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Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Inferno => Topic started by: Fusion on December 24, 2024, 07:16:25 pm

Title: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Fusion on December 24, 2024, 07:16:25 pm
Inferno's just gotten better.

https://fsnebula.org/mod/Inferno (https://fsnebula.org/mod/Inferno)

Finish the fight with the EA and prepare for the arrival of another unstoppable Shivan armada. The upgraded version of the legendary 20 year campaign enters its second official release, reaching the end of humanity's civil war and the first step against the Shivans' newest galactic threat. Experience the first two acts of a campaign built around the largest nonretail modpack in the history of FreeSpace modding, along with so much more.

Featuring

- 32 missions covering the start of the EA war to the arrival of the new Shivan armada, ranging from frenetic fleet battles to assault missions, escort, and everything. Trust your wingmen with Inferno's advanced AI suite, and match wits with enemies that sneak up behind you, hide behind ships, and work in teams. Checkpoints help ensure even long missions are fun to play.

- Over 120 new non-retail ship classes, including hi-poly improvements on R1 originals. Inferno now features the largest non-retail modpack in FreeSpace modding history, with classics like the Jotun superbomber and Vesuvius fighter joined by a whole host of newcomers. NOW INCLUDES THE ICANUS.

- Over 65 new player-accessible weapons providing the ultimate Inferno experience, from the Terran Plasma Accelerator and Shocker missile to the EA's infamous combination of Trantor plasma gun and Stinger swarm missile. Blow things up your way in spectacular fashion.

- Over 10 tabled music tracks, including Inferno classics and never heard before original compositions.

(https://i.imgur.com/8cfO512.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/XIvAdQI.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/aDzvrh2.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/XNbfEc5.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/sBdIc8r.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/9zm1VAo.png)

Merry Christmas. This gift sure has taken long enough.

--------------------------------------------

Release announcement articles are also available on ModDB (https://www.moddb.com/mods/infscp/news/after-21-years-of-waiting-inferno-nostos-act-2-has-been-released) and Reddit (https://old.reddit.com/r/freespace/comments/1hlqjin/inferno_2_is_out_happy_christmas_everyone/).
Title: Re: Inferno R2 Release
Post by: Renegade Paladin on December 24, 2024, 08:16:57 pm

Opening cutscene on YouTube.  As of this posting, it's premiering in roughly 15 hours, at noon on Christmas Day.  :)
Title: Re: Inferno R2 Release
Post by: NeonShivan on December 24, 2024, 09:39:29 pm
(https://i.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExZWYxOG01NXJ3b3M2MGY2OTE2bG54eTJzZWFwdThkcXg0c25hYWNxNCZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/YRuFixSNWFVcXaxpmX/giphy.gif)
Title: Re: Inferno R2 Release
Post by: skdKitsune on December 25, 2024, 02:50:50 am
match wits with enemies that sneak up behind you, hide behind ships, and work in teams

Hmmm... I mean, it's technically true...
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno Nostos: Act 2
Post by: Mobius on December 25, 2024, 08:09:46 am
I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to the team for delivering the actual sequel of Inferno's main story after so many years. First of all, I really wish I could contribute more to this release: I'm in the middle of a true challenge in terms of daily routine work and I can barely do the most basic stuff (even today, which is technically a "holiday", I had to refuse invitations so that I could focus on my work).

Working on Act 2 was no easy task. To be fair, working on any Inferno mod after years of development stagnation is never easy. In addition to INFR1 and INFA, which are official releases from 2003 and 2006 respectively, there were concepts for INF SCP, INFA2, and INFASA which had an enormous impact on Inferno lore, and most of these were "safety stored" in private Inferno board discussions from nearly 20 years ago. The team got the criticism and community feedback seriously, and worked hard to make up for some of the old stereotypes about INF. Any modder willing to revamp INF found out about the existence of a significant amount of concepts, designs and plot outlines (as well as missions at various degrees of completion) pretty much no one else in the community knew about. The team behind this release managed to deliver new content matching most of those old concepts, and it was not easy.

So, once again, congratulations!  :)
Title: Re: Inferno R2 Release
Post by: Fusion on December 25, 2024, 08:52:57 am
match wits with enemies that sneak up behind you, hide behind ships, and work in teams

Hmmm... I mean, it's technically true...


0:30
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Colonol Dekker on December 25, 2024, 09:30:59 am
Voice acted to boot?
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: qweqwe321 on December 25, 2024, 09:43:03 am
100 percent voice acted, though Command and some minor roles are still AI.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Damage on December 25, 2024, 09:49:51 am
OMG

Only came here on a whim today.  Thanks, guys!
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: qweqwe321 on December 25, 2024, 09:52:23 am
We'll replace AI Command with a voice actor in Act 3.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: deathspeed on December 25, 2024, 11:17:01 am
This may be hard to believe, but in my 25 years of playing FS2 I have never played any Inferno mods.  Is this the place to start?  Or should I play Nostos or an earlier version first?
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: qweqwe321 on December 25, 2024, 11:29:38 am
This may be hard to believe, but in my 25 years of playing FS2 I have never played any Inferno mods.  Is this the place to start?  Or should I play Nostos or an earlier version first?

You should play this. It includes Inferno 1.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: deathspeed on December 25, 2024, 11:33:50 am
Thank you!  I just opened Knossos and see that Inferno Nostos is updating to 2.2.2 - Final.  :)

This looks amazing, and I am in awe of the amount of work so many people have put into this over the years!
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Fusion on December 25, 2024, 11:38:16 am
This may be hard to believe, but in my 25 years of playing FS2 I have never played any Inferno mods.  Is this the place to start?  Or should I play Nostos or an earlier version first?
Play Inferno Classic first, THEN play current INF. You'll appreciate the latter a hell of a lot more if you do.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Nightmare on December 25, 2024, 02:15:17 pm
Oh my, I'm so glad that this has finally been made. I didnt expect to see this ever get completed but still, there it is. My dearest thanks and a merry Christmas to everyone involved in making this beautiful present :)
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Trivial Psychic on December 25, 2024, 11:37:11 pm
I've only played through the first 2 missions so far, but I spent a few hours going through the techroom database, and I can report a few minor bugs.  There appear to be no glowmaps for the Satis and Ra models.  I could be mistaken, but the Satis also looks less detailed than the one in the media VPs.  Also, although I am able to view it in the lab, the civilian Orion model doesn't display in the techroom.  I've also encountered a number of spelling and gramatical mistakes, but those are minor.  They can be easily found by listening to the tts read them out, or by doing a copy-paste into Word.

BTW, as troubleshooting info for the lab error, I'm using the Dec 25th knightly built and I've updated to the latest ATI Radeon drivers.

