Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Frontlines => Topic started by: Black Wolf on August 08, 2013, 11:19:37 pm
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Right, so I've recently re-started on my Frontlines project (A series of TV-War minicampaigns - there's info on the wiki, although most of that is for the very early minicampaign - the one I'm working on now is the very latest, in 2334) as I'm up at site, and I can FRED but not do much else. Personally, I think it's turning out pretty cool - old-school, FS1 style action without shields - it's very different to a post Capella type campaign. Cruisers are a threat (Hell, freighters are a threat) and mistakes are punished, even by retail AI. Also, since it's a minicampaign (6 playable missions), and is set a few months before FS1 (so is pretty low on mods), it's progressing at a decent pace (I'm hoping to have the bulk of the FREDding done before I go home in a week or so, although there'll probably be some bugfixing and beta testing and whatnot to do afterwards).
I do, however, have a problem. One pivotal moment in the campaign is intended to take place in an in-game cutscene (showing events happening while the player is elsewhere). Without giving away any details, it'll show a major battle between Terran and Vasudan forces will tip the balance one way or the other (no Spoilers!). Unfortunately, while I am technically capable of making ingame cutscenes, artistically mine leave a lot to be desired. I feel like the scene will have a lot more impact if it's done well, and I don't think I'm capable of creating it to the standard that I want it to be at.
So, what I'm asking for is someone who knows what they're doing with cutscenes to take a crack at this one. It wont require any special mods - I'm basically just using the Port, plus a few public mods - in terms of this cutscene, all that would be needed would be a few custom weapons, one of Axem's skyboxes and my GVGs Hemsut gunship (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/GVGs_Hemsut) (cunningly disguised as the PVGs Hemsut). It also doesn't have any kind of script that I want slavishly followed - I have only the roughest idea of what I want to see, and essentially it boils down to "Show the two sides fighting, show a specific event, show the result, fin" so there's lots room for interpretation in terms of how you might want to present it, what music to use etc. etc. I'm anticipating the whole thing being two to three minutes long, but that too is flexible.
In return, I can offer my undying gratitude. :nod: I'm conceptually open to a trade - I think my skillset is pretty well known, but I can kinda model, kinda texture, make head anis and kinda FRED - but I freely admit that I am horrendously unreliable (ask Goober - sorry Goob! It's coming!), so depending on what you want, it may take awhile. :nervous: I'm good at stations! :p
If nobody's interested, well, it'll still get done, never fear. It'll just take longer, and probably not be as good. So, with that exciting preamble out of the way, is anyone interested?
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Dibs
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Well, that was easy! Although I may regret it, depending in how much rigging I have to do... ;)
Anyway, since that went so well, I might as well turn this into a progress thread! :D
Frontlines 2334 is a TV War era minicampaign, the first in what I hope to develop into a series of similar campaigns in the future. Set a few months prior to the events of Freespace 1, you play the classic Freesoace role of (who else?) Alpha 1, and join the GTD Minnow and the GTAs expeditionary force in their attack on the Vasudan colony system of Deneb.
Frontlines 2334 is very much inspired by the clean, simple design ethos of FS1, and will provide a similar atmosphere, but the game play mechanics associated with shieldless combat and late TV War equipment mean that the experience will be a novel one, especially for those used to post-Capella campaigns.
Current progress is one fully-complete mission, one gameplay-complete mission (I.e. Needs a few messages and a debrief, but is fully balanced and ready to go), one approx. 60% complete mission (this mission will very likely be the most complex in the campaign, FREDwise). Two other missions have been started, and two are yet to be begun (No feature creep, I misremembered in the first post :P). In terms of pace, pretty much the entirety of the FREDding has been done in the past week. I have another six evenings to work on it, so I anticipate a reasonably similar amount of progress to take place, probably 5 missions done by then. Following that, who knows. ;) But I suspect I can throw it together quickly if release proximity gets my motivation going. The only non-public mods I'm planning are table tweaks and a few custom weapon effects/missile models - these I can put together fairly quickly, but if for whatever reason I struggle, they're purely aesthetic, so release could easily go ahead without them (can't see this happening though)
Beyond that, there's not much to say. I'd show off some screenshots except A) My graphics are buggy and B) It kind of just looks like regular Port gameplay at present. So, for now, unless I've forgotten something, or there's anything you really want to know, I guess wish me luck, and watch this space! :)
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And now I know why you liked my campaign idea! :)
Good luck with this. I will play it if you release it, it appeals to me for the same reasons my own idea appealed to me.
