[Singh]

Thanks Karajoma. I would like to re-iterate again that this i intend to only HTL-ize the retail nebula patterns and do a little bugfixing.

Although re-writing missions seems good, I try to avoid it for 2 reasons:

1. Lack of time
2. made it that way; and surprisingly, their might just be a reason as to why it's like that.

[Singh]

also, a small update.

Mission 1 nebula upgrading is done and completed. I can't play through and take screenshots atm, since I've got a rendering going on in the background. I'll put up some shots tomorrow

[Singh]

Here we go. I've preserved all the original patterns as best as I could. It's come out a tad....uglier than I am satisfied with, but im not sure whether going with an entirely new pattern of colors would be better, since I wanted to preserve the original image that wished to potray. If one looks carefully enough - in this case it is of a serpent or eastern dragon coiling itself around the planet of Deneb.

[Col. Fishguts]

IMHO you don't need to follow 's patterns, as they're not very pretty anyway. Just follow your own sense of aestethics.

[karajorma]

Yeah. I was kind of disappointed when I saw that you'd done that Singh.

The backgrounds you do are much prettier than 's anyway so why not simply concentrate on making everything just simply look the best it can?

[StratComm]

What kara said.  The nebula backgrounds from are so generic that they'll be impossible to make look good.  Use lightspeed's neb packs the way they were meant to be used.

[Singh]

The reason is that even the Nebulae seem to have distinct and unique patterns for each mission and are hardly generic. Although they are plain looking, they are works of art in their own right. read my observations on the nebula - its suprising nobody ever picked up on the serpent/dragon shape, despite it being definately there. Like mission names and elements, I fear that changing stuff will take out something that meant to be there for a reason.

I have no right to replace that; regardless of how much I may want to. At most, I can change the colors and sort of 'refilter' it through the new nebs, but I don't think it would be acceptable at all to create all-new ones.

However, if you really wish, then I'll see what I can do.

[TrashMan]

REalisticly speaking, when looking at a nebula far away from Earth or form Venus, you ain't gonna notice much difference...if any.
The distance to the nebulas are far too great for any Point of View changes 8within the system) are practicly meaningless.

That said, all my mission that take place inside the same system share the same nebula background, with only a few tweaeks here and there (mainly the sun size and position and planet size and position)

[Nuclear1]

I never saw the backgrounds like that before. Good eye, Singh.

I agree to keep the nebulae positioned the way they were, and for the above reasons that Singh gave. Who knows what other little nebular trick V added in?

[Singh]

Ok, having thought over it, I realize that in a sense what you all have said is correct. New nebulae would be better; especially in the sense that if someone wished to see the old patterns, they simply would have to switch over to the old missions. While did leave a pattern, I just realized that by upgrading everything, even if its just a post-filter sort of a thing, it'd still be ruining that pattern, which is something I'd rather avoid.

So, instead, it's now an all-or-nothing scenario from the looks of it. I'm headed to Maylasia for the next few days. But once I return, i'll get back to work on this ASAP.

[Mongoose]

Here's another bug to consider:  Someone in General Freespace just brought up the fact that Snipes can be killed in the second mission of the first SOC loop, "Love the Treason."  Not only does that not make sense given the fact that you have to rescue and fly with him in the second loop, but his dialogue also forms an important part of the mission.  If he is killed, other ships start talking to no one in particular. I remember initially replaying this mission a few dozen times until I finally got Snipes through it; I knew that his death wouldn't cause a mission failure, but I just wanted to hear the rest of his dialogue.  I don't think that adding a ship-guardian flag to his fighter would be considered changing canon; if anything, I'd consider it adhering to canon, since he is supposed to survive.  I'm guessing that simply forgot to put the guardian flag in there on that mission.  What does everyone else think?

[WMCoolmon]

ship-guardian or mission failure would make sense to me.

Could be that :V: found that in certain cases it was difficult to keep Snipes alive, but ships-guardian made it too easy, something to look closely into before changing that particular thing.

[StratComm]

Am I the only person who has never lost Snipes?

I think that was more a matter of one mission designer doing things one way (when hull < X, ship-invulnerable on Beta 1) versus the other (ship-guardian), especially since fighters have that nasty tendency to be able to die in a single game cycle.  It's worth investigating, but I don't see how making him invulnerable would make things any more difficult than ship-guardian.

[WMCoolmon]

I can't remember Snipes ever dying, but I doubt I've played that level on anything higher than Medium or Hard.

[Mongoose]

I used the term ship-guardian, but to tell you the truth, as a non-FREDder, I don't really know what sets that apart from ship-invulnerable.  What I was going for was FRED's version of "don't-let-him-die."

I just always seemed to have problems with losing Snipes.  It usually wasn't during the fight with the remnants of the sabotaged fighters; I was always able to take them out quickly enough for them to have little impact on him.  Where I always ran into trouble was when the second wing of Hercs arrived, feigned friendly for a minute or so, and then attacked you.  I eventually found that ordering Snipes to cover you usually managed to keep him out of trouble for the rest of the mission.  In any case, my original point was that Snipes really shouldn't be able to die in that mission, so whatever method of preventing that works best would be what I would suggest.  Like I said, I really don't think that intended for him to die during that mission, since he has a lot of dialogue and has to appear in later missions (and even that mission's debriefing, for that matter; it cracked me up how he always seemed to magically come back to life to debrief you ).

[karajorma]

From the FAQ
What is the difference between Ship-Invulnerable and Ship-Guardian?

Ship-Invulnerable means that a ship can't be damaged by anything. No matter what happens the ship will remain at 100% (or whatever the damage was when it was at when the SEXP triggered). Ship-Guardian allows a ship to take damage until the ship reaches 1%. After that the ship becomes invulnerable. Careful use of both can fool the player and prevent him from realising that the ship is protected (A wing of ships at 100% at the end of a mission is a big sign that Ship-Invulnerable was used while a wing at 1% is just as obviously a sign of Ship-Guardian's use. )

For a non-FREDder you've pretty much got the right answer Mongoose. The mission does require a ship-guardian on Snipes to prevent him being killed. It's pretty obvious that [V] didn't want snipes to die as evidenced by

1) The fact that they invulnerable him at a certain number of hitpoints.
2) They never vulnerable him again
3) There is no debrief covering Snipes being killed.

Simply adding a ship-guardian to Snipes should definately be a part of this bug fix. It would act as a safety net for the times when the invulnerable SEXP didn't kick in fast enough.

(Incidentally there is actually an event that can make Snipes vulnerable again but it can never trigger. The Mission has about 3 events in a loop where event 1 requires the arrival of a Centaur supply ship and event 3 which is dependant on event 1 being true triggers the arrival of said ship)

BTW all the event names refer to Snipes as Bond. James Bond perhaps?

[Roanoke]

The thing with ship guardian is it becomes obvious and so there is no reason to try and protect him. Not a major issue for this mission, but it does look a bit dodgy.

[TopAce]

The High Noon mission's debriefings are weird, look into it.

In Love the Treason, there are spelling mistakes: I remember that Regulus is spelt as Regulas and hijack is as high jack. Fix them.

[karajorma]

Simply adding a Guardian from the very start of the mission wouldn't do that. The invulnerability would kick in at around 47% IIRC and you wouldn't notice that he was protected most of the time.

You'd only spot it in those occassions where Snipes would otherwise have been killed too quickly to let it kick in and if you use a Guardian threshold equal to one less than the number for invulnerability you wouldn't even notice the effect then.