjuna wing back to it and killed them, but then I was ordered to depart immediately and I hadn't had time to scan the nav and comm systems of the two destroyers so I still failed the mission. I only eventually beat it by a long process of trial and error, figuring out how to use cheats to make it easier without breaking the mission. A thoroughly unpleasant experience that I never want to suffer through again. I sincerely hope there aren't any more missions like this in the campaign.
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Mission 14 (ISF Branch): Fun, not nearly as difficult as I was worried about.
Mission 15 (ISF Branch): Flying a Nahema was a new experience, although it wasn't quite as agile as I had expected. Challenging mission but not too hard, although seeing the Ravana escape immediately after the mission started was annoying.
Mission 16 (ISF Branch): Reminded me a bit of a mission from ASW, although I liked that one better. I had a very difficult time defending the Pallas though, since its hull was reduced to 27% in the previous mission.
Mission 17 (ISF Branch): First time I flew the Reshef, which seems to be a Vasudan equivalent of the Erinyes. It seemed that the Warlock carrier pointlessly just sat there and let itself be destroyed, though. Nice to see many new ships... although I kind of felt useless fighting a shielded Lucifer. Difficult mission.
I'll also note that I like the new medal box, although when you hover the mouse cursor over the medals they don't display the names unless you hover it over an area significantly to the left of the medal in question.
I don't feel like starting the campaign again from scratch so I guess I'll next play the missions in the other branches from the tech room.
I'd also like to add that I really liked the music in the last mission.
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From now on, playing all missions from the tech room.
Bonus mission (the 4th vial): I don't know why this was included with the mod but apparently it is as a standalone mission. I got deja vu as I remembered playing a very similar mission before (same premise and objective in the same place and time) but it wasn't the same one. I did like the use of the glowing Sathanas models and the subspace weapons (I've seen several mods where they were included in the weapons tables but this is the first time I've ever actually seen them being fired in a mission). Scanning the first two Sathanases was difficult enough and I died in the supernova later so the next time I just forgot about scanning the third one and got out of their as quick as I could, and managed to escape.
Mission 1 (Military Branch)
It was kind of annoying to fly over and deal with the convoy then fly back in time to protect the ships from the Shivan counterattack. I lost the Imutef to the bombers before being able to save it with 1% health in my latest run. Curious about what the mysterious radar signature on the moon was, also the Imutef took a very long time to jump out, but that could have been because it was so damaged. I had to use time compression to wait for it to finally jump. Background scenery was pretty good too.
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Mission 2 (Military Branch): Somewhat difficult to protect the friendly capships. Otherwise a good mission.
Mission 3 (Military Branch): Even more difficult, but not so much as to not be fun. Nice to see what happened to the Kraken after we fought it in the other branch. Also, the Reshef is a joy to fly, and it seems I was right about it being a Vasudan equivalent of the Erinyes.
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Mission 4 (Military Branch): Straightforward but ended a bit too soon, I kept expecting there to be more.
Will probably finish the rest of the missions tomorrow.
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Mission 5 (Military Branch): Simple and straightforward mission, although fairly challenging. Again though it felt like it ended too soon.
Mission 6 (Military Branch): I knew I was going to hate this mission as soon as I read the briefing. Escorting warheads by firing EMP missiles sounded impossible, and indeed that was my experience in the mission. Nothing I did could stop the missiles from being shot down, it was pure luck that any of them survived, and even when they did they did hardly any damage to the turret. I failed the mission tons of times and eventually had to cheat and destroy the turrets with cheat codes. Even when I did that, though, there was an error when the AWACs ship showed up, Delta wing arrived shortly before I destroyed the ship and the mission ended successfully (as I cheated again to destroy the last turret) but the debriefing gave both the successful text and text saying that one turret wasn't destroyed and I didn't signal Delta wing. I have no idea what was going on there.
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Mission 7 (Military Branch): The beginning of this mission was very tense and difficult. I had a very hard time targeting and hitting enemy beam cannons, and I got a message that one of the installation's beam cannons was still active but I spent so much time trying to find it by pressing k while being attacked by fighters. The dialogue said it was the dorsal cannon, but I forgot whether that means top or bottom, and the installation is pretty much symmetrical so telling the bottom apart from the top is difficult to begin with. I lost lots of fighters and cruisers to enemy ships but somehow eventually managed to win the mission. Overall the mission was very fun though and the music was great too.
Also since I was playing these from the tech room I couldn't see the new medal, and I also just realized there is an option in the campaign room to start the campaign again from the branch point, but it's too late for that now.
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Well that's it for the campaign. Overall very good with a few frustrating parts, and it left me wanting more.
