[General Battuta]

You need the patch.

However, your issue is not with the MediaVPs Advanced BPs, but the Blue Planet ones. Pull those and the skybox error should go away.

Good to see you around, Battuta!

 

No way I was going to miss this. And good to see you too. 

[Colonol Dekker]

alert!

No Vishnan preserver found, or the Earth frigate......

[The E]

Are you using an inferno build? If not, log please.

[Colonol Dekker]

Alert cancelled

[Kolgena]

Very awesome work. I especially love how cutscenes were redone in a much more dynamic way.

And of course, voice-acting is win.

2 bugs I noticed, probably due to RC1 code problems. I'm not sure, so I'll post them here:

1. Second-to-last mission: (insane number of ships everywhere)
Sometimes dead ships remain targetable, and can receive commands, although they no longer have a presence in the mission. Applies to both hostiles and friendlies. The target window in bottom left will be blank if this happens.

2. Last mission:
Yay for Alpha 2 and Alpha 3 dialogue bug being fixed! Boo for starting the mission with nothing but 16 harpoons equipped as my primaries!

Otherwise, it was awesome to play through this campaign again. Many of the missions were not nearly as hard as I remembered them to be, which I guess is a good thing. All that lacks now is for WiH to be released

[General Battuta]

We're getting some reports that there are missing briefing/CB voice acting on Universal Truth (bp-21). Is this true for everyone? Our internal SVN version, and our own tests of the VPs we uploaded, both suggest the voice acting is present.

[Rhymes]

Yeah, I had that problem.  Same for the debrief of Journey's End (bp-22).  Is it possible that the downloads were corrupted?

[Kolgena]

I have voice acting for all parts, though some parts skip and jump a bit.

I got my files from the mirror on the first page of the release thread.

[Zacam]

That's what MD5's are provided for, so you can check that.

I can say I have encountered no problems.

[starbug]

We're getting some reports that there are missing briefing/CB voice acting on Universal Truth (bp-21). Is this true for everyone? Our internal SVN version, and our own tests of the VPs we uploaded, both suggest the voice acting is present.

i had that problem, but quiting the game and then restarting it sorted it for me, because i checked the VPs and they are present.

[General Battuta]

Really weird.

[Herra Tohtori]

Post transported to another thread.

[Colonol Dekker]

Everything works fine for me soundwise.

Spoiler:

But where are the outtakes?

[General Battuta]

Aren't they in the VPs? Did Fury cut them?

nooooooooooooooooooooooooo

FURY WHERE ARE THE OUTTAKES

[Herra Tohtori]

Gotterdämmerung.

Oh well, here, have fun... not the same as having them hidden in the VP's... but nevertheless. >_>

OrestesOuttakes.7z

[Colonol Dekker]

I just looked properly.





edit, two of mine are in there, do they play under certain conditions, in campaign i mean?

[Herra Tohtori]

Right...

Please don't cause further cardiac arrests.

They shouldn't play during the campaign, not that I'm aware of. They are also the only outtakes I am aware of in total.

FS2 outtakes don't play during the FS2 campaign either...

[Shivan Hunter]

O hai, DarthGeek from IRC here.

All in all, Blue Planet was probably the best campaign I've played for FS, and one of the best mods for any game I've played in a very long time. I felt like I was part of the campaign even more than when playing the main FS campaigns. Immersion makes all the difference when it comes to FS, and I must say you guys got it right.

When I first played "A blue planet..." (this was before the re-release), I expected to see a destroyed Earth because, like I always do, I had uncovered the spoiler tags on the first few pages. But nothing prepared me for the feeling of really losing several million people to the Shivans that BP was able to create. The atmosphere surrounding both the Orestes battlegroup, the mysterious Vishnans, and the unrelenting Shivans is unparalleled in any FS campaign to date.

The ships in the battlegroup itself are "as beautiful as they are powerful". Stratcomm's fleet pack really shines as a post-fs2 expedition (or invasion, as the case may be) fleet, and the Aurora and Kulas look awesome fighting Shivans. The vishnan ships have been improved since the first BP by about three orders of magnitude- the texturing especially is simply awesome!

The background in the nebula deserves a special mention all on its own. It's beautiful and atmospheric, and even better, it's realistic! it actually seemed like I was in a nebula, instead of the generic soup that comprises most FS nebulae.

The voice acting was superb. Most of the voice was near-professional and it really added that bit of immersion that most FS campaigns lack. It was also monumentally helpful not having to read messages in the heat of battle.

The thing about BP is that it's almost completely character-driven, and it explores through the characters the things that make us human. Normally, I don't like such an introspective twist on FS campaigns- which speaks even more highly of BP, since I was able to thoroughly enjoy the campaign even though it's quite out-of-character for a story in the FS universe.

Can't wait for WiH!

[Spoon]

Aaaand finished.
Played it without any of the blackmarket stuff because I wanted to compare the changes made to when I played the 3.6.9 release. My original encounter with BP was a buggy one. I had to skip missions, play the campaign with ctrl+shift+s etc. It could also be rather hard at times.

Well, here is the Director's cut. The first .12 release.
And man, talking about polishing it up. I managed to complete the campaign in one day and it was one smooth ride. It is balanced, it is good looking and it is involving. Every issue I had with the original release have been addressed in one way or an other. The story and mission flow felt more consistent. I encountered no bugs ('cept for the funny issue that I couldn't get my Ursa to fit into the Titan's hanger bay ) and the mission balance had no 'unfair' moments anymore.
The voice acting ranged from good to excellent. Bei at times sounded like he was about to burst into tears though
Special props to the female voice actors. I say this because every other female voice actor in a freespace mod I heard before just sounded really bad. Either it was the recording, the acting or just the voice in general it was all rather rubbish. However the ladies in BP:AoA all play their part very well. I only found Taylor to be annoying at times (I'm not out yet if its because of the character, the voice or a combination of both).
The campaign overall felt a bit more easy then it did before (or perhaps that's just a side effect of the good balancing done) and I had very little problems getting through it on medium. (In b4 Fury saying I should play with his A.I.) Which is a good thing BTW

As I already said on IRC, I wasn't too fond of the sol starfield used in mission 2 (asteroid field, dragons etc) because it really gave me the impression of a spherical texture on a mesh instead of being in space. But all the other skyboxes with the planets are absolute beauties  
The blue flak was nice too. And was I right in spotting Black Wolf created head ani's?

[Herra Tohtori]

Spoon, that's great to hear, and thanks for the comments.

The voice acting ranged from good to excellent. Bei at times sounded like he was about to burst into tears though
Special props to the female voice actors. I say this because every other female voice actor in a freespace mod I heard before just sounded really bad. Either it was the recording, the acting or just the voice in general it was all rather rubbish. However the ladies in BP:AoA all play their part very well. I only found Taylor to be annoying at times (I'm not out yet if its because of the character, the voice or a combination of both).

Just out of interest, how did you think the in-game communications voice filtering worked out? 'Cause I want to hear what people think of it, in case someone comes up with suggestions that can be implemented in the future.

The campaign overall felt a bit more easy then it did before (or perhaps that's just a side effect of the good balancing done) and I had very little problems getting through it on medium.

You're just a better pilot now.

As I already said on IRC, I wasn't too fond of the sol starfield used in mission 2 (asteroid field, dragons etc) because it really gave me the impression of a spherical texture on a mesh instead of being in space. But all the other skyboxes with the planets are absolute beauties  

Just for the record, I'm repeating what I said in IRC in response to this already; I have no idea why NASA's Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio opted to make the brightest stars larger in diameter than one pixel, instead of limiting themselves to static brightness range of 255 values of intensity (plus a hint of colour for brightest stars) but I can assure that I used the best source material publicly available for rendering the starfields. I am aware that the "big stars" like Sirius for example are somewhat annoyingly big, but aside from acquiring the Tycho/Hipparcos star catalogues and figuring some way of rendering the starfield based on them in the way I would prefer, there is not really anything I can do about this issue.

However, I would like to ask if you are using regular or advanced starfields. In my experience, the advanced starfield is a bit more "star-like" than the lower resolution one.

I'm glad you liked the rest though. Oh by the way, what did you think of the Vishnan Nebula skybox? It was actually the one I thought would be the most controversial of the backgrounds in the campaign. But the one that took the most effort was the destroyed Earth...