Looking forward to playing through the rest of it over the coming weeks.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: qweqwe321 on December 26, 2024, 07:31:39 am
We're uploading a hotfix which should fix the transparency issues (2.2.3)
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Trivial Psychic on December 29, 2024, 10:10:39 pm
100 percent voice acted, though Command and some minor roles are still AI.
Were it not for the lack of a British accent, that AI command voice could almost pass for the Aquitaine's captain, (and I'm not talking about Petrarch).
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Bossman on January 03, 2025, 11:22:04 am
Damn, what a super fun campaign! I don't think I've ever survived so many missions where the ship I'm escorting has 1% hull strength left. The use of AI in some small roles was tasteful, and I thought the background lore about the political situation was sophisticated enough to keep me immersed. the one thing I kept wondering though -- surely, the GTVA must have more wings than this, and what the hell are they all doing? Also, like always the entire alliance would collapse in an instant if it wasn't for me destroying every major beam cannon for the entire war. 10/10

[On an unrelated note, this reminds me of my dream to make a Freespace campaign filled with endless space drudgery as the plot unfolds impossibly slowly like a 1,000 episode anime. Like: What if instead of watching one piece to smoke and chill I just played mission 102 of this endless freespace campaign where odds are nothing interesting will happen but some side character plot may be revealed as we help a colony track down a food pirate in exchange for corvette flak ammo]
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: qweqwe321 on January 03, 2025, 04:35:07 pm
the one thing I kept wondering though -- surely, the GTVA must have more wings than this, and what the hell are they all doing? Also, like always the entire alliance would collapse in an instant if it wasn't for me destroying every major beam cannon for the entire war. 10/10

This is definitely something we thought about when making the campaign.  We deliberately wrote Admiral Ramsey as someone who's in over his head. To make an American Civil War analogy, Ramsey is the GTVA's George McClellan.  Ramsey is obviously capable of building a military, but he's too scared to deploy his main force - which is why Alpha and Beta wings keep having to make heroic stands. 

The chickens come home to roost in Clash of the Titans III, when the Earthers kill the Ramayana and drive the GTVA out of Sol.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Trivial Psychic on January 04, 2025, 02:15:09 pm
I just finished playing through Tobruk, and encountered some bugs, both minor and major.  I swapped out my Vulcans for Disruptors, for one.  Then when the transport tried to dock with that derelict corvette, I disabled rather than destroyed it, disarmed it, and left it alone.  Then, later on after all of the action was over with, I went back and finished it off, prompting both the 'lets get over to the station' messages and and the directive.  You might want to nullify these if all the action is over.  Also, after disabling the transport, and before closing on the station to trigger the attack sequence, I bypassed it and attacked the enemy capital ships.  I disarmed, disabled, and destroyed the flak cruiser, prompting the 'lets press on to the corvette' message to be played.  Then I moved in the corvette and knocked out all its weapons and engines.  I should note, that while the cruiser opened fire on me, the corvette didn't.  Then I returned to the station and triggered the attack sequence.  After the main action was done, there was the 'knock out the beams on the corvette' message, and what's supposed to be the corvette and cruiser's advance on the station.  Unfortunately, with the cruiser destroyed, and the corvette disabled, it was impossible for the mission to proceed.  I then restarted the mission, and did everything the same, except I only knocked out one of the corvette's engines.  I'd hoped to wait until it got within weapons range of the station before disabling it completely, so the station's heavy guns could do what my meager Proms couldn't, but alas it jumped away before that could happen.  Also, once all enemies (except that one disabled transport) were destroyed, the derelict corvette jumped away for some reason, and furthermore, it didn't show up in the event log as having departed.  With no-one aboard, it shouldn't be able to retreat.

So, I'd suggest tightening up the messages regarding the transport, so they don't trigger if the action is over.  Second, you may want to add a second trigger to the attack sequence, should the player get too close to the enemy capital ships.  I'd also suggest leaving at least the corvette's defensive turrets active to begin with, and using a guardian-threshold on its engines so they can't be knocked out... assuming there's no contingency in the mission for its destruction.  Lastly, find out what's triggering that derelict corvette to depart.

Thanks.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: qweqwe321 on January 04, 2025, 08:31:44 pm
Thanks. Passed it on to the rest of the team.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Trivial Psychic on January 05, 2025, 01:02:24 am
I just finished 'The Enemy of My Enemy', and encountered an end-of-mission bug.  Although the directive appears to jump out at the end, I am unable to manually activate my subspace drive.  It only activates after I get the message from Command to not be a hero.  Unfortunately, the delay it creates, allows the Shivans to get into firing range and open up.  Now, I see that there's some kind of 'invulnerable' status initiated for Alpha 1, so the Shivan weapons won't destroy you, but the buffeting their weapons generate, interfere with the jump.  I was worried I'd have to play the mission for a 3rd time and get myself as far away from the engagement site as possible (first time I tried charging the nearby Ravana to disarm it, and got caught up in the fighter swarm, and got disabled before the 'invulnerable' thing kicked in), until for some reason, they released me from their guns and I was able to jump away safely.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: mr.WHO on January 05, 2025, 10:01:06 am
Wow, so much waiting that I actually missed the R2 release.

Now I gotta reinstall, FS2, setup Knossos and try to run the mod.

I wonder if there is still some muscle memory in me after so many years.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: mr.WHO on January 05, 2025, 12:08:31 pm
Hmm, installation and setup was swift and easy overall.

However, I noticed one single issue - Seem like in my game and in FRED, GTI Ishtar is missing most of textures - no other ship or installation seems to have this issue, only Ishtar.


Any idea how to fix it?
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: qweqwe321 on January 05, 2025, 12:35:18 pm
Hmm, installation and setup was swift and easy overall.

However, I noticed one single issue - Seem like in my game and in FRED, GTI Ishtar is missing most of textures - no other ship or installation seems to have this issue, only Ishtar.


Any idea how to fix it?

Download the MVP compatibility package.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: mr.WHO on January 05, 2025, 12:42:26 pm
Download the MVP compatibility package.

Stupid question on my side, since I haven't used Knossos since R1 release a couple years ago - How do I download it?

I don't see in in "Explore" section of Knossos :(

Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: mr.WHO on January 05, 2025, 12:48:30 pm
Is it under Freespace Upgrade MediaVPs > Modify > (scrolling down to bottom) MVCompactibility ?


Edit: It is it! Downloading it fixed missing textures on GTI Ishtar, wonder why it wasn't downloaded or set as dependent for Inferno.

Anyway - thanks for quick response qweqwe321 - now I'll have a nice week with Inferno  :v-old: :) :v:
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Dan1 on January 06, 2025, 07:28:31 am
Going through it now.   Very fun so far.   Did encounter one issue that affected gameplay to me.

Mission: Clash of the Titans III

For some reason my targeting window is blank for the 2nd and 3rd checkpoint.    I had to exit and restart the mission and jump to checkpoint so I had it back.   

Guessing it has to do with the interference from the first part of the mission but it doesn't seem to clear up unless exiting and restarting the mission.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: qweqwe321 on January 06, 2025, 07:29:37 am
Going through it now.   Very fun so far.   Did encounter one issue that affected gameplay to me.

Mission: Clash of the Titans III

For some reason my targeting window is blank for the 2nd and 3rd checkpoint.    I had to exit and restart the mission and jump to checkpoint so I had it back.   

Guessing it has to do with the interference from the first part of the mission but it doesn't seem to clear up unless exiting and restarting the mission.

Can you give me a screenshot?
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Dan1 on January 06, 2025, 08:22:39 pm
Going through it now.   Very fun so far.   Did encounter one issue that affected gameplay to me.

Mission: Clash of the Titans III

For some reason my targeting window is blank for the 2nd and 3rd checkpoint.    I had to exit and restart the mission and jump to checkpoint so I had it back.   

Guessing it has to do with the interference from the first part of the mission but it doesn't seem to clear up unless exiting and restarting the mission.

Can you give me a screenshot?

I went back to try through the tech menu with the mission individually and started from the beginning.   Then every time I would jump out from part 1 to part 2 (or if I started part 2 to part 3 of the mission)  it would give me these errors.   I dunno if this is something on me or not, didn't get this when going through the campaign earlier though.




Could not find index 'Name' in type 'object'

------------------------------------------------------------------

stack traceback:
   [C]: ?
   [string "imjump-sct.tbm - On Game Init"]:162: in function 'DoStage2'
   [string "imjump-sct.tbm - On Game Init"]:107: in function 'Monitor'
   [string "imjump-sct.tbm - On Frame"]:303: in main chunk
------------------------------------------------------------------

1: Userdata [object]
2: String [Name]
------------------------------------------------------------------


LUA ERROR: [string "imjump-sct.tbm - On Game Init"]:167: attempt to index field 'Class' (a nil value)

------------------------------------------------------------------

stack traceback:
   [C]: ?
   [string "imjump-sct.tbm - On Game Init"]:167: in function 'DoStage2'
   [string "imjump-sct.tbm - On Game Init"]:107: in function 'Monitor'
   [string "imjump-sct.tbm - On Frame"]:303: in main chunk
------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------

Went back and verified all files as well, still same messages when going individually from tech room.  Haven't replayed the campaign to see if this happens when going straight through.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: qweqwe321 on January 07, 2025, 07:32:20 am
Going through it now.   Very fun so far.   Did encounter one issue that affected gameplay to me.

Mission: Clash of the Titans III

For some reason my targeting window is blank for the 2nd and 3rd checkpoint.    I had to exit and restart the mission and jump to checkpoint so I had it back.   

Guessing it has to do with the interference from the first part of the mission but it doesn't seem to clear up unless exiting and restarting the mission.

Can you give me a screenshot?

I went back to try through the tech menu with the mission individually and started from the beginning.   Then every time I would jump out from part 1 to part 2 (or if I started part 2 to part 3 of the mission)  it would give me these errors.   I dunno if this is something on me or not, didn't get this when going through the campaign earlier though.




Could not find index 'Name' in type 'object'

------------------------------------------------------------------

stack traceback:
   [C]: ?
   [string "imjump-sct.tbm - On Game Init"]:162: in function 'DoStage2'
   [string "imjump-sct.tbm - On Game Init"]:107: in function 'Monitor'
   [string "imjump-sct.tbm - On Frame"]:303: in main chunk
------------------------------------------------------------------

1: Userdata [object]
2: String [Name]
------------------------------------------------------------------


LUA ERROR: [string "imjump-sct.tbm - On Game Init"]:167: attempt to index field 'Class' (a nil value)

------------------------------------------------------------------

stack traceback:
   [C]: ?
   [string "imjump-sct.tbm - On Game Init"]:167: in function 'DoStage2'
   [string "imjump-sct.tbm - On Game Init"]:107: in function 'Monitor'
   [string "imjump-sct.tbm - On Frame"]:303: in main chunk
------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------

Went back and verified all files as well, still same messages when going individually from tech room.  Haven't replayed the campaign to see if this happens when going straight through.


Thanks for reporting this. Looks like a bug with the script. We're having a look.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Poorly Timed Gimli on January 08, 2025, 04:01:04 pm
Been loving the campaign so far! I have been receiving multiple crashes on Tobruk. Usually just seems to happen randomly during dogfights, not sure what's going on there.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Trivial Psychic on January 08, 2025, 08:01:25 pm
I would recommend making sure your video drivers are up to date.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: qweqwe321 on January 08, 2025, 10:05:14 pm
Been loving the campaign so far! I have been receiving multiple crashes on Tobruk. Usually just seems to happen randomly during dogfights, not sure what's going on there.

I think we caught the big issue with Tobruk.  We're releasing a patch in a week and a half that should fix the stability issues with Tobruk.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: mr.WHO on January 10, 2025, 01:46:47 pm
Having crashes during mass fighter/bomber fights during Tobruk as well.

Looking forward to patch.

Edit: The crash seems to happen after you arrive at the station (post destroying EA transport and 6 fighters) and around less than a minute after Falon launch first fighter/bomber wave (in the middle of dogfight).
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: qweqwe321 on January 10, 2025, 02:06:17 pm
Having crashes during mass fighter/bomber fights during Tobruk as well.

Looking forward to patch.

Edit: The crash seems to happen after you arrive at the station (post destroying EA transport and 6 fighters) and around less than a minute after Falon launch first fighter/bomber wave (in the middle of dogfight).

That's the crash, all right.  It'll be fixed in the patch we release next weekend.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Trivial Psychic on January 10, 2025, 03:50:41 pm
My Inferno install just got trashed.  I'd been playing last week, and today decided to play the mission against the Vindyahar (or however the new Diablo is spelt) but to my surprise, the Inferno splash screen is replaced with a generic 'Freespace Open Engine' one, and I've got the FS2 mainhall, and when I go to the campaign screen, the only one available is the FS2 main campaign.  This is most likely a KNet issue of some kind, but I've tried other mods in my install and this is the only one that behaves like it doesn't exist.  I tried to verify my install, and I get no warnings.  The only mod I've tried that gets me even remotely close to the same result, is S:AH, which also gives me the generic splash screen, but goes to the right mainhall and the rest.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: qweqwe321 on January 11, 2025, 09:04:14 am
Ugh, that's really annoying.  I think it's a Knossos issue - not sure why it barfs like that, but I'd try a clean reinstall.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Trivial Psychic on January 11, 2025, 04:07:43 pm
Re-downloading a clean Inferno install ATM.  Hopefully my pilot's progress will be retained.

[Edit] The clean install seems to have worked, and I didn't lose my progress.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: SF-Junky on January 14, 2025, 10:50:19 am
WARNING! There might be tiny spoilers in this review.

I've finished this mod yesterday. I think this was the first time since playing the original Inferno back in the 2000s - of which I had no fond memories. If I remember correctly, it has nothing more to offer than absurdly large warships and a total lack of any story.

Regarding gameplay, music and assets, this is a top quality mod. I've found a couple of flaws, for instance many radar signs (e.g. for fighters or the Arcadia) have black boxes around them, but that's not really hurtful. The most major thing I've encountered was that Bellum Se Ipsum Alet was kind of broke: the "opening fire" messages from the Vasudan ship played repeatedly and the debriefing showed the same or similar paragraphs repeatedly. It was not mission-breaking, though. Overall, these are child diseases which are okay for an initial release. Regarding gameplay, I'd recommend adding hull repair and the AI could be a little better at avoiding collisions.