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All three of the above mentioned partially complete missions are now fully complete, although one is pretty complicated, and may yet have some hidden bugs, so it'll need a bit more playtesting yet. The other two are still only really in the "started" category, but they will move fairly quickly in the next few days, I'm expecting. Still hoping to have all five (or ideally even more) done by Friday, leaving me two to do when I get back home.
In other words, [Emperor]Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen it.[/Emperor] :D
I'm almost tempted to declare a release date sometime next month, but I know the folly of that all too well. :|
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Looking forward to this. :)
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you are not by any chance freding Operation Thresher are you? becaue i've had a feeling of doing that one myself some time in the future
no need doing it twice ;)
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Nope, not Thresher, this is (non specifically) sometime between 12 and 6 months before the start of FS1.
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just after i wrote that i realized that this information is in your OP
+100 fail points at reading skill
i''m looking forward to your campaign, there is not nearly enough TV-war stuff out there
let me know if you want me to playtest and/or TTS voice act your campaign
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Can´t wait to play this mod.
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old-school, FS1 style action without shields - it's very different to a post Capella type campaign. Cruisers are a threat (Hell, freighters are a threat) and mistakes are punished, even by retail AI.
I love these kind of campaigns, cause they make me :mad:
Will be watching for future updates.
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I'm glad people are excited for this! So am I. :)
Anyway, a bit of an update. I recently got some rather good news regarding my main project, TI, which has seen this get back-seated a little bit, but I'm heading back up to work on Thursday, and plan at this point is to focus on Frontlines while I'm up there. Given the amount of work I was able to get done on my last swing, I think I can safely anticipate a comparable rate of development this time around, so (and it's with great trepidation that I make this statement) I'm anticipating my part of the FREDding to be completed by some time around the 23rd of September, at which point I'll probably need to do quite a bit of my own testing before sending it out for public beta-ing. So the date for that isn't really finalized. Also, given that the campaign is very contained and has a limited number of missions/roles, I'm considering shooting for voice acting on first release, but that is very much up in the air at present. My main hindrance is the very real potential for a 1.1 release that might require new lines under certain circumstances. Which would be a pain in the neck. It's under consideration, anyway.
So, yeah, things stalled for a little while but are about to pick back up again. Release should easily be before the end of the year. I think. Hope. Maybe.
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Another mission officially into the "Completed" pile. I don't think I'm going to have the FREDding done by September 23rd, partially because I haven't been as productive as I hoped while I've been up here, and partly because I think I need an asset that doesn't yet exist after all. It's nothing outside my capabilities, so I'll be able to do it myself, it's just a question of what level of priority I put on it, given how much other FS stuff I want to get done. The degree to which the FREDding gets done over the next several days will be a factor there.
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This is an early look at the PVCa Ramses - the above mentioned asset - in a very, very WiP form:
(http://i42.tinypic.com/29cqt7q.jpg)
The model itself I am... unhappy with, but multiple attempts to change it (both when I was building it and recently in response to IRC discussions) have consistently made it worse. I am terrible at smooth or organic modelling - the acceptance of this shape is more or less me admitting that. :p
WRT the textures, most of the grey will need to be redone (more properly just "done" - what you're seeing here on most of the trim was just thrown on there so it wouldn't have Lith's auto-generated black and white lines), and the smoothing is obviously borked (this smoothing was auto-generated by Deep Exploration rather than done by hand, as the final model's will be). The grey and black stripy bit at the back is also only just started, and I'm probably going to replace the reddish Typhon texture on the side, though I'm not sure with what yet. It's also not yet AO baked.
I'll also be adding a few turrets - for the record, those pods on the sides aren't turrets or associated mounts. Ingame, they will be destroyable submodels, probably comms, sensors or navigation. I may yet go through and change some to different looking structures so they can be all three.
