Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: DarkBasilisk on October 09, 2007, 03:17:38 pm
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I was starting to read through parts that latest FS3 thread and I got to thinking, I think the important question is not whether as a mod community whether we should make a kind of unofficial sequel (I know there's knives thrown if any kind of thread brings up that question), but whether with some of these campaigns we already have made a sequel. Now its not as cut and dry as one campaign that people started to treat as cannon, but we've gotten a couple of campaigns that other fred-ers have decided to assimilate as background for their work. There's a number of campaigns that incorporate Derelict into their storyline, most notably BWO (if it ever comes out), and Inferno's had a couple takers on campaigns based off that storyline (some I think are still in production). Its two different possibilities yes, but especially in the first case isn't this starting to form some kind of unofficial cannon that could constitute an unofficial FS3?
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The idea is that these campaigns are speculation into what could have happened after the Supernova. Noone ever saw a point in labelling one or the other as canon.
However, the community has already created FreeSpace 3 several times over for all pratical purposes. Almost every recent user-made campaign is superior to the canon FreeSpace 2 campaign, in my opinion. If one of the Volition mission designers came on here today, he'd be considered a novice; "our" modders put a lot of effort into their work, and it shows, in contrast to Volition (which faced both a profit motive and a firm deadline). So yes, there are many FreeSpace 3s out there.
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I second -Joshua-'s post in the FreeSpace 3 thread. If we just had a novel or something from Volition, which explained what was supposed to happen in FS3 and how the story would end, I'd be happy. As in, I'd be happy to know the 'official' conclusions to the story. Not that any of the campaigns we have here were inferior or lower quality; they're just not canon and don't give a definitive answer to the questions FS2 raised..
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The only difference between FS3 and various excellent campaigns that continue the story of FreeSpace is that the authors of the storylines are different. Thus all the campaigns made by fans are fan fiction of a kind. They aren't canon, thus they aren't FS3.
Obviously, being non-canon doesn't diminish the value of fan fiction mods and campaigns the slightest bit.
My opinion is that while FS3 made by :v: or at the very least affected by the original FreeSpace team members would be extremely cool, all the excellent campaigns made by fans - as well as the SCP additions to the possibilities - have turned the game into something more than "just" FS2. As far as the engine goes, it's still FS2 in some regards (although it might be interesting to compare the original source to current and check the percentage of original code in current builds...) but it's so much evolved that it could IMHO visually pass as imaginary FS3 engine from a couple of years ago, but FS3 campaign cannot come from the fan base.
Obviously, as was already said, if there was some kind of closure (book, script, storyline skeleton, timeline or whatever) for the story that came from official source, then a campaign based on it could be claimed as semi-canonical FS3 campaign. But since that's completely hypothetical, there's not much point in this kind of speculation - and the only merit of this campaign compared to fanbase campaigns/mods is that it'd be "real deal" as far as storyline goes. The models described would still be made by fans - unless you could get original :v: concept art for them along with the storyline. Same applies to all the other graphics - effects, interface, mainhalls... The music would be made by fans - unless you somehow got Mr. Wentz to do it, which is... rather unlikely.
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In all of my excperience in the community, not one mod has provided closure for the FS series. But I haven't played inferno, and I used to see new members take it as canon all the time. You figure there might be something there.
But still:
canon = occured in FS, ST, or FS2
non-canon = didn't occured in FS, ST, or FS2
EDIT: IIRC it was on Kara's FAQ: If it isn't V, it isn't FS3.
Unofficial FS3 != FS3. Unofficial FS3 = -4^1/2
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this is all pretty interesting. but i must agree with this guy ^^ and what kara said..if it aint [v] it ain FS3.
also, love the maths there..hahaha. it so works!
does anyone know who actually came up with the concept of the shivans? and the intereactions with the anciants? cause if they came up with them, and the small amount of history we are told, then wouldnt they kind of know where the story was gonna go?
and if not, couldnt we dish out a little cash to maybe, give them incentive to write something down and give us some answers? that way it would be cannon. right?
whats the deal with the guys that worked on FS anyway? do they just not care about their work? dont want to see what we have all done with it? if i made something like the FS series, i would be so proud to see, that even after the companies colapse, the game was being improved upon by the fan base.
also, does anyone know the percentage of source code? u know, how much compared to the origonal have we changed?
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Every person who said that Inferno or the Warzone, Derelict, BWO timeline should be considered canon shout be blitzed.
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Every person who said that Inferno or the Warzone, Derelict, BWO timeline should be considered canon shout be blitzed.