Overall, the technology shown in this mod, the ships and weapons feel like a believable extension of the development we have seen between FS1 and FS2, although I felt like there was a little too much stuff, particularly regarding the weapons available to the player. It might just be a question of getting used to, though. The ship models are all awesome and a beauty to watch, putting the fact aside that some of their designs simply don't meet my personal aesthetic preferences (that Bastion thing is so god-awfully ugly, man! :D) - big thumbs up to the asset people there!

The music, while admittedly not mind-blowing to me, was well put together and presents an organic composition. Do I hear the Fury 3 soundtrack in there? I certainly recognized the rocket launch sound.  ;7 :nod:

The voice-acting was awesome! I totally liked the Command VA. I personally could not distinguish between real voice actors or AI voice actors, and even if I'm absolutely not against using AI voice acting. I should, eventually, try it out for my own mod at some point.

Unfortunately, the campaign has one big weak point and that is the story and, tightly connected to that, the general mission design. This is the same problem I have with the Exile and Shadow Genesis mods: taking vanilla-style missions and inflating their runtime to 20-30 minutes does not improve anything. In fact, it's quite the opposite, at least for me. Length neither creates epicenes nor excitement. It creates monotony. Sitting there and blasting wave after wave after wave of capital ships to pieces for 30 minutes is not interesting.

Now I'm not against having long missions, though I generally see little reason to go beyond the 10-minute mark. Good reasons to do so are interesting character dialogue, world building or - most importantly, perhaps - story development. I was very disappointed to find out, however, that none of these things happen in Inferno.

Characters were kind of there at the beginning, but after a couple of missions your wingmen turn into main campaign type non-personalities except that they have a name. But that's not a big problem to me, actually. Not that I'm against good characters but that's not the reason I play FreeSpace. The biggest problem I had in that regard is that nobody seems to be particularly bothered about the destruction of the Ramayana. I mean, that's the ship we were stationed on? Tens of thousands of our friends and colleagues die and all the reaction we get is "Let's raise a glass"? Hell, even I'm more emotionally in real life and I'm schizoid.

What bothers me more is that we learn next to nothing about the world these people live in. This is a very long campaign and throughout it we learn almost nothing about the Earth Alliance, it's internal structure, it's goals, or motives, except that it seems to be some kind of space-commie dictatorship that starts a war because... why not? I mean, yes it was mentioned that the EA wants immediate reunification with the colonies, but why? What's so important about that that you start a war? What is all this about? We know just as much about this after 32 missions than we already knew after three.

In fact, the final mission is a good representation of all that. This mission is a whopping 35 minutes long and of those the first twelve feel completely redundant. This first part is simply a generic vanilla-style escort mission which has nothing extraordinary to offer. You could completely skip this part and start in the debris field right away without missing anything. Searching the debris was more interesting, but ultimately presents little progress either. We already knew that Ross 128c was devastated and we already suspect that it probably has something to do with a new weapon developed by the EA. The only point where it really gets interesting is the final 5 minutes, but again we don't really learn anything but stop at getting teased.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that every mod has to re-invent the wheel. My own mod certainly is no masterpiece when it comes to creativeness or writing or mission design or whatever. But its 2025 and I think we have to offer more than simply extending what we already had in 1999 to 30 minutes. In that sense, Inferno stays far behind its potential. And that is very, very sad for a quality project like this that shows so much determination in pretty much every other aspect. The team behind this visibly put a lot of hard work in this and I whish more of it had gone to world building and story.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Colonol Dekker on January 14, 2025, 12:23:27 pm
Well I appreicate the feedback on the VA,.  I wasn't responsible for anything apart from Ramayana tactical 😅
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Nova Terran on January 15, 2025, 10:54:17 pm

What bothers me more is that we learn next to nothing about the world these people live in. This is a very long campaign and throughout it we learn almost nothing about the Earth Alliance, it's internal structure, it's goals, or motives, except that it seems to be some kind of space-commie dictatorship that starts a war because... why not? I mean, yes it was mentioned that the EA wants immediate reunification with the colonies, but why? What's so important about that that you start a war? What is all this about? We know just as much about this after 32 missions than we already knew after three.

In fact, the final mission is a good representation of all that. This mission is a whopping 35 minutes long and of those the first twelve feel completely redundant. This first part is simply a generic vanilla-style escort mission which has nothing extraordinary to offer. You could completely skip this part and start in the debris field right away without missing anything. Searching the debris was more interesting, but ultimately presents little progress either. We already knew that Ross 128c was devastated and we already suspect that it probably has something to do with a new weapon developed by the EA. The only point where it really gets interesting is the final 5 minutes, but again we don't really learn anything but stop at getting teased.
I imagine that Inferno team wants to explore that in both the last act and the new version of Alliance.

As for the last mission... maybe because I already cleared the Series Resurrecta, but it immediately clicked for me why the Earthers are obsessed with reunification, and what they were trying to do in Ross 128. I don't know if SR is canon to Nostos, though.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: skdKitsune on January 16, 2025, 08:20:44 am
I imagine that Inferno team wants to explore that in both the last act and the new version of Alliance.

As for the last mission... maybe because I already cleared the Series Resurrecta, but it immediately clicked for me why the Earthers are obsessed with reunification, and what they were trying to do in Ross 128. I don't know if SR is canon to Nostos, though.

Series Resurrecta is actually canon to the Inferno continuity, yes. Players will also learn a little bit more about the EA in R3 and some potential bonus missions.

The plot is vague in many places, for multiple reasons. One of them being that we are working with some missions that are over 20 years old at this point. The core plot for R2 is still very much the same as for R1, which isn't exactly "sophisticated". Much of the worldbuilding is also done via tech entries, which isn't exactly ideal.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: mr.WHO on January 17, 2025, 11:02:05 am
Any ETA on crash fix patch?
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: qweqwe321 on January 18, 2025, 02:44:48 pm
In the process of upload - Knossos isn't playing nice today.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: qweqwe321 on January 18, 2025, 05:03:15 pm
Inferno 2.3.0 is now out, including a whole bunch of balance adjustments and fixes - including the infamous Tobruk crash.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: mr.WHO on January 19, 2025, 04:25:50 am
Thanks for the patch - Tobruk now runs flawlessly.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: mr.WHO on January 19, 2025, 11:00:00 am
Continue with my playthrough and have two things to report:

"First combat with Shivans" mission really need a checkpoint, especially with the "suprise" at the end.
Having long scripted flying/talking sequence without checkpoint is literally game design sin.
Granted I had to repeat mission only once, but still.


In the next mission (or one of the next) there is an objective to scan Shivan heavy corvette - however, this corvette has very peculiar and narrow angles for scan - because it's moving it always fall short of couple of seconds to finish the scan. I dunno if it's intended, or I'm suppose to dissable it first, but I suggest making scan clerance/angles much wider.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: mr.WHO on January 19, 2025, 01:58:45 pm
OK, now it's time for a critique.


The amount of "plot armor" invulnerability is too abudant, irritating and random - sometimes it's whole ship, sometimes it's an engine component and sometimes ship beams (one Shivan destroyer) - seriously it's really lame to stuck upon this in every second mission or so - i could understand it for plot critical/hero ships, but it's often applied to what I'd describe as grunt/NPC ships.


