[Singh]

Originally posted by Maeglamor
[color=66ff00]I'm currently the only person trying to push this thing forward.

I'm not sure how I could get a team together at present, for the time being it's mostly just a case of getting the whole thing up and running.
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You are???
Judging from the backing the other mods get, i'm not sure why you haven't gotten any so far

One question tho. What is the FS2 Upgrade supposed to do? Is it a mod like the others, or is it something else entirely?

[karajorma]

Singh : Basically Maeg is trying to put together a community project. The basic aim of the project is to come up with a new campaign to attract new blood to the community. We want lots of new people who just want to play the game but also people pretty much like yourself who have talents in FREDding, modding or story writing (From the plot you posted I can guess you have at least one of these skills ) and thereby help the community grow rather than stagnate.

Maeg : You're doing a great job at the moment and no one else has joined cause at the moment you don't need anyone else All that is going on at the moment is people brainstorming ideas for plot and mods. You don't need a team for that. Once you get to the point where you do need one we'll be here

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]Thanks karajorma.
Yeah right now it's basically just a case of throwing some ideas around. I guess the direction we're heading in is pretty indistinct at the moment but I just got an excellent piece of news which I'm going to post in a minute.
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[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Ace
You'll probably kill me for a post this long but:

Mission Structure: ( * notes a command briefing)
*xsm1-01: Alpha Centauri-Securing of node cluster (after destruction of SD Ravanna)
xsm1-02: Sirius-Strike on NTF flagship (defeat)
*xsm1-03: Alpha Centauri-Planetary defense
xsm1-04: Deneb-Blockade
*xsm1-05: Sirius-Vasudan battlegroup against NTD Cyrene
xsm2-01: Polaris-GTVA Colossus blockade of Regulus
*xsm2-02: Epsilon Pegasi-Defense of convoy bringing ammo for blockade against NTF runners
xsm2-03: Epsilon Pegasi-Colossus v.s. NTF runners (NTCv Jacquerie destroyed, transports, etc. as bonus)
xsm2-04: Polaris-Abandoned NTF cargo depot (assigned with Vasudans as Colossus hunts Bosch, ends with news of Sathannas #1/battle)
*xsm3-01: Knossos Nebula-Science vessel defense (reassigned to Colossus for nebular ops to find Bosch, faces Vasudan spec ops and Shivans)
xsm3-02: Knossos Nebula-Discovery of NTF cargo depot, defense of recovery ships (ends with news of Sathannas fleet)
*xsm3-03: Vega-Defense of GTD Nereid

Ship Continuity:
GTD Ithaca
xsm1-01:assigned

GTVA Colossus
xsm2-01:encountered in mission
xsm2-02:transferred
xsm3-03:encountered in mission
xsm3-04 (mentioned in cbrief)
xsm3-03 (destruction mentioned in cbrief)

Pretty much this is the second half of FreeSpace 2. Dealing with the NTF campaign while you were in the nebula, the Colossus' run towards Gamma Draconis engaging the NTF, the other nebular operations looking for Bosch, and finally defense of the GTD Nereid as it was sent to collapse the Capella nodes.

I wrote this up a while ago, it's 12 missions and requires no mods except for custom command briefings and squads as this is meant to cooincide with FS2.

If you're interested I can write out more detailed mission outlines. Most of these missions were designed to have a twist in mind.

Plot thief.

Anyway, I've had the idea of a concurrent story alongside FS2 literally for years (not trying to make a claim on this, Ace, just mentioning it. ). I have a document that reveals too much of the plot to post here, but if we ever get the plot committie going, I'll gladly post it. There's a very, very large plot twist at the end.

For those of you who remember (about 2 years back), I released a closed Beta Test of the first 3 missions. Feedback was very good.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Ace
I wrote this up a while ago, it's 12 missions and requires no mods except for custom command briefings and squads as this is meant to cooincide with FS2.
 

but isn't the idea here to promote the scp and stuff? so I would have think there would be many mods, actually.
otherwise it's just another campaign...

[Martinus]

Originally posted by Venom


but isn't the idea here to promote the scp and stuff? so I would have think there would be many mods, actually.
otherwise it's just another campaign...

[color=66ff00]Indeed it is, as such we have to move away from the Freespace 2 campaign completely, we can't use any of :V:'s media as it would stop us from freely distributing it.

I think any campaign should be sufficently far enough into the future to remove the use of any of the Freespace 2 ships.
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[Singh]

So basically we dont want to use any of the current FS2 ships at all??

[Nico]

Originally posted by Maeglamor

[color=66ff00]Indeed it is, as such we have to move away from the Freespace 2 campaign completely, we can't use any of :V:'s media as it would stop us from freely distributing it.

