Hard Light Productions Forums

FreeSpace Releases => Mission & Campaign Releases => Topic started by: KappaWing on March 29, 2005, 07:20:35 pm

Title: Demo Release: Relentless
Post by: KappaWing on March 29, 2005, 07:20:35 pm
This is the very beginning of what is to become a 51 mission campaign project. Vanillaspacers need not worry, SCP not required. ;)

Scroll down a few posts to download from the Hades-Combine.

If this isn't enough action for you, you can check out some screenies I posted in the "Celebration of Freespace" thread.

Enjoy! :)

Edit; The music may not work for one or more of the missions. This, of course, will be corrected before Chapter 1 release. In the meantime, you can choose your own soundtrack with FRED. :p

Edit 2; There seems to be some problems with ship/weapon allowances. Simply open up the campaign file with the Fred campaign editor, and under the 'initial status' tab, check all ships and weapons.
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: BlackDove on March 29, 2005, 07:22:39 pm
Any info on what it is, story, possible characters, timeline, whatever else?
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: KappaWing on March 29, 2005, 07:27:32 pm
The basic story is posted on Skippy's campaign list. Since it's mainly a story-driven campaign, I can't reveal much. Just play it! :p

If the link doesen't work, right click and "save as".
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on March 29, 2005, 10:21:03 pm
Hey, I think there are some problemos with the demo. I was going to start the first mission and none of the fighters had any weaponry. You have to authorise what weapons the player can get in the campaign editor. There were also some grammatical/spelling errors, but those are less important.

This thread would also probably be better recieved in the campaigns forum where people generally go to grab new missions.
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: Goober5000 on March 29, 2005, 10:28:00 pm
Moved.
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: WMCoolmon on March 30, 2005, 01:25:20 am
Er, I can't get the archive to work.
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: Spicious on March 30, 2005, 01:39:00 am
You have to copy and paste the link, or it'll redirect back here and you'll download a copy of this thread instead.

Here's a download mirror anyway: http://hades-combine.com/hosted/files/cobra-kahn/upload/uploads/XC-02.zip
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: KappaWing on March 30, 2005, 11:41:51 am
Ummm. Sorry bout that. Just open up the campaign file and enable all ships/weapons.

Typos and grammar will all be corrected during the final testing.

And thank you for the mirror, Spicious! :D
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on March 30, 2005, 11:33:39 pm
I played through the four missions and it wasn't too bad. I don't think your campaign thing is quite complete, because I totally failed mission 3 yet it still allowed me to go to the next one.

      Some of your ideas are interesting. Your missions could use the escort and directives a bit more. Also I wasn't sure what kind of campaign you were going for. Some of the briefings are pretty detailed, so it seems serious but then during the briefing there's a joke or two which makes it seem more like a comedy-driven campaign. I'd pick one or the other.
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: KappaWing on March 31, 2005, 10:08:43 am
It is meant to be a serious campaign, so I'll probably edit out the lame jokes when i do the voice acting. I didn't think they fit the mood of the campaign either. What I usually do when making an escort list when more than 3 ships need to be protected usually takes some time. I let the mission run by itself on very easy, and I take note of which three ships were destroyed first. I usually finialize all the escort lists late in the process so I can test them extensivley before I decide which ships get first priority.

As for fail-and-continue thing, those will be added before final release. I let the player continue for a reason. I didn't want players to become frusturated with the difficulty of the first and third missions and just quit before they completed the Demo. (As you can probably tell by now, I'm a horrible pilot ;))

And If you're hunting for more info, I just got my website (www.game-warden.com/kappawing) up so you may want to check there. The missions still need much polishing before final release. So, what do other people think about this? Good? Bad?
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: Goober5000 on March 31, 2005, 04:06:21 pm
Eh. :blah:

Well, you're competent with FRED.  All the different aspects of mission design are used adequately.  It's not a n00b mission. ;)

However, there were a lot of things I didn't like about it.  There were a bunch of balance problems, and the missions tended to be either boring or tedious.

The plus side is that the campaign shows promise. :) As AA said, there are some good ideas but IMO they weren't used to their full effect.  Fix the balance problems, make the missions more interesting, and make them shorter... i.e. don't cram more stuff into the mission than the mission deserves.  All the missions, except mission 4, were longer than they needed to be.

Are you part of FRED Academy?
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: Ransom on March 31, 2005, 09:07:35 pm
Hmm. Well the missions seemed kinda awkward to me, the main thing being huge waits all over the place with nothing to fill it. Though I did experience some funky sexp turbulence in the first mission where the Ravana got destroyed before the escort cruisers, and then everything went downhill from there as the pilots started screaming about how the Ravana's powering up its beam cannons and it's tearing them apart. The mission concepts themselves though were pretty cool.

The story, on the other hand, was very cool. However I do think there were some problems with its execution, for instance
Spoiler:
the mind-controlling Shivans, while an interesting concept, would have worked better if the Vasudans didn't do the whole 60's scifi act, maybe if they'd just gone silent and cut off their communications or something before warping out. Also I think whatever happened onboard the derelict in Betelgeuse could have been handled better - their screams were kinda unconvincing, again sudden silence would perhaps have a more eerie effect... but it's your story of course, just some suggestions.
The only other gripe I have is the whole humour thing (Lampshades? :ick: ). With a bit of polish this could turn out to be an awesome campaign. :yes:

In short, pretty much what Goober said.
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: KappaWing on April 01, 2005, 11:00:32 am
Yes Yes, I know. The lame humor will definatley be corrected before final release.

Spoiler:

As for th'whole mind control thing, th'GTVA needs t'know that th'Vasudans were abducted with mind control. It be very cruicial later in th'story.

Thanks for th'idea about th'Equnox. Their screams shall be silenced!


I probably will make only minor changes t'the first four, but I will keep these balance issues in mind while designin' th'rest o' th'campaign. When ye say 'balance' do ye mean that some missions were too easy/hard? Or that thar were simply too many wings? I will fix th'mission 1 SEXP problem with a ship-guardian on th'Ravana, but how th'heck did ye manage t'destroy th'Ravana before th'Warspite got into position?

Spoiler:

The whole point o' that part o' th'mission was that ye were supposed t'be fendin' off waves o' Shivans while th'bombers take out th'cruisers, then th'Warspite eventually completes it's waypoints. When that happens, th'Ravana beams it. Then when all hope be lost, th'Vasudans jump in t'save th'day. If th'Ravana be destroyed before th'warspite, th'whole mission be broken.


What is the Fred Academy? I've seen people talk about it before but I don't know what it is.

Arr! Ye [V] pirates have boarded th'forums! :arr: Any more feedback will be greatly appreciated! Yarr!
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: karajorma on April 01, 2005, 11:46:08 am
FRED Academy (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,28122.0.html)
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: Charismatic on April 02, 2005, 08:29:10 pm
So this campaign release has Voice files?
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: KappaWing on April 02, 2005, 09:28:28 pm
The final release will have voice acting. The demo does not. This is because i will be making some changes to the missions and I hate doing the voice acting all over again. The only reason I was able to release the demo was because the first four missions didn't contain any ship or weapon mods. When the final campaign is released, it will be in two sections. One section will be the modpack, and the other section will be the chapter 1 mission pack. I do it this way because when chapters 2 and 3 are released, I only need to post new mission packs.

I am trying to keep this project retail-friendly, and I would like to know how many ships the retail version can handle. I am already using eight additional ships and I'm afraid I may be crossing the line.

And storywise, although it may seem that I have leads that go nowhere (the demo itself is comprised of 2 totally unrelated events), everything ties in at the end. I aim to have four plots going at one time. two of them you've already seen, and two of them you haven't. These four plots intertwine and converge throughout the course of the campaign.
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on April 02, 2005, 11:39:05 pm
8 additional ships? No big deal, get rid of the irrelevant stuff. Like the Amazon drones, space chunk, small sathanas, etcetera.
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: StratComm on April 03, 2005, 01:25:00 am
You're just using 8 ships above the retail tables?  Size may be an issue, but you should be fine on the number of ships.  If you're getting crashes, try cleaning out the irrelivant crap (comments) from you tbl file.
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: karajorma on April 03, 2005, 01:25:55 am
The limit on retail is 130 ships or a ships.tbl file of ~380k.

Go over those limits and weird things may start to happen
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: Annorax on April 04, 2005, 10:40:06 am
Quote
Originally posted by KappaWing

Arr! Ye [V] pirates have boarded th'forums! :arr: Any more feedback will be greatly appreciated! Yarr! [/B]


I thought th'pirate crap was th'April Fools thing only. Guess I was th'wrong. (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v86/annorax/jackoffsmiley.gif)

I'll play th'demo sometime later today. I'm a horrid pilot, so
Spoiler:
if I take out th'Ravana, something's seriously th'wrong.
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: Kie99 on April 04, 2005, 11:29:29 am
What th'Phuck?
Title: DEMO RELEASE - Relentless
Post by: KappaWing on April 04, 2005, 02:31:19 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Annorax


I thought th'pirate crap was th'April Fools thing only. Guess I was th'wrong. (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v86/annorax/jackoffsmiley.gif)

I'll play th'demo sometime later today. I'm a horrid pilot, so
Spoiler:
if I take out th'Ravana, something's seriously th'wrong.
[/B]


The pirate thing... It was... a joke. :rolleyes:

Acually, I have no idea how RA took out the Ravana unless he set every single wingman to bombers, loaded them up with cyclopses, and ordered them all at the Ravana.

Or he just ~k'ed it to death.

Oh, and btw, in the final version, the 'w' key will automatically self destruct you. Mwahahaha!!! :lol: It shouldent be too much of a problem, cause If I can beat it on Medium, anyone can. And besides, if you get stuck you can just jump out five times.