I need this to finish the campaign, so I'm doing it at a decent clip. I have a standing policy to release all Frontlines assets as they're completed, so it shouldn't be too long before I can release this thing - andf hopefully, not long after that, the campaign itself.
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I like it.
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The model itself I am... unhappy with, but multiple attempts to change it (both when I was building it and recently in response to IRC discussions) have consistently made it worse. I am terrible at smooth or organic modelling - the acceptance of this shape is more or less me admitting that. :p
There is no need to worry, Black Wolf. This thing is perfectly fitted for FS1-era if you ask me.
And btw, this render is pretty :D
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The model itself I am... unhappy with, but multiple attempts to change it (both when I was building it and recently in response to IRC discussions) have consistently made it worse. I am terrible at smooth or organic modelling - the acceptance of this shape is more or less me admitting that. :p
There is no need to worry, Black Wolf. This thing is perfectly fitted for FS1-era if you ask me.
And btw, this render is pretty :D
I second that. I really like classic look of that ship :yes:
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Textures are done. But there's still debris (including all the submodels), poffing, maybe LoDding - that will be a bit time consuming if I end up doing LoDs, so it may or may not happen - shine, normals, tabling and testing. Ideal world, it's finished in the next two days (without LoDs). Real world... end of the week maybe. But when it is out, back to FREDding :D
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The end of the beta has meant I can no longer upload full res PNGs - so apologies for the crappy low res JPEG texture. But this is pretty close to the final look of the ship now.
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Looks like a sad dog smiling.
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Lookin' good.
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A little bot of pof work still to be done (including possibly tweaking he size up a tad - it's presently 966m long, which is just under where I wanted it to sit) and I need to do the tidying up, convert the texs to DDS that sort of thing. But it's ingame, the debris and submodels work, the turrets shoot, the fighterbays launch fighters, all of that is as it should be. Will release tomorrow I reckon.
(http://i41.tinypic.com/33cssqu.png)
(http://i42.tinypic.com/2nv43tw.png)
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So, with the release (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=85875.0) of the carrier, I started FREDding the actual mission, but it became harder and harder to justify the fact that the assault on a major Vasudan capship was happening without heavy bombers - the GTA would have had some kind of heavy strike craft. So, given that there was nothing I really liked on the wiki in that role, and I didn't want to make anything new, (I've delayed too long on this project as it is) I had to do something else. Hence:
(http://i39.tinypic.com/29eol1l.jpg)
Mars class bomber - obviously, it's a kitbash and texture tweak of Col Fishguts' Rhea - full credit to him for the vast bulk of the work.
Download (http://www.mediafire.com/?kqo0x0r32a32ybb)
Mesh is as yet untested and it currently lacks a table. I'm not wiki-ing it or making a proper release thread since it kinda doesn't really deserve one. I'll throw it up as a variant once FL is out I guess.
Anyway, on with the FREDding!
[EDIT]Looks like the pof references the worng textures - this will need to be fixed in PCS2 if anyone wants to use the model, but it's an easy fix. Really, this emphasizes that this is more of a WiP than an actual release - I'm mainly only putting it out to hold on to my stated goal of releasing all my FL stuff as I finish it, because I couldn't justify a full on release for what was really only a couple of hours modifying someone else's work.
[EDIT2]Also, the glowpoint is off in space somewhere forward of the tail. Really should have looked at this ingame before releasing anything. Once again, reiterating this is a WiP.
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mh, nice
the next time i'll be super bored i'm going to make a team colored version ;)
edit: i've actually done it at once, together with adding LODs and creating a table, download will follow tomorrow
thinking of it, the textures should actually work as a team color version of the Rhea too...
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do you need someone to test this campaign count me in
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... of Col Hornet's Rhea -...
Wat? Ok, I haven't been around much lately ;)
Funny looking kitbash though :yes:
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... of Col Hornet's Rhea -...
Wat? Ok, I haven't been around much lately ;)
Whoops! :nervous: Can't keep my colonel's straight. :|
Of course, I cocked up, original model is by Col. Fishguts, not Col Hornet, and is bloody good too!
