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(http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j367/TopAceHLP/RoguesMODTab.jpg)
A FreeSpace 2 minicampaign
General
Rogues! tells a credible but intense storyline, told over the course of 8 missions (and two cutscenes). The missions are small scale, so there's no Battle of Endor, no Colossus, and no Shivans! This minicampaign is meant to follow the "simplicity is good" itinerary; both mission design and narration style reflect this.
The story takes place some time after the "domino effect" that elevated Bosch's rebellion into a considerable force.
The campaign is about three underworld figures: Jack, an assassin (the player character); Nicholas, an ex-special agent; and Alex, a thief. The campaign starts when Nicholas sneaks on board an NTF destroyer, but is discovered, and has to rely on Jack and Alex to bail him out. Nicholas returns with intelligence that promises a lot of wealth.
The story is retrospectively narrated by Jack, to an unidentified listener. The three types of briefing (Command, mission, debriefing) are his reflections, but the missions will be played through Jack's eyes, "as it happened."
Miscellaneous
- Remember to play Rogues! with a new pilot file
- The missions are deliberately short and difficult. There are two missions that are longer than the rest, but they are also easier.
- MediaVPs 3.6.12 are recommended
- Most tested difficulty settings: Easy and Medium
- Recent nightly builds are recommended
- AAAs in Rogues! don't penetrate shields, but have their damage increased
Known bugs
- The last mission used to generate the "black hole of doom (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=69103.0)" bug. It looks fixed now, but there's no harm in placing a warning here.
- The debug build compains that two .anis don't have LODs. Since I'm not an animator or an artist, I cannot fix this. This error has no impact on gameplay.
- Two people so far have reported a quotation mark-related typo in the first Command Briefing. Since the quotation marks are displayed right on my end, there is nothing I can do about it.
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgment goes to bigchunk1, who playtested and proofread the campaign.
DOWNLOAD (http://www.mediafire.com/?38j9rkx1s1ae6on)
Fixed mission 2 (http://www.mediafire.com/?75iaspa31gcn844) - In case you have the HTL Arcadia.
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Ah, it is finally released! :yes: DL'ing now (I am not sure if I am going to be able to play it soon, I am FREDding Syrk)
I might do a playthrough of it though :P
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I can't think of any other campaigns that do use universal translators, cloning or genetic engineering. :blah:
Did up a highlight, post me a cool image if you have one.
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The player had a universal translator in Unreal. Cloning and genetic engineering were featured in ITHOV to some extent.
Thanks for the highlight, by the way.
[EDIT]Okay, I edited the first post per Battuta's implied request.
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Awesome recreated Black Hole!
Nevermind.
Pretty sweet minicampaign.
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Played through, though the story is kinda odd the gameplay is ok and it kept me on the seat till the end.
Thanks for the play.
Some stuff to check:
On CB of mission one you got "Shadowuote instead of "Shadow"
On the final mission the Transport was already docked with the installation when I got there, kinda odd the guy talking to us... he could have just walked his way to the installation, but something unmentioned was keeping him from doing that?
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Awesome. Downloaded, will play soon.
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http://freespacemods.net/download.php?view.725
Mirrored.
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Spoiler alert! I just played through the campaign. Here are my thoughts.
The gameplay is very easy (I didn't die once on Hard) and not very inventive, but I imagine that the main goal of this campaign is to tell the story.
The mission where you have to scan a bunch of transports seems unnecessary; it isn't atmospheric, and nothing interesting happens. The kidnap could have just been alluded to in the briefing, without the player having to go through the motions; alternatively, there could have been more interesting stuff happening in the background to flesh out the story.
The story is interesting; I like the idea of playing as a bunch of unaffiliated outlaws, caught between the warring factions. I'd have liked the story to have developed a bit more; the final mission was anticlimactic; I never really hated the villain (the protagonists seem have a history of trust with him that the player never experiences), and it seemed too easy to catch him. I also feel that many events were skipped over between the final mission and the ending. In summary, I think the story would be better if it were extended or made more dense.
The writing is a little clumsy in the first command briefing, with inconsistent usage of tenses. Also, Shadow's page says 'Shadowuote'.
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The writing is a little clumsy in the first command briefing, with inconsistent usage of tenses. Also, Shadow's page says 'Shadowuote'.