Persepolis Burning mission is whole another level of bull****, with missing at least one checkpoint (after missile cruiser/corvette group destroyction and going to engage docked Carrier).

Not to mention post-mission failure suggestion just say "use Spells bro" - very useful, I'm using overdrive afterburner like crazy, but I'm still need minutes to traverse between key mission areas.

Edit:
Wow, it looks like it was those two unknown crusiers launching sub-space missile that cause me a headache.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: mr.WHO on January 19, 2025, 02:38:16 pm
OK, I have consistent crash in Persepolis Burning in the phase where enemy carrier undock.

First I though taking out carrier beams before script cause the crash, but it looks like there is a different reason for the crash...

...namely, when you destroy but a one big turret (the "gattling one" that fire like 5 yellow bullets at once) on the station/pier then the game crash :(
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: qweqwe321 on January 19, 2025, 02:40:59 pm
Can you upload the debug log?
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: mr.WHO on January 19, 2025, 03:00:33 pm
Can you upload the debug log?

If you tell me where to find it, then sure - don't see anything in my Knossos folder that looks like debug log.



Fortunately, I manage to clear mission by not shooting those turrets and making sure none of my wingmen destroy them by accident.


P.S. I find some lore inconsictency in this mission - the Fortress station is in GTA space, but it's EA design/origin - I'm not sure, if EA is capable of building such huge station just under a year (it's like multiple super-destroyers in volume).
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: skdKitsune on January 19, 2025, 03:23:16 pm


The amount of "plot armor" invulnerability is too abudant, irritating and random - sometimes it's whole ship, sometimes it's an engine component and sometimes ship beams (one Shivan destroyer) - seriously it's really lame to stuck upon this in every second mission or so - i could understand it for plot critical/hero ships, but it's often applied to what I'd describe as grunt/NPC ships.



I'm curious, do you have some specific examples for this? We have quite a few allied capships that can either die very early in the campaign or accompany you far into it if you manage to defend them. Not sure if that is the case for a lot of enemy capships.
The thing is that most of these ships have plot armor for a reason. I also doubt that we have "invulnerable" plot armor ships anywhere. They tend to either be guardianed or get a substantial amount of armor, once they fall on low HP.

And as for beams being invulnerable, I don't really know any example of that off the top of my head, but if we have guardianed them, then that's usually to prevent a softlock and set up in a way that you don't really have the means to destroy them in the first place.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Trivial Psychic on January 19, 2025, 10:42:47 pm
I'm up to 'Ad Portas' and I'm having trouble surviving that mission.  That said, I've encountered another one of my mission work-around/cheats.  First using Corinthos, I can disarm the 3 RBC platforms quite easily and quickly, but that's hardly a cheat.  Then, after taking out all of the ships attacking the cruisers, you get the order to nano-jump to protect the Sebek, which triggers the next part of the mission, but I decided, 'why do I need to jump over there?  Nothing's gonna happen until I do, so what if I use my time wisely, and try to do as much damage as I can before then?'  So, I tell all of my wingmen to disarm the EA corvette, then fly over and destroy all of the gungir and RBC platforms, just for the kills, then fly through the gate and go for the corvette.  BTW, I swap out the railguns for disruptors, to more easily take out turrets without running out of ammo.  Once the corvette's beams are taken out, I just go for fighters until the Sebek's escort cruisers take out the corvette.  Then, I make a break over to the Arathusa and its escort cruiser, disarm, disable and destroy the cruiser, then disable and disarm the Arathusa.  After that's all done, I trigger the jump.  Having the corvette gone already, prevents all of the bomber and beam fire damage that normally happen, and despite the fact that the messages warning of them still fire, the objectives go complete as soon as they drop.  Then, I high-tail it back to the Arathusa and start going after the bombers as soon as they launch.  There's more than I can handle, but there's enough of my guys that we can nail them all eventually.  Once the Arathusa escort is destroyed, Tau wing will finish it off on their own, so I group all fighters that I can back at the Sebek.  My plan is to disable all of the artillery cruisers before taking out their missile batters (haven't confirmed if you've protected their engines), so they'll be destroyed in stead of escape, but its during the swarm part of that mission, that I get killed, whether I go for the proper way to play the mission, or the cheat.  I'll try again another day.

As a way to prevent my work-around/cheat from being used, I recommend you rig the 'you have jumped' trigger to become valid if you cross over the way I did.  Maybe key it off proximity with the Sebek-side warships.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: mr.WHO on January 20, 2025, 09:23:55 am
And as for beams being invulnerable, I don't really know any example of that off the top of my head, but if we have guardianed them, then that's usually to prevent a softlock and set up in a way that you don't really have the means to destroy them in the first place.

Sadly, Inferno dumb at you so many ships that can't even tell which one it was (I don't tend to play with having pen and paper to note this stuff down).

I think it was one of Ravanas that jumps, I'm in fighter protecting something, and command tells me they send bombers to deal with it (I know this doesn't narrow it down much, that's how generic this situation sounds).

The problem is that I have compuslive tick, that every time I see Ravana, I lob Trebuchets at her fangs.
So in Inferno, the moment I saw Ravana, I punched like 10 corinthos at het two man beams immediately, hit afterburner and close in to finish with my guns - to my dissapointment, neither corinthos, not my guns did any damage as both beams stayed at 100%.
I moved to other targets, but saw allied bombers dealing with Ravana (not sure, if it was scripted or that just Ravana had god mode exclusively for attacks from me).
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Nohiki on January 20, 2025, 09:53:54 am
I'm with WHO on this one, this is... immediately noticeable in this one, with protecting heavy beams etc. I didn't notice this in any other campaign, but it just slams me in the eyes in this one. One example I had just now is the heavy beam on the EA final corvette during the siege of the Sol Gate. Another one off the top of my head is engines of the science cruiser in the subspace anomaly depot mission.

To me this isn't infuriating because it's done for storytellyng reasons and whatnot, but because It makes me waste missiles.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: SF-Junky on January 20, 2025, 10:50:40 am
To me this isn't infuriating because it's done for storytellyng reasons and whatnot, but because It makes me waste missiles.
Regarding this, it might be a good idea to set subsystems which are supposed to survive in order to not break a mission untargetable. :)
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: mr.WHO on January 20, 2025, 01:31:20 pm
My god, those Super-heavy EA bombers are no joke - they managed to tear my poor Banhee before I was able to say WTF.
This is probably the first bomber in my life that I'm afraid of approaching - at my second attempt I used my full banks of corinthos and still managed to take down only 2 out of 4.


As for Trivial Psychic problem with "Ad Portas" - somehow for me the mission was quite swift and easy, so I didn't need to cheese anything.
However, the absurd amount of ships EA throw at you from every direction somehow made that "M" (monitored targets) button, as well as F9-F12 buttons became useless, didn't provide me with any useful information.