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This is a Vasudan "tug", designed specifically to dock with Aten cruisers. It grabs them if they've been damaged or disabled and drags them through subspace for repairs. Given that it handles the dead (or near dead) I'm thinking about calling it the "PVT Sarcophagus", but I'm not entirely sold on that. Anyway, for those wondering, it will dock like this (http://i40.tinypic.com/sb0un9.jpg).
For the record, I have also been FREDding - the mission for which this model is required is one that I like, but one that I can use in pretty much any frontlines minicampaign - and given that it wasn't part of the initial mission plan, adding it would be feature creep, which I'm trying to avoid. So this may get used in this campaign, or I may put it n the slow burner and use the mission idea in a future minicampaign. There's still more mesh work to be done, obviously - I want to add some greebling to the sides and base, and up the detail count on the "arms" leading to the bridge at the front. It'll also be armed, so a few turrets to come yet.
[EDIT]UVing is complete, and was less painful than I originally expected it would be. So, makign the actual texs (and possibly, eventually a bridge interior model) is the next step. Ho hum. maybe it will get included in 2334 after all.
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(http://i44.tinypic.com/2rm06z8.jpg)
These weapons have been tabled in-game for awhile, but I only just got around to making models for them. On the left is the Phoenix III, the GTA's best anti-turret weapon (and a personal favourite of mine from the weapons available in 2334) and on the tight, the Thunderclap heavy bomb. Both very useful for anti capship operations against the Vasudans.
[EDIT] - Another angle (http://oi43.tinypic.com/2lnh9jo.jpg).
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Please say that someone makes a joke about giving Vasudans the clap. :D
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I take it these weapons will have less power than what you use in FS1?
Please say that someone makes a joke about giving Vasudans the clap. :D
Nooo... :D
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I take it these weapons will have less power than what you use in FS1?
They do. Phoenix 3 has lower range and less damage than the Phoenix 5, although it's a trade-off, since the heat-seeking means that it's much quicker to fire off than the 5, especially if you have them in two banks. Once you're used to the missile's quirks, you can very efficiently defang a freighter or a cruiser with them. The Thunderclap is slightly faster and longer ranged than the Tsunami, but does half the damage.
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any chance you could release the models? i've been looking for some good early terran bombs for ages...
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any chance you could release the models? i've been looking for some good early terran bombs for ages...
Sure. Link (http://www.mediafire.com/?bfa5pdxcr9a61ld)
In other news, Goober has agreed to add me a little private forum for beta testing the finished missions (currently 5 complete and another very nearly complete, just needs some messages added and some additional debrief stages). So things are moving along very handily at this stage. :)
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(http://i44.tinypic.com/2h3ssg4.jpg)
It's fully dynamic (http://i43.tinypic.com/2j2z2o9.jpg), and the amount of damage you do (as well as the ships you prioritize) determines whether you pass the mission. For the record, also a minor PITA to do. But worth it I think. :D
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that's pretty cool indeed, and thanks for the missiles!
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How about nout for the tug? If you search for that goddess's meaning you'll notice it seems compatible...
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OK, for those who're interested and wondering why updates just stopped, well, I have spent big chunks of the last couple of weeks helping my brother paint and move into his new house (still working on that last part actually) which has meant no FS time in my schedule. However, that is nearly finished, and I should be back into it very soon. Also, before I got started on that, I had a few people run through the missions I had in the completed pile - a few bugs were noticed (most of which have now been fixed) but the big issue has been the difficulty. Rebalancing the campaign to make it realistically beatable for those people who didn't happen to FRED the missions is going to be a tricky business, especially since I really do want this campaign to fall on the harder end of the spectrum.
Anyway, should be able to get back into fairly intensive FREDding from tonight - new updates to come soon. :)
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:bump:
I'm still working away at this. 4 missions are now in what I'd call the complete pile, although a couple are pending tweaks for difficulty once the testers get ahold of them. 2 more are very close, and really mostly need messages and debriefs.
The last few are definitely much farther away - my end of the agreement with mjn is finally starting to progress, so hopefully the ingame cutscene will be going ahead before too long, and the final few playable missions have at least been started (although they're somewhat embryonic), though a lot more work is needed. I've also been convinced to add a training mission that will help to introduce players to the ideas of TV War era combat - shieldless combat, ****ty missiles, things like that.
