Hard Light Productions Forums
FreeSpace Releases => Mission & Campaign Releases => Topic started by: Goober5000 on March 30, 2004, 01:34:47 am
-
I was inspired by a thread in the FSPort forum to dig up one of my old missions and post it here. One of the first missions I ever made after playing FS1 was a recreation of the Shivan attack on Ross 128. I've been kicking it around for the past two years, gradually improving on it, and actually planning to release it along with Fortunes of War, but I thought - why not release it now? So here it is (http://www.sectorgame.com/goober/ross128.html).
Keep in mind that this is a FS1 mission, so it won't run on FS2 without some modification. I may release a ported version eventually, but that should probably wait until I'm less busy. :p
The mission is fully voice-acted and features one of Dark's planets. I've tried to make it as similar to the FS1 intro cutscene as possible, so let me know what you think. :)
-
:bump: (Wow, I had no idea it was a year since I posted this... :nervous:)
Okay, I'm officially rereleasing this mission. :) When I originally posted this thread, I was deluged (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,33356.0.html) with people reporting various sexp-related bugs - bugs that I had never encountered myself. But now, thanks to the source code, I have discovered the root cause of the problem.
Sexp nodes are shared between campaigns and missions. If you have a large campaign in memory, it takes up a significant number of sexp nodes (the main FS2 campaign uses about 30% of the total nodes available). This leaves fewer sexp nodes available for the mission. If you try to load a complex mission, you may exceed the sexp limit.
So I rereleased the mission in campaign form: a simple campaign consisting of just the one mission. Now everyone will start from the same footing and have the same number of sexp nodes available. :)
The reason it took me so long to figure this out was that the source code has a bug in the sexp error reporting. Instead of printing "You have run out of sexp nodes!" and quitting, it would silently overwrite sexp nodes at random. This led to some pretty strange errors. I only started making progress when some of my FS2 retail missions started generating the same bugs. With the help of the source code, I was able to trace through and nail down the problem.
So, without further ado, here (http://www.sectorgame.com/goober/ross128.html) is the updated download. Let me know what you think. :)
-
:bump: yet again. :p
Admiral Nelson and I have converted this to work using the Port version 3.0. Hopefully this time I'll finally get some non-bug-related comments. :)
http://www.sectorgame.com/goober/ross128.html
-
Hey, can you make a cutscene version of this? ;)
-
:yes:
-
A special thank you to FreeSpaceGundam and to Darkblade for lending their voices!
-
Indeed. :yes:
(Are they featured prominently enough in the readme, or should I give them their own section?)
-
Nice! It was really observant of you to add the GTSC Einstein and Mcarthy bits. :cool:
-
Very cool. :nod:
-
You preceeded me!!!
Has someone ever planned to make a FS2 intro based cutscene mission?
-
Yep, several people. I'm planning on doing one as well.
-
Yep, several people. I'm planning on doing one as well.
unfortunately, on low to medium-end machines with mediavp's that mission/cutscene will be an FPS nightmare. :shaking:
-
That cuscene had some extreme BOE issues.
-
Necrobump! :eek:
Hey Goober. Wanted to let you know that I finally got to play this thing through to the end. I reinstalled FS1 today purely on a whim, and playing your updated version of this mission was the first thing I did. Dark's planet wasn't showing up again (for reasons which escape me :doubt:), but the important thing is that I was able to actually play the mission from start to finish.
Great job! :)
-
Cool! Glad you liked it. :)
-
So I put this in it's own folder and should be able to run it as a mod from the launcher? Because that's not working; I only see the retail campaigns in the campaign room. :confused:
-
It's a mission. Not a campaign. Go to the Mission Simulator and it should show up.
-
Under what name? Running the FSPort mod makes a whole bunch of missions that I don't recognize pop up in the mission simulator, and none of them are entitled anything close to Ross-128.
-
Uh, did you make sure you downloaded the one marked "FS2 version"?
-
So I put this in it's own folder and should be able to run it as a mod from the launcher? Because that's not working; I only see the retail campaigns in the campaign room. :confused:
It doesn't include a mod.ini, so you need to do this manually. Go into the launcher and put something like -mod ross128, fsport for the custom command line.
-
Nice, but I thought there were no Hercules fighters back then
-
Took another run at this today (it's an oldie, but a goodie) since it was up on Knossos to try. A couple of notes:
- The Cain that jumps in behind the planet in order to trigger the "battle" music doesn't actually trigger it anymore; the soundtrack doesn't change until the main Shivan force jumps in. This is presumably due to a change in FSO.
- That Hercules is from the future. :nervous:
- Although it pains me to say it, it may be time to retire Dark's planet. It hasn't aged well and will only look worse as the FSO engine and media assets continue to improve, and there's already a giant planet in the mission background anyway. As it stands, it's just a Playstation-esque brown blob that's taking up system resources. :(
- This is sort of a balance issue and sort of obvious, but there's really no way to survive the Shivan attack without totally avoiding it. You mix it up with Manticores and Scorpions in an unshielded Apollo armed with ML-16s, and you die, simple as that. The only way to make it to the debriefing is to get several clicks away from the battle zone and watch the Shivans kill everyone. Now, FS fans will obviously know that a storm is coming as soon as the mission starts, but new players (and hopefully we'll get a few, coming off FS2's recent giveaway on GOG) won't have that advantage. Granted, the whole mission is just one giant Easter Egg anyway, but even so.
-
Took another run at this today (it's an oldie, but a goodie) since it was up on Knossos to try.
Glad to hear. :)
- The Cain that jumps in behind the planet in order to trigger the "battle" music doesn't actually trigger it anymore; the soundtrack doesn't change until the main Shivan force jumps in. This is presumably due to a change in FSO.
I just took in the code and didn't see any apparent changes. The only thing that might affect this is if a support ship arrived less than 60 seconds before the Cain did.
- That Hercules is from the future. :nervous:
Ah, but if you look at the cutscene, the officer's ship display has Hercules ship icons. :drevil:
- Although it pains me to say it, it may be time to retire Dark's planet. It hasn't aged well and will only look worse as the FSO engine and media assets continue to improve, and there's already a giant planet in the mission background anyway. As it stands, it's just a Playstation-esque brown blob that's taking up system resources. :(
Take a look at the screenshot comparison included in the mod folder; there are actually two planets in the background, in addition to the large one. I could replace all of them with a skybox, but I would need someone to create it for me.
- This is sort of a balance issue and sort of obvious, but there's really no way to survive the Shivan attack without totally avoiding it. You mix it up with Manticores and Scorpions in an unshielded Apollo armed with ML-16s, and you die, simple as that. The only way to make it to the debriefing is to get several clicks away from the battle zone and watch the Shivans kill everyone. Now, FS fans will obviously know that a storm is coming as soon as the mission starts, but new players (and hopefully we'll get a few, coming off FS2's recent giveaway on GOG) won't have that advantage. Granted, the whole mission is just one giant Easter Egg anyway, but even so.
I don't think there's really any way around this.
-
Well I think the idea behind the attack on R128 was that pretty much everyone gets killed so it should be OK. Of course one could guardian the player and have the mission end upon the players demise and dump them into a generic DB, but it doesn't seem necessary as literally everyone who has watched the FSPort intro will know roughly what happens in that mission.