That's my bad. I should have been more careful with wording.
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I enjoyed it. Not particularly lengthy (but I guess it is only eight missions after all), but still enjoyable.
Nice work. :)
Spoiler alert!
[ spoiler ] and [ / spoiler ]
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FSW:
Mission 2 needed to be as long as it is so that the characters can reveal their thoughts about abducting Commander Ybl's daughter. Also it wouldn't be credible if the first transport they scan happened to have her on board, would it?
I checked this typo thing, but it's not present on my end. The quotation marks are displayed correctly to me.
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I checked this typo thing, but it's not present on my end. The quotation marks are displayed correctly to me.
I went back and checked it too, I didn't see it eather. Made me wonder If I had a different version. It's strange since both Rodo and FSW pointed it out. The raw text file for me reads $quoteShadow$quote.
I enjoyed it. Not particularly lengthy (but I guess it is only eight missions after all), but still enjoyable.
Nice work. :)
One thing I like about this campaign is that you can play it in one sitting. Something fun to do if you've got an hour or so to kill.
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I extracted the mission from the released VP and checked it. Then the one I have in the un-VPed folder. They match and both work fine.
I wonder if deleting the $quote and updating the released file would be a good idea. If more people report seeing it, then I'd do just that.
[EDIT]I'll download the campaign from here and see if the typo is there. I'm suspecting a corrupted download or a faulty 7z archive.
[EDIT2]Downloaded and tested. Still the same.
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Just downloaded Rogues! this morning and will have a chance to look through it when my spring break begins. ;)
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The campaign was short, simple, and still very good. Well done, will be curious if there's a sequal to this.
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Quite a solid campaign. Some of the dialogue was a bit off, but I felt that the overall plot was quite strong, and that's what kept me playing till the end. The gameplay was nicely based around the premise of each of the missions. This campaign was short, sharp and shiny. :D It gets my thumbs up! :yes:
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- AAAs in Rogues! don't penetrate shields, but have their damage increased
Spoon approves of this
Known bugs
- The debug build compains that two .anis don't have LODs. Since I'm not an animator or an artist, I cannot fix this. This error has no impact on gameplay.
You dont have to be an artist or animator to fix a table :p
This warning can be fixed by adding a
$name: Avenger_impact.ani
$LOD: 1
entry in weapon_expl.tbl
But its pretty much insignificant.
Played up till the mission 'The defenders', which I failed for unknown reasons. Got a "no debriefing for mission"m04a_rogues.fs2" screen. I'm guessing nick or alex got shot down, but that's a ****ty reason to fail me. That's completely out of my control :/
That aside I'm finding the missions to be incredibly easy so far, I have yet to take any hull damage.
And I must say that I found the first mission to be anything but credible...
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The campaign was short, simple, and still very good. Well done, will be curious if there's a sequal to this.
I don't plan a sequel. I may come up with a similar smaller-scale campaign in the future, but at the moment, I'm trying to finish the plot outline for my next campaign, which will be a pure military campaign. I've had enough for character-driven campaigns for a while.
Out of curiosity: Has any of you received the quotation mark oddity in the first mission?
Also, there shouldn't be any debriefing for m4a. The Toggle debrief (On/off) is checked, so it's an SCP bug.
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Test the mission, kill one of your team mates, watch it fade into an end mission event that leads to a no debriefing screen. It's not a bug, its logic:
Because the game needs to tell the player that he failed and that he cannot progress in the campaign unless he completes the mission.
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Exactly what Spoon said. It's not a bug, just a...not very finely nuanced feature.
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Just finished it.
I like the way the story was told
The missions had zero difficulty in them
There was a bunch of things that didn't seem quite logical
Where are these guys getting their ammo from?
For a bunch of people that kidnap girls for ransom they seemed to oddly care a lot about the morality of the war
The rhino station had to scramble volunteers to deal with a few wings of NTF fighters, you had to save their asses. Yet the next mission they somehow started believing in the lie that you were somehow involved with the NTF? They even send Zeus bombers after you.
It's not a bad campaign though.