Finally, I've pretty much decided to delay the Aten recovery mission and insert it into another minicampaign - it wasn't plot critical, and the amount of delay required to finish building the model would be unacceptable, given my aim for a short development time (already dragged on much longer than anticipated).
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I've added a poll to the topic - please let me know your opinion. Will only run for a few days, so decide quickly!
Also: http://imagebin.org/290147
This is still a WiP - as well as LoDs and debris, I'm going to put some big, sweepy arms from the boxes into the centre, one set going up, one going down, with big sensor subsystems on them, plus probably some kind of greebles on the outer sides of the boxes (Docks, perhaps, or additional windows). In all honestly, it's a bit too close to the Abydos design, really, but I couldn't think of another design I could do quickly, and this is for a specific mission, so I needed it to be done sharpish. Besides, it's of the same generation, so I'm letting myself get away with it. :D
[EDIT]Just thought, with a few tweaks, and a big enough asteroid model, this might see additional use as a Vasudan mining station. Hmmm...
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It's pretty!
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I don't want to be a killjoy, but I don't think I want to see any of those four ships show up in this campaign. Maybe the Valkyrie at a stretch.
What could be amusing though would be a very early Herc, which performs poorly, and is mocked by the pilots on the mission as being a flying brick or something that will never amount to anything. :D
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I think a Herc prototype would be fun. A Valkyrie prototype sounds pretty much like a GTF Angel, which we've seen. A zeus prototype sounds a little too... advanced? Somehow it seems weird to have it that early. An early Medusa might be interesting.
Anyway, I'm definitely looking forward to it once it's done!
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Hmm, Herc and Valk are way out in front, But three votes between them, pretty close. Interesting.
Also, de-doughnutifying a tad: http://imagebin.org/290236
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It's cool :yes:. I have a question, do You bake your textures from tiles and than adjusting them in GIMP/Photoshop? What is your method?
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Heh, well, I definitely cheat, no doubt about that. I'm not exactly proud of it, but it works! ;)
For simple meshes like this one, where I need to get it done quickly so I can get back to FRED, I'll normally build it in Max, then UV Map it in Lithunwrap, then apply the textures in Paint Shop Pro. I'll often start by pattern-filling tiles onto large areas of UV space that need them, and then adjusting it/adding detail as needed across multiple layers. Not everything is floodfilled though - big chunks of the texture are still handmade, but when time is of the essence, and it's aesthetically acceptable in the specific context of the mesh, it can be gotten away with IMO.,
The method is very, very quick, but allows for the addition of extra detail as needed at a sub-poly scale, which tiling just can't do (unless, as you say, it's baked and added in later). You have to have the correct sort of mesh for it to work though. You can get reasonably good results from this FS1 vasudan palette, with lots of large areas of smooth polies for an armour texture to work on, although it's far from foolproof - I think the Abydos turned out very well, but I've never been happy with the sides of the Ramses - I just couldn't think of anything better to put there so I fell back on the floodfill method. On the other hand, it would look terrible on something like my Tug from earlier in the thread, for example, because the mesh is both smaller and has fewer areas of large smooth armour. That's one of the reasons why I can throw this together in a day or two, while the tug would\will take weeks, probably, to do right. The end result will probably be better on the tug though.
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Okay, I hadn't really wanted to do this, but I'm worried the project has started to stall out a little and I want to give it the final push it needs to get released in the next one to three months. I think I need some help.
Essentially, I'm looking for two types of assistance. First and foremost, I need a tester or two. I have had some help in this regard, which has been great, but the guys who were helping have all gotten quite busy, and without feedback to work on, I've had less to go on on the missions that are well on their way to being finalized.
Testing is relatively easy, but it's important to remember that it's about much more than just playing the campaign early. I need people who're willing to replay missions three or four times, and report back in detail on bugs, gameplay, difficulty, all that. You'll need to commit a certain amount of time, and need good, easy to understand English.
