[Goober5000]

There are about a dozen threads on three forums that talk about that.  For example, have a look at the stickied FTP thread at the top of this forum.

[diamondgeezer]

Hey... in the second training mission, is there always an Arcadia there? I never noticed it before...

[Goober5000]

Yup.  The Kos, IIRC.

[Hippo]

Originally posted by gevatter Lars

My interest is...has anyone managed it to extract the FS1+2 movies so that you can view them without playing the game.

The programs were forcibly removed from downloadable form by interplay. People still have them hanging around their webspace, and with a lot of scouring you can find them... Or you could just PM someone and ask if they could email it to you...

[Carl]

every game should have a rendered cuscene or two.(or more)

All the ones with the in-game cutscenes look nice, but it would be much cooler to see them rendered.

[Lynx]

I didn' t like it that FS1+2 lacked any form of character development or characters at all. The most personal experience were the tutoring lessons in FS1.
Independence War2 and Wing Commander did a much better job on that. I really felt pissed when the Nephilim killed Dallas in WCP. He was one of the most likeable characters in that game.

[Hippo]

Well, Hallfight had good charecters...

[Lynx]

What's hallfight? A mod?

[Hippo]

The movie from FS1 where the marines enter the captured freighter.

[Stunaep]

We will not discuss FS1's superiority over FS2 or FS2's superiority over FS1. Period.

DG, I took you four years to realise that?

[Stunaep]

We will not discuss FS1's superiority over FS2 or FS2's superiority over FS1. Period.

DG, It took you four years to realise that?

[Lynx]

Nice doublepost!:p

Nah I meant relationships between you and other persons ingame. Hallfight was good, but you saw only some marines once that didn't have anything to do with you.

[Hippo]

yeah, but its more in depth in the charecter field then FS2... AHTW has charecters that you'll get to know and love, then as something happens to them, the player will actually miss them... *in theory*

[Drew]

god, each mission Alpha 1 looses like 8 or 9 wingmates... i dont think V had much room to develop characters when most of them have a life expectancy of about 1/4th a mission. Try to look at the capital ships as characters. Didnt you feel kinda a connection with the Aquitane and the Colossus?

[Killfrenzy]

I felt a connection with the Psamtik........ WHAT??

[Lynx]

Originally posted by Drew
god, each mission Alpha 1 looses like 8 or 9 wingmates... i dont think V had much room to develop characters when most of them have a life expectancy of about 1/4th a mission. Try to look at the capital ships as characters. Didnt you feel kinda a connection with the Aquitane and the Colossus?

There ae a lot of ways to do that...scripting that the wingman doesn't die, or that he ejects in an escapepod(oh wait FS ships don't have that. Looks like Command wants them to fight to the bitter end... ). But yeah, due to the sheer stupidity of the FS AI it's hard to keep your wingman alive...and it appears to me that none of the ingame wingman has a higher  AI level than Captain, or Major perhaps. Anyone checked that?
The Freespace AI is one of the not-so-great things in the game. Most older spacesim AIs perform a lot better, at least in some aspects. And FS is the first spacesim ever where I saw ships firing through their on hull:ick

[magatsu1]

Having their cries for help cut short by their death sream doesn't really help ie;

"This creates gonna/ Aaaaarrrrgggghhh!!!"

And I agree with Carl. In-engine "cut scenes" are OK, but a lovely bit of flashy FMV (or similar) can't be beaten.

[Triple Ace]

Originally posted by Solatar


*grabs the port*

Problem solved. at least for me...

Well the port still has some flaws.

[karajorma]

I'm glad that FS never had character development for Alpha 1. I used to hate it when the characters in Wing Commander did something stupid that I wouldn't do. It forcibly rips you out of the story and reminds you that you're only playing a game.
 The original Wing Commander did it much better in that the characters around you had personalities but the player could act however he liked.

[Stryke 9]

Who says Alpha 1 needed a personality? Woulda still been nice to see 2,3, and 4 get some.

Yeah, the AI is dumb enough that it really doesn't last long in fights. That's not exactly an insurmountable problem in and of itself, it's not like non-retarded AIs are a complete work of fiction. You'd still get a lot of fatalities with the standard setup due to various factors, but just sitting here right now I can think of workarounds to it- having fighters jump out when they get real armor damage or including escape pods in the wreckage LOD, for example. They just didn't do it because recurring personalities weren't really integral to the FS1 plotline and FS2 was basically an unabashed straight shoot-em-up all around. Basically, because Volition didn't feel like it.

And capships weren't really much better. Hell, in a straight fight, a wing of bombers on even the dumbest AI setting could grease a destroyer (never mind Alpha 1- gimme the average player enough ammo and they could successfully take on most of the GTVA fleet), there were all sorts of artificial situations set up to protect them and in fact most of the missions involved some variant on you playing babysitter running back and forth saving their dumb arses. You'd see them for all of about half a minute in a given mission (in those missions when they weren't in immediate danger of getting destroyed by a Nahema with half its shields torn off and two Cyclops bombs left), they'd sit around and look vaguely impressive until something stupid stopped working (honestly, the engineers musta really cut corners, there was always at least one thing going wrong with those damn caps), they'd jump out. No real distinct personality there, just a big hunk of metal with a ridiculously large crew number and a few nice guns attached to it.