QFT!
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I've seen the term 'fanon' used for unofficial stories that people concur on, but by definition, they'll never be genuinely canonical.
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What are you talking about fanon? I'm talking about 100% canon. I have the box art for the long awaited actual fs3, if any of you wants to see it?
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:doubt: Let's see it.
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Derek Smart's outdone the community this time :nod:
(http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/7168/bc300cv9.png)
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omg dude.. where did u get that? is that real????
*salivates*
EDIT: wait, i get it. i think thats a joke? lol :lol: :doubt:
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:lol:
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Don't be too fooled ;7
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/0b/BattleCruiser_3000AD_box_scan.jpg/476px-BattleCruiser_3000AD_box_scan.jpg)
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and if not, couldnt we dish out a little cash to maybe, give them incentive to write something down and give us some answers? that way it would be cannon. right?
Wasn't this tried before?
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By the way...
THIS is a cannon...
(http://www.people.exeter.ac.uk/nkjdatta/photos/abroad/macau2/cannon.jpg)
...THIS is a Canon...
(http://www.dphotojournal.com/images/canon/canon-400d-xti-rebel.jpg)
...and the correct spelling for "officially true" or "a body of works that are considered to be "genuine" or "official" within a certain fictional universe", as wikipedia so eloquently puts it, is canon with one n in the middle.
I normally do not mind spelling so much as long as I understand it, but when the spelling changes the meaning I really don't like it either. It's not too bad if the context is clear enough to discern the meaning, but still I cannot fathom why so many people consistently write canon as cannon, which is a big honking firearm. Yes, the pronunciation is the same (or almost anyway) but for pie's sake, I'm not even a native english speaker and I've read enough to know the distinction... :mad: :hopping:
*rant over*
...please, just use canon if it's not too much trouble, mmkay? Inquisition, out. :p
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oopsy..sorry :eek2:
wont happen again.
by the way, your a hell of a ranter :nod:
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Was the cannon taken with the canon?
Anyway (and on topic), I'd prefer not to have a canon third installment. I like the range of possibilites and facet being explored by the mod community. No canon instalment would have given us TBP, BtRL or INFA. FS3 would risk undoing the storis and excellent gameplay of too many campaigns.
I say it's best to leave the future of FS where it is - here. :yes:
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Every person who said that Inferno or the Warzone, Derelict, BWO timeline should be considered canon shout be blitzed.
QFT!
Find one such member and I'll help "blitzing" it. :P
Don't confuse a "it's a probable post-Capella scenario" comment with a "it's canon!" one. "Inferno is canon" claims are stupid, I know, but I have been accused of claiming something like that(though it wasn't true)...so don't exaggerate. It's something like the classic "Never put F, S and 3 together" thing, it gets annoying. Incredibly annoying.
I normally do not mind spelling so much as long as I understand it, but when the spelling changes the meaning I really don't like it either. It's not too bad if the context is clear enough to discern the meaning, but still I cannot fathom why so many people consistently write canon as cannon, which is a big honking firearm. Yes, the pronunciation is the same (or almost anyway) but for pie's sake, I'm not even a native english speaker and I've read enough to know the distinction... :mad: :hopping:
:yes:
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Besides, there's no canon evidence that anything had to happen after Capella. The Shivans left, they're happy blowing up Capella and reaching whatever "universe" Admiral Petrarch claimed they were trying to reach. The Terrans have the means to restore contact with Sol, so all the plotlines are tied together (if only in an anticlimatic way). The Shivans at the end of FreeSpace 2 didn't seem too interested in crushing the GTVA, so who says that they would return again for FreeSpace Round Three?
Oh, and just to piss you guys off, I take Dereklict as cannon. ;)
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Derelict is about the only plausible solution.
After that if fs3 did come out, no it would not undo all of the other stories and campaigns out there. They would keep going on their merry way as fans would want to play them. And even though fs3 has not come out, well who's to say that all the campaigns that happen after fs2 right now don't undo each other in the same sense that fs3 would be feared for causing anyhow. If fs3 came out, i'd still be interested in playing these great post fs2 campaigns anyhow and have fun still.
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I take Dereklict as cannon. ;)
(http://users.tkk.fi/~lmiettun/Kuvat/bum.gif)
Well, in that case I take Desu Ex Masiina as a howitzer! Whatcha gonna do about that, huh? Howitzers own cannons, so you lose horribly.