Secondly, and I know this will be much harder, Id like some help finalizing the FREDding. Most of the missions have been started, to one extent or another, but need work. I can do that myself, but thee are a couple that haven't been begun yet, or have had no serious work done on them, which Id like assistance with. A couple of these are bonus missions, which can and will be cut if things start dragging on too long. But I'd like to see them finished.
Frontlines is mostly about the setting, and the novelty of pre-great war shieldless combat, and the immediately pre FS1 setting eliminates a lot of the tricks I have in mind for the earlier minicampaigns so, while there's a tiny bit of advanced FREDding, for the most part the missions are fairly vanilla. As such, you wont need to be a super experienced FRED genius to help out. I'm also happy to help developing FREDders - I'm no Axem, but I have been messing with FRED for a very long time, and I have a few tricks up my sleeve. :)
Obviously, Id really like someone to volunteer who's excited about the project for its own sake, but I'm also willing to trade, just like I did with mjn to get the Vasudan head anis. If there's something you think I can help you with and you're willing to FRED in return, let me know and we can talk about it.
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I'd be willing to help with both testing and FREDding.
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Wow, I wasn't actually expecting a positive response so quickly! Thanks for volunteering, I'll arrange access to the forum, and you can have a look at what's been done so far. I'm out at work right now, but will fire off a PM this afternoon to get you up to speed with additional details.
Thanks again! This will make a big difference - with a little help I'm very confident of a release in the next little while. :D
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I don't know if I would be of any value to you, but I'd be willing to try and FRED for you.
As I just posted today:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=74794.msg1741534#msg1741534
I'm thinking to wait until Spoon creates the new Wings of Dawn to make my own campaign, so it would free me.
Anyway, you could go have a look at my work for Wings of Dawn if you want to see if I'd be any use to you. I can post the latest versions of the missions as attachments if you want.
Also, Lepanto and I are friends. Lepanto and I might well be able to work together on this.
I can also vouch for his FRED ability. He’s much more advanced than I am.
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Thanks, Black Wolf. I hope I'll be able to serve your project well.
Lorric, you're too kind. :o
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Thanks, Black Wolf. I hope I'll be able to serve your project well.
I'm sure you will, with what I've seen you are capable of.
He is lucky to have you.
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Lepanto: You have access. :) Scroll down to the forum and have a look at what's been done so far. Feel free to post some thoughts and ideas/opinions - I don't want you to think of the arrangement as "serving my project" so much as contributing to a joint effort.
Lorric: If you're happy to test and FRED, I'm happy to have the additional assistance. :) I'll get your permissions sorted out and you can have a look at the current progress. The forum will appear above gen disc as soon as I sort it out, so have a look, have a play around, and again, Illget a PM through this arvo explaining what needs doing.
I think that the additional two people should be plenty to knock over the rest of the work, so that should be enough for bow. Thanks again guys!
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Lorric: If you're happy to test and FRED, I'm happy to have the additional assistance. :) I'll get your permissions sorted out and you can have a look at the current progress. The forum will appear above gen disc as soon as I sort it out, so have a look, have a play around, and again, Illget a PM through this arvo explaining what needs doing.
I only said FRED, because I have a testing commitment with Lepanto. But I've PMd Lepanto, and if he's willing, I can test for you instead.
I'll keep an eye out for the forum.
I'm surprised you have a forum. This was a solo project, was it not? How come you have a forum?
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Thanks, BW. I saw the forum. I'll do some testing shortly, and give you my impressions. Once that's done, tell me what you want me to do, and I'll get to FREDding.
Lorric, go ahead and test for BW; his project is higher-priority right now, anyway. I would like you to eventually finish beta-ing WFF, though, whenever you get around to it.
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Lorric, go ahead and test for BW; his project is higher-priority right now, anyway. I would like you to eventually finish beta-ing WFF, though, whenever you get around to it.
He is lucky to have you.
I told you, didn't I. It's paying off for you already! :D
I don't have access to the forum yet, and I can't stick around for too much longer right now anyway, so I'll probably have to get into this properly a lot later on.
I guess testing WFF will have to be finished when this project is finished.
EDIT:
Thanks again guys!