I think any campaign should be sufficently far enough into the future to remove the use of any of the Freespace 2 ships.
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why not doing a TC? that way we can do what we want w/o bothering about this or that regarding to the original plot, or what people think of what could happen after capella. just a thought.

[Singh]

TC?
(sorry, i'm the new guy here, so haven't quite gotten the hang of all this lingo.  :/)

[Tiara]

Originally posted by Singh
So basically we dont want to use any of the current FS2 ships at all??

Heh, there are enough ships out to do that. Especially with Inferno ships about to become available

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]Sandwich actually proposed this whilst we were considering how to approach the upgrade. Two reasons for not choosing a total conversion that we could think of was that everyone here is here due to freespace and it's plotline which influenced them enough to make new stuff for the game.
Second reason is that most of the major TC's (starwars being a prime example) have the possibilty of drawing legal problems. We could never effectively distribute a SW conversion as it would most likely result in all media being taken by lucasarts.

The other main conversion, B5, is doing pretty well for itself and I think we'd be stepping on toes if we tried to do anything here relating to it.
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[karajorma]

TC = Total Conversion (i.e nothing of the original game survives)

I personally don't much like the idea of moving completely away from the [V] ships. By doing that we hugely increase the amount of work we have to do and unless we are going to recreate every single interface file ourselves we are still going to be using [V] media so we are still in a legal grey area when it comes to distribution.

If we are going to drop all the FS2 era ships we might as well move completely away from FS2 and make an original story based on the FS2 engine. This has some advantages because the main barrier to attracting newbies (that they haven't played FS1 & 2) is now gone.

Personally I think we should stick to post Capella for simplicities sake.

[Singh]

I agree (thanks for the explaination btw) about sticking to post-capella. That is the most logical place to start out if you want to make something related to FS2.

Seriously tho, if you can make up your minds about a time period, then I can make up a plotline to fit it quite easily. I have done so in the past and can do so again

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]Well what if we already had an entirely new shipset that needs some tweaking and a few more models?
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[karajorma]

Originally posted by Maeglamor
[color=66ff00]Well what if we already had an entirely new shipset that needs some tweaking and a few more models?
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In that case I have no problem with setting everything much after Capella. Remember though that caps and fighters aren't enough. We need a full set of freighters, support ships etc too. We'd also need Vasudan and Shivan mods and they tend to be as rare as boxers teeth (i.e they do exist but generally the boxer wants to keep them )

And even then we still wouldn't be completely free of [V] since we'd still be using their interface (actually anything we do in the FS2 universe is probably considered a derivative work and therefore automatically copywrited to [V] or Interplay).

Originally posted by Maeglamor
[color=66ff00] I guess the direction we're heading in is pretty indistinct at the moment but I just got an excellent piece of news which I'm going to post in a minute.
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You've had 240. What is it?

[kasperl]

Originally posted by karajorma
And even then we still wouldn't be completely free of [V] since we'd still be using their interface (actually anything we do in the FS2 universe is probably considered a derivative work and therefore automatically copywrited to [V] or Interplay).

could someone research this? if it would be :V: copywrite, were probably fine, if it's interplay, we have a problem.

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Maeglamor
[color=66ff00]Well what if we already had an entirely new shipset that needs some tweaking and a few more models?
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Hehehe...

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by karajorma
I personally don't much like the idea of moving completely away from the [V] ships. By doing that we hugely increase the amount of work we have to do and unless we are going to recreate every single interface file ourselves we are still going to be using [V] media so we are still in a legal grey area when it comes to distribution.

I've already begun working on a new interface for the SW Mod, which I'm sure Karma will be willing to share. And I do mean totally new, none of this Render behind the V Interface stuff, or a simple colour change. There's a slightly out of date example in the Job oppourtunities thread on the SW Mod forum. Here for the Lazy

Yes, it's a massive project (one which I've been called off for the moment unfortunately, but still will progress), especially with me working effectivly alone, and with a lot of other commitments, but I dont believe its impossible. If you look at the images in Sparky.vp you may notice that a huge number of them are relatively simple modifications on other images - some are exact copies. In real terms there are probably only a few hundred truly unique images in there, and many are fairly small - the rest are copies of these few hundred with simple changes made. Other files are stuff like loadout anis, concept art, hud pictures etc. - a lot of stuff that could be replicated from things that we would need to recreate anyway.

EDIT - Note that the interface wouldn;t be the only thing that'd need replacing. If we're using currently existing mods, Like *Is stifled by Maeg* then we'd also need to eliminate all references to Vs textures, including stuff like the AWACS and Deimos Textures, which seem really common.

However this shouldn't be so hard - we'd need to make a similar looking but different texture from scratch, and just put this in there. It wouldn't change the overall appearance of the ship, but would get us out of the Lawsuit hole.

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]I love suspense...
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[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Maeglamor
[color=66ff00]I love suspense...
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Oooh, you're cruel!