Modding, Mission Design, and Coding > The FRED Workshop

[Demo Release] Wing Commander Vega Assault

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Rabenrecht:
UPDATE - DEMO RELEASE

This is a short demo for the Wing Commander Vega Assault campaign - a re-imagining of the very first Wing Commander game.
This demo consist of the first two missions - Enyo 1  &  2.

Why this demo?
This is my very first attempt at Freespace 2 modding. With this release I aim to gather valuable feedback in order to learn and to improve.
Am I on the right track? Is there any interesst in a campaign of this style?

How to get & installation instructions

* Get Knossos: https://fsnebula.org/knossos/
* Install my mod with this link:
* Start Wing Commander Vega Assault, open the campaign selection: there should be two entries: "Vega Assault Demo" and "Vega Assault Demo Ironman".
* Choose one of the and start playing!
There are two verions of the demo: normal and Ironman

Ironman is exactly what it sounds like: if you die (or turn traitor or let the Tiger's Claw be destroyed) your campaign is over.

Failing a mission objectives will not fail the mission.
Pressing Alt-X will activate the emergency ejection ending the mission after 2 seconds. All open objectives will considered failures - but you will survive.
The above is true regardless of Ironman mode.

I appreciate any feedback  :)

In particular:

* Did you encounter any bugs?
* Did you came accross any spelling/grammar errors or unwieldy or strange expressions and sentences? (English is not my native language...)
* Did you find the mission objectives clear? Was there any point where you din't know what to do?
* Was it, you know, fun? Kinda important :p
I would also like your opinion on the combat and flight model (speed, damage, shields etc.)

I am in particular unsure about one thing: I have deliberately removed any gun convergence. I have my reasons for this but I also found during playtesting that any engagement range beyond "knife fight" is pretty much useless as you wont hit anything.
So if you have opinions on gun convergence, please share!


Known issues:

* Ignore techroom description for now.
* Main hall, menus, loading screens etc are WC Saga
* The command briefing has currently no animations. The text assumes that there ARE animations and I have a good idea of what they should be. But I'm not a visual artist (sadly...) so I've decided to cut them for this demo.
* I have no fitting generic pilot or generic cap ship head anis that are compatible in style with the pictures used for Maverick, Spirit etc.
* It's probably for the best if you consider any 2d artwork as WIP or placeholders.
* There is, obviously, no voice acting.
* The command briefing was the very first thing I wrote for this mod and I wrote it in german. I really liked how it turned out in german but I hate my english version of it. All other pieces of text are originally written in english. But the comand briefing is a translation and it shows :(

Credits:

* Wing Commander Saga for providing a base for this mod: lots of base assets like weapon models and effects, as well as some Freding snippets
* Klav's WC1 Ship Pack: without those there would be no Vega Assault!
* Big Rocks by Shivan Hunter
* Wing Commander 1: music, Head anis
* And a special thanks to Nasa for making awesome planet pictures available to the public!

Asteroth:

--- Quote from: Rabenrecht on April 11, 2022, 04:15:55 pm ---What can be done about it? Editing the model? How? With what programm? How do I access the model in the .pof? Do I even have the skills? Finding a different model (whould it fit with the rest?)?

--- End quote ---
Both PCS2 and Pof Tools (which can be found in the FSO Tools subform) can open .pof and let you change some of the specs of the model, but changing the geometry itself will require you to save it as another 3d format (which they can also do) and edit them in a dedicated modeling program, like Blender.

Rabenrecht:
Thanks for the input and for pointing me to the Tools Forum :-)

Editing models is pushed back far down the backlog for the time being. It is more important to actually creating a mission working with what is there :). Improvements can always be made later. Start small and all that :)

Progress report: creating my mission template is mostly done. Issues I've ran into:

* The Autopilot stuff surely references specific ships a lot. I can see why in WCS the player wing is always Alpha :P But still, I'm determined to stickt to the "canon" wing names from the WC 1 campaign. Changing the reference name is not complicated, especially if it's the first thing you do. It's just tedious.
* Question regarding referenced ships in Events: the "compiler" produces a warning when a referenced object does not exist in the mission. But what happens if the referenced object DOES exists but leaves (depart/destroy) during the mission? Say you have an event that if triggered will set the goals for a specific ship. Would the game crash if the ship is already destroyed?

starlord:
That sounds great.

Just on top of my head, I think deathsnake made a number of WC1 fan models back in the day, like the Gettysburg cruiser and tolmacs light carrier. Wonder if they are still around…

Asteroth:

--- Quote from: Rabenrecht on April 13, 2022, 02:51:30 am ---Question regarding referenced ships in Events: the "compiler" produces a warning when a referenced object does not exist in the mission. But what happens if the referenced object DOES exists but leaves (depart/destroy) during the mission? Say you have an event that if triggered will set the goals for a specific ship. Would the game crash if the ship is already destroyed?

--- End quote ---
Doing that is perfectly fine and valid, what matters is that it exists somewhere in the mission file, not that it necessarily be on the field at any particular moment. It depends on the SEXP in question, but most SEXPs will silently do nothing if you attempt to do something to a ship which has left, is yet to arrive, or has been destroyed.

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