You're welcome. :)
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Lorric: You now have access, sorry for the delay. I'm doing this all in between drill holes at work. :) Same goes for you as I said for Lepanto - feel free to offer ideas, thoughts, suggestions, even outside of mission specific stuff - if you're willing to help, I'm willing to listen to input and suggestions in return. If there's going to be a team, then the mod should be a team effort.
Regarding the forum, I have it basically because, err... I asked for it, I guess. A private forum for a pre-released project to coordinate mission testing and such things is a very low impact request, especially given that, as a mod, I already had limited user group permissions access, I was able to administer it myself. Given how many unreleased ex-hosted projects there are though, I would probably not have gotten a public forum/webspace/badge without either a release, or significantly more visible progress than I had when I asked for the private forum.
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Lorric: You now have access, sorry for the delay. I'm doing this all in between drill holes at work. :) Same goes for you as I said for Lepanto - feel free to offer ideas, thoughts, suggestions, even outside or mission specific stuff - if you're willing to help, I'm willing to listen to input and suggestions in return. If there's going to be a team, then the mod should be a team effort.
Regarding the forum, I have it basically because, err... I asked for it, I guess. A private forum for a pre-released project to coordinate mission testing and such things is a very low impact request, especially given that, as a mod, I already had limited user group permissions access, I was able to administer it myself. Given how many unreleased ex-hosted projects there are though, I would probably not have gotten a public forum/webspace/badge without either a release, or significantly more visible progress than I had when I asked for the private forum.
Alright, I see it! :)
Alright, that's good to know. I wonder if I could ever get one then if I was ever able to drag a campaign into it's later stages, and needed testers. It would certainly be a lot more efficient than firing PMs around all over the place. Who knows, maybe I could even get Spoon to make me a child board, since I would intend to make a WOD campaign.
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So, I realized that I didn't actually post a proper status update when I asked for help, and that it's been awhile since I actually did post anything explaining how the campaign is going in terms of progress. So, here goes:
Just int he past few days alone, Lorric and Lepanto have been a huge shot in the arm for the project. Lorric has been testing away like mad, coming up with all sorts of little errors and places to polish existing missions, as well as showing up a few more serious bugs. He's also agreed to take point on the training missions for the campaign, which will teach all you spoiled, post-capella high falluting techno-kids what it was like back in my day! (Aka how to fight without shields, aspect seeking missiles or any of the fancy stuff we already take for granted by less than halfway through FS1).
Lepanto, meanwhile, has also been doing some testing, but in addition to that, he's also taken one of my embryonic missions from "Barely started" through to a very solid WiP, and has plans to improve it further still in the coming days. He actually took the mission in a direction I hadn't considered by integrating some significant Vasudan capital ships, and really improved the way it fits into the overall structure of the campaign.
I've been fixing whatever bugs and errors the testers spot, working on and improving each mission bit by bit, and the standards really are, IMHO, climbing steadily. These aren't hyper complex missions, but they're solid, fun, the player knows what he has to do, and hopefully they're all going to be very close to bug free by the time release rolls around. How far away is that, you ask? Well, the official status thread currently lists 3 missions as complete, and another 4 as "Near Complete", which basically means they have very minor work still to be done, in most cases a bit of debrief tidying up - with one or two potentially tricky bugs excepted, there's nothing in there that should take more than a few hours to fix - I honestly think I can have that number up to 6, maybe even 7 completed by Monday. If Lepanto can continue his FREDding pace, that number could easily be 8 before too long as well. Given that, excluding cutscenes, there are only 10 missions total in the campaign, things are definitely looking good.
Oh, and last but not least, mjn.mixael has agreed (in principle :)) to throwing together a few small CB Anims for us - we don't have many CBs in such a short campaign, but the ones we do have are going to be much nicer now. :D
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Thanks Black Wolf. It's nice to be appreciated. Even if I did pull apart your "complete" missions and show you they weren't quite so "complete" after all, and I'm not finished with them yet either... :p
But don't worry people, for the most part this was minor stuff like he said and all or nearly all have been dealt with. A few more tests to do, but it's looking good.
Anyway, what I really wanted to say was now I'm working on this, it was fun to read the thread through again just now from start to finish, now that I can actually see the work, I can see the progress made on the project through the updates on the thread with a new clarity. Pretty educational and fun.