Still, despite this, full banks of corinthos, debeam/demissile everything in sight and resupply (at supply ship kept near) made me somehow pass the mission without much of a stress.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: skdKitsune on January 20, 2025, 02:58:22 pm
I'm up to 'Ad Portas' and I'm having trouble surviving that mission.  That said, I've encountered another one of my mission work-around/cheats.  First using Corinthos, I can disarm the 3 RBC platforms quite easily and quickly, but that's hardly a cheat.  Then, after taking out all of the ships attacking the cruisers, you get the order to nano-jump to protect the Sebek, which triggers the next part of the mission, but I decided, 'why do I need to jump over there?  Nothing's gonna happen until I do, so what if I use my time wisely, and try to do as much damage as I can before then?'  So, I tell all of my wingmen to disarm the EA corvette, then fly over and destroy all of the gungir and RBC platforms, just for the kills, then fly through the gate and go for the corvette.  BTW, I swap out the railguns for disruptors, to more easily take out turrets without running out of ammo.  Once the corvette's beams are taken out, I just go for fighters until the Sebek's escort cruisers take out the corvette.  Then, I make a break over to the Arathusa and its escort cruiser, disarm, disable and destroy the cruiser, then disable and disarm the Arathusa.  After that's all done, I trigger the jump.  Having the corvette gone already, prevents all of the bomber and beam fire damage that normally happen, and despite the fact that the messages warning of them still fire, the objectives go complete as soon as they drop.  Then, I high-tail it back to the Arathusa and start going after the bombers as soon as they launch.  There's more than I can handle, but there's enough of my guys that we can nail them all eventually.  Once the Arathusa escort is destroyed, Tau wing will finish it off on their own, so I group all fighters that I can back at the Sebek.  My plan is to disable all of the artillery cruisers before taking out their missile batters (haven't confirmed if you've protected their engines), so they'll be destroyed in stead of escape, but its during the swarm part of that mission, that I get killed, whether I go for the proper way to play the mission, or the cheat.  I'll try again another day.

As a way to prevent my work-around/cheat from being used, I recommend you rig the 'you have jumped' trigger to become valid if you cross over the way I did.  Maybe key it off proximity with the Sebek-side warships.

That's pretty cool, actually. Yes, working with a distance trigger for the first IMjump sequence (or rather if you skip that sequence) would make sense here.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: twinkyt on January 20, 2025, 04:36:49 pm
Working my way through this, not having played Inferno since R1 over a decade ago.

Just had to say that I love the Terran Trade Authority shout-outs.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: qweqwe321 on January 20, 2025, 08:24:30 pm
Bonus points for catching the TTA shoutouts. The TTA books were a huge influence on me as a kid.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: mr.WHO on January 24, 2025, 03:06:39 pm
YAY, finally finished the act 2...I really hope that we won't have to wait for R3 another 5 years.

My last suggestion/complain is those loading screen Star System charts - they are great, but they are small and blurry to the point it's very hard to read the node status or planets (e.g. I'm still not sure if the Ross 128 planet that blew up was the colonized one or non-colonized one).
If possible please make the central system (aka the one where the mission takes) be visibly bigger. The all writings (e.h. node status) as well.

Edit: One more bug - EAD Basileus entry is not added to Tech Room post battle where it appears.


Bunch of question going through FRED ships and TBL descriptions:
1) Is all the ship visible in FRED are the final ship list, or are there any ships to be introduced by R3? E.g. GTSD Odin, SJ Amritaya, SCa Shiamak.
2) Is Icanus texture final, it doesn't looks like any 3 EA pain shemes.
3) Icanus TBL descripiton contain a lot of spoilers.
4) Is Basileus the next generation destoryer to replace Tereus (mentioned in Tereus TBL description).
5) Is SH Garganth (aka bigger than SSJ Gigas/Anathema) still around?
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Colonol Dekker on January 24, 2025, 05:02:10 pm
It mind of goes without saying that going into FRED or the tech room and reading info on ships not featured will, by its nature, be spoilers. :D
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: mr.WHO on January 25, 2025, 04:33:43 am
One thing that grow on me during the campaign is Inferno soundtrack selection.

At first I thought it was all over the place and almost completely lost FS2 vibes, but now I think it replaced it with worthy INF vibes :D


These are my favorite tracks:

Cycerin - Wet Asphalt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_3ilUUktOE

Nutritious - The Fallen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6dIbGibPHc

Nutritious - Ancient Enemies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0xWds9QjJ0

Waterflame - Rupture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGHurR9nvMY

Kyle Richards - Terra Victor
<sadly no YT>
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: CT27 on January 29, 2025, 03:28:05 pm
Overall I really liked this new release and enjoyed playing it.  Congratulations on the release!

I'll post some more thoughts later, but I have one question for now:  On the mission after you
Spoiler:
retake the Sol Gate and defend it from EA counterstrikes
, you are given two corvettes to help you after you TAGed something.

I was able to beat the mission, but I don't think I quite understood the mechanic in that mission.  You had a number pad that said:
1-25% power
2-50% power
3-75% power
4-100% power

What exactly did those different settings do?  No matter which setting I had selected, the beams seemed to do about the same damage.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: mr.WHO on January 31, 2025, 10:44:58 am
A page or two ago I complained about artificially invulnerable beams on Shivan destroyer.

It was Kalanemi/Ravana in The Walls of Jericho:
https://youtu.be/7wEVKU2gnts?si=ncMCxRVktEuiukiY&t=308

However, now I'm confused - in above Paladin video (timestamp 5:08) he has no problem destroying the beams - while I launched like 10 corinthos and put hundrerd rounds of Hastor/Vulcan only to find out the beam was still 100%.
This must have been some kind of bug, coz there is no chance in hell so many rounds and missile simply failed to connect.

I was under false impression that this was intentional/scripted, coz allied delta wing bombers had no problems taking down those beams.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: qweqwe321 on January 31, 2025, 02:13:22 pm
A page or two ago I complained about artificially invulnerable beams on Shivan destroyer.

It was Kalanemi/Ravana in The Walls of Jericho:
https://youtu.be/7wEVKU2gnts?si=ncMCxRVktEuiukiY&t=308

However, now I'm confused - in above Paladin video (timestamp 5:08) he has no problem destroying the beams - while I launched like 10 corinthos and put hundrerd rounds of Hastor/Vulcan only to find out the beam was still 100%.
This must have been some kind of bug, coz there is no chance in hell so many rounds and missile simply failed to connect.

I was under false impression that this was intentional/scripted, coz allied delta wing bombers had no problems taking down those beams.

Thanks for the bug report - I'll try to reproduce it.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Trivial Psychic on January 31, 2025, 04:15:45 pm
I still can't get past 'Ad Portas'.  At first, I decided that my desire to make sure no enemy warship managed to escape, by knocking out their engines before going for the HVAL turrets, was leaving me too exposed to enemy fire.  Once I tried to disable the first cruiser, going in with %90 hull, and was destroyed before managing to disable it.  I though, 'screw it' and just went for the disarming runs.  Then after forcing 2 cruisers to withdraw, I thought 'well, that last one is all alone, so I should be able to disable it no problem', but those fighters were on me so fast, and when you're getting buffeted by engine wash, you can't feel it when you get hit, so I was getting my ass shot off and didn't realize it until it was too late.  On my last run, I managed to force the cruisers to withdraw, then dealt with the corvettes, but was getting pissed off when the 'next turret' targeting feature, refused to prioritize the beam turrets, despite them being surrounded by yellow brackets.  I was taking evasive maneuvers, trying to avoid enemy fighters and turrets, while trying to target the beams, and it wouldn't.  For a time, it wouldn't target the ship as 'next enemy', always going for the nearby fighters.  It was infuriating.  Then, that comes in that targets that Vasudan one, and I try to knock out it's forward beam with my Corinthos.  Then I get the turret down to 6% health, and stops.  It was right here when I get killed, managing to survive the earlier exchanges at %7 health.  It takes about 45 minutes to play it the way I do, so I'll have to try again later.