:lol:
...Ahem... I suppose I should also say something sensible in order to avoid excessive spammage of a reasonably sensible topic.
Obviously it's possible that everyone lived happily ever after in GTVA space until the thermal death of universe, but seeing the expansionist nature of both Terran and Vasudan cultures, I'd say it's highly unlikely. Even if Shivans disappeared for good (which is also unlikely IMHO), there would almost certainly be encounters with other species at some point, be they peaceful or hostile.
Of course, the hostile ones are those that provide the most entertainment for us!
...not to mention all the rebellions, uprisings and such. So far there's been at least three canonical rebel factions - Hammer of Light uprising during/after the Great War, GTI Rebellion and of course the Neo-Terran Front which was a full-blown civil war, and that's only in the original timeline from the Great War to Capella incident.
Clearly GTVA's history doesn't really give reason to assume that there wouldn't be any conflicts to tell about... ;7
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Clearly GTVA's history doesn't really give reason to assume that there wouldn't be any conflicts to tell about...
I don't think any society's history gives reason to doubt future (and repetetive) conflicts.
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Of course there will always be war, encounters with new life, bla bla bla. I'm saying that you could technically claim that FS2 wrapped up all the plot points already.
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Oh, and just to piss you guys off, I take Dereklict as cannon. ;)
TEH DERLICT IS RONG
WEERD NAEMS LIKE NYRALOTHEPETSUT IS UNCANNON
TEH BEST REAL CANNUN FS3 CAMPAING IS HEAR (http://mods.moddb.com/7291/the-final-war/)!!!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
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Oh, and just to piss you guys off, I take Dereklict as cannon. ;)
:beamz:
Derelict is about the only plausible solution.
:snipe:
I so enjoy these little turkey shoots :p
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Oh, and just to piss you guys off, I take Dereklict as cannon. ;)
*Karajorma wonders where they keep the ban button on SMF*
You're safe for about as long as it takes me to find it. :p
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Oh, and just to piss you guys off, I take Dereklict as cannon.
That was either the cruellest joke or the most ironic typo ever... I'm still trying to decide which....
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What the hell is the final war? Inferno i did like, but i'm waiting for R2 to come out to get rid of all the stupid **** in R1. If the final war is any good, perhaps we should try to finish it? Then again, i don't want to speak too soon :)
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Star Trek suffers from a lack of continuity with their fan fiction novels. There are some really good novels out there for Star Trek like Q-Squared by Peter David and Mirror Universe Part 1: Glass Empires by David Mack, Greg Cox, Mike Sussman, Dayton Ward, and Kevin Dilmore (each co-authoring it). However, none of these novels are considered canon. In fact, the events of a great deal of them are made impossible by new canon that came after them, thus forcing the reader to assume it is an alternate reality where things happened differently if they have seen all the canon already.
Star Wars, meanwhile, has a linear, non-conflicting "semi-canon" storyline known as the Expanded Universe, from which entire games have been based on (Grand Admiral Thrawn makes an appearance in Star Wars: TIE Fighter way back when, before FreeSpace 2). Each author builds upon the stories of the previous in some way. While the impression I get from reading Wookieepedia's timeline of EU events is that the result is a "comic book"-like storyline (partially because comic books are also considered part of the Expanded Universe), the storyline is nonetheless enjoyable. They even were bold enough to kill off a character from the Star Wars films, and they got away with it. To my knowledge that character is still permanently dead in the EU timeline, and has not been resurrected.
I have an idea...
I was going to propose it earlier in a new thread but I've decided to hijack this one (forgive me) now that people are discussing the topic.
Why don't we create our own Expanded Universe type storyline for FreeSpace 2? Starting with some new collaborative campaign that all of HLP works on (just like the collaborative modeling projects recently started), or maybe not (if one person here is excellent enough), we could create a series of campaigns which always link to one another, like a great long roleplay thread in a roleplay forum, each campaign builds upon the one that came before, not necessarily introducing new awesome ships each release, but developing characters and factions and events as if a real FreeSpace GTVA universe is evolving.
We have the power to do this and still have side campaigns that occur completely independently should someone wish to take more artistic liberties (just say it's in an alternate reality and it's fine). As long as the universe is open ended enough, we could have entire wars spanning several campaigns, politics, characters and other events unfolding as if each campaign were merely an episode of an ongoing series. Events could unfold not only one after the other, but concurrently. We would not be able to make major time jumps with campaigns in this timeline. We'd need rules to govern how long in-universe time passes within a campaign, and an emphasis would have to be placed on keeping things to a certain level of believability.