You can already see in the thread that I was enthusiastic about this project, and while it might possibly have not been clear to Black Wolf in the process of my testing, since I was trying to find things to fix or improve, I'd like to say publicly, that at least to me, he has not disappointed with this campaign. I had some pretty high hopes for it to begin with, and I'd honestly say that they have been exceeded. :nod:
I especially had a blast with one of the missions. It was one of the closest battles I've ever had in Freespace. It was a rush. And I took and kept a screenshot of my knife edge victory.
The campaign isn't going to be revolutionary or ground-breaking, don't get me wrong. It's not supposed to be. But if the low tech, shieldless combat or the setting appeals to you, I don't see how you can go wrong here. It feels like a Freespace campaign. I mean something by :v-old:. And that's what got us all started here, is it not? That was part of what Black Wolf was going for and I'd say he's succeeded. It's the Terran Vasudan War, and it just feels right. :)
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For those who're interested, the campaign structure for 2334 is now finalized - 9 playable missions, one in-engine cutscene mission. Of those, 5 are listed as "Complete", 3 are "Near Complete", 1 is "Started". The remaining, yet to be started mission is the cutscene mission, which will be simpler (and hopefully quicker) than a combat mission (no balance issues, briefing/debrief, mission goals etc. etc.). Also, for the record, two of the "Near Complete" missions don't actually necessarily require any more work - they just haven't been stress tested as much as I would like.
In other words... we're closing in. :D
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Can't wait to play it! :)
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There was a specific mission that needed an extra little boost, so we've promoted a ship from 2322 (where it'll be a somewhat dangerous foe) to 2334 (where it's outdated and outmatched). But it does help the mission. :) This is the PVC Sokar:
(http://i59.tinypic.com/i6jija.png)
Alternate View 1 (http://tinypic.com/r/qsld0n/8)
Alternate View 2 (http://tinypic.com/r/mwtlar/8)
It's a light cruiser, though at only around 100m long and a few decks tall it barely counts as one. The "cruiser" designation is a hangover from its discovery in the early days of the war - had it been first encountered any later, it would have been designated a gunship instead. It borrows heavily from the Ramses - it has the same primitive, blister-based navigational system, and is intended to be more or less the same vintage.
The model still needs some work - normal and shine maps, a couple of basic LoDs and integration of the debris (which is already modeled, just not part of the pof yet), but it's not going to slow down release as far as I can see - we're already balancing the mission in question with the WiP. And speaking of missions, the amount of work in that particular pile continues to shrink - 6 are now "Complete", 3 "Near-Complete".
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I think main texture is a little bit too bright. It should be darker and less saturated, just like main Typhoon texture. At the other hand, it looks just as pre-GW vasudan cruiser should look like. Great work!
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Our hoting has been made official, and the public board is up! (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?board=247.0) So I probably wont be updating this thread any more - check our shiny new forum for future updates. :)
Also, we've made the May 9th release date official - we still have a little bit of work to hit it, but we're remarkably close - I know FS projects haven't always had the best relationship with pre-announced release dates, but I'm feeling good about this one! There really is very little left - all of the playable missions bar two are complete, and those two really just need a tiny bit of icing - they're both release quality right now.
Start getting excited folks! :D
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Move the thread over in case anyone wants to reference earlier posts.
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OK, so, now that this thread has ended up in our forum, I guess I will keep updating it. :p
Big news - all playable missions have now been declared final and releasable.
I'll continue to test, particularly in terms of the campaign progression (the fc2 file will be my next task), but I'm confident that the vast majority of the bugs have been eliminated (certainly all the ones we know of).
All that remains now, other than the fc2 file, is the cutscene mission (which is being actively worked on as I type), a quick standardization run to ensure briefings, hotkey usage and other stylistic things are being used consistently, and the final packaging of the missions and mods into VPs.
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Yay! I'm really looking forward for this. :yes:
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Congrats Black Wolf, it's always great to see projects having its end run in sight :yes:
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FC2 file assembled. Was both easier and harder than I expected, in different ways. Crossing those ts, dotting those is. :D