[Edit]

Finally cleared it.  Had to make 2 more attempts, the first brought me to about the same point, but I wasn't paying attention to the Sebek's warning, and was destroyed in the blast wave.  Was ready on the second attempt.  Too bad I didn't have the weapons to take out those last 2 corvettes.  Gonna take a breather before going on to the next one.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: skdKitsune on February 02, 2025, 02:17:05 pm
-snip-

Yeah, you're not really supposed to clear this mission perfectly. There's too much **** going on, which is deliberate. The targeting bug for the corvette turrets (targeting fighters via the F9 key) is weird. There has to be some event that manually sets the key to target specific fighters, since neither ship nor wing editors have that set, iirc.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Mafu on February 11, 2025, 04:55:29 am
So is there a trick to getting this mod to recognize a joystick, or do I likely have some weird "me" problem in getting that to happen?  Other mods and regular old Freespace still detect it fine.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: SF-Junky on February 11, 2025, 11:55:28 am
So is there a trick to getting this mod to recognize a joystick, or do I likely have some weird "me" problem in getting that to happen?  Other mods and regular old Freespace still detect it fine.
I also had this issue. When you are in the options menu, press F3 and then you see the right settings.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Mafu on February 11, 2025, 02:36:19 pm
My man!
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Trivial Psychic on February 12, 2025, 09:38:32 pm
Finally finished.  I wanted to share with you more of my lets-try-to-play-the-mission-different-and-either-break-it-or-get-more-kills attempts, this time with 'Clash of the TItans III'.  The vulnerabilities come in the fact that there are no penalties for not jumping to the new positions right away.  After taking down the Punisher's beam and reactors, instead of jumping out, I set about destroying everything I could.  Ultimately, that means everything short of the station and the Nemesis.  Taking out the corvettes was quite the challenge.  For the skotas, after disarming and disabling it, I just sicked my wingmen on it, having replaced Beta's 2nd bank with Corinthos instead of those fighter-suppression missiles.  It still took them quite a while though.  I also swapped out my Stilettos for Corinthos.  I had to disarm the station to ensure that my wingmen could go over to the other corvette without getting harassed.  I then set about destroying all of the Nemesis' turrets, but since the front cannon is guardian-ed, I couldn't take that one out.  Ultimately, my wingmen got that 2nd corvette down to about 9%, before I had to join them, and crank up the time compression all the way to 32.  My mission time was about 120 minutes when it finally blew.  Then, after joining the Bastion and going through the ambush, I had my wingmen stay around after everyone left, and I proceeded to disarm everything in sight.  In a previous playthrough, I'd disabled everything too, but that came with some mission-breaking side-effects, so I had to settle for just taking out their turrets, and weapons subsystems to be on the safe side.  I also used my Corinthos to destroy the Baselius (sp?) escort from distance until they stopped respawning.  Once everything had been disarmed, I jumped to the Bastion, went through the rest of the mission, and just relaxed when the destroyer trio arrived, as I'd already neutered them.  During my previous replay, when I'd disabled them as well, they were still loitering around ahead of the Bastion in the distance, and then when the trio arrived, they'd inherited the status of their copies, and so they didn't jump out once the Lindos got waxed, so the mission never ended.  Comically though, there was a bomber wing launched to destroy the Tereus, but they went for the one in the distance and destroyed that instead.

I'm not sure exactly what you could do to encourage the player to jump out.  Maybe try sending multiple wings and waves of highly skilled enemy fighters after you.  If you had time and opportunity to record more audio files, you could include warnings about the fact that Command needs you there or they'll abort the mission.  Take too long, and you lose.  The debriefing gives you a royal dressing down for throwing the entire sol campaign into chaos, just because you wanted to get more kills.

Anyway, I enjoyed the campaign, though I am a little disappointed that the Nemesis mission from the original Inferno, got reduced to a much less pivotal one.  I also would've liked to retain the scan-ships-at-the-gate mission from the original.  When I was working with the team in the pre-Nostos release, I'd modified the mission to include a portion where you get to swap out for an EA cloaking stealth fighter half-way through, and assassinate an agent.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: skdKitsune on February 18, 2025, 03:03:55 am
snip

"Clash of the Titans III" will be redone for R3, it's been a bit of a hacky job. It's probably gonna be a two-parter, with the Neptune section being expanded on as a Red Alert.

The Nemesis mission is quite anticlimactic at the end, I agree.
As for the "Gateway" mission; that one will be included in R3. At least that's the current plan.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: mr.WHO on February 19, 2025, 11:50:05 am
Looking forward to replay everything when R3 release.

Hopefully, I don't have to wait till 2030 for it.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: jbjhjm on February 28, 2025, 05:49:21 am
It's been an amazing trip so far! Thanks for this one, guys!
Cliffhanger makes me  :hopping: tho :D I sure hope to see R3 complete the story one day!  :nod:

I was quite fascinated by how "complete" the R2 felt in terms of immersion and storytelling.
The voice acting, albeit not perfect (some speaker's audio was a bit muffled and misbalanced in terms of volume) added so much value, making it feel much more cohesive than other releases of previous years.

I have split feelings about the music tho.
WONT say a bad word about the music itself, I just think some tracks didn't support the atmosphere, it felt out of place.
Some of the tracks were fine, but there've been missions where I turned the music down and played back the OST instead.

Also, the gain staging of some loud songs vs quiet speakers required tweaking settings to be able to understand a word.
I by myself am a music producer with quite some tools.
Feel free to dm me if you need some help with improving speech clarity, mediocre microphone recordings and such.
We could even talk about some creative processing if wanted, e.g. processing voices to sound like transmissions etc

Was even thinking about writing some tracks in style of original FS2 soundtrack, but who knows if and when I find time for that.

P.S.: Just remembered one thing that really annoyed me: Blast radius damage.
I head to restart so many missions because of exploding torpedos and capitals.
I don't see it adding value to the game and would've preferred if it wasn't there or of smaller scale.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: TrashMan on March 08, 2025, 03:24:35 pm
Re-playing it right now.

Aidie from an massive error dump when trying to follow the Bastion (after the failed attack on Nemesis in Earth orbit.. currently stuck there), no major bugs.

A personal observation, the EA seems at times comically incompetent and evil.
Some missions are virtually impossible to complete without knowledge what will happen in advance, so you can position and arm yourself properly. To me, that's just not that great of a design.
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: DarkMathis on April 12, 2025, 02:20:37 pm
Hi there,

many thanks for the release. Your persistence after all these years is really admirable, and i had a great time playing it!

It kind of became a little tradition with my brother to look at the yearly Inferno news when we meet around Christmas. We never lost hope that we would get to play another release at some point, and now here we are.