Would it be all for nothing if then, [V] came back out of the blue? I say no. A FreeSpace equivalent of an interconnected Expanded Universe has the potential to become something amazing. Who knows? [V] might honor us with an FS3 in the timeline we make...
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I'm probably going to get stabbed, nuked, beamed, or otherwise destroyed for this, but I'm working on a campaign, or more likely, series of campaigns, that start about 30 years after Capella... They're all linked, they're all inter-related, but that's about all I can say, cause, well, I've already said too much.
*keeps it secret, keeps it safe* :nervous:
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I'm probably going to get stabbed, nuked, beamed, or otherwise destroyed for this, but I'm working on a campaign, or more likely, series of campaigns, that start about 30 years after Capella... They're all linked, they're all inter-related, but that's about all I can say, cause, well, I've already said too much.
*keeps it secret, keeps it safe* :nervous:
Someone wants to be the leader :beamz: :snipe: :headz: :warp:
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Gregster2k - not a bad idea...Yes, isee htat we can certanly put together a EU from some campaigns made so far....maby a few would need slight alterations...and we can make new ones..
however, this HAS to be done in chronological order...starting from FS2 era campaigns 8taking place DURING the FS2 timilne), then post-capella and so on.
FS1 campaigns up to FS2 are another matter to consider.
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@ Gregster: Wow. Thank you. Your post is longer than what I normally read in a whole day. :nervous:
I'm not very enthusiastic about the idea though. One, most people make campaigns to pimp their own personal FS3 theory and wouldn't be satisfied with something that the whole community had to compromise on. Two, starting an EU project would be equivalent to starting a new mod- in other words, you need to have a lot of enthusiastic people wanting to do that, and it would limit their options and creativity anyway if they decided to join.
Three, EU starts to get repetitive if you're just tacking things on to an existing storyline... Star Wars got sucky once the Yuuzhan Vong came along. I can't comment on the NJO books and such that some people say are good, but I can tell you that modern SW fanfic isn't up to the quality of the Thrawn Trilogy and older stuff. Too many writers, too few of them skilled as happens over time. Any FS EU project should seek to wrap up the storyline and be done with it, not go onto FreeSpace 4... and 5... and FreeSpace Academy.
That was either the cruellest joke or the most ironic typo ever... I'm still trying to decide which....
Not quite, it was missing a WCNews reference. ;) :yes:
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TEH DERLICT IS RONG
WEERD NAEMS LIKE NYRALOTHEPETSUT IS UNCANNON
TEH BEST REAL CANNUN FS3 CAMPAING IS HEAR (http://mods.moddb.com/7291/the-final-war/)!!!
What the hell is that?
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A campaign, apparently. The description says it all. :D
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So you're making fun of some guy's campaign? That's not very nice...
In fact I played it and it's a big BoE mission.
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A big boe mission that works...
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Also, Star Wars didn't end on a cliffhanger, there were no pervasive mysteries, etc. Writers were free to take the existing setting and expand on things not covered, or concoct events that might have happened after the films. The problem with an expanded universe for Freespace is the Shivans: Nobody really understands them, and very few of us are likely to EVER accept a mod that purports to explain them as being canon.
It would be somewhat like what George Lucas actually did: Explain the Force by essentially ret-conning in midi-clorians and subsequently disillusioning a fan base that revered him and the universe he created. It didn't help that every other aspect of the prequels besides the lightsaber fights was bloody awful, but the Force thing was just all kinds of stupid.
Fan explanations for the Shivans fall completely into the "midi-clorian" catagory for me, and probably the majority of us. We're not going to agree on one answer because we think most of them are stupid, and the only one we're 100% willing to accept is our own, barring Volition releasing a FS3 reference bible of course.
The only way you could get everyone on board for such a project would be to completely ignore the Shivans and focus on elements that lack mystery and have no pre-conceived notions coming along for the ride. I can't really see mod designers doing that though, since the Shivans are so integral to the Freespace experience.
There's a line between stories that could be canonical (if in a semi-official way) and fan fiction: Everything dealing with the Shivans crosses it.
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Do what I do - offer no explanation on shivan motives or genesis.
Just have em as a baddie with a mysterius agenda that you have to try and stop. And fail...Or do you? :nervous:
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Yes, that was the other way to get around the Shivan problem, though the temptation to do more with them would always be there. And of course then you run the risk of the fanbase balking over non-canonical Shivan vessels or tactics, even if you leave their origins and motivations alone.