The next one I'll be playing is Twilight (I just hope it doesn't involve any sparkling vampires).
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Thank you for your feedback! :) Always delighted to see people post their thoughts on the campaign, good or bad.
I plan to release a patch in the next few days that will address some player feedback. There will be a couple of extra enhancements thanks to this post.
Specific responses...
Mission 6: The upcoming patch will include some extra hints for the player.
Mission 8: The unscannable containers are only because this was from a GVTI convoy, per the briefing. The whole setup near the Knossos is for scenery.
New CBAnims: Those were created by MjnMixael, and we were really pleased to have his artistic talent featured in the campaign. :yes:
Mission 10: Fun fact: the Ravana's fighterbays aren't normally destroyable, as Battuta noted. This mission uses a modded ships.tbl entry.
Voices: Odd or not, I like the gibberish. :) That format, and the synthesized speech more generally, was Sesquipedalian's idea. As for "you fight like a Vasudan", yeah it doesn't really fit, but we decided to roll with it.
Not sure what the problem is with the sharply-defined backgrounds. Can you post a fsolog?
Mission 13: Sorry for the bad experience. :( I'll add a checkpoint or two to this mission.
Medalbox: You've found a bug! We never added a mask file to the new interface art. I'll include that in the patch.
4th Vial: Glad you liked it! This is a mission that Sesquipedalian made years ago. I haven't heard from anyone else about it yet.
Mission 1: You'll find out more about the mysterious radar signature in Part II.
Mission 6: This mission will be a bit easier in the patch. I'll add a new checkpoint too. What was the error when the AWACS arrived?
Glad you liked the campaign overall. We hope Part II will take less time to release than Part I. :)
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Not sure what the problem is with the sharply-defined backgrounds. Can you post a fsolog?
I could post a screenshot.
Mission 6: This mission will be a bit easier in the patch. I'll add a new checkpoint too. What was the error when the AWACS arrived?
I attacked it, and Delta wing arrived as it was nearly destroyed, and they helped finish it off. But at the debriefing I got the text saying that I successfully called in Delta wing and the text saying I didn't call them and I didn't destroy the last turret.
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Not sure what the problem is with the sharply-defined backgrounds. Can you post a fsolog?
I could post a screenshot.
A screenshot would help, but the log is most important because it will indicate the build, mod paths, and mod settings.
I attacked it, and Delta wing arrived as it was nearly destroyed, and they helped finish it off. But at the debriefing I got the text saying that I successfully called in Delta wing and the text saying I didn't call them and I didn't destroy the last turret.
Okay. I thought you meant that there was a program error, but this is good to know too. I'll fix it.
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Actually I can't post a screenshot since every time I try no file is created and when I paste it into MSPaint it just shows my desktop and the launcher.
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Hit the PrintScrn button and FSO will save one to your %APPDATA%\HardLightProductions folder. That should be where you can find the log too.
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I can't find that folder anywhere.
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Just type it into the address bar of Windows Explorer. %APPDATA% will resolve to your profile AppData\Roaming folder.
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Just type it into the address bar of Windows Explorer. %APPDATA% will resolve to your profile AppData\Roaming folder.
Did that but the only folder I found in roaming is labeled Microsoft and inside it is something called System Certificates.
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As for "you fight like a Vasudan", yeah it doesn't really fit, but we decided to roll with it.
I just took it for granted that it was something like how someone in our world might tell you to "fight like a man" or "man up"
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As for "you fight like a Vasudan", yeah it doesn't really fit, but we decided to roll with it.
I just took it for granted that it was something like how someone in our world might tell you to "fight like a man" or "man up"
But particular on that field the Vasudans were always different to the Terrans; it should be more like "You truly deserve to call yourself a Vasudan" or something like that.
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Just type it into the address bar of Windows Explorer. %APPDATA% will resolve to your profile AppData\Roaming folder.
Did that but the only folder I found in roaming is labeled Microsoft and inside it is something called System Certificates.
In that case, check out the more detailed instructions in this post (https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=56279.msg1180359#msg1180359) according to the version that you're running.
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That post doesn't say anything about screenshots.
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But it does say something about the log.
If your build doesn't put screenshots in %APPDATA%, it may not have built-in screenshot capability.
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I think this is it here
[attachment stolen by Russian hackers]
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Good work. Okay, two things I found out from the log:
1) The %APPDATA% path does exist. The full path name for screenshots on your computer is C:\Users\igotb_000\AppData\Roaming\HardLightProductions\FreeSpaceOpen\screenshots.
2) You're using 3.8.0, and others have reported graphical problems on 3.8.0. Try a nightly build, or try playing with 3.7.4.