All the ships look absolutely stunning now and the missions seemed better balanced to me than at the original release way back.

One thing that irked me a bit though were this one particular squad of huge EA bombers, i don't remember what they were called, that came in to a big destroyer battle. They tanked so much damage and the torpedo blasts around them would tear you apart, even at great range.


Anyways, many thanks for keeping this going and lets see if we can get another update next Christmas  :D
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Garfield on April 24, 2025, 12:41:46 am
I first played Inferno when I was a kid back in 2003 or 2004. It's amazing to be able to still play it and see its quality match modern games! I've been having a great time playing through Inferno R2, but I'm having a technical problem. Every time I try to load the mission Enemy of my Enemy to continue the campaign, it crashes. Here's the debug log:

Quote
Error: Failed to wait until uniform range is available! Get a coder.
File: UniformBufferManager.cpp
Line: 116

ntdll.dll! ZwWaitForSingleObject + 20 bytes
KERNELBASE.dll! WaitForSingleObjectEx + 142 bytes
fs2_open_24_2_0_x64_AVX.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_24_2_0_x64_AVX.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_24_2_0_x64_AVX.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_24_2_0_x64_AVX.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_24_2_0_x64_AVX.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_24_2_0_x64_AVX.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_24_2_0_x64_AVX.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_24_2_0_x64_AVX.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_24_2_0_x64_AVX.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_24_2_0_x64_AVX.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_24_2_0_x64_AVX.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_24_2_0_x64_AVX.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_24_2_0_x64_AVX.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_24_2_0_x64_AVX.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_24_2_0_x64_AVX.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_24_2_0_x64_AVX.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_24_2_0_x64_AVX.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_24_2_0_x64_AVX.exe! <no symbol>
fs2_open_24_2_0_x64_AVX.exe! <no symbol>
KERNEL32.DLL! BaseThreadInitThunk + 20 bytes
ntdll.dll! RtlUserThreadStart + 33 bytes

If anyone knows how to fix this, or at least advance to the next mission to get around the crash, I'd really appreciate it!
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: qweqwe321 on April 24, 2025, 01:04:09 pm
Can you run it in debug mode and upload the crash log?
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: Garfield on April 24, 2025, 03:06:56 pm
Can you run it in debug mode and upload the crash log?

Sure, here's the link to the log: https://fsnebula.org/log/680a991e487e3bcd4e0010db
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: neoterran on July 01, 2025, 11:35:14 pm
OMG ! I play FS2 and then forget about it for years, then get the itch again. Been coming here for 20 years (!!!!!!)

I installed a few years back and I come back and everything is changed. New launcher (Knossos.net) that is way better and Inferno ain't the inferno I remember - But I sure know that pesky Major ! LOL !

Wow. Amazing Job guys. Especially the voice acting. But just all around. Up there with my favorite all time mods (again).
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: neoterran on July 01, 2025, 11:36:41 pm
Bonus points for catching the TTA shoutouts. The TTA books were a huge influence on me as a kid.

I too... remember the TTA books and the absolute WONDER they installed in me. **** yeah. Birds of a feather
Title: Re: RELEASE: Inferno R2
Post by: CT27 on July 02, 2025, 02:41:34 am
Sorry for being late in posting my thoughts here.  I have shared these with some others and will paste them here.

I want to start of by saying again thank you to the team for helping to get this campaign to its next phase of completion.  It was very enjoyable.  The music was great, and the weapons were great (I especially enjoyed the new more versatile Cyclops and the new Prometheus cannon...I wish there would have been more missions with that new Prom as the original Nostos release didn't really have a good all around gun like that).  New ships were fun too (I like missions where you fly bombers so a relatively minor issue is I wish there would have been a mission or two where you got to fly a super heavy bomber and use the newest equivalent of the Harbinger/Helios...I remember in old Inferno posts there was supposed to be a new bomb called Executioner or Armageddon).
Gameplay wise I think it was excellent and these issues I brought up were only minor.  Bottom line:  when part three comes out I will certainly play it and am looking forward to that.
I also like the new version mission of the mission where you defend the Vasudan carrier.  In the original, that mission was super difficult, but in this it was challenging but fair.

I had a couple issues with the story however.
1-The beginning of the war:
The beginning of the war in the updated Inferno (this recent release), felt kind of weird.  When the EA came through now, they didn't immediately attack, but they didn't behave diplomatically either.  They started shouting "Unification! Unification!" and not engaging in any real dialogue beyond that from what was said.  Now certainly the GTVA would be open to integrating Sol into the GTVA and I agree with some of the pilots who said its not inherently wrong for Sol/EA to want unification, but when someone shouts at you instead of being more diplomatic, that makes one defensive.  Plus, you see EA craft engaging with criminal elements in the first couple missions and game dialogue says EA officials often would ignore GTVA diplomatic requests for conversation...all this should have raised more red flags IMO in the GTVA and not been so caught off guard.
 If the EA wanted to force a military conflict they should have either been more engaging and friendly at first to catch the GTVA off guard...or they should have just did an outright surprise attack like they did in Inferno Classic as soon as the Sol Gate opened.

2-Vasudan intervention:
In Classic, the Vasudans intervened in the EA war after the Shivans attacked because they felt it would be better to have a united front to face the Shivans.  That made sense.  In this new Inferno, the Vasudans were brought into the war because the EA decided to attack them all of a sudden.  I think that could have been explained a little better.


2-The end of the war (for now):
To be honest I wasn't crazy about the way the war ended.  You have a couple of confrontations with the Nemesis, but none of them really go anywhere.  Whereas Inferno Classic's "Nemesis" mission remains iconic even today.  I'm not saying the GTVA should have outright conquered Sol (or even done as well as they did in Inferno Classic though I wouldn't complain if they did), but I think they should have done better than they did in this new update (though I get the team probably wanted to make the EA seem like more of a credible threat...I thought it did that with that chapter 1 missions).  If the GTVA Terrans were able to push the EA back to the Sol Gate, then when the Vasudans joined in, the GTVA should have done better in Sol than they did.
It felt like the EA was constantly able to pull rabbits out of their hats once the campaign got into Sol.  If what the campaign implies is true and the GTVA is forced out of Sol...that's just basically status quo ante bellum.  One would think the GTVA would try for something better than that since the EA launched a surprise attack and basically supported terrorist/criminal elements destabilizing the GTVA prior to invasion.  Also, one would think they would want to permanently weaken the EA since they were trying to bring in Shivans with their Ross 128 subspace experiments.
Now on the other hand, if the GTVA-EA war isn't over and will be continued in chapter three I apologize.

Here's what I would do:  Have one or two more missions where the GTVA kicks Admiral Ramsey out and puts someone more competent in.  They could lure a number of EA destroyers in for a climactic battle (heck, even use damaged GTSD Bastion as bait).  Briefings would bill this as one final attempt to end the war on favorable GTVA terms and prevent a retreat from Sol.  In short, the GTVA wouldn't end up in as strong a position as Inferno Classic (ending in Earth orbit), but would still have a relatively good position in Sol.


I look forward to part 3.