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FreeSpace Releases => Mission & Campaign Releases => Topic started by: psyhotik on December 08, 2010, 11:33:33 am

Title: BETA - Sacrifice - single mission
Post by: psyhotik on December 08, 2010, 11:33:33 am

Hi! I would like to show you a beta version of my new mission. I'm not a professional FREDer, it's just more a free time activity so the mission is definitely not a masterpiece but I hope it'll be fun to play ;)

Synopsis: During evacuation of Capella system a convoy carrying classified cargo misses its jump destination...

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?r4km6yytbn5yryn

Few notes:

- the mission should be fully playable* (briefing, debriefings, AWOL/traitor handling included) but it's still a beta as no-one besides me has tested it yet. I would be very grateful for reporting any bugs you will find.
- it was designed to be played on medium difficulty, but there's an element of randomness (mainly enemy attack directions) which may make it easier or harder each time you play.
- it was made with MediaVPs_3612 and not tested without them.
- dialogs were checked with spell checker but not by English Speaker. Please report any mistakes/grammar errors/nonsenses as well :)
- I've imported a background from one of "The Blue Planet" missions. I hope the BP team won't feel offended. I'll create my own background in next version.

Have fun and please write your opinions. :)

* there's, however, a small issue: (please read it after you play. Maybe you won't even notice it)

Spoiler:

The is-destroyed-delay seems not to work properly for Iota and Lambda transports if they are destroyed by the Shivans (the events are not activating). However, if I destroy them by self-destruct SEXP everything is working fine. I was able to workaround this by adding events which self destructs the transports when their hull drops below 5%. It's not a perfect solution, however, and I'd be glad if some more experienced FREDer could take a look at this.

Title: Re: BETA - Sacrifice - single mission
Post by: Rodo on December 08, 2010, 12:20:23 pm

Make the mission shorter, just to start.

People will get bored of just shooting down wing after wing of shivan fighters/bombers.

Died before finishing the mission, so I can't tell you more right now.

Title: Re: BETA - Sacrifice - single mission
Post by: VPR on December 08, 2010, 04:19:10 pm

Quote from: Rodo on December 08, 2010, 12:20:23 pm

Make the mission shorter, just to start.

People will get bored of just shooting down wing after wing of shivan fighters/bombers.

Died before finishing the mission, so I can't tell you more right now.

As said above the endless combat gets a bit long and I also died before the end.

Personally if you're making long missions you need to give players a break every now and then so that they can re-arm at least. It's also a good time to get your dialog in as I missed most of it due to the non stop combat. With breaks as well you can spread out and manage your waves more easily which reduces the need for overly repetitive wave respawns. Still it'll be interesting to see how this develops. :)

Title: Re: BETA - Sacrifice - single mission
Post by: psyhotik on December 13, 2010, 06:21:05 am

Thank you for your opinions :)

No one else would like to comment? Is it really that bad? :P

Title: Re: BETA - Sacrifice - single mission
Post by: Rodo on December 13, 2010, 07:05:21 am

I don't think it's because of that, people round here will probably play only released campaigns.
Plus the fact that we already said it was a long mission, thus making anyone around here loose the interest in an instant.

Yeah, the long mission syndrome is a motivation killer.

Title: Re: BETA - Sacrifice - single mission
Post by: General Battuta on December 13, 2010, 07:06:52 am

Yeah, for whatever reason single missions don't tend to get a lot of play.

Title: Re: BETA - Sacrifice - single mission
Post by: CommanderDJ on December 13, 2010, 05:41:30 pm

I will download it now and play it. :D

Title: Re: BETA - Sacrifice - single mission
Post by: CommanderDJ on December 13, 2010, 06:26:41 pm

Okay, I failed the mission the first time round. I found a few little grammatical errors in the briefing, I'll list them here.

Nitpick mode activated.

Stage one should have "after recharging its drives", not "after recharging the drives". Also, "supposed to jump near Epsilon Pegasi node" should have a "the" before Epsilon Pegasi.

"However, it didn't happened" should be replaced with "However, this didn't happen."

Stage two should have "convoy's escort" instead of "convoy escort", "heavy losses" instead of "heavy loses", and "carrying XM-53 container" is missing a "an" before XM-53.

Stage three should have "the contents of the XM-53 unit are highly classified" instead of "the content of the XM-53 unit is highly classified", "assembling the repair crew with required spare parts" should be "assembling a repair crew with the required spare parts". Stage 3 is also missing a period at the end of the last sentence.

Stage four: instead of "This cargo is critical for the GTVA, maybe even for the whole humanity", I recommend rephrasing it to something like "The survival of the cargo is critical to the war effort, and therefore critical to the survival of humanity". Also in that stage "protect it by any means necessary" should have "with" instead of "by", and "but in this whole Capella Evacuation mess" should have "with" instead of "in".

Regarding the scanning of the cargo, that sentence should have "will be considered a traitor".

The last part should have "get out there and do your job" instead of "go there and do your job".

That's all I could find there. The briefing set up a very nice atmosphere for the mission and I commend you for that.

Like I said I failed the mission the first time so I can't comment on that. I'll do a more determined playthrough later today.

Regarding the fail debriefing, I think that "time will show if we can recover from this lost" should have "loss" as the last word instead.

Also I noticed that the debriefing for failure has no recommendations. It's generally a good idea to include some possible solutions for what might have gone wrong, even if it's pretty general.

That's it for now. I will post more once I replay the mission.

Title: Re: BETA - Sacrifice - single mission
Post by: psyhotik on December 14, 2010, 09:37:25 am

Thank you very much, CommanderDJ :) I'll fix that. As for the debriefing, you are right - there are 4 fail debriefings (including traitor and AWOL) and one of them has no recommendation. I'll do something with it.

Title: Re: BETA - Sacrifice - single mission
Post by: swamper123 on December 23, 2010, 04:23:42 pm

(http://i55.tinypic.com/70waih.jpg) I lost the mission cause so many respawns, but I liked anyway , that scene make me laugh