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As with spoon, the oddity I spotted dealt with the first mission. it kinda felt a bit odd that the Hecate was completely unguarded and did not already have a few fighter wings sent out already to make sure the convict running rampant inside the destroyer didn't escape, much less no patrolling fighter wings were recalled. Sure a Leviathian comes in later, but it's useless when it arrives. Not trying to say that the mission was poorly done, but it just seems curious that a massive military group virtually allowed 3 freelancers, one which was in a crude transport to easily run into a hornet's nest, cause some damage, kidnap an officer, and escape with no hassalment.
Still was a good campaign, just the first mission kinda strikes me on the head a little bit.
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For a bunch of people that kidnap girls for ransom they seemed to oddly care a lot about the morality of the war.
That's a point for philosophy no?
Yet the next mission they somehow started believing in the lie that you were somehow involved with the NTF? They even send Zeus bombers after you.
That's because it's the ONLY way to fly baby! ;) How else do you think the military got rid of them once everyone realised they were crappy?
...Not trying to say that the mission was poorly done, but it just seems curious that a massive military group virtually allowed 3 freelancers, one which was in a crude transport to easily run into a hornet's nest, cause some damage, kidnap an officer, and escape with no hassalment.
Still was a good campaign, just the first mission kinda strikes me on the head a little bit.
Who do you send in when Alpha 1 is on break? They're just that good. Aharharhar!
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It wasn't easy for me , one of my ''wingmates'' keep dying and dying at almost every mission , I putted the game it in very easy , but it was a good campaign though
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If you guys think this is way too easy, play it around in Insane... it gets more tricky :S
Those stupid wingmen keep dieing, and i've never been pwned this bad by 3 Hercules. The fighters you get to fly are pretty light stuff.
Blocked at M04, those idiots engage like hell and get completely owned... Guess with some will and time you can manage to keep em close, but i'm too lazy to try atm
About the campaign in a whole..... the way the story is told sure is original but... i personally find it weird.
Having the character actually retell the story during every command/mission briefing feels a bit strangy, i think a flashback story style would have been better.
Looking forward to finishing this thing :S
Oh, and cool intro btw! :yes:
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I don't play on Insane, but I can assure you that I could beat the campaign on Hard without too many retries. Mission 4 is comparatively longer than the rest of the - combat - missions, so I recommend you lower the difficulty, then replay from the simulator on Insane if you feel like.
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I'm so DLing this. I can't wait to play it. :)
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Just started the first mission; no stars for some reason.
Edit: The stars are there; they reflect light when something explodes, and then disappear.
Double edit: Apart from that, I didn't run into any other snafus in the campaign.
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Is the starfield like that in any other mod? Rogues! uses the MVP starfield and standard nebulae.
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I actually got the same issue Nemesis did. It went away after the first mission, so I ignored it. Meh, didn't detract from anything.
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same here
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Confirmed. Somehow the No Lighting option became unchecked.
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Finished this campaign a week ago.
Pretty good! Its short and it is weird how they consider the morality of the wars when they are kidnapping a girl, but looking past that it was fun!
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I'm so DLing this. I can't wait to play it. :)
:bump:
So I played through this campaign again, and it felt like it was the first time ever due to the... ehm, time span between my playthroughs. I do wonder if Rogues! was meant to be the incipit to something else, especially considering the ending.
On a slightly unrelated note, the campaign would look great even by modern standards if only it switched to newer nebula skyboxes. Lightspeed's effects are definitely showing their age, unfortunately.
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Rogues! doesn't connect to any campaigns. You can, however,
theorize that Jack becomes Alpha 1 of the main campaign
if you want to, but since I'm not at all planning on a sequel, you can have whatever interpretation you wish.
And I won't retouch the campaign just for the nebula backgrounds. I could have done that with the rest of my older campaigns, but I just don't have the willpower to do that anymore. Not to mention it wouldn't be worth the effort, given no one even remembers my campaigns, so there's that.
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I think you would be pleasantly surprised by the number of people still discovering and playing them.
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I wholeheartedly agree with Battuta. A significant chunk of the community is on the "lurking" side of things and you can be 100% sure your campaigns are still played through by fans. In fact, I believe you should consider the possibility of upgrading their packages. :yes:
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Could I see any tangible evidence of that? It's certainly not something I can see here on HLP, or Discord, or PMs. Into the Halls of Valhalla and Luyten Civil War are on Knossos kudos to Novachen, but I can't see any download/visitation statistics there (not that I tried to look very hard).
As I said, my FRED time is dedicated wholly to FotG, and unless you find and report to me game-breaking bugs, I don't see how that would change.
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Rogues and Renegade Resurgence are on Knossos as well (and on FSOInstaller, not to forget). But i always made only bugfixes or replaced models with newer ones if available. But never messed up with the mission backgrounds, because other backgrounds can simple change the feeling of a mission completely :).
Unfortunately i can give you only my ModDB download statistics for the updated Rogues release... and that stands on 16 Downloads since 6th October 2018.
But ModDB is not very representative for FreeSpace :doubt:
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I can't see Renegade in the Explore tab, and the Rogues version is the one I uploaded a month or so ago (ID: rogues2020). If there's a second version, I can't see that.
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I do not see either one when using Knossos. I double checked last night.
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I heard Knossos does keep track of download figures somewhere, but the figures themselves are rather tricky to extract and analyze. I think they should become public - we used to have download counters on a number of websites, such as FSMods (and they can still be seen via direct access to the website's backup). They're definitely a good, though not absolute, activity indicator.
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Whatever happened to this one? I played it on release day and finished it, and the next day it was gone
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What do you mean? It's on Knossos and the MediaFire link works, too. (Just checked both).
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If it is on Knossos, it is invisible.
[attachment deleted to save space]
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Well... i actually have no idea.
I still see it in the Explore Tab... :confused:
[attachment deleted to save space]
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I don't see a Renegade resurgence either
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That's weird. I can see Rogues! on my end. Can anyone confirm its absence? Maybe I need to turn something on in the Developer tab?
Does the MediaFire link work?
I can't see Renegade. I wasn't aware it was up at all.
Can you see Luyten Civil War? I can see two versions, one with a shipyard icon, the other with a Medusa. Just wondering.
[EDIT]Strangely enough, it's not that version of Rogues! that I can see. Mine is with a green background icon.
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There are indeed two Luyten Civil wars. The one with the shipyard is more up to date.
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I have no idea, what is causing this.
Updated the meta data of both. But i have no indication if this is working now, as it is worked for my "normal user" Knossos profile for ages before already.
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Still nothing
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This is what my Knossos looks like at R and S.
[attachment deleted to save space]
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This is what my Knossos looks like that R and S.
That seems to be another version of Rogues actually... as it have a total different Thumbnail. :lol:
All of this is very strange. Last year a whole update of Shadow Genesis went missing completely for everybody... and now even Mods does not appearing for all users.
The only thing i did not tried yet, was to push a new version... but as i do not have any update ready, that would break the versioning i have completely... and i would not like that.
As RR and Rogues was last made compatible with MVP 4.0 i could make a new compatibility update however. But I will not be able to do that today.
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That's the version I uploaded, believing it wasn't on Knossos at all. It's got the ID "rogues2020".
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I played a version of Rogues where it didn't use MediaVPs, so it played with the original Freespace 2 graphics
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Neither Rogues or Renegades show up for me.
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If i think about it...
I have to admit, that i am actually unsure, if i should release an update at all for all the campaigns like Rogues, RR, SF, ItHoV, VM etc...
Last time i rereleased older campaigns i get heavy harassed for it on Discord or in the Forum that even caused that my Account was hacked, only because people wanted to gain the credit as updater of older campaign by themselves as it turned out later, or at least they did not want to leave the credit to a female.
I have to say, that i do not have any big interest to get in the crosshairs once again.
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Okay, I did something on Knossos. Can you see it now?
And here? https://www.fsnebula.org/mods I can see it there with download links and a notification that there's no mod.ini included.
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Yes, I can see Rogues and just downloaded
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Same here, downloaded.
Many thanks!
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A second version which features compatiblity with mediavps 4.4 has appeared on Knossos, but it won't start because of an error saying "No executable was found for this mod"
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It was set to use the 21.0.0 build. Now I changed it to "Mod default". Check now.
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Still not working
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I can run it on my end, so I have no idea what's causing it.
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A second version which features compatiblity with mediavps 4.4 has appeared on Knossos, but it won't start because of an error saying "No executable was found for this mod"
As i never use Stable builds on Knossos, it may work if you change the Build Preference to Nightlies if you did not use that already.
And as far as i can tell, it was not set to stable by TopAce, who should have access rights to my rereleases.
Or it is maybe set back and forth if both are editing the mod